Dear readers
This is my story from a devote Christian who fasted, prayed with tears, defended the Gospel by all means til the day i asked myself a simple question which is "Why am i a Christian?" From that day everything changed. I
was carrying unanswered questions and doubt for the period of 7 month and after
these 7 month I reached the end of my rope and renounced my faith in Jesus. I
want to inform you that I did not close the door for Christianity rather I’m
willing to reconsider retaining my faith in Jesus. Also I want to inform you
that I’m not an atheist rather I am
a deist. Deism is a belief that God exist but he hasn’t revealed himself to humanity.
I will explain later why I hold to this belief of deism. The following reasons
are the one which troubled me for the period of 7 month and made me to renounce
my faith in Jesus.
Introduction
I must say that it’s
the role of skepticism which brought me to where I am today. It’s all about
being open-minded and open-hearted by being allowing the truth to set me free.
Different people in life have different world views trying to explain the same
entity. In this regard I’m talking about religions of the world. Someone said
that there are about 10 thousands religion in the world in every different
culture of people. Though most of polytheistic religions died out throughout
the centuries, monotheistic religion still continue to flourish. Christians
genuinely believe that their God created the universe and Jesus is the only way
to salvation and other Goddess of other religion are false, Muslims genuinely
believe that Allah is the only God and Muhammad is the only last prophet who
humanity ought to believe in. Ravi Zacharia a noted Christian speaker once said
that there are about 4 thousands Gods in Hindu religion, and Hindu also
genuinely believe that their thousands of Gods are true and Islam and
Christianity is false.
Now if you were born a
Hindu you would genuinely believe that those thousands of Goddess do exist and
they are real. But if you are a Muslim or Christian you will regard those four
thousands Gods of Hindu religion as false. One thing religious people forget is
that the same way they view other religions as false, that’s the exact same way
other people view their religion too. Each religion is claiming that their God
is the ultimate reality behind our existence and unfortunately as we grew up we
found ourselves being told by our parents that our religion is true and other
religion are false. So we carry this believe and the only thing that we do in
adulthood is we defend our religion from skeptics because we were indoctrinated
when we were young that our religion is true. But is that rational thing to do?
Have you ever try to test your religion in order to know if it’s true or not?
Or you just believe that it’s true because your pastor or your parent told you
so?
In my opinion the best
way of testing your religion is by being rational and objective as possible by
asking why you believe in what you believe. This is the ultimate way of knowing
whether your world view is true or not by being honest to yourself and
appreciating the role of skepticism. Skepticism play an important role in
finding the truth by listening to skeptics who critic your religious view.
There is nothing that shake the truth, the truth will always stand no matter
how much attempt to debunk it. So if the truth will always stand then it’s good
to put the a world view on test and assess its truth claim concerning reality,
if that world view is true then obviously it will stand but if that world view
is false, it will fail though it will hurt you at the beginning but later on it
will set you free and you will be freed from lies that confined you in your
life. However if you are not open to
the truth and keep rejecting the role of skepticism then you are deluding
yourself and you are wasting your time, money, energy and resources which you
spend advocating your world view since you don’t have any reason why you
believe in what you believe.
This is what I did as a
Christian I appreciated the role of skepticism and begin to ask myself deepest
questions such as why am I a Christian? How do I know that Christianity is true?
How do I know that other religions and world views are false? That’s when I
begun to assess the truth claims of Christianity as objective as possible. And
after 7 mouth of examining my faith, I came to the end of the rope and
renounced my faith in Christianity because I believe there are very good reasons
for thinking that Christianity is false just like any other religion.
The following are some
of the reasons that I have for thinking that Christianity is false. I encourage
you to take away the fear of hell-fire as you read this paper and put yourself
in the shoes of someone who is assessing the faith as rational as you can by
being objective as possible. Don’t be partial on your faith nor on the
objections against your faith rather be impartial on both your faith and the
objections against your faith. By so doing is the best way of truly assessing
the truth claim of your religion. With
that said, lest look at the followings reasons that I have for thinking that
Christianity is false.
