WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN
By Howard Thompson
Editor: The Texas Atheist newsletter
Copyright 1999 by Howard Thompson
----------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
I am a materialistic atheist. I accept reality as it is and hope for a joyous, successful life. I am not a Christian. For me, Yahweh, Jesus, Satan, demons, angels, heaven, hell, magic and miracles are fantasy creations of the human brain. My rejection of Christianity is a rational choice arising from my understanding of how reality works.
Christians should note that there are many free thinking paths to atheism trodden by free minds. Atheistic thinking is individualistic -- a natural result of making your own choices. Atheists figure things out for themselves. They choose to reject America's dominate magical fantasy -- despite the risk of Christian hostility and discrimination.
My reasons for rejecting Christianity here described are brief outlines, not complete arguments. It is thus a description, not a full explanation, of why I reject Christianity for atheism.
Many Christians may not recognize their Christianity in my reasons for rejecting Christianity.
* Materialists think about reality differently than Christians. You should expect those who reject a belief to have a different view of that belief than its believers.
* What you reject is believed by other Christians. There are thousands of competing versions of Christianity derived from the same scripture. Christians should not expect others to think that their Christianity is the only correct version.
* Popular presentations of Christianity are limited. Believers usually do not see unbiased discussions of the bible and theology. Scriptural difficulties are usually rationalized or ignored so that believers are convinced rather than informed.
The atheistic view of Christianity may upset or seem silly to Christians. However, atheists who study Christianity have in some ways a more informed idea of Christianity than many Christians.
When Christians encourage atheists to read the bible, we are not going to see the words through the distorting filter of Christian faith. We are going to see the contradictions, the mistakes, the inaccuracies, the meanness, etc. We are going to relate our other knowledge of history and science to biblical stories. We take at face value the biblical difficulties we find and, where possible, to draw reasonable conclusions from them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SIX REASONS WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN.
1. Christianity is an false description of reality.
* Our beliefs about reality are our understandings of what reality is and why things happen. The more accurate our idea of reality, the better we can understand what happened, why it happened and what may happen in the future. The better we can understand what happened and predict the future, the better our chances of making choices that benefit our lives, the lives of our loved ones and humanity.
* Christians believe in supernatural magic. Christians believe that a magical, supernatural being created and controls everything. They believe that events in the material universe can be determined by actions of magical beings. For them, events may have magical or material causes. I have not experienced and see no evidence for the magical aspects of Christianity being real.
* Materialistic ideas of reality are, I think, humanity's most accurate description of reality and why things happen. Materialism describes reality in terms of orderly, consistent interactions of matter and energy. Scientific methodology helps us observe, test and validate materialistic descriptions of reality. The magical claims of Christianity cannot be demonstrated in the same way materialistic science can be demonstrated. All the verifiable evidence supports the idea of a materialistic reality while no verifiable evidence supports the existence of supernatural magic.
* Therefor, I accept scientific descriptions of a materialistic reality. I reject magic, including Christian magic, as unreal until such time as evidence for magic is stronger than the evidence for materialism. Based on the weight of the evidence, I am an atheist because I choose to regard god(s) as unreal.
2. Christianity confuses your thinking.
* Christians must consider magical explanations for why things happen. Since by definition magic does not operate by consistent laws, you can never be sure what caused something to happen. This means Christians can never understand cause-and-effect relationships. They can never be sure what caused something to happen. Christian thinking must always be confused between magical and natural explanations.
* Christians are confused by unknowns. Christians think the lack of a natural explanation for an event is evidence for a magical cause. Their first resort to magical explanations confuses their ability to learn about reality and causes them to resist materialistic explanations for the unknown as they become available. The current lack of a material explanation for something is not evidence for magical forces but a situation which justifies saying, "I don't know."
* Christians must doubt their thoughts and emotions. Since magical forces struggle for their soul, Christians can never accept their thoughts and feelings as their own. Christians must constantly worry about whether their thoughts and feelings are Holy Spirit guidance or demonic temptations. This kind of self-doubt inevitably distorts self-understanding and destroys self- confidence.
* Therefor, I choose rational, materialistic thinking over magically confused Christian thinking because I want to think as clearly as possible. I want to think about reality as clearly as possible because confused ideas and thinking can threaten my chances of surviving and enjoying life.
3. Christianity makes you feel badly about yourself.
* Christians believe they are born evil. Christians must believe in original sin and evil forces that constantly tempt them. To be a good Christian, you must be ashamed of what you are. You must feel guilty for your natural human instincts and behaviors. The mandatory burden of sin can trap a Christian within a life-long depression of guilt and unworthiness.
* Christians must humiliate themselves in worship. Human sin condemns you to hell unless you utterly surrender your individuality to worship a the Christian god. Christian guilt and unworthiness at being sinful can only be relieved within the ritual self-abasement of confession and worship. This can trap Christians in a self-destructive cycle of obsessive guilt and ritual abasement.
* Therefor, I choose to accept my natural humanity and reject Christian humiliation because it is stupid to punish myself for being human.
4. Christianity damages human relationships.
* A Christian's priority is their personal relationship with Jesus. Loving Jesus comes before a Christian's loving intimacy with others. This denies loved ones the emotional energy and time that is committed to a selfish relationship with an imaginary friend. This can develop into a life-long psychological inability to fully give and receive human love.
* Christians must doubt others. Since magical forces struggle within, Christians can never believe that what others do and say is sincere. They can never fully trust others for fear that they may be controlled by evil forces. Their thoughts about others are distorted by the need to test others for demonic influences.
* Therefor, I choose to seek the full potential of human relationships and reject Christianity's demand for an unreal relationship with an imaginary friend within the mind's delusions.
5. Christianity harms humanity.
* Christianity inflames harmful group behavior. Christians must believe in an ultimate war between good and evil magical forces. Scripture and doctrine requires Christians to convert everyone and oppose evil. This motivates Christians to intimidate, harass, ostracize, and attack those who reject god's laws. Christianity is thus an obstacle to a peaceful, loving human society.
* Christianity is a punitive belief. The selfish Christian god loves you so much that he will inflict infinite punishment upon you if you do not obey his arbitrary commands and worship his power. Christian scripture and doctrine emphasizes negative You Shall Nots that must be punished on earth vastly more than positive You Shalls that are rewarded after death. Thus, Christian societies focus on the legalities of punishment much more than supportive encouragement.
* Christianity delays and perverts human progress. Christianity has a long history of suppressing and perverting information. It oppresses and destroys competing ideas and groups. It perverts public perceptions of reality with magical propaganda. Christian social actions thus harm human progress by forcing their magical legends of God's will upon everyone.
* Therefor, I reject Christianity's harm of humanity and hope for a saner, more rational, more progressive human culture that is free from the harms of Christian beliefs.
6. The New Testament is an unreliable source of information.
* Many biblical scholars refute biblical legends and theology. Critical scholarship has resulted in numerous Christian scholars rejecting many biblical legends, miracles and much biblical theology. There is no good reason to accept Christian doctrines when so many authoritative scholars debunk them. Why should an atheist believe what so many Christians reject?
* Hundreds of Christian denominations interpret the bible differently. Each denomination picks and chooses its most important scriptures with different rationalizations for what the words mean. If a divinely inspired bible can be interpreted in so many conflicting ways, there is no good reason to accept it as a reliable source of information.
* The bible has many serious errors and contradictions. Traditional Christianity either ignores or weakly rationalizes these problems. If important scriptural problems are inexplicable, then there is no good reason to accept the bible as the divinely inspired word of a perfect god nor as a reliable source of information.
* New Testament manuscripts are late and unreliable. The verifiable manuscript evidence for the New Testament: a) is many decades later than the events described, b) is not in the Jewish language of the main figures, c) is very sparse before 400 C.E., d) has clearly been altered by later authors, e) has conflicting versions of the same books, f) represents only what the church could not destroy, f) conflicts with reasonable alternative histories, and, g) conflicts with other surviving traditions of Messianic Judaism. Since source manuscripts are unreliable and conflicting, there is no good reason to accept current Christian versions of the New Testament as reliable sources of information.
* The Roman Empire had reason to distort Jewish history. Messianic Judaism caused three major revolts against Rome and constant minor outbreaks. The idea of a Messiah that would over throw all earthly Kings and free people from Roman oppression was a powerful hope that spread beyond the Middle East. Rome crushed the revolts, persecuted surviving Messianic followers and spread propaganda, beginning with Paul's letters, that the Messiah preached a spiritual kingdom where people should obey earthly rulers instead of an earthly kingdom that would destroy existing rulers.
* Christianity was controlled to support Roman rule. Key advances of early church history were controlled by the Roman Empire. The Council of Nicea was mandated by the Emperor who presided and imposed an Apostle's Creed acceptable to the Empire. The church prospered because it preached obedience to human rulers as God's representatives.
* The real Jesus was not the Christian legend of "Jesus". Popular leaders do not flout a culture's most basic taboos. Whomever Jesus was, he could not have been the leader of a popular Jewish movement while rejecting the Mosaic law, rejecting Second Temple ritual sacrifice and deliberately seeking sinful impurity by associating with Gentiles, the unclean and wicked Jews. The Jesus of Christian legend is more understandable as a creation of Roman/Greek culture since it is more harmonious with Roman/Greek ideas of divinity than Jewish ideas of divinity.
* Therefor, I reject Christianity as a lie about its main figure Jesus. There is no good reason to believe in a religion that dishonors the memory of the most likely life of its central figure.
END COMMENT FOR CHRISTIANS
Rationalizations and Excuses.
You have found much to disagree with, perhaps much that angered you. There was no attempt to soften my reasons for rejecting Christianity nor to pretend that there is more good than harm in magical Christian beliefs. You got a direct, to the point list of reasons why I reject Christianity.
Christian readers no doubt thought up arguments for why each of my reasons is a poor reason for not being a Christian. For an atheist, such arguments are demonstrations of our human ability to think up excuses and rationalizations for not thinking through the reasons why someone rejects your most cherished beliefs. Some common Christian rationalizations are:
1) Bad apple Christians. Christianity should not be blamed for the bad things done by self-identified Christians. This is a fair argument if the bad things are not done by people trying to act in direct obedience to what they see as God's will. For example, the rapes of a self- identified Christian which are unrelated to Christianity cannot be blamed upon Christian doctrines. However, brutalities done by self-identified Christians in the name of God with reference to Christian doctrines are part of Christianity's heritage.
2) Not really a Christian. Many Christians excuse Christianity for horrible acts by saying the perpetrators were not really Christians. This often causes conflicts among Christians over which of them are "True" Christians. If Christians can't agree on who are really Christians, they should not expect others to accept Christian judgements about who is or is not really a Christian.
3) False doctrines or false interpretations. Many Christians excuse Christianity for horrible acts by saying that the perpetrators are following false doctrines or false scriptural interpretations. This causes conflicts among Christians over whom among them has the one "True" doctrine or interpretation. If Christians can't agree on "True" doctrine and scriptural interpretations, then they should not expect others to accept Christian judgements about doctrine or interpretation.
4) Original sin or the Devil made them do it. Since God let Satan infect humanity with original sin as punishment for human curiosity, Satan gets blamed for the harmful things Christians do. Satan is a necessary Christian creation that excuses God from responsibility for bad things happening. Christians should understand that atheists see Satan as a rationalization for the failures and weaknesses of a supposedly all-powerful YHWH.
5) It's a mystery. Humans can't know the mind of God, so we can't judge anything that happens by human reasoning. This says shut-up, sit down, stop asking questions, and accept what church authorities tell you about God's word for humanity. Supposedly, humanity can't understand how reality works and science must be a lie when it disagrees with Christian doctrine. Atheists reasonably regard holy scriptures and interpretations are more likely to be lies than the evidence of the universe.
6) The spiritual realm transcends the material realm. The spiritual realm of god and spirits is intangible, immaterial and transcendent, thus beyond the material universe we can perceive. Since rational science can only interact with the material realm, it cannot tell us anything about the spiritual realm. Only our souls made by god can interact with the spiritual realm, and, spirit forces can, of course, affect the material realm. If this is true, then we should be able to scientifically examine the material effects of spiritual forces violating in the material realm what we think of as the laws of physics that we experience with our senses. There never has been, however, a verifiable, testable violation of what we understand as the laws of physics. There is, then, no reason for atheists to believe that spiritual forces are real.
Understanding how atheists view Christianity.
Most atheists in America started out as Christians. We have an understanding of what it is to believe in Christian magic. We understand both views from having been on both sides. Christians who think our reasons for rejecting Christianity are unfounded, easily refuted arguments simply misunderstand atheism. You can't understand why someone rejects your beliefs without making a sincere effort to comprehend their reasons from within their viewpoint.
I suggest that Christians reread the reasons without the usual human, knee-jerk reaction of thinking up reasons why someone who disagrees with us is wrong. Make at least a modest attempt to see things through atheist eyes, to understand why our reasons for unbelief are more than sufficient for us. There is no danger that you will somehow be tricked into unbelief, for a few words on paper cannot accomplish that. What is more likely to happen is that you will gain a better understanding of why you are a Christian from better understanding why others choose atheism.
At a minimum, I urge Christians to let atheists tell them what atheism is instead of relying upon Christian descriptions of atheism. In the same way that atheists would be foolish to rely only on what atheists say about Christianity, Christians are foolish if they rely only on what Christians say about atheism.
Christians are right that it comes down to what they call "Truth". We can agree that we are harmed when we believe falsehoods. We can agree that seeking and understanding the truth about reality is a worthwhile goal. We can agree that supernatural magic is either real or unreal. What we cannot agree on is the reliability of evidence for supernatural magic being real.
My understanding of Christianity has been enriched by reading the New Testament, sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaic history, Roman history and biblical scholars. While there are few good atheist books to read, there are a few. There are vastly more books about scientific descriptions of reality from which atheists build their own ideas of reality.
This is the essence of materialistic atheism. We want to learn about reality, understand how reality works, and accept reality as it is. We want the most accurate idea of reality we can get because it enhances our lives and helps us avoid harm. We rely upon scientific methodology as our best source of accurate information about reality. We reject magical beliefs because they are unreal descriptions of reality which diminish our lives.
END COMMENT FOR ATHEISTS
Experienced atheists will find little new in my reasons for not being a Christian. What I hope they do find is a bit different approach that relates to our personal lives. Philosophical discussions of reasons not to believe are, I think, much more precise and complete descriptions than my presentation. The weakness of philosophical reasons for rejecting Christianity are that they traditionally fail as personally convincing reasons.
Our ideas of reality arises from life experiences and how our brain/body works. For us to accept a different idea of reality, that different idea must relate to our personal experiences and work within our physical reasoning processes. Human reasoning is greatly influenced by and inseparable from instinctive emotional processes. Therefor, exclusively rational arguments for atheistic materialism will forever be marginally effective, for they only weakly touch emotional reasoning processes.
Emotions are reasoning
This is heresy for traditional atheist thinkers who prefer the illusion of abstract human reasoning untainted by emotions. Many of us prefer the illusion of ourselves as Mr. Spock or Commander Data when it comes to what we mistakenly regard as purely rational thought. Humans are capable of rational thought. The reality is that our rational thought processes are usually employed after the physiological brain/body has generated a decision about what we like or don't like.
We seldom make rational choices. We mostly rationalize our choices after the fact.
The "good news" is that we are also capable of being rational about our rationalized emotional decisions. We are capable of digging into our psychology using our best understanding of evolved human instincts and behaviors. We can figure out why our emotional reasoning processes generate and cling to a choice.
We should then examine important decisions because our emotional decision-making processes cannot always tell us what a best decision might be. We won't like doing this, because it usually exposes strong emotional positions we wish to protect.
What our unconscious, emotional, decision-making process can tell us is our combined instinctive and life learning response to a situation. The amazing thing is that these unconscious emotional processes often produce answers within a second or two. We call this being in tune with ourselves or listening to internal wisdom, or more simply, intuition and gut hunches. This is valuable, crucial information about how you feel. However, those feelings may not produce a "best" short or long term decision for your life.
So, to end this digression, materialistic atheism needs emotional ways to address personal human lives. The paths to developing these more effective ways of spreading materialistic ideas are, I think:
* a better understanding of the physiology of human consciousness, emotions, instincts and thought processes, and,
* explicitly addressing human emotions and living through our more accurate understanding of our humanity.
The reasons why atheists should spread materialistic ideas are another topic that would address why atheists should reach out to our fellow humans who suffer under magical delusions and help them to accept reality as it is.
Howard Thompson is editor of The Texas Atheist newsletter. You may contact him at gofreemind@aol.com.