Losing Faith in Faith..

Dis-Member

I came across this lecture at 3am not being able to sleep by Dan Baker. It details his transition from Christian fundamentalist to atheist and the various shades in-between. He realises that every denomination of Christian can open the Bible and prove to you that they have the right interpretation and everyone else is wrong. The Bible can be used to prove just about anything you like.

"God is not the author of confusion". Can you think of a single book that's caused more confusion than the Bible? What is literal and what is metaphorical? Everyone thinks that they have the right way and they all disagree with each other. And Jesus does not return and God is silent for thousands of years and never shows himself.

How on earth are we meant to believe in any of it? Faith based upon nothing is madness.

If I am honest with myself the whole idea of a non-provable faith in anything is seeming more and more to me like believing in fairy stories. I personally can not prove a single thing of what I believe. I can't even defend it. What business do I have in believing it in the first place then? Merely saying 'because the Bible says so' is no longer enough as we already know they Bible can say anything you want it to.

I also can not prove that the Bible is anything more than an old book that not a single person in history has ever understood. How can I ever possibly hope to.

"Let's be honest here.. there simply is no verifiable testabable evidenece for a God.. if there was someone would have won the nobel prize by now".

He also discusses the hypocrisy and insincerity of acting like you believe something when you don't. (ie: attendance and participation at meetings and ministry) Something very many in here do and have done for years.

Here's the lecture. You may find that a lot of what this guys says resonating with you. It certainly does me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmPqUkB-mVE

HeyThere

Marked

kaik

I believe in the God as a creator of the Universe. However, I do not believe that Bible is word God. How would God left behind such book that is full of nonsense, missing references to non-existing books in the cannon, has internal inconsistencies and contradictions. Bible is what people thousands of years ago thought was their divine revelation. Do we care what Romans belived and treasured so much like the books they kept in the temple which contained sybyllas' prophecies, and had people to die for?

Heartofaboy

Marked

Phizzy

I think there was a thread on here, one of Cofty's ?, titled "Faith is not a Virtue", I certainly agree with that title.

No one has ever explained to me the real difference between Faith and Delusion.

punkofnice

"God is not the author of confusion". Can you think of a single book that's caused more confusion than the Bible?

Hows about the Quran. There have been some looneys let loose because of that book.

I am amazed how how easy it is to feel love for an imaginary creature and think that they love you back.

Dis-Member

The Bible speaks of many men of old that had this wonderful illusive faith which are meant to inspire us. But of course they did! They saw fire a lightning come from the sky, they heard the thunderous voice of God from the heavens, they saw countless vast enemy armies vanquished with miraculous supernatural forces and whole cities swallowed with with fire and brimstone right before their eyes.

Of course they would then have faith after experiencing such things if true.

Later according to the same Bible in Jesus time people had faith only and because they saw him perform countless impossible miracles and bend the laws of nature.

People in those times prayed to God and often got an unmistakable response from him in less than 5 minutes. People today can pray for 50 years and have no response what so ever.

God was seemingly far more friendly and sociable back then and liked humans more making several of them his 'friend'.

I'm sure if any of us today saw or experienced a single iota of this we would have the most unbendable and unbreakable and valid faith. But we don't.

In fact no human has experienced any direct interaction what so ever with God for over 2,000 years. We instead are told that we must have this same unbendable, unbreakable faith based on mere stories, legends, fables, parables passed down in copied, translated, manipulated, twisted, even possibly fabricated untrustworthy and unreliable documents written in languages we can not read and the veracity of which too can never ever be proven.

This is a form of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 20th, and even a hundredth hand faith. Faith in the story of the faith of another person is not real faith.

We are then also told in that same Bible and by those that promote it that of we do not have this faith we are utterly rejected by God. Apparently to be acceptable to God, it is necessary for one to exercise faith in Jesus Christ, and this makes possible a righteous standing with God. (Ga 2:16) Those lacking such faith are rejected by God.—Joh 3:36; compare Heb 11:6.

The men that wrote that either knew or had a real and personal experience of God and Jesus so it was easy for them to say and write such things. No one in 2,000 years has had any such real experience.

It seems that to have a real faith today in an uncontactable God and a 2,000 year absent Jesus is a physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual impossibility.

What is needed to have genuine faith then is not the study of some dusty old antiquated parchments housed in the British Museum or the Vatican Library but rather for the living God to actually unmistakably do something in our lives today, right now to inspire and foster such faith. Without this there can be no surprise that the world is in utter and total confusion as to the existence, identity, nature and will of God.

OnTheWayOut

Marking. I like your opening post and will have to view the youtube another time.

Slidin Fast

Lovely reasoning dm.

OnTheWayOut

I was about to put a negative comment on a thread by "Objective Truth" where he is ready to support the truth of the Bible and Jesus over the lies of Watchtower. But then I decided just to skip that and come back here to real objectivity. The Bible can be used to justify mistreatment of women or hatred of groups of people. All JW's did was use one set of extreme variables to justify their "truth" of the Bible because, in modern times, use of ancient Greek and Hebrew makes it even easier. Find a definition of an ancient term that barely fits like "house-to-house" instead of "in-private-homes" and expand in modern English, then pass that along in Spanish, French, etc. It allows anything, especially if you can simply ignore any scriptures that cannot be made to fit.

Losing Faith in Faith..

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