The
main problem with Christianity
1) Biblical
inerrancies
Noah’s arks
When I grew up I
genuinely believe that the event of Noah’s Ark really happened and there was a
worldwide flood and Noah took every animal species in his ark. Most Christian
believed that this event really happen and it’s a historical event. But I
believe any Christian who believe that Noah’s ark was a historical event had
not came across with serious objection against Noah’s ark. I also use to
believe in Noah’s Ark until when I come across with some serious objections against
Noah’s Ark which led me to abandon the belief in Noah’s Ark. One of the
argument against Noah’s ark is the number of animal’s species. According to
Ernest Mayr American leading taxonomist said that there are over 1 million
species of animal in the world and some of these animal’s lives only in
specific geographic area and they are not found in any other part of the world.
Geographically ancient Hebrew lived in Israel present day (middle-east).The
first question is what happened to animals which are only find in southern of
Africa, Australia and Americas ( south and North ) ? Did Noah put on board
animals which lived only in South America and Southern Africa? Animals like Kangaroo
never lived in Middle East, up to today there is no fossil of Kangaroo in the Middle
East, the only continent we can find fossil of Kangaroo is in Australia, now
did Noah traveled to Australia to load Kangaroo on his ark also? If yes, where
in the Bible is it written? Do we think
about this things or we just turn a blind eye on it and ignore it? How could I believe
this event as historical while there is no enough evidence to support it and on
contrary there are good reasons to falsify it? Do people accept this story on
historical basis or on the basis of faith? And if we are to accept this event
on the basis of faith, I think that will become even more problematic since the
Bible itself claim that this event was factual. Some Christians who are aware of the fact that
Noah story is a myth would say that the Christian faith is predicated on the
basis of Jesus resurrection not on Noah’s story. While it’s true that the
Christian faith is based on Jesus resurrections but it’s also very important to
point out that Jesus was a Creationist too. Jesus himself believed in this
story of Noah. I remember in one of my online debate with an theist he brought
up the story of Noah’s ark and I tried to get away with it by claiming that
Noah’s story is irreverent to the truth of Christian faith but I was stumped
when he said that Jesus was a creationist too I couldn’t get away with it.
Jesus whom Christians predicated their faith on also believed in Noah’s story. Christian
such as Young Earth Creationist (Christian who belief that God created the
universe in 6 literal days and the universe is less than 10 thousands years old)
have attempt to reconcile this errors but failed badly. Even If there is
evidence for worldwide flood that doesn’t imply that the story of Noah’s Ark is
a historical factual event because there is no way Noah’s could have put all
land animals and aquatic animals from various geographical area from different
part of world in one wooden Ark. There are a lot of animals which are not found
in middle-east where Noah’s live so what happened to those animals did Noah’s
put those animals in his ark too? What creationist and other Christians who
believe in Noah’s ark tend to do is that they ignore the evidence and discovery
in the field of science like for modern cosmologist and astrophysics. The big bang
theory is accepted in the mainstream science including Christian Scientist as
well. In fact William Lane Craig who is regarded by many as the leading
Christian defender also accept the Big Bang theory. He uses the big bang in his
Kalam Cosmological argument for existence of God. Should we say that scientist
are wrong and that the big bang never actual occurred and that the universe was
literal created in 6 days? As far as I know it science an objective and
independent field grounded on evidence not on dogma like religion. So to sum up
my argument, I would say that if you accept the Noah story, I believe you do so
on the basis of faith not evidence but there is a lack evidence to support
Noah’s event thus, there are good evidence to demonstrate that Noah story is
false.
For more information
on why I think Noah story is false, I recommend you to watch this debate
between a renown Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham and an atheist Bill Nye.
