I set up this blog as a way of expressing my views, frustrations etc on the Christian faith, of which I was very much a part in the beginning. Now that I have "come out" as an atheist, however, I can't really keep blogging under the title of "Honest Faith", so this blog has come to the end of its useful life.
I have no plans at present to delete Honest Faith, so anyone who's interested can still read my old posts and follow my journey through, and ultimately out of, Christianity.
I will still be blogging, but with a somewhat different focus. Anyone who is interested in reading my musings (yes, both of you!) will find them at my new blog, Atheos. To all my regular readers, whether or not you have any interest in reading the musings of an atheistic ex-Christian over at my new blog, thanks for reading Honest Faith and for enriching my life over the past few years with your comments.
One thing that has always been important to me is truth. One of my co-workers describes me as "a black-and-white kind of guy" and to some extent that's accurate. I don't just like to take other people's word for things; rather, I like to investigate things for myself and find out for myself whether or not they are right, true or beneficial. One thing I don't like much is the grey area of not really knowing; I prefer certainty if it's available, though of course I understand that certainty isn't always possible.
One thing that has come out of this is that I am willing to question anything and everything. There are no untouchable areas that are beyond being questioned, because I strongly believe that if something won't stand up to scrutiny then it's not worth believing anyway.
I mentioned earlier that I don't like taking other people's word for things, but that's exactly what I've done all my life with regard to my Christian faith, and even my basic belief in the existence of God. I was brought up nominally Christian, and the existence of God was always an assumption in my family and my wider community, to the point that for most of my life it never even occurred to me to question it. It was one of those unspoken cultural things that I just took for granted as self-evident. That assumption became even more strong following my conversion experience 21 years ago. Now, though, I'm questioning those assumptions to see if they hold up in the face of doubt.
At the moment, as I've said before, I'm agnostic but with a leaning towards theism as a default position. Depending on which way the questioning leads me, I could end up going either way, but I'm comfortable with that.
So the question I'm asking myself at the moment, and which I'd like to put to anyone who still reads this blog, is this: What if there is no God?
If you were to discover, conclusively and with absolute proof, that there is no God and never has been, what would your reaction be? How do you think your life would change as a result - or would it change at all?
[This is an edited version of a post from Monday 2nd July 2007. I wanted to post up the YouTube clip, which I stumbled across by accident today, but needed some context to put it in. The video is at the bottom of this post.]
“See my tie, see my tie shin up a drainpipe. I’ll have a double Bacardi and a Kaliber shandy. A lass with a Calor gas heater can seek a man’s coriander, but she came on a Honda.”
Does that sound familiar? If you’ve spent any amount of time in a Pentecostal or charismatic church, it probably does. This post is all about speaking in tongues, or glossolalia to use its technical name.
If you listen to most “speaking in tongues” as practised in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, it is usually an unintelligible babbling made up of pseudo-words or even disjointed sounds with a lot of repetition. This is regarded by Pentecostals (of which I used to be one) as the initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately for that point of view, speaking in tongues has been recorded in other religions as well, including some shamanistic religions and voodoo. Is it evidence of the Holy Spirit in those cases? I would think not.
As I understand it, the word “tongue” in the New Testament generally refers to a language. A real language, not an ecstatic babbling. That is why there is so much emphasis in the Bible on interpreting what is said “in tongues”. The gift of tongues, to me, is an ability to speak languages other than one’s own by the power of God. Certainly in the most famous incident of speaking in tongues, when the Holy Spirit was first given in Acts chapter 2, the people from all over the known world who were present each heard the believers speaking in their own language.
In the early years after I first began to follow Christ, I was part of a Pentecostal church. A lot of people kept telling me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this amazing “second blessing” in which I would be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I was not so much encouraged to seek for this as pressured into it, but either way it was something I desperately wanted, as I was told that it would take me to a higher level and enable me to live a more godly life. I wanted it so much, I regularly prayed and prayed for hours to receive this wonderful gift that I had been told was mine by right, and eventually one day I began to speak in tongues. Years later I gradually began to realise that what I was doing was more the result of wishful thinking, self-delusion and pressure from others in the church than real spiritual inspiration. At that point I stopped, but it took me a long time to reach that point. At first, for many years, I was convinced that I was speaking in other tongues by the power of the Holy Spirit and I am certain that many other Pentecostals and charismatics are similarly self-deluded, thinking that their speaking in tongues is the result of a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit when really it may be just a product of their own desperate desire to do so.
I have met several Christians who spoke in tongues and were convinced that they were speaking Hebrew. Well, I studied biblical Hebrew for two years and have a basic knowledge of modern Hebrew and I can honestly say that although I have heard a great many people speaking in tongues, I have never yet heard anyone speaking Hebrew while doing so. I have heard monoglot English-speaking Christians speaking in tongues who included half-remembered snatches of the Welsh prayers their parents knew (as a Welsh-speaker, these things stand out to me). I have heard people speaking in tongues whose utterance consisted of one or two syllables repeated endlessly, such as “oolalalalalalalalalababala, oolalalalalalalalalalalababababalala.” I regard all these as suspect, though in my experience all these people have been totally sincere in their belief that they are “speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance.”
To me, the touchstone that proves whether or not the gift of tongues is genuine is this: does the “tongue” have the characteristics of a real language, or is it perhaps recognisable as such by someone present who understands the language being spoken? If not, I would suggest that it is not genuine, in which case the real gift of tongues is rather rare these days. However, it is often counterfeited unknowingly by people who desperately desire this gift as proof that they have been filled with the Holy Spirit.
