I Don’t Believe So

An Atheist and a Christian walk into a discussion. The Christian – surprisingly politely – asks for an explanation. I thought that I might provide one.

Thank you for your polite response. I respect your right of choice. If you don’t mind would you please share what first caused you to question the validity of Christianity when you began believing otherwise? I’m just curious. Was it something someone did or the church you were attending or a major life experience? For you to believe one thing for so long and then decide to believe differently had to be a major life changing moment.

You have made two fundamental unsupported assumptions in your question.

First, no-one chooses to believe anything, Atheism, or otherwise. Anyone who claims that they, or anyone else does, is either mistaken, or lying. We all believe what we do, only when we become convinced. It’s just that some people are more easily convinced than others.

Second, most people who leave Christianity to become Atheists, do not have a single, major, life-changing moment. It’s like Chinese water torture – drip, drip, drip, drip. Or like a new-born baby, growing into a full adult. There’s never a day when they are what they were yesterday, but it’s a constant series of tiny, un-noticed, incremental changes. For many, these changes are powered by a slew of social, secular, and saintly causes.

Read the Bible, it will give you Faith and Belief

Don’t read the Bible, you might not ‘interpret it’ correctly – says the priest/preacher who is interpreting it.

You have free will – but don’t use it to think for yourself. Accept what you are told, and DON”T QUESTION!
The church which preaches love and acceptance – discriminates against LGBTQ.

The ‘infallible’ Pope just finished changing a ruling that a previous infallible Pope made.

There are hundreds of religions in the world, and they all insist that they are right and Christianity is wrong. The three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, all disagree with each other. “Catholic” means ‘universal in extent, pertaining to the entire Christian body, or church’, yet there are three ‘universal’ Catholic sects, Greek, Russian, and Roman. At least two of them must be wrong – along with more than 20,000 Protestant divisions.

We are told, especially by the RC Church that, “There is no supermarket Christianity. You must accept all of it.” But the Holy Church picked and chose what gospels to put in, when the Bible was created. The Gospel of Mary, Christ’s supposed mother, was not put in. The Gospel of Peter, the Rock upon whom the Church was built, was not put in. They voted on whether Jesus was God or not. If Jesus was God, who did He pray to, in the Garden of Gethsemane?

And the ‘Inerrant’ Bible…. 😯 I have a Word file with 23 pages of mistakes and contradictions. There are two versions of Creation in Genesis. One says that Adam was created before the animals; the other says that the animals came first. There are two versions of Eve’s story. The first says that she was made from the dust, like Adam; the other testosterone-driven drivel claims that she was made from Adam’s rib. In neither was she present when God forbade eating the magic fruit.

Moses came down from the mountain twice, but the two pairs of tablets hold different sets of the Ten Commandments. Could God not remember the first set? One says to remember the Sabbath, and keep it Holy. Check with a Jew, a Muslim, a Seventh-Day Adventist, or your calendar – Saturday is the Sabbath, not Sunday. A pope made all Christians into sinners

Two different people supposedly constructed the Ark of the Covenant. Two different people are credited with killing Goliath, only one of whom was David, and that was with a sword, after the stone had stunned him. Both accounts contain historical inaccuracies. In one, he was a Philistine, in the other, an Amalekite. There are two different versions of the death of Judas.

One version of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus says that those with him saw the figure of Christ, but heard nothing. The next one says that his companions heard the voice, but saw nothing.

Drip! Drip! Drip! Eventually they wake up one day and realize that it’s all exceptions, and no rule – no great, life-changing decision. Believe it all – or nothing. Okay, Nothing it is. Reading the Bible is the best way to create Atheists. Other than carefully selected and justified passages, most Christians haven’t. If a Power exists which created the universe and us, it neither needs nor wants our puny adoration and obedience – and it need not be called God. We’re just an ant farm. The “God” that Atheists don’t believe in, is the one in your imagination.

I imagine that there will be a Flash Fiction or a WOW on Friday. There’s only one version of the story of me being happy if you show up. 😀