Watch here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI
The historicity of the synoptic gospels
I grew up without
knowing historicity of the synoptic gospels. In my childhood I had an idea that
the gospels were authentic and the named associated to the gospels were actual
authors of this gospels. I though the gospel of Mark was written by the
disciple Mark, Matthew was written by the disciple Matthew, Luke was written by
the disciple Luke, and John was written was written by the disciple John. I was
very shocked when I found out that Luke, Mathew, Mark and John were not the
actual authors of the gospels. In the original manuscripts the heading of these
Gospels read as follow “ THE GOSPLE ACCORDING TO MARK, LUKE, MATTHEW OR JOHN”
the heading itself implies that the author of the gospel is writing what Mark,
Luke, John and Matthew told him or what he heard from these four disciple. That’s
why the word “ACCORDING” is appearing in the heading. Now this is universal
accepted by all Bible scholars that these four authors attributed to these four
gospel actual never wrote the gospels themselves. One of the proof of this is
in Gospel of Luke 1:1-2, The author of the gospel of Luke open his gospel with
the following statement and it reads: “Many have undertaken to draw up an account
of this things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down
to us by those who from the first eye were witness”. Now if the Gospel of Luke
was written by the Apostle Luke, why is the text saying that many have written
up an account of Jesus and handed to us? Luke supposed to be the eye witness of
all the life events of Jesus but who are these eye witness who handed down the
account of Jesus to him? This is one of the example to show that the authors of
these gospel were not the first eye witness. Now after for a while I was
troubled with authenticity of this gospels because I understood that the
gospels are historical document written in ancient times just like any other
historical document so there has to be some errors. I did not pay attention to
some contradictions in the gospels because I was concentrating to the person of
Jesus which is his miraculous birth, divine claim, the crucifixion and the
resurrection.
However though I
believed that the gospel provide us with the picture of the historical Jesus I
think it’s very important to point out some errors in the gospels. In the
gospels of Matthew 22: 52-23 it say that after the resurrection of Jesus the dead
saints rose from the dead and they were walking in the street of Jerusalem, the
passage read as follows: The tomb broke open and the bodies of many
holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and
after Jesus’s resurrection they went into the holy city appeared to many people.
Now this passage has been universal rejected by scholars including noted
Christian scholars and apologist like William Lane Craig and Craig Evens. All
scholars agree that the passage is an invention and if the author of Mark
invented passage like this what else did he invented? The reason why scholar
believe that the passage is an invention is crystal clear that this is a pure
apologetic motive invented to persuade first century reader that the
resurrection of Jesus was witnessed by all people in Jerusalem and it was
accompanied by dead saints. Now, when you read the Pauline letters and books of
Acts you will noticed that the disciple were persecuted in Jerusalem, and the
Jewish did not believed in the resurrection of Jesus. So if the passage is
true, the resurrection of Jesus was accompanied by dead saints then why did the
Jews who were in Jerusalem disbelieved in the resurrection of Jesus, if they
also witnessed his resurrection and that of the saints?
In summary, I would say
that though this gospels provide us with a the historical Jesus it’s very
important to keep in mind that before the gospels were written in ink they were
passed orally for number of years and obviously there would be some addition or
missing part in the story which was passed orally for a number of years.
Example if the gospel of John was written around 70 AD as scholar speculate
then obviously it’s not a reliable document because Jesus died around 33 AD and
from 33 AD to 70 AD is a period of 37 years which is a very long period of
years. Surely In those period of 37
years there has been some addition or missing information from the story of the
gospel of John.
2) PROBLEM
WITH THE CONCEPT OF SALVATION
The doctrine of Christian
salvation say that only those who believe and accept Jesus as the son of God
would have eternal life. Those who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell since
according to the Christian faith there are only two final places in the
afterlife which is hell and heaven. In the gospel of Mark 16:15-16 Jesus said
those who don’t believe in him will be damned the passage reads as follow: And
he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned. Now
everyday hundreds of thousands of babies
are being born by non-believer parents
such as atheist parents, Hindu parents
and Muslims parent and their parental believes will have an influence in the
beliefs of their babies as they becomes adults. Now you are a Christian because
you were born in a Christian country, Christian community and by Christian
parents. If you were born in Iraq or Pakistan were about 98% of population are
Muslims surely you will be a Muslim by now. Our parental beliefs play an
important role in what we belief as we grow.
