From: "Joel"
Subject: None
I am wondering: why do you believe what you believe? Who or what or what event caused you to embrace atheism and secular humanism? I've had many wonderful people and circumstances in my life to cause me to embrace God (the God of the Holy Bible).
Asking why I am an atheist is not at all an unreasonable question and this certainly isn't the only time I've been asked it (indeed, I get asked this question often enough that I decided to create a special FAQ page just for it). However, there is an interesting assumption lurking in the way Joel presents his query.
If you notice, he states why he believes in the existence of a god - and a particular god at that. Does he say that a logical argument led him in that direction? Does he explain that he has good, strong reasons to think that the proposition "God exists" is true? No, he doesn't say anything like that; instead, he says that he embraced God due to "wonderful people and circumstances" in his life.
Is this the sort of language one normally employs when explaining why they have accepted the truth of a proposition? I don't think so. If I said "I believe that Paris is a city in France because so many wonderful people and circumstances in my life have caused him to embrace that idea," I think that most listeners would start looking at me funny and wonder whether I'm on any medication!
There are, however, statements that would make sense in such a context - for example, a person might say "I believe in the value of love because I've had many wonderful people and circumstances in my life that have caused me to embrace that idea" without any problem. Why? Because the idea "love has value" is not an empirical proposition which can be subject to tests of truth or falsity. It is, instead, a statement of personal valuation and meaning - if it is true for a person, then it is true.
Is the idea "God exists" such an idea? It certainly looks like it is supposed to be an empirical proposition, not unlike "Paris is a city in France," but Joel doesn't treat it like one. So what exactly are we to make of Joel's position - is it an empirical position that might be true or false or is it a statement of value which is true for him but need not be true for anyone else?
My family and myself have been actively involved in church my whole life. I've attended Christian schools. My teachers, parents, pastors, and friends have been great role models to encourage me to believe in the God of the Bible. All of my circumstances have pointed me towards God. But, in all my circumstances and all my experiences, God has only become more and more real to me. He has become my most faithful friend. His Son, Jesus Christ, is the Lord, or you might say boss, over the whole Earth and yours and my life. He is a kind and benevolent and loving ruler.
Here we find further examples of Joel treating the statement "God exists" as if it were similar to the statement "Love have value." If we were to replace the former with the latter, in fact, much of what he says above would continue to make sense and indeed might actually be true for quite a few people.
At the same time, we also find Joel making statements that look an awful lot like empirical propositions, like "Jesus Christ is the Lord." This is especially true since, if that is indeed an empirical fact in the way that it is normally meant, then it has important consequences of how human beings live their lives. If Joel is simply making a statement of personal value, then we don't have to care; on the other hand, if Joel is making an empirical claim, then we might need to care - at least a little bit.
Unfortunately, our ability to evaluate Joel's statement is made very difficult by the fact that he can't seem to keep his language consistent. We need to be clear on just what Joel is saying and why before we can reach any firm conclusions about how to take his ideas, how to evaluate them, and whether we should accept them ourselves.
In fact, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God love us so much that God sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us. He had to die for us because we would have been eternally separated from Him, our Creator, because, as you would probably agree, we all mess up a lot. This sin cannot be in the presence of our Holy God. The only acceptable consequence for sin is death. Now that death penalty can either be paid by you yourself, or it can be paid by Jesus Christ who bore all of our sins and their consequences when He died. The choice is yours. I choose to believe that there is a God, especially one who is on my side and loves me enough to die for me so that when I depart from this earth, I'll spend eternity in His glorious presence.
There is no question but that Joel believes very strongly in his religion - but is his religion, as he describes it, something that deserves our belief? If we take his statements as being empirical, then he certainly hasn't offered any reasons that would justify belief. If we take his statements as expressing values, though, we still don't have good reasons for accepting - in fact, just the contrary is true.
What Joel describes here is a very nasty sort of god. Joel writes that the "only acceptable consequences for sin" is death - according to whom? According to this god. Joes says nothing that suggests that this god is unable to impose any other consequences, so we must assume that these are the consequences that this god desires. And how are these consequences met? Through the suffering of a completely innocent individual, Jesus.
I'm not aware of any justice system in the world that deliberately punishes the innocent in exchange for the guilty going free - and if such a system existed, it would be harshly condemned by every other government. You can bet that Christians would be among those who raise serious objections to whether such a system could be called a "justice" system and whether it is even vaguely moral; yet here we see that that is exactly the sort of system which grounds their religion.
I have to doubt the value of any religion that grounds itself in something that is so obviously immoral. Doesn't it bother Christians? Why don't they object to it? One has to wonder whether the constant reinforcement of the message that such a sick "exchange" is beautiful and good hasn't so twisted the moral sense of so many Christians that they aren't even able to see just how immoral and unjust it is anymore.
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