(22 votes, average: 4.91 out of 5)
Loading...I started feeling the tug toward agnosticism sometime during my PhD program. I remember clearly a particular moment, and it was, somewhat ironically, while I was serving as the pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church.
Even though I was incredibly busy at the time (I was taking a full load of graduate seminars, preparing to take my PhD exams, serving as a Teaching Assistant for a class taught by Bruce Metzger, AND serving as the pastor of the church) I enjoyed the ministry very much. Well, parts of the ministry. I have never enjoyed transition rituals very much: baptisms, weddings, funerals, and the like. And of course pastoring a church involves doing such things. And I wasn’t thrilled with visiting the sick – I was a bit out of my depth on that one. But I did very much enjoy interactions with the people I worked with in the church, and I especially liked preaching nearly every week.
I remember thinking at the time, though, that …
Only Members can read the rest of this post. If you don’t belong yet to the blog JOIN!! It doesn’t cost much, all the money goes to charity, and you get tons for your money — 5-6 posts a week!
I think these posts aimed at putting it all together is the main thing that really interests many of the readers of your trade books.
These posts remind me a lot of some autobiographies that have greatly influenced me as follows:
1. “Why I Am Not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell;
2. “godless” by Dan Barker;
3. “Why I Became an Atheist” by John Loftus;
and going the other direction:
1. “Here I Stand” by John Shelby Spong;
2. “Surprised by Joy” by C.S. Lewis;
3. “Letter to a Man in the Fire” by Reynolds Price
4. “Letter to a Godchild” by Reynolds Price.
Anyway, your search, as influenced by people, teachers, and events in your life is really very helpful and worthy of an autobiography.
With regard to the social, my parents, living in a very small town in south Texas, bought their groceries from a man in their church, bought their cars from a man in their church, played dominoes on Saturday nights with members of their church, attended Friday night high school football games with members of their church, had a physician who was a member of their church, bought their insurance from a man in their church, and so on and s forth. My adult life was very similar. So, the “social” is a HUGE thing and all that changes when church members stop contacting you because of your questions ….
If you haven’t already read them, you should also read Karen Armstrong’s “Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery” and “The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness;” and “A Dual Autobiography” by Will and Ariel Durant.
Point of order–can one really become an agnostic? Not knowing about something is more or less the default setting, right? We define ourselves by what we believe (and beliefs, by their very nature, are always impossible to definitively prove)–not what we don’t believe.
If somebody says “I don’t believe in God” I respect that, because there is no inherent reason why anyone should. It’s a choice, and the choice is meaningless if you can only choose to believe.
“Agnostic” and “Atheist” sounds like people trying to define themselves as a group on the grounds of what they don’t believe.
How does that work?
Yes, you can have secular beliefs, and some of the most noble and fruitful beliefs of humankind are secular in nature. But those beliefs have nothing, really, to do with the existence or nonexistence of God. My quarrel with atheism and agnosticism is that they want to define themselves by denying the beliefs of others (often respectfully, and often not so respectfully, as you know better than most).
I wish people who don’t believe in God would go back to calling themselves Freethinkers. It’s positive–“I’m free to think and believe as I see fit, based on my own personal perceptions and experiences. If someone can persuade me there’s a better way, I’m willing to listen–my mind is open, but the admission isn’t free.”
When somebody says he’s an atheist, it usually means he yearns for the day when everybody else is an atheist too.
When somebody says he’s an agnostic, it usually means he doesn’t want to be an atheist, because they’re kind of obnoxious and full of themselves sometimes, and maybe there’s just a touch of Blaise Pascal in there, but I wouldn’t know. I’m agnostic about that.
😉
No, I don’t think not knowing about something is the default. From the moment your brain cells start to function, they are given imput. No one starts with a blank slate when it comes to belief. (Proof: you have to *change* your views about religion to have some other views: we “know” what we learn before the time when we know we are learning).
I’m not sure I think we have beliefs at the early stages of cognition. Beliefs require some capacity for abstract thought, which infants probably are not capable of. We may have mistaken perceptions (‘daddy disappeared!’), but those are not on the order of religious beliefs, or we’d have to say dogs and cats have religious beliefs. My dog seems to worship sliced ham, but he’s just really really interested in it.
It’s been a commonly expressed view among many (hardly all) prominent atheist thinkers that religion is a corruption of the natural state of human thought, an infection of sorts. Others would say it was a phase we had to go through as a species that has now become outmoded. Still others would say–myself among them–that it’s an unavoidable part of complex consciousness, that will find some way to express itself, even in the most devoutly atheistic persons, and without which we probably would lose our creative abilities. What do you think?
For me it’s like saying “when did you think you were an American”? There’s not a default position of belonging to *no* country. The default is thinking that you belong to the country you’re in . Same with faith. The default positoin is not belonging to none, but to the one you’re raised in.
I was not raised in a faith–a Reform Jewish tradition, yes, but was never of the faith. Many people at our synagogue were believers. I never was. That was my default position vis-a-vis the Judaic faith and all religious faiths. Culturally, yes, I still feel and behave in a Jewish way and part of the time I don’t.
I think there is some confusion here between what the default position is chronologically and what it is or has become existentially. Although I never embraced belief in God or Hell or Heaven or Jewish “Law” or Bar Mitzvah, I would wonder about them until, eventually, I ceased to. I didn’t so much deny the truth of what people believed; I simply couldn’t embrace it. When I was about eight years old in Jewish religious school and the teacher and students were talking about this or that Bible story as though it were literally true, I simply felt alienated and baffled: Why would they be doing that? I had no words for what I felt. But I was in a default position I was unconscious of. Eventually, I became conscious of it and considered many religious responses to the big questions. For me, then, the burden of prove has been on those who believe. I’d have to be given or shown convincing reasons to be dissuaded to and disabused of my agnosticism and embrace some religious or spiritual belief. I came to believe default is not in our stars but in us. Sorry about that.
On the other hand, I fervently oppose fundamentalist Christianity or any other such faith not because of their religious beliefs per se but their social and political beliefs and, more particularly, .when any of them actively oppose the separation of church and state. There is a more personal level too that I will speak up about if it comes up. If a fundamentalist tells me or others that his way is the only way, that is, to me, no better than saying the only way to be a full human being is to be white. It is bigotry.
I think godspell is way off the mark in his/her characterization of atheists and agnostics. Sure I’ve read some Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins but that’s a bit like reading only the sensationalist headlines. Of course they raise a fuss that many people react to. But most atheists and agnostics I know simply go about their business and their business does not include tearing down the beliefs of believers.
For me (since I wasn’t raised in a religion or denomination) it was the tradition I grasp and felt was ‘right’ for me early on around 12 years of age. I was pretty much brainwashed by the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan. I did not formally join the Nation of Islam until the age of 16 and after not getting good answers (which were both theological and historical) to my questions I left right before I turned 18.
After that I searched for a belief only to find a Baptist church that was pastored by a new pastor and that is where I got licensed to preach at the age of 21. Although he couldn’t answer a lot of my theological and historical questions dealing with Christianity I still stayed. So my Christian walk has taken lots of different turns. Finally I have settled on Agnostic Theism.
Well, I think of myself as an agnostic and non-theist. An agnostic because I don’t presume to claim certainty for my hypotheses; and a non-theist because I *have* hypotheses, and they don’t include a “God” or gods. In matters as serious as this, I use the term “believe” only to say that I “incline” or “incline strongly” to believe in something.
And while I expect – and hope! – that theistic beliefs will die out within the next thousand years, it’s only in a group like this that I’d discuss such things.
The mere fact that you ‘hope’ for this to happen–on a rather generous time frame, I might add, who says we’ve got a thousand years left as a species–and how did the atheistic countries of the 20th century do in terms of improving on the organized behavior of theistic ones?–indicates an ideological basis for your belief. You aspire to have everyone believe as you do (or not believe, and it really is the same thing, in this instance). But you don’t want to openly proselytize, as atheists do, for fear of causing offense.
This seems to confirm what I just said.
I can reject all theistic belief, and still find nothing in atheism or agnosticism that particularly inspires or attracts me. Just abandoning one orthodoxy for another.
No, I don’t “aspire to have everyone believe as I believe.” I almost *take it for granted* that theistic beliefs will die out – just as I think about hereditary monarchies. And I think the world will be a better place when both those concepts are seen as outdated.
But I have ideas of my own about the nature of the Cosmos, ideas which *do* “inspire” *me*. And since they’re ideas for which I couldn’t offer a bit of proof, I’d never urge them on anyone else.
Must be your particular experiences. I’ve never met an atheist who cares in the slightest what other people’s beliefs are. To be fair, most Christians I’ve met aren’t interested in other people’s beliefs either.
The word “agnostic” is usually misused. One is not an agnostic because he or she doesn’t know what to believe, but because of he or she believes that there are questions that can not be answered. Agnostics do not believe all religions are equally probable,but that no religion has gnosis (knowledge of spiritual mysteries). Thus, a-gnostic, as coined by Thomas H. Huxley.
When I use the word “agnostic,” I mean that I do not have gnosis, not that no one does. Whether or not anyone can acquire or does have gnosis is also something I don’t know. To believe that would be to have a stronger form of agnosticism–that is, when one believes gnosis CAN NOT be acquired, period.
Something that put a crack in my faith was when I read the book, Night, by Elie Wiesel. There was no purpose in that kind of pain and suffering, and I knew it. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it kept nagging at me.
It’s an incredibly powerful book; it should be required reading for the human race.
I think I might read it just because you suggested it. I am currently reading your book ‘Lost Christianities’. I just finished Misquoting Jesus. I learned a lot from that book. I see why you are a best selling author!
What do you mean (above) by “Agnostic Theism”?
I remember reading Night in middle school. And as a Jew it particularly resonated with me. My mother’s home in Israel is literally right up the road from Yad vaShem. I always visited it when I’m in town. So I’m constantly being reminded of what human beings are capable of doing to each other. The reason God seems so inconsistent throughout the Bible is not because God changes, but because the human beings who wrote the Bible changed their ideas of the world and, therefore, their idea of God to reflect their own notions of life, history and society. That’s why the Bible and “God” are reflections of humanity, not vice versa.
Tal
I have been wondering that more and more – esp. as we see this in the OT – that Yah is a reflection of those speaking – AND that there is an evolution over time – towards worship in spirit from form, etc.
Ultimately I suspect there are as many Gods as there are people…
I do must best to relinquish identifying God – but let Him be who He is (sort of an Ex3:14 thing).
Suffering isn’t evidence against God. At most it is evidence against a certain “type” of God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent). So, if there is such a thing as a loving, caring, personal God who watches over us and has a plan for our lives, why are there three year olds dying of cancer? That’s not love. But such a refutation only works against a certain “type” of God. Maybe the problem isn’t that there is no God, but rather that God exists but is Immoral, Indifferent, Insane, or Impotent. It’s a paralogism to claim from the premise that suffering is evidence against a certain type of God, that the problem of suffering is evidence in favor of secularism. I’m agnostic, but the problem of suffering didn’t get me there.
john76
Excellent statement – I have pursued this line as well. In other words – either God is VERY different than typically conceived (I already know that is true – since he is not just a big cuddly guy serving us — as evangelicals tend to devolve to – but we are here to serve him (more messianic/apostolic view…).
OR – Love is VERY different that we tend to conceive…. I am good with this too since the Bible never uses the word love – that is our English word – being invested with whatever constituents that we invest it with…
Greg
Did you experience any sort of nightmare or hallucination when you were having this faith crisis? Something that really scared you.
Yes, I had some late night panic attacks!
Sounds familiar. I can remember at age nineteen or twenty, as a liberal Christian, assuming without much thought that the the alternative–the only alternative–to belief in God and Being Itself was nihilism and meaninglessness. I can’t quite remember if I plunged into the wilderness of disbelief despite the fear of nihilism (thinking truth comes first) or armed myself before the plunge with some appreciation of a purely secular case for morality.
About how long after graduating from PTS did you become an agnostic?
Maybe seven or eight years? I’ve never gotten the chronology quite right in my head.
At the moment when one realizes that choice exists (to be or not to be!) it is at that moment that our humanity begins. We cease being some sort of intelligent animal and we begin to add our part to the collective experience of being alive and being human – the continuing evolution of our species. We may try to avoid choosing our character but we cannot escape the responsibility associated with being alive.
Bart
One question remains – why were you a Christian in the first place? What was the initial basis for your receiving/believing in Jesus Christ – in a Creator? What was this faith based on?
Greg Logan
I was raised a Christian — a church going believer from my earliest memories. Faith wasn’t based on anything: it’s what I had.
Thanks – I run into a lot of these in the evangelical churches I hang out with.
In contrast, I was raised essentially an atheist. My conversion was very different – as well as the basis for my faith – both then and subsequently. I find this distinction to be a very interesting issue. I really wonder about the faith of the lot of these sorts of religious people – that really it is rather “thought-less” they just have always been – and have not subjected themselves to the intellectual curiosity that you did.
BTW – I am curious what church/type of church/denomination you were raised in (to put the rest of the picture together).