It’s very unusual for Bill graham son to become an atheist and it’s very
unusual for Richard Dawkins son to become a Christian. Now the most difficult
question arises which is what happen to 10 and 13 years old babies who die
while they are being raised by their parents who are unbelievers? Do they go to
hell fire or they go to heaven? Now if they go to hell, is it their fault to be
born by parents who are non-believer? Why would God sent them to hell as if it
was their choice to be born by parents who are un-believer? In addition to
this, in history there are some good people who live a peaceful life and had
contributed to world peace. Let’s take a good example of people like Gandhi who
spend his entire life fighting a peaceful struggle for the freedom of his
people. Gandhi, rejected alcohol,
violent, left his riches behind and lived in a very poor house with other poor
people, stopped wearing expensive clothes to wore very simple clothes, eat
simple food, later in life abstained himself from sexual intercourse from his
own wife. Now according to the Christian
doctrine of salvation people like Gandhi are in hell fire burning simply because
they rejected the Christian God while on earth they lived a peaceful life. While a murder, rapist, or a tyrant who ask
for salvation while in his deathbed would allowed to enter heaven. Really?
The other problem which
I have with the Christian doctrine of salvation is that if hell exist, a large
number of people are perishing in hell fire each an everyday. According to the CIA world facts out of the 7
billion people who inhabit the earth 31 percent of them are Christians and the
other 69% consist of non-Christians such as Muslims, Hindu, Jewish and atheist.
Now if Christianity is true then all that 69% of non-Christian would perish in
hell-fire. And this rises the questions as to why would God create the universe
in which only a few number of people who would believe in him and let the
majority of people to perish in hell fire for eternity just because they
disbelieved in Jesus? Though I’m a limited in my human-mind I don’t think this
doctrine make sense or rational. This is clearly a human made doctrine. Is that
the purpose of humanity? Did God created human being so that at the end of our
lives some will have eternal life and some will be condemned in hell-fire for
the rest of their lives? Is that it?
Some Christian
apologist like Frank Turek the founder of cross examined ministry argued that
God created us with freewill therefore it depend on us weather to embrace him
or reject. Those who reject God separate themselves from him in eternity and
God would not force them against their will to be with him in eternity. Now to
be objective as possible I think the interpretation of Christian like Frank
Turek make sense to me because if the Christian God does exist then those who
reject him do that on their own accountability. However the problem still
stand, as to why would God create humanity and out of 100 of human beings only
31 percent of them will believe in him and the rest of 69 percent will burn in
hell. Why did God created people whom he knew that they will reject him in
life? Why does God allow people to be born to unbeliever while he knew that
unbelievers would influence their kids to be an unbeliever as well? In fact you
and I if we were born in Pakistan or Iraq today we would be devote Muslims or
if we were born in India today we would be devote Hindu who have no idea about
Jesus and the gospel. We would see Christianity in the same way we see them. We see them as lost people and their
religions are false, but it’s very important to keep in mind that they also see
us in the same exact way we see them. Hindu, Muslims and Buddhist see us who
believe in Christianity as lost people and have a false believe.
Another problem I have
with the Christian doctrine of salvation is up today we don’t know what will
happen to people who are mental ill. I remember in church asking the preacher
as to what will happen to those people who are born mental ill and never had
chance of receiving the gospel. The preacher responded by saying that most of
the people who are mental it’s their fault because they messed up with their
lives and they ruined their chance of being presented with the gospel. The
preacher further said that we should not question things about such nature.
Just think about it, are our brothers, sisters, mother and fathers who are
mental ill going to hell-fire? Some of these people became mental ill before
they reached puberty.
