Originally posted here.



I dunno but it sounds to me like you're in the wrong field. If you give it all your heart (put all your effort into your service to God) on a daily basis--and still fail--it seems you're doing something very wrong.

That is why I'm not a Christian. It's the wrong field for me. I gave it an honest try and it wasn't right for me. I refuse to give any more of my life energy to something that is so wrong for me--something I'm bound to fail at on a daily basis.

I'm a far better person on every level--in fact I had the New Birth--at the very moment that I turned my back on all I was taught to hold sacred. Voluntarily binding oneself with the bondage of slavery to an invisible imperceptible Master is sacrilege. Yes, you heard right. Life is sacred. You get only one--this life here on this planet that you're living right now. If you waste it in the hopes of getting a better one in some far-off fantasy land you will have wasted your one and only chance at life.

Not that you will ever know it because you'll be dead. But what a waste!

Originally posted here.



N-n-no-no-No-NO! Justin, WAIT! We're not supposed to ask this kind of question. We're supposed to just learn about geology and please just leave it at that. Okay? Just learn enough to pass the exam and get your degree. That's all you need to know, okay?

Listen, there was this flood. And we can see what the world is like today. Just forget about all those complicated details. They really are not important at all. What we need to know for salvation is that Jesus died to pay our ransom and that God accepts us no matter how sinful we are--IF WE BELIEVE and confess that we are sinners. But that is the important item--THAT WE CONFESS AND BELIEVE.

Huh??? This is me, Ruby, speaking in my own voice now. Somehow I'm supposed to trust the teachings and wisdom of people who gloss over such blatant scientific facts as unrealistic tons of gold reported in God's own infallible and inerrant Word to have been used in the Temple?

Okay, I Ruby am appropriately stupid and ignorant when it comes to this kind of factual knowledge. But when it comes to the social sciences and humanities I'm right in there with all the incisive questions that Christians absolutely hate! They might blame formal education for this but they would be wrong! I've had these questions since I first heard the stories when I was a child of perhaps seven or eight years old. Others on here have had the same kinds of questions and insights. These things happen!

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained praise." Thus spake Jesus according to one of the gospels. Christians love to dig out this verse depending what cute things their kids say. By rights, they should also apply it when exChristians testify to having had these convictions since they were little kids themselves. I like to think that "God" is just another word for "truth" personified. From that perspective, in our search for truth most of us exChristians have gone waayyyyy beyond what the Christian evangelists have gone who come on here preaching. Some of us have stood up for truth despite severe persecution from family and friends.



The problem with this "question" is that it throws doubt on the entire structure of the Faith. That is simply not permitted. Forget that it is called faith. Faith can, supposedly and avowedly, stand on its own without evidence and support.



[I will use a hypothetical case from my family. This didn't happen in my family, and it never will because Mom died a year ago, but it could have. Supposing I had this conversation with my mother and sisters:]

Mom: You see what happened to you when you did that--you stopped believing altogether!

Me: And what's so bad about that?

Mom: If you don't repent you will go to hell! You know that.

Me: Hell would have to exist for that to happen...

Mom and sisters: intelligible but loud exclamations of horror

They really do believe this stuff. It's really real to them. Sad, sad situation. Don't know how to help them. They feel the same about me.

Originally posted here.



That story is a particularly terrible one. It's a story I have struggled with a LOT. The same goes for the passage in Paul about hardening Pharaoh's heart and judging Esau evil before he was born. I can see how these stories were comforting for the Israelites as a people, and how they helped form them as a people or society in the early days. I think every society has its own national or tribal or folk heroes. (By "folk heroes" I mean as in baseball has its heroes and the computer industry has its hereos, etc. and these may well cross international or other geographical/social boundaries.) However, all these Bible stories explain is how the Edomites and Israelites came to be enemies rather than allies. Etc.

The fantastic plagues of Egypt probably never happened, though there might be a tiny grain of truth somewhere in the story if anyone knew how or where to look for it. (Maybe there was a group of slaves that got away in the middle of the night while the army was engaged elsewhere.) As for Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of soup, maybe he did and maybe he didn't. According to how things played out later in their lives when it came time to claim the birthright, it seems no one except Jacob remembered the sale, and definitely no one else expected to honor it. Jacob used outright deceit, trickery, and even lied to his blind father, in order to get it. So much for honouring your father and mother, for not stealing, for not bearing false witness, for not coveting, etc. Oh let's see, the Ten Commandments weren't written yet.

Maybe that's why they had to be written--Jacob's descendents were no better than the patriarch. Funny how the world's Messiah was born of his seed. Or maybe not. Maybe it was precisely because Jacob was such a dickhead and because his descendents were no better that God had to send his own Son to set them straight. According to their testimonies, Christians are among the worst humans alive so perhaps there is a reason why they need a book to tell them how to live. If they were even worse than Jacob and his Genocidal Maniacal God without the book they better have a book.

But I seriously doubt that they would be as bad as they are if they would trash the book. Humans in general seem to be better than this particular God/Jacob set-up. The book tells them they have to be bad enough to be saved so they have to do something bad. Otherwise they can't be saved and then they can't be Christians. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE!