I thought I'd post about my favorite Bible verse, Psalm 14:1. For those of y'all who don't have a Bible handy I'll go ahead and lay down the New American Standard version of the verse right here.
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.I love this verse. It's just dripping with all the sorts of stuff Christians like to hear. Fools say, "There is no God." Of course they do. Back in the day, they called people who didn't believe in God "fools." Today we call them atheists. If we replace the "they" in the second part of the verse with "atheists," we get something like this: "Atheists are corrupt, atheists have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good."
Well that's interesting. According to the Bible, atheists are all corrupt individuals who can't do a single good deed because abominable ones take up all their time. This puts me in somewhat of a difficult position, because I am an atheist. Or, if you're Biblically inclined, a fool.
Remember about a year ago when I made a post about my determination to keep my faith strong when I got to school? That didn't happen. You see, I read the Bible cover to cover twice the summer before I headed off to Tulane, and I discovered there's a lot of crap in there.* All the terrible junk in the Bible, such as dudes letting their concubines get gang raped to death** , had me kind of turned off of the whole Christianity thing by the time I got to college. I still believed in God, but I was sufficiently distanced from Him to not feel a bit of guilt when I got hammered my first night in New Orleans. It was all downhill from there. I got into philosophy, and I read books written by non-Christian philosophers. (Gasp!) I won't go into all the details right now, because that's not the purpose of this post, but for now I'll say this: I'm an atheist, and I like it. I've loved being an atheist more in 6 months than I loved being a Christian in 6 years.***
So, back to Psalm 14:1. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." I say that, in my heart, I guess, many times a day. That must make me a fool. I don't like that. I think I'm a pretty swell guy. I think I'm pretty smart too. Chances are good, about 96% actually, that I scored higher on my SAT than you did (or will). I'm in the honors program at the 50th best university in the nation, according to U.S. News. I don't know how many universities there are in the country, but I bet there's at least 1000. So, am I an arrogant d-bag? Kind of. Am I a fool? The jury's still out on that one.
They (atheists) are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds, There is no one who does good. Hmm. I don't really think I'm that corrupt. I haven't ever taken a bribe or embezzled, or any of the other things you hear about when you read newspaper headlines about corruption. I don't think I've committed any abominable deeds, but I suppose that depends on your definition of abominable. If underage drinking is abominable, or if you think gratuitous use of the "f word" in everyday conversations between 18-20 year olds is abominable, then I'm the abominable snowman. If you think of as abominable thinks like rape, murder, and bigotry, then I'm squeaky clean. I also like to think of myself as a person who does a good deed on occasion. I hold the door for people, I spent months helping 4th graders in the ghetto learn long division, and I told a couple redneck dudes today (yesterday, technically) that racism was "not cool, man."
I'm 19, so I guess I'm probably pretty retarded by normal person standards, but am I really abominable? Come on now, people.
* If you don't believe me about the crap, check out this extremely irreverent but also very accurate representation of Genesis 19.
** Judges 19; my version says "ravish," not "gang rape."
*** I say 6 years and not 18 because I was about 13 when I really started to be a Christian for myself, instead of just because my parents told me to. Calling a 7 year old a Christian is like calling a 7 year old a Kantian. They don't understand the Bible any more that they do Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.
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20 comments:
Oh man what a foolish blog dude
This was great. Enough said.
Ross, I'm sorry you feel this way. The more you move away from God the harder your heart will become and you WILL do things you didn't think you were capable of. I know this from experience. My relationship with the Lord got weak, my heart hardened, and as a result I did something that hurt many people deeply. What I did was "abominable". I also wondered where God was...I never questioned my Christianity but I felt very far away from him, and I was. But it was me who moved away from him, not the other way around. I guess all I'm saying is that God was real to you for several years. You can walk away from him but he won't walk away from you. He may try to get your attention, but he will be there should you decide to walk with him again. Just be prepared for consequences that may occur in the meantime. Ross, we are just concerned about you...no one is trying to "shove religion down your throat". Anything that is said is said out of love...not judgement.
Sheryl,
I wish Christians would stop spreading the lie that all atheists are cold, indifferent, morally repugnant nihilists. Come on. How can you really believe that? It is incredibly arrogant to think that Christians are the only people on this earth who can be happy. If Christians are so freakin' happy why does the United States, by far the most Christian nation in the world, have violent crime rates that far exceed those in more secular countries in Europe?
Even if all Christians were really happy all the time (they're obviously not), are you prepared to believe that the 4-5 billion non-Christians in the world are leading a meaningless, hollow, misery filled existence? God being the only path to happiness is a malicious lie spread by the Church in order to control people.
If loving God makes you happy that's fine. Go for it. I'm sure there are people who have an incredibly satisfying Christian experience. But to imply that the only way to have a fulfilling life is through Jesus is insulting. I don't need to talk to a dude who's been dead for 2000 years to love my life. I have plenty of friends who are still alive.
But, He is not dead
But, He is not dead
Yeah, Jesus isn't dead, and neither is Mohammad, Buddha, Gilgamesh, Osiris, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Brahman, Thor, Zeus, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard.