So to sum up I would
end with the following questions, Did Yahweh created heaven for only those who
will believe in him and hell-fire for those who will not believe in him? Is
that the ultimate purpose of humanity? Some to have eternal life and other to
burn for eternity? Is that the reason for human existence?
3) THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING AND THE
CHRISTIAN GOD
This is main problem
which caused doubt in the belief of a personal God. The attribute of a
Christian God is all-loving, all powerful, and all-knowing, all good and all
merciful but when you look at the suffering and evil which is happening in the
world it’s hard for one to believe that the universe was created by an
all-powerful, all loving and all-knowing God. When I was a born-again Christian
I tried to seek answer as why do God allow evil and sufferings? I must say that up to this days there is no
plausible nor convincing answer from top leading theologian as why an
all-powerful, all loving and all-knowing God would allow evil and suffering.
Most Christian whom I know said that God is not responsible for the suffering
and evil which is happening in the world right now. Before I give reasons why I
think suffering and evil disapprove a personal God let me first distinguish two type of suffering which is
natural evil (evil which is naturally) and moral evil ( evil which is caused by
human beings). I would perhaps agree with a Christian who argue that God is not
responsible for moral evil since it’s the act of human beings themselves to
rape, kill, torture and steal. I would agree with a Christian that God is not
the one who sent a man to rape and I think it would be unfair to blame God for
the evil which man does. However when it comes to natural evil such as earth
quakes, tornados, drought, diseases, and hurricanes and flood surely God is the
one to be blame. Each year many people die from natural disasters and diseases.
The environmental News
services stated the following:
·
Just in 2011 alone natural disaster
claimed over 295 thousands live worldwide.
·
950 natural disaster were recorded
·
The average losses was estimated around
US$ 130 billion
· The most devastating earth quake was
Haiti earth quake which claimed over 220 thousand of live
·
Pakistan flood affected over 20 million
people and most of them lost their possession.
According to World Health Organization listed
the following figures
·
33.3 millions of people are living with
HIV/AIDS
·
2.7 million new infection of HIV/AIDS
·
2 million death from HIV/AIDS
·
1.7 million death from TB
·
9.4 million new infections each year
·
1.6 million die from pneumococcal
disease each year
·
Each year 7.6 million people die from
cancer
·
More than a half of pneumococcal disease
victims are children
Now with all this
amount of suffering which is happening in the world how could one argue that
the world was created by an all loving, all powerful, and all knowing God?
There is an apparent contradiction between an all loving God and the amount of
suffering going on in the world. There are attempts out there from Christian
philosophers and Theologian like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga. They
argued that there is no explicit contradiction between God and evil. Craig
argued that God had moral sufficient reason for permitting the evil and
suffering which is happening in the world and that God and evil are logically
compatible with each other.
Watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwo4Zq-CyFs
On a TV debate between
Michael ( an atheist professor ) who is a cognitive scientist at Yale
University VS William Lane Craig , the moderator asked Craig as why does a
loving God and merciful God allow evil , pain and suffering, Craig responded as
follow: “There isn’t a single reason Michael rather there is a multitudes of
reason which will be in play here, one would be that God want to create the
world of free creatures who can be came responsible moral agents and mature
persons and that would require a world that operate according to certain
natural laws where the fire that warm you can also burn you, the water that
sustain you can also drown you and it will require the ability of this
creatures to do certain moral evil acts so creating that sort of arena I think
it’s going to allow the possibility of natural suffering and moral evil to
occur but God permit this ( suffering and evil ) with an overall goal in mind
of bring people freely into a knowledge of himself and to eternal salvation.
