Captured,: an atheists journey with God

The experience did not deter or cause Nosipho to question her faith, instead it made her even more fervent and devout:. I found a different church to join and became active, got baptized and devoted myself to the whole charismatic church business. That was a start of a very turbulent life I would live over the years. I always had a feeling of never being holy and obedient enough. All the while, after so many years I knew myself to still be struggling with those challenges they seemed to have quickly overcome.

It was a traumatic thing even for my family as they believed it was because of the church I had gone to, but for me I believed that I had to do better. That was when I started to do research and to differentiate for myself things that God would really expect from us as human and doctrines that human beings have invented. To my greatest surprise, when I searched on the internet and googled my queries, I came across these websites that stated that Jesus was never a historical figure. That was the first time I came across a publication that talked about Jesus as having never existed.

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And for me, having spent the last 17 years of my life trying to attain that higher place where I would know that I hear from Jesus exactly as others used to claim. It was just a numbing shock. And as I searched further on the net, I had to admit that the only thing I knew about God was what someone told me about him and I knew that was the only reason I thought he existed. I therefore could find no reason to believe anymore as I understood that Christianity was just as fabricated as all other religions which I knew were mere human creations. I was in a confused state for only a short period because I could not explain what then I was as a human but then as I checked about the state that I was now in, I came across stories of people who wrote about how they made sense of their existence after deconverting and those also who had never been religious.

After realizing that the god idea was a form of fiction, Nosipho had to contend with the issue of human origin:. Her readings about evolution reinforced her atheistic notions:. These events are often primarily organized so others can interview me, but I also find time to interview and learn so much from others. And Dave Foda—what can I say? The event is FREE if you sign up soon. The main draw is Dr. Get all the information and register today by visiting the website here. The ascent of man?

Letters to an Atheist

Photoillustration by Matt Connolly. Why are human beings so prone to believe in a god or gods? Is this religious inclination universal in all societies across human history, as this report claims , and if so, what does it mean? We could call this set of questions about the nature of belief itself the sociological question. I said I would talk about my sense of the immediacy of life in the next post but this is not that post.

Recensie(s)

But first, a little background. A-theism is about the absence of—the lack of belief in—god. What I discovered, especially over the past 5 years or so, is that there is a void staring me in the face, pulling me in. I am standing in a familiar, comfortable and comforting, well-lit room. On one wall is a door, standing open.

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At least until recently. There are familiar people, familiar smells and sounds. But that door is always there. It is perfectly dark on the other side. In recently years the well-lit room has grown cold and limiting. Theism gives us reason to believe human persons are special in creation because we were supposedly created in the image of God for the purpose of relationship with Him.

So the non-intentional process of biological evolution makes little sense. Our experiences of pain and those of other non-human animals are systematically connected to the biological goals of survival and reproduction and not to a relationship with God or moral growth. In the state of nature, survival is the exception and extinction is the rule. If we were to infer facts about a creator god who used biological evolution as a means to create, then we would infer an indifferent god, a tinkering god, or perhaps a malevolent god but not the God of perfect being monotheism.

On the other hand, if atheism is true, then there is no perfect disembodied mind who creates us for a purpose. Something like biological evolution must be true if atheism is true. I concluded facts about biological evolution counted in favor of atheism and against theism. Considerations about the inevitably cruel process of biological evolution points us towards perhaps the most serious challenge facing perfect being monotheism.

The problem of evil for theism is the tension which arises between the properties attributed to God and facts about the kinds, amounts, and distributions of evil in our world. The biological role of pain ensures our world is full of suffering, and the distribution of it appears mostly random. Some people even suffer so horrendously they lose themselves entirely. They come to believe their lives are, on the whole, not worth living. Why would a perfect being create a world full of so much seemly random evil like human and non-human animal pains, natural disasters, and circumstances of injustice?

These facts about suffering seem in some way incompatible with an infinitely powerful and wholly good person. What reasons could such a being have for allowing evil? God might use some evils as a means to achieve some greater good or as a means to prevent some evil equally bad or worse. We can call evils which achieve neither of these goals pointless evils. A An all-powerful God has the ability to prevent or eliminate all pointless evil,. B A wholly good God would be maximally motivated to prevent or eliminate pointless evils.

C Perfect being monotheism implies a God-created world would contain no pointless evil,. D There has never been any pointless evil, and all seemingly pointless evil is illusory.

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E There has been at least one pointless evil. Most evil seems pointless because it is pointless. I found D implausible. The agony of being eaten alive, the terror of being raped, and the anguish of losing a child to disease really do seem pointlessly evil, and we have no reason to believe them necessary for achieving any greater good or preventing some evil equally bad or worse. Our world would be, on the whole, much better if there was less evil in it. However, E is just what you would expect given the non-intentional process of biological evolution, the indifferent laws of nature, and finite creatures with limited altruism.

Appearance and reality about pointless evil would coincide if atheism were true. But if E is true, then it follows,. F Perfect being monotheism is false. I concluded facts about seemingly pointless evil strongly counted in favor of atheism and against theism. As my journey continued, my religious skepticism eventually eroded my belief in God.

The god of perfect being monotheism began to seem indifferent, distant, silent, and hidden. Eventually, I no longer believed there was a perfect being and this lack of belief or absence of belief was not the result of emotional or behavioral opposition towards God or relationship with Him. I had become a non-resistant nontheist. A wholly good and loving God would create a world of finite persons such that anyone could enter into relationship with Him simply by trying.

Additionally, a belief God exists is a necessary condition for entering into a meaningful and positive relationship with Him, so all non-theists must be resisting God in some way. H If God is always open to relationship, then every finite person believes God exists unless they are somehow resisting such a belief. I If perfect being monotheism is true, then there are no non-resistant nontheists.

Former theists like myself were already in a relationship with God and a loss of belief terminated that relationship. Some lifelong seekers are open to finding or being found by a perfect being without ever achieving that goal. Consequently, isolated non-theists unavoidably live their entire lives within the influence of a fundamentally misleading system of religious meaning.

J There are non-resistant nontheists. K Perfect being monotheism is false.

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I concluded facts about non-resistant non-believers strongly counted in favor of atheism and against theism. After several months of reflection I became convinced it is much more likely perfect being monotheists have been making some mistake. All their claims about God are false. But what about a minimal theism? What if there is at least one less than perfect disembodied mind?

I soon learned five facts which made me doubt the plausibility of a disembodied mind,. Which capacity is destroyed is tied directly to the particular region of the brain that was damaged. These facts give us reason to believe all mental activity probably has a physical basis in embodied brains. We cannot infer mental states are identical to brain states from these fact, but they do give us reason to believe mental states are at least causally dependent on complex physical structures.

This inference is also consistent with the causal closure of the universe and seems to be implied by the conservation of energy. L All known mental activity has a physical basis in embodied brains implying disembodied minds probably do not exist.

M Minimal theism implies the existence of at least one disembodied mind. N Minimal theism is probably false. I concluded facts about about the apparent physical dependence of minds counted in favor of atheism and against theism. In the end, I made a full transition from theism to atheism. My journey began with religious skepticism towards miracles and some events described in the Bible. I was much more confident in secular science and ethics.

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I then journeyed through the landscape of religious disagreement, the inefficient and cruel process of biological evolution, the problems of evil and hiddenness, and finally the physical dependence of minds. These are among some of the reasons why I am an atheist in the belief-implying sense. Admittedly, I did not give a serious consideration of the arguments for theism here. This piece is written under the assumption there are no successful cases for theism to be made. But that is certainly controversial. Any adequate defense of atheism would need to address the leading arguments for theism which I cannot do here.

Cameron is a professional photographer and founder of Capturing Christianity, a ministry aimed at exposing the intellectual side of Christian belief. He is a writer, speaker, and uses his ministry to host discussions and interviews on Christian Apologetics. Cameron is married to a beautiful wife and is the father of two adorable children. How can you question such? I would love to talk to you because God has moved in my life in tremendous ways. Please, email me back! He has brought me through many trying times in which no physician on Earth could fathom!

If there is no God, then where did we come from?