Hey guys, I don't post much, but I've been struggling with religion for a while now and you guys seem to be pretty intelligent people.
I've grown up in a family without religion. We've always gone to public schools, never gone to church, my parents have already told me they don't believe in God. But I go to a christian high school because my parents like the more conservative environment. I had never really given christianity a chance before high school, because evolution and such had been drilled into me for most of my life. But after freshmen year of biology and theology classes, I converted to christianity. But I fear maybe for the wrong reasons.
The biggest reason was that I saw evolution as false. I still do, but I think that I must be missing some important facts because scientists everywhere have come to a near consensus that evolution is true. The way I see it is that evolution is based on mutations. Obviously the first singled celled organisms that formed themselves in whatever (logical) way did not have the genetic information of every species to ever live on earth. So that information must have mutated over time. The earth is supposedly billions of years old but even in that much time, it seems like the odds of every single of allele of every single gene of every single chromosome of every single genome of every single species forming randomly are just so low it's insane. Consider that most mutations are harmful and I just have trouble believing in the theory of evolution.
But that said, I also think it's a logical fallacy to believe something because the alternative is false. Maybe the only alternative we know of, but it seems silly to assume that we fully comprehend the universe at this time, no matter how far humans have progressed.
Recently I've come to lose my faith in christianity. Ironically because I've been studying the actual bible this year in theology, rather than the main concepts. And this is the part I struggle with. The main ideas of christianity make so much sense to me. We humans do have innate issues and are in need of help of we wish to live up to the standards of a perfect God, but there really is nothing we can do. Humans never can and never will be perfect. And that's why God sent his son to save us, to be the perfect sacrifice, etc... that all makes sense to me. It all lines up with my conscience and heart's thoughts.
But at the same time, these ideas come from a book which writes almost exclusively about condemnment and hate. About violence, and about fearing an angry ruler. The old testament is about living up to God's high standards. While the new testament spends most of it's time attempting to reconcile itself with the old testament. The fact is that the old testament was written by violent and bigotrous (is that a word? haha) ancient jews, and the new testament was written by jews and gentiles alike who were too proud to give up there tradition of God and were attempting to justify their beliefs. While the writers of the New Testament may quote the Old, and profess their faith in it, I highly doubt the writers of the Old would consider the new testament anything more than heresy. The whole book reeks of hypocrisy and contradictions.
No matter how much logical sense it makes, christianity has an unreliable base. If their are no facts supporting it, than I have no reason to believe it
If there is a God, after reading the Bible I am quite sure it was not written by him. Which leads me to the question of are we reading the real deal. These books were written 2000+ years ago, who's to say we are reading anything close to the originals? A lot of people don't know this, but around the year 250, a council of christian elders met in Nicea. These elders compiled all known prophetic literatures and literally decided what was and wasn't God's word. This is the one thing that pisses me off the most about Christianity. How in the world could we let male chauvinist, arrogant, elders who lived 1700 years ago decide what is right and wrong for us? Another fun fact, one of the most well-known christian doctrines is the prejudice against homosexuality, but did you know it is actually a very debatable subject in the bible? In fact there is actually no word for homosexual in ancient hebrew. The holy code references that a man should not lie with a man as he would a woman, but did you know that lesbianism is never once mentioned in the bible. I think it more likely that homosexuals were frowned upon because male chauvinist ancient jews thought it wrong that a man should take the position of a woman in bed, the receiver. They thought it demeaning or disgraceful. And to think christians are using that rationale (they haven't thought of their own) to justify their prejudice against other human beings is sickening.
But if it was not written by God, and God still exists, than is it possible that nobody truly knows his true will? Would God literally send everybody to hell, despite knowing that we have all been misled? That seems unlikely from a benevolent God. But at the same time would a just God simply give a free pass into heaven for close-minded and hypocritical christians who only believe in God because it was drilled into them and send open-minded and free thinking, but misled non-christians to hell?
I also have a few logical issues with some christian ideas, some of these I understand have no answer and are just logical paradoxes that appear when discussing God.
1. Who is the devil? What is his nature? From what I understand he is apparently pure evil. He is rebbelious to God down to the core. He was in prescence of God, saw his power, saw his great wisdom and still chose to rebel. But I don't see how a rational being could do this. Was it not clear to him that God was all-powerful? Did he actually believe him and his demon friends could defeat God? If so, why did God not make this plain to him? How did he justify damning Satan for all eternity, knowing full well that had he made it clear to Satan that he was perfect, invincible both to rebellion, and to criticism, Satan would not have rebelled. Satan really had no reason to rebel against God if he was perfect. Yet he must have had reason to believe God was not perfect, and being omniscient God knew this, why did he not make it clear?
2. This is a simple one, if God is all-powerful, could he make a boulder so heavy that even he could not lift it? This seems like a juvenile question, but I really think it calls into question the legitimacy of titles like "omnipotent". As some things are simply not doable.
3. Another somewhate simple one, if God is omniscient, do we have free-will? Think about it, I have plans to go to the beach tommorrow, I might change my mind, I don't know, but God does. Let's assume I do go. Right at this very moment, God knows that I am going to go to the beach tommorrow. He is omniscient, so he cannot be wrong. Therefore I cannot not go to the beach tommorrow, otherwise he'd be wrong. In which case, before the decision is made, it is predetermined which choice I will make. I have no say in the matter. It may feel like I do, because God's divine foreknowledge is not made known to me, but it's an illusion of free will. Now a common mistake is that this implies God controls us. There is a difference between him knowing what we are going to do/choose and him forcing us to do/choose. It merely implies that something (who knows? fate?) has predetermined our lives.
4. This one I bugs me a lot. How does God justify punishing people for what he both knows they will do, and has the power to stop? Now "God gives us free-will" is the textbook answer, but I think it's a rather cruel realization if it's true. God is omniscient. Your struggles with faith, your conversions to christianity/atheism, your battles with sin, they are all meaningless. God knew before you were born who would win. And I find it rather sadistic that God would bring a being into this world knowing full well that he/she would not die a christian and would go to hell. How could he do that a child he loves unconditionally? Making everybody Christian would save everybody, but of course that would lead to questions of free-will. But I wonder why he allows people who will not find Christianity on their own to be born, and to go to hell, when there is no sacrifice here in free-will. Some may say that without evil, good is meaningless. But that is rather cruel as well. The souls of millions are damned to hell for the good of others. Now it's a dog-eat-dog world and I understand that, but when it's not up to you, it's just cruel.
Alright, sorry for that wall of text, I just have a lot of thoughts, probably more I just didn't think of. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