So
we got to get away from the idea that were are God’s pet and his goal is to
create a nice little environment for his human pets at least on Christianity that
false”. In other words what William Lane Craig is saying here is that
God allow the suffering and evil in order to bring people into a loving
relationship with him and to eternal life. So if there was no suffering and
evil people would not believe in God so God uses suffering and evil as a tool
to bring people to believe in him. During the debate Michael attacked the
Christian concept of God which is all loving , all knowing and all powerful by
saying that the Christian God is incompatible with genuine evil and suffering
which is happening in the world. Craig brought up Alvin Plantinga argument by
saying the following: “We need to understand what an atheist is
arguing here is he arguing that God and suffering are logical incompatible with
each other if he is then he need to show us that there are implicit
contradiction there because there is no explicit contradiction and I would say
no atheist has ever been able sustained that burden of proof”.
This argument is a
philosophical argument deliberately developed by Plantinga to stump the
objection of evil and suffering but this argument does not offer sufficient
reason as to how can a loving God be compatible with genuine suffering and
evil.
You can watch a full
lecture on problem of evil and suffering by Professor William Lane Craig:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q5zQC2BEVY
Many people of
different religion and worldview tried to explain the reasons for suffering and
evil but none of them offered us any plausible reason as to why there is a
genuine evil and suffering in the world. In fact even Jesus himself could not
offer a valid reasons as to why God allow evil and suffering, in the gospel of
John we read the story when the disciple asked Jesus as to why the man was born
blind and Jesus responded by saying that the blindness of that man was
engineered by God so that Jesus would perform healing miracle on him. Here is
the passage: And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his
parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither hath this man sinned,
nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. But
noticed that the question was on suffering and evil in the world. Surely God
incarnate could’ve given a more plausible answer to explain why God allow evil
and suffering in the world than the answer which Jesus gave. The answer is not
satisfying, I think they were expecting answers as to why God allow evil and
suffering in the world.
I remember in January
of 2014 I had a discussion with my mother who is a Roman Catholic concerning
the euthanasia of children in Belgium. She was opposing euthanasia as being
inhuman practice but when I asked her as to what is the reason and purpose of
little children living a painful live for the rest of their lives? The answer
she gave amazed me, she said that those who are suffering they are suffering
with Jesus. They are not alone Jesus is with them in their suffering. Now if God is with us
in our suffering should we now say that both humanity and God are mourning and
crying in pain? Can a God who created this universe suffer from the pain and
suffering which he created? Perhaps God is a bystander who fold his hands and
watch humanity as we suffer from genuine evil.
I remember in my
born-again church there was a small boy maybe 16-17 years old of age who was
deaf. Whenever we had a church services he had to look for someone to translate
for him in sign language what the pastor was preaching. Sometimes we use to
have miracles healing programs were the sick would be healed but after every
program the boy could not be healed. Everyone in the church knew the condition
which the boy had. Now what’s worse is that the boy was a born-again Christian
who gave his life to Jesus? He use to attend most of the church services and
program but why can’t an all-power and loving God heal that boy so he could
listen properly to the Gospel of Jesus? In the gospel of Matthew 7-11 Jesus
said that people should ask and they shall receive the passage reads as
follows: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that
seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is
there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask
a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in
heaven give good things to them that ask him? How many people do we
know in our churches who are mental ill and physical disable but hoping for a
miracle which will never occur? How many prayers did we prayed hoping that they
would be heal but yet nothing happen some have even given up their hope. In September of 2013
while I was still a born again Christian, I remember going to visit my brother
who is a nurse at the hospital, on my way there I passed through the corridor
which separate the mortuary and nurses
houses. As I passed near the mortuary I found two mortuary attendance having a
conversation blaming the pastors for the death of 3 Christians who belong to
the pastor church because they refused to take their ARV (HIV medication) and
they believed that the power of God would heal them. Unfortunately for them
they died from AIDS. Now as Christian I was confused and I asked myself
questions as to how could God allow this to happen. In Gospels we read Jesus
saying that ask with faith and you shall receive but in reality we don’t see
this.
One of the ten
commandment in Exodus 20:12 say that if we are to honor
our parents we will have a long-life. Here is the passage: Honour thy father and thy mother:
that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. How many good people out there who have
respect for their parent but yet they die young? How many evil and wicked
people out there who disrespect their parents but yet they do live a long life?
Can this commandment come from the God who created the universe?
Now it’s easy for a
person who is living a healthy life and having a healthy family to say that God
knows why he allow evil and suffering but
keep in mind that there are people and families out there who are living
in horror. Each and everyday pain and suffering is what they have to deal with
their children’s are starving to death because they don’t have food to eat,
some children are orphans because their parents died from natural disasters.
What strikes me a lot is when I see children under the age of 13 years going
through a severe suffering? Children are little people who don’t understand how
the world operate and they depend on
other people for their survival but when I see a baby born with cancer and by the age of 4 years
the cancer will kill the baby, is there any meaning and purpose in the life of
that baby? She was born in pain, lived a painful life and died a painful death,
is that the purpose of that baby? We live in the world where people are
experiencing terrible amount of suffering, innocent people like baby dying from
terrible and painful diseases, natural disaster like flood and earthquakes
claims hundreds of thousands lives every year, each and everyday people are
killing each other. With this high amount of evil and suffering how may one
argue that the universe was created by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful
God who cares for humanity? If the universe was created by an all-knowing,
all-powerful, and all loving God then he is contradicting himself because the
world that we live in and what we observe doesn’t seem like a creation of an
all-power, all-loving, all-knowing God.
I would say that in
this world where there are bacteria, virus, natural disasters, psychopathic
people, thugs, gangsters, jealous, hatred, envy and angers it’s obvious to
expect suffering and evil but this is not the product of an all-knowing,
all-powerful, all-loving God. In life some would be lucky and they would live a
long healthy happiness life but some would be unfortunate that they will only
live a short span of life full of suffering. We found ourselves in this
terrible world where our beloved ones face a terrible suffering and we are
broken psychological, physical and emotional. Each one of us is having a burden
which we are carrying and we look forward to be relived from our burden.
In conclusion I would
say that if the Christian God exist its either he is a bystanders who suffer
with us in every tabulation we go through and he cannot do anything to solve
the situation or he is a monster who enjoy and fold his hand and watch as
humanity suffer from the evil and suffering which inflicted us for thousands of
years but we shouldn’t come up with nonsense claiming that we were created by an all loving, all
powerful, all good, all knowing , and all merciful God because the world in
which we found ourselves don’t look like creation of an all loving God, all
merciful, all knowing God
3) The
incoherence and inconsistence of the God of the Bible
The third problem I
have with Christianity is the concept of God himself as described in the Bible.
Trinitarian Christian believe that God consist of three persons namely; Jesus,
Holy Spirit and Yahweh. Three persons but one God and the same God who divide
himself in three persons.
Now the problem I have
with this concept is that the God of the Testament who is supposedly the same
God of the New Testament is almost completely different the God from the New
Testament. The character of Yahweh is different from that of Jesus and the Holy
Spirit. In the Old Testament the character of Yahweh is portrayed as angrily,
harsh, and genocidal. In the Old Testament Yahweh commanded the stoning of
death, the genocidal of Canaanites, the destruction of Egyptian soldiers in the
red sea and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire. Now when you look at
the God of the New Testament he is completely different from Yahweh, he is
peaceful, loving, forgiving and compassionate.
In the New Testament we find God amending the stoning of women,
forbidding causing pain to others, he encouraged non-violence, he encouraged
loving of enemies. I can’t say much about the Holy Spirit since the Holy Spirit
is not mentioned a lot in the New Testament but I would say that the Holy
Spirit reassembly the character and nature of Jesus.
Now the problem with
this is crystal clear, in the Bible we find God who change often, in the Old
Testament we find him allowing the stoning of women but in the New Testament we
found him forbidding the stoning of women. In the Old Testament we find him
commanding people to kill Canaanite including their children but in the New
Testament we find him forbidding the killing of anyone.
