Why I cannot be Christian simplified

I have made many arguments against Christianity in this forum. I have given this thought and I realize it boils down to two reasons. Everything else leads back to these two problems:

1. Thought crime

2. I find the Bible objectionable

I will now elaborate on each.

First let's address thought crime. In Chrisitanity, it is a very real thing to sin inside your brain. If you have sexual desires and fantasies especially the wrong kind (homosexual desires), you are worthy of eternal torture. Just giving that attractive young woman you pass by in public a second look will send you straight to hell. I'm also to be sent to hell for the victim-less crime of masturbation. Having feelings of resentment, anger and fantasies of violence is another thought crime worthy of eternal torture. Don't misunderstand me, I think forgiveness is a very beautiful and worthy thing to accomplish, but that is a process a person must go through to reach the state of forgiving their enemies. Having the initial unpleasant thoughts should not be registered on your sin counter. Also, why am I to give up my independent thinking and accept the authority of the man in the clerical collar to do my thinking for me?

Many Christians here will now scream "YAHWEH GAVE US FREE WILL!" That may be true as far as choosing Christianity. Once you are a Christian you have no more freedom including inside your head. Christianity is VERY Orwellian! Also, having a choice between being a slave to a vengeful and angry God and eternal torture is not a choice I should be grateful for. That's like the choice between handing over all your money or being shot in the head.

Now Christians will be saying "But all you need to do is accept Jesus as your lord and savior and all your sins past and future will be forgiven! (including thought sins)" And they might add that going to church, prayer, reading the Bible, giving to charity and avoiding fornication and adultery will follow naturally from that choice. This leads me to my second problem: I find the Bible objectionable.

You see, Jesus is a package deal. If you want Jesus, you must embrace the Bible as the Word of Yahweh 100%. You must accept it as absolute truth and complete timeless wisdom. For one, the Bible does not answer to my satisfaction the questions I need answered (My specific question: If sex outside wedlock is a sin, why does Yahweh create life through the act of a sin?).

Then I have to embrace as truths and "beauty" the following:

Glorification of the violence and destruction of Yahweh's enemies.

Instructions on how to treat a slave.

The historic accuracy of the Bible (despite a lot of evidence against it).

View homosexuality as a disease and reject the idea of women in leadership positions over men.

Rejection of science (deny evolution but embrace the idea of a planet wide flood).

Deny salvation for non-Christians and Christians who do not worship or believe the same things (rejection of the trinity)

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As I said, everything else I might say, will boil down to these two objections.

 

Hogwash......

 

Once you join the cult there is no escape.

In Exodus 24:7 the people pledged to be loyal and obedient and then they changed their minds and were slaughtered.

In John 15:6 the Jesus character said that if you abandon him he will toss your butt into the fire.

So once in there is no escape. Know the rules before playing the game.

 

The most dangerous element of Christianity and all other religions is the way they glorify faith over reason and push people into believing in bronze age teaching out of dogmatic blind faith.

 

Thank you for filling us in on the details of your sex life. The rest of this is a straw man, which is one of the problems I have with atheism, their critical thinking skills are impaired.

 

Belief in a religion is one based on faith, faith has nothing to do with critical thinking.

 

As opposed to having NO critical thinking! Which is what Christians must strive for.

 

Well, what you are saying is true, but Christians don't have to park their brains at the church door and reject science and history and critical thinking.

 

According to fundamentalist Christians our rights are "god given" but NOWHERE in their bible does their god give anyone any rights.

In fact their god is OPPOSED to religious freedom and freedom of expression to such an extent that it is worthy of the death penalty and eternal damnation.

Good luck finding the presumption of innocence, right to a trial by your peers, freedom from discrimination, equal rights for women and minorities, etc, etc in the bible.

So what kind of critical thinking skill impairment does it take to believe in the fallacy of "god given rights"?

 

Ouch... very true. I don't think they have thought it thru.

 

Maybe so, but if they DON'T park their brains at the door, they won't be Christians for very long or they will have to do a lot of mental gymnastics for their world view to fit reality.

 

You don't really know much about Christianity.. The sin of Onan wasn't masturbation, it was disobedience.. He didn't want to follow Levirate marriage and have children with his widowed sister-in-law.

Its still practiced in Kurdistan.

 

Or democracy!

 

There are many Christians who understand that the bible is metaphorical rather than literal and therefore they park their faith at the door when they go to work. There is even a fundamental Christian who studies the evolution of the dinosaurs.

However the subset of extremist Christian zealots who believe that the bible MUST be taken LITERALLY are the ones who have problems dealing with reality. How they handle the cognitive dissonance of being anti-abortion while their bible literally has their own god ordering his chosen people to commit abortions and even provides a recipe for an abortion must be difficult.

 

That may be so, but if I were to ask a Christian of any theological persuasion the direct and simple question: was there really a Noah's Ark and a world wide flood? The answer I'd get almost always falls along the lines of: I don't know or Who cares if not an outright yes. Growing up in a Christian home, my father suggested it was all of the known world as opposed to the whole planet. But he did not take into account the ability to keep all the animals alive and the fact that there is no evidence of Noah or the Ark even existing.

 

Most Christians know that the Noah story is didactic literature. There was no global flood. Like Exodus its a tale of redemption and delivery.

Your father was correct.. the known world (eretz) was 150 miles wide and 350 miles south towards the Persian Gulf.

 

That does not take into account thought crime. The Bible also fails to define what sex is or what it means to be celibate.

 

LOLOL.. Its cautionary.. You aren't damned by lusty thoughts. Have you read the song of Solomon?

Do you need to have celibacy explained to you?

BTW.. The flood lasted 4 days not 40 days.. not a year..

 

However there is evidence of a large flood in the region of the Black Sea and the Tales of Gilgamesh recording such an event.

The reason why the bible is metaphorical is because it took an event like that and disingenuously turned it into a means to threaten people into believing that goddidit by embellishing it to the extreme. At that point in time those who had the most to gain out of religion where not aware that Science would come along in the future and expose these fallacies in the bible.

Today we do live in the world where religion, especially LITERAL religion, is threatened by the knowledge made available by Science. It was not the objective of Science to expose the bible and many of the great scientists of the past were Christians. Some, like Newton and Darwin realized the folly of religion and stuck to Science instead.

FTR Atheism predates Christianity!

 

The Black Sea breech is too early and it was a very slow moving flood. It took months to raise the water level in the Black Sea. People had ample time to move their livestock to higher ground.

The event does coincide with an explosion in shared technologies and agriculture that spread across Europe and the Levant.

 

Good to know that. No disagreement here. Only, tell that to many fellow Christians like Ray Comfort who goes around evangelizing and tells everyone he talks to that the Bible says looking upon another with lust is a sin. He wouldn't be the first, but he's the first example I can come up with. If you like I'll show you Youtube videos of him saying it.

As for needing celibacy explained to me, there is only a couple of things: Does celibacy also include refraining from masturbation? A yes or no will do. What about wet dreams?

 

Why should it?

You probably should ignore the jackasses.. They tend to want your money anyway. Religion attracts a lot of crackpots and charlatans.. calling themselves modern day prophets or predicting the rapture date.

 

I couldn't remember which crackpot Ray Comfort was.. LOLOL He's with Kirk Cameron ..

http://jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/ray_comfort.htm

 

And that would be another reason that drives me away from religion. Well, to be fair, organized religion at least.

I don't want to sit in church pews with people like this:

 

You live in Uganda?