Be honest and not a smartass. None of the others have a religion that is based on the fact that they claim to be have risen from the grave.
Except for buddha, be he claims that he and his followers will come back as bugs or something like that - convenient
Yes, I was being a smartass. My point was your unsubstantiated claim that Jesus is, in fact, alive holds no more weight with me than the claim that Jesus was a black dude who toked up (Rastafarians) or that Joseph Smith read the Book of Mormon off of metal plates in a hat, or that Zeus fathered tons of illegitimate children with mortal women.
Nobody would take me seriously if I just walked around saying "there's a group of elves living under my bed" without offering any proof, yet that is exactly what you did with "But, He is not dead."
Also, I fail to see how the Buddhist belief in reincarnation (many Buddhists don't believe in this, by the way) is any more or less "convenient" than any other afterlife.
Well, the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith soon after he was released from a mental hospital, so I guess we can discount his account
Jesus was seen by over 500 hundred people in the week(s) after his death - a death that was not disputed by anyone who witnessed it. The new testament has more archeological evidence supporting its writing than any other piece of writing that dates to antiquity. It has more evidence supporting its original writing than ANY of Shakespeare's plays - the world has only seen copies of copies of copies - and the old testament has more archeological evidence of than anything of the same vintage. So, when I know that, I feel I can depend upon the recording of over 500 witnesses who saw Jesus after his death.
Yeah, 500 people saw Jesus after he died. According to the Bible. However, none of the accounts of Jesus' life or death in the Bible were written until at least 30 years after Jesus' supposed death.
There are *no* contemporary secular writings about Jesus. Everything we know about Jesus is secondhand at best.
It's a moot point that there is more evidence for the Bible than for Shakespeare. Nobody ever tried to exterminate the Jews because of Shakespeare.
Hitler was not Christian - and you can't try to make him that way through argument
Wow, didn't know that about ML, guess I'd better study. Can you direct me to some sources? And not an atheist book, but original sources?
And it is not a moot point. Some atheists will try to claim that the Bible is a dark ages English or European work of fiction. This is not born out by archeology. So, unless atheists are willing to concede the archeology, it is not moot.
Just google the Martin Luther book. It's on the web in its entirety.
For medieval antisemitism I'm speaking from memory. I wrote a paper about the Black Plague, and all the books I read at least touched on the fact that Jews were almost invariably burned en masse after plague outbreaks. I looked for my bibliography, but I think it's in a landfill somewhere around New Orleans by now.
I do concede the archaeology. I do not concede that ancient manuscripts existing points to the Bible being the word of God. Ancient manuscripts exist for many religions. The Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible by a fair piece, but that doesn't make it divinely inspired.
I'm not a historian or archaeologist, but I'd be willing to bet that the church is behind the fact (if it is actually a fact) that more Biblical manuscripts exist than other ancient manuscripts. The church has a long and storied history (even documented in the Bible itself) of destroying all evidence of other religions. It's really not surprising that Christian manuscripts outnumber other classical texts when the Christian church had a complete monopoly on western thought for over a thousand years.
Ross,
I'm a Christian. Where do you find in my comment that I say you are a "cold, indifferent, morally repugnant nihilist"? Quit putting words in my mouth. From what I can see you didn't even address what I wrote. You just went off on another tanget about why you are an atheist. All I was doing was addressing your previous post. I know from experience that you don't know what you're capable of doing. All of us are capable of doing "abominable" things. The closer you stay to God the better the chance you won't have to find out what you're capable of.
Your Christian Friend,
Sheryl (don't hate me cuz I'm a Christian) :-)
Sheryl,
Here's some things you said in your original post.
"The more you move away from God the harder your heart will become and you WILL do things you didn't think you were capable of."
"Just be prepared for consequences that may occur in the meantime."
I could be wrong in supposing that your implication was it's hard to live a happy life without God. Sure, I dressed it up and rephrased it a little. I am aware of the fact that you did not call me a "morally repugnant nihilist," but it also seems to me that you were implying that God was somehow necessary for morality and happiness. He's not, just so you know.
With the last statement I quoted you strongly implied that bad things would happen to me because I'm no longer a Christian. I can imagine getting a lot of hell from Christians and offending some people, but do you really think that my life will fall to pieces because I no longer spend a good portion of my day praying?
From what I can see, I did address what you wrote, and what I wrote was not a tangent about atheism. You told me, in rather plain terms, that I would be unhappy and commit abominable deeds unless I returned to God. I attempted to explain to you why you were mistaken.
I'm aware that we're all capable of abominable deeds. My post (the original blog post) was about the fact that the Bible explicitly states that those who do not believe in God will commit abominable deeds. That's simply not true.
Finally, please don't think that I hate you because you're a Christian. I do not. I disagree with your beliefs, and I'm irritated because you seem to think that I'm naive enough to be swayed by unsubstantiated claims about something in which I've explicitly denied belief. But hate you, no.
Your atheist friend,
Ross.
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