Now when you read the
Bible you found the same God claiming that “He is the same today, tomorrow and
forever he never change. Here is the passages: Malachi 3:6 "For I am the LORD, I do not change”; Hebrews
13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and forever.”
To sum-up how can one
reconcile this illogic concept of God? We all know that the God we found in the
Old Testament is different from the God we found in the New Testament but yet that
same God is one. Though the Christian God claim that he never change we found
him changing often in the Bible.
SUMMARY
OF MY BELIEF ABOUT GOD
·
He does not answer prayer
·
He gave us reason not scriptures
·
If he intervene with humanity, he
operate with nature
·
He gave us morality and we are born with
it.
WHERE
I STAND NOW
Leaving a religion is
the most difficult steps to take in life it’s not easy it require soul
searching and deep meditations but the end of my journey is a wonderful ending
setting me free. Religion is something which is rooted in ancient times and the
ancients were primitives. Each ancient civilization invented their own God as
the explanation for their existence or phenomena which they observed. They were
trying to explain the natural world but as we progress and evolve intellectual
were realized that their explanation of the natural world is either incoherent
or implausible. If human evolution did occurred in this planet then it was
evolution which led to the advent of religions as our ancestors gained
consciousness they begun to explain their existence by inferring Gods as the
ultimate reality behind their existence. Now their Gods where characterized by
the nature of the society and they were suspicious like human beings. Their
Gods have human emotions depending on the behavior of people in specific
community. If people of a specific community were lust their Gods would be lust
as well, if people of that community were very violent their Gods would be
violent as well. The Gods of ancient
Greek were lust and drunk because ancient Greek were lust and drunkards. The
Gods of farming community were fertile and green. Unlike to some people who
leave religion and instantly become atheist my case is different from them. I’m
a deist who believe that God or the first course of the universe never revealed
itself in any scriptural writings. I believe the God who created the universe
is a very intelligent God but I don’t believe that he is the one who authored
these ancients’ scriptures full of absurd doctrines, myth and teachings. Though
science tell us about the physical world I don’t think it explain our existence
from A to Z. There are a lot of unanswered questions which science can’t answer
such as the origin of the universe, why is there something rather than nothing.
This are ultimate questions which ought to be answered but yet there are no
answer to this questions. As someone who embrace the philosophy of rationalism,
I would be ignorant to jump to a conclusion that universe got no cause while I
don’t have good and sufficient reasons to back up the claim. I believe in God
because the universe exhibit complexity which I find implausible that the
complexity of the universe is due to chance. However, as I stated above that I
did not say goodbye to Christianity, I’m willing to retain my faith in God
again if I will be confronted with a refutation of my objections against the
Christian faith. After all there are highly intellectual people out there who
believe in God, and I believe they have reasons for why they believe in their
Gods, but as for me with these reasons I really find it hard to believe in God
though I want to believe in God. I’m still struggling to believe in God again,
I often watch YouTube lecture of Christian philosophers and Christian debate
and testimony of those who convert to Christianity.
CONCLUSION
I don’t intend to
convert you from your faith but I believe if you are an open-minded person my
paper will have an impact in your faith. So friend as I said above that there
is nothing that shake the truth, the truth will always stand no matter how much
attempt to debunk it. So if the truth will always stand then it’s good to put
your faith on a test and assess its truth claims concerning reality, and if
your religion is true then obviously it will stand but if your religion is
false, your conscience will tell you that you believe in crap though it will
hurt you at the beginning, later on it will set you free and you will be freed
from lies that confined you and which you carried in your life. But if you are
overwhelmed with the fear of hell-fire and you are scared to question your
religion as objective as you can because you believe that you are sinning for
questioning your God then you are doing nothing but deluding yourselves with
lies and false hope of resurrections, eternal peace, and enjoying the fruits in
paradise .
I welcome a refutation
of my objections against the Christian God.