[The views expressed in the following video clip aren't necessarily my own, but I found it interesting enough to share on here.]
This YouTube clip is a recording of a comedian who appears to be an atheist. He is very critical of religion in this clip, and I know that the first reaction of many believers to such things would be to retreat behind the battlements and ready the Bible Cannon to blast him into oblivion (in love, of course).
However, as believers, how should we respond to this? Like it or not, this is actually how we are viewed by a fair proportion of the non-believing population (though of course, it is milked here for comedic effect). What do you think? Is this a fair reflection of how we are perceived? Is it actually in some way a true reflection of us? If so, what (if anything) can be done about it?
I've blogged before about the myth of the "Good Christian Man" here, here and here. It seems that I forgot one important aspect of the myth of the Good Christian Man, namely that a GCM never lusts and has overcome his sexual urges.
The fact of the matter, of course, is that a man can no more overcome his sexual urges than he can overcome the urge to breathe. Being a Christian should not mean denying the very thing that we were created to be: a sexual being with natural desires and inclinations.
I could go into depth on the subject here, but John Shore has already covered it on his blog much better than I could have. So if you're interested in the subject, please read John's thoughts on the matter and comment there.
I've been going through a tough time lately. I've been very ill and off work for almost four months now, and although there has been some improvement in that time the illness shows no signs of going as yet.
With that in mind, I posted a comment on my Facebook profile to the effect that I've pretty much run out of optimism.
Next thing I know, a no doubt well-meaning acquaintance of mine (we were often theological "sparring partners" in college) tried telling me that my illness is basically God's way of testing me. Those of you who are my Facebook friends can follow the conversation there if you have a mind to.
Anyway, after a theological discussion that I never wanted to get into (seeing as I was - and am - pretty despondent about the whole long-term illness thing) I wrote this:
OK, imagine this scenario. A friend of yours is pointing a gun at a child and says he's going to kill her. You could easily prevent him from doing so - in fact, a single word is all it would take to bring him to his senses - but instead you stand by and allow him to pull the trigger and either kill or horribly injure the child. Are you not as much to blame as the man who pulled the trigger?
How then can you draw a distinction between God causing suffering and merely allowing it? Either way a person's suffering and the means of causing it are sanctioned by God. Can you really not see how terrible that would be - what an uncaring monster that would make God?
So what do you think? Is suffering caused by God, whether actively or passively? Or is it, as I believe, usually just a random thing that has no meaning or purpose whatsoever?
But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
Erin has tagged me with Matt Stone's meme "What religions interest you apart from your own"?
List three "religions" (i.e. religion/belief system/philosophy/irreligion) : 1. which, if any, "religion" you personally identify with 2 & 3. two other "religions" that interest you.
If you're brave, explain why the other religions interest you.
Hmm, OK. This does, of course, mean that I have to find a term that adequately describes my personal beliefs for part 1.
1. Christian agnosticism
I believe that it is not possible to know for certain whether or not God exists, but that it is very likely that he does and that he is in fact the God of the Christian Bible. I subscribe to a non-literal interpretation of the Bible and I believe (tentatively) in universal salvation. I am also, as an agnostic, open to the possibility that there may in fact be no God, but I regard this as the less likely possibility.
(As a side-issue, I seem to be becoming more comfortable with the term "Christian" these days.)
2. Judaism
Jesus was a religious Jew. His earliest followers were religious Jews. That's a strong advertisement for Judaism in itself. It seems that Jesus never set out to create a new religion, but to reform Judaism. The Hebraic mindset of the original Bible writers and earliest followers of Jesus was rapidly replaced by a Hellenistic version in historical Christianity, which was not necessarily a positive development. I also like the Jewish emphasis on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy (right actions rather than right beliefs). There is a lot of mileage in interpreting the New Testament in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures ("Old Testament"), rather than the reverse which is far more common today.
3. Islam
If Jesus can give us a new revelation on top of the Hebrew Scriptures, why couldn't Muhammad give us a newer revelation on top of that if God wanted him to? OK, I don't believe he did, but I can understand the rationale behind it. There is a lot to be said about the Islamic emphasis on community, and the Qur'an makes interesting reading even for an unbeliever like me. The discipline of Islamic prayer is also one of Islam's strong points. Indeed, I have borrowed it on more than one occasion - using the forms and wording (translated into English) of Islamic prayer, but leaving out references to Muhammad and anything else that contradicts my belief in the biblical God.
If I were to stop there, it would seem as though I was only interested by the Abrahamic religions. In fact, there are aspects of many belief systems that appeal to me. The reverence of the natural world in neo-paganism; the ancestral heritage of Celtic paganism for me as a Welshman; the emphasis on rational thought of atheism; the hospitality of Sikhs. All these I find appealing. It just goes to show that no one religion or belief system has a monopoly on truth, and we can all learn from each other. We should recognise that which we share and that which we can learn from each other, while at the same time being open and frank about the things on which we disagree. Surely that's a much better alternative to the religious conflict that tends to arise from demonisation of other belief systems.
I won't tag anybody specific for this meme, but if you want to take part, go ahead and post it up on your blog and leave a comment to let me know.
OK, now the warning is out of the way I can continue :o)
I mentioned in the comments to my last post that the story of Noah and the Flood has parallels in other Ancient Near Eastern literature besides the Bible. For those who are interested, here are a few parallels to biblical stories in other Ancient Near Eastern texts, which you can look up if, like me, you find this sort of thing interesting. The links will take you to online versions of the texts.
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