What am I trying to do?

 

"Go ahead, tell everyone what you saw - some will actually believe you."

Dear Christian,
With regard to what you believe and why I don't believe - as an atheist it's not that I am trying to convince you that I am right.  It's not even that I am trying to convince you that you are wrong.  It's more like I am trying to get you to understand that you really don't have any good reason to believe what you believe and that you really don't know what you think you know.

You have believed these things for so long that your belief feels - to you - like knowledge.
You believe so strongly, confidently, that you misconstrue your belief with knowledge.
In your mind the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus are so obvious that you are puzzled that some people don't believe (or don't know) that these biblical claims are true.
In your mind, the fact that so many people have believed these things for so long, they have to be true.
In your mind, you "know" these things are true.
In your mind, the thought that you might one day no longer believe in Jesus is simply absurd, unimaginable.

I suspect that the first step in a necessary and honest examination of what you believe (know) with regard to your religious faith, is to be willing to admit to yourself that you don't know what you think you know, you merely believe what you believe.
It's OK to know, or to have great confidence that the bible says what it says, such as John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Even people like me, who no longer believe in God, can be confident that the bible says what it says, but people like me are not confident that what the bible says is true.

I have no confidence that:
There is a God, nor that there is a God that "loved the world.
or that a God "gave his only son"
or that simply believing anything can prevent perishing.
or that there is any such thing as "eternal life".

Sure - if I was still a Christian I would believe the claims found in John 3:16, but I could never really know that those claims were true.

And that is what an honest Christian needs to understand and admit - they believe, but they really don't know that what they believe is actually true - they merely believe that it is true.

What a wonderfully astounding admission from the lips of Christians that would be.

bob
r.u.reasonable@gmail.com