For the first time in my life, I am considering abandoning my Christianity. I am considering becoming a deist / auto theist.
Perhaps Christ was a great philosopher, and a religion was made out of a simple man.
I doubt I was lucky enough to be born into the right religion, while most other people were not. In fact I want to refuse to believe that. When I joined RF, I identified as a syncretist, because I was trying to find a way to synchronize all religions. This pursuit burnt me out when I found it to be a silly impossible task.
I believe there to be a higher power, I know this. I’ve been a young earther intelligent design believer all my life, I’m thinking of letting that go.
I have been proud to use God as my crutch all my life. I thought that this is what God is for. But God doesn’t hear our prayers, does He? He doesn’t hear our begging. Those in Ukraine cry out to Him every day I’m sure, yet they die every day. Does God hear them?
I’m fearful of the Christian God as I type this, because if He is real, I am sure He is sorely displeased by my betrayal. But I accepted Christianity all of my life because I’ve hoped it to be true. I’ve gone through all the apologetics and have let myself be convinced that Christianity is the right religion. By doing this, I have given up the power of independent thought from an early age. I was never afforded the chance to decide for myself if Christianity was true. Salvation was brought to me at an early age thanks to my environment.
I have a religion of one. That being what I’ve come to understand through the power of my own independent thought. I am tired of looking to religions to spoon feed me the truth.
former Christian, did you ever fear God? I fear Him, I’ve trained myself to. I rely on this fear. But fear is bad! Were you not afraid of being wrong? I want to claim my freedom and be an auto theist, and through my own power change the world positively. Scared of Hell though. Yet, most of those who I know and associate with, including many of this site, are supposedly going to burn for eternity. To hell with it, if I abandon Christianity and am wrong, I’ll have plenty of company in hell.
I feel abandoning my Christianity and relying on my own power is the only way to change my life around. Through definiteness of purpose, I will achieve all of my aims. I do not need a theistic God to submit to. I should submit to no one but myself.
As I type this, I’m sure God is going to have me hit by a car next week and send me straight to hell. I’m scared of this God. More the reason to break free?
I would like to hear from former Christians. Did you get struck by a lightning bolt or something shortly after disowning Christianity?
We can assert that God is love.
Some will argue. They'll say that God doesn't cure cancer and allows cruel deaths (animals eating animals), and poops, and bad smells.
Yet, some assert that God is love and God is good, no matter what we say.
The Catholic church allows Mafioso (the church doesn't object, as it should). We can use "Rocko" (a made up name), a Mafia hit man, to spread a little "love" of his own. The Mafia's love is defined in much the same way that God's love is defined....brutal, ruthless, crooked, self-serving. Anything that we need can be obtained with Rocko's help. If we want a promotion at work, I'm sure that Rocko could persuade our boss (or the position of boss might suddenly become available is something, heaven forbid, should happen to the current boss--promotion by assassination).
After we get what we want (our self-serving desires satisfied with our new promotion), we can, once again, assert that Rocko is love (Mafia love).
God allows hell. The Mafia creates its own hell (right here on earth).
God might send you to hell. The Mafia might fit you with cement shoes and send you to the east river, New Jersey.
God's tactics and the Mafia's tactics are very much alike. No wonder the Vatican allows Mafioso in their churches.
The Vatican has many assets. Those assets are being carefully shielded by bankrupcy filings (so boy-raping priests who were allowed to rape more little boys in other parishes where they moved, could not financially compensate their victims, in order to protect the mammon of the Catholic church...they love mammon more than God).
One asset of the Vatican, oddly, is a house of prostitution. It seems incongruous that a church would own sin. But not if sin is tolerated and if sin provides money to the church (love of mammon over God).
If Mafioso are providing income to the church, it must be part of God's plan, and therefore, ordained by God that we should have houses of prostitution and Mafia hit men. It would be unholy to stop using them.
So, the churches have a loving God, a place where love is freely shared (just ask the madam), and a Mafia hit man to help spread love.
All we have to do is accept the "new definition" of the word "love."
President George
W. Bush attacked peaceful nations (not linked to terrorism) of Iraq and Afghanistan, and tried to lie us into a war with Niger, but his plans fell through when Wilson refused to lie, so they outed Valery Plame (CIA wife) as punishment for telling the truth. W. Bush had to get prisoners to lie about their involvement with terrorism...he had to in order to justify his unjust wars. So, torture camps were set up in Guantanamo, Cuba (where it was thought that US laws could not reach, and it was behind the back of Congress), and there were numerous other torture camps around the world. When caught, W. Bush's attorney (Dr. John Woo, professor of law at Chapman University) changed the definition of the word "torture" so that no torture ever did exist (anywhere), nor could any torture ever exist anywhere. Thus, holocaust deniers could rightly deny the torture deaths of 6,000,000 Jews.
Just as the word "torture" was changed, to make it appear that torture never existed, the word "love" has been changed to apply to God's actions. Thus, we can say that God is love (as long as love is hate, violence, and harm, that is).
Redefining is another way of lying.
So, when we are incredulous at theists saying that God is love, we should realize that they are plying their trade of lying to make it seem that God is love. Since when is the Catholic church about lying? torture? killing? (thou shalt not kill).