Thanks
Greg
I was mainly raised in the Episcopal church.
Dr. Ehrman: I thought fear of hell would’ve been a big issue for me when I left fundamentalism, but it wasn’t. What was and still is a problem is letting family and friends know my true thoughts on religion now. Everyone I’m around is a fundamentalist & I just have to keep my thoughts to myself. They all just think that I’m a backslider that’s too lazy to go to church anymore. It’s very frustrating. Your blog is my only outlet for interaction with like minded people. Thank you.
Hang in there! For what it’s worth, our numbers are growing.
Shoot me an email! I know what you are experiencing first hand.
[email protected]
Professor Ehrman you explain: “And I wasn’t thrilled with visiting the sick – I was a bit out of my depth on that one.”
Could you please elucidate on what you mean here? Thanks.
I had taken some classes on pastoral counseling (required part of the curriculum), but was not really trained to handle the situation pastorally. It takes some serious training to be any good at what needs to be done (comfort, console, support, encourage — without encroaching)
It is hard to relate to the religious view of the authors of scripture who lived thousands of years ago. One of the Muslim commenters on this blog explained that all scriptures originated from God but were targeted to a specific time and in a specific geography. That seems reasonable — assuming you don’t make an exception for any particular 6th century prophet.
The social, moral religious reasons above to attend church really are not compelling.
I don’t think the liberal christian churches can really answer what is the purpose of their church or what is the purpose of religion. The fundamentalist will answer those questions but the answer ‘getting to heaven even if everyone else on the planet goes to hell’ is too awkward and leads to a very unpleasant view of God.
tompicard–
“I don’t think the liberal christian churches can really answer what is the purpose of their church or what is the purpose of religion. The fundamentalist will answer those questions but the answer ‘getting to heaven even if everyone else on the planet goes to hell’ is too awkward and leads to a very unpleasant view of God.” Exactly what my wife and I have been discussing for years. Well said.
Growing up, I feared the Muslim hell more than the Christian hell. The Muslim hell is absolutely terrifying and it is unambiguously portrayed as real and eternal in the Quran, whereas the Christian hell is up to interpretation. The Buddhist hells are even more terrifying, but it is much harder to end up in one of them. I wish I had never been threatened by hell as a kid by crazy Baptists and their Chick tracts. I would not have suffered from anxiety disorders like I did for many years. Once you learn about all the possible hells, you learn that you could end up in any of them if you do the wrong thing and you have zero basis for determining which one is real. Christians tell you that disbelieving in Jesus will send you to hell, but Jews and Muslims tell you that worshipping Jesus is idolatry, which is unforgivable in Islam. So you’re basically left with a coin toss. You’d think God would make it absolutely clear what he wanted you to do, but instead we’re left with a bunch of confusing books written 1400-2700 years ago. If God is real, he is either a sadist, or he is just playing a huge practical joke on us and will save us all. I prefer the second option.
Seems heartfelt. I really needed to read that. Courage I’ve not mustered. I tend to think coming out as gay (I’m not) would be easier than telling family members “Gods Problem”
Your comments bring up a lot of excellent points. Why do we act ethically if there is no “eternal” reason to do so. Since all of the major religions believe is some form of the “golden rule” there must be a greater social good behind it rather than a religious one. I have known many people who acted very “Christlike” even though they did not adhere to any organized religion. I agree with you that a faith is not necessary in order to do good works. The money we pay to belong to your blog that all goes to charity is an excellent example. Even though we do not believe alike, and never will, I have the utmost respect for your actions. You have shown an incredible sense of morality. I think you must be unique in keeping your “Christian” like actions when most others would have left those behind when they felt that there was not reward for them in an afterlife. My hat is off to you Dr. Ehrman.
Speaking of the social reasons….How did this transformation affect your marriage and relationships with your children? Forgive me if this is too personal, and feel free to ignore if you’d rather; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mention this.
Turns out one of my children came out as an atheist years before I did (as an eight year old!); the other after college.
Wow! And how did you and your wife respond to that declaration?
I thought it was a bit amusing. And he’s never wavered from it!
I have played music in front of one church or another every week for the last 15+ years, and often thought that it keeps me faithful, until last year or before when I stopped believing altogether. I still enjoy meeting with my musician friends whom I have grown to love, and thankfully I’m not put on the spot much about my beliefs. It’s assumed at this point. But I do wonder about what it is that my standing up there playing is actually saying in an unspoken manner?
As Levin (AK) you, too, will end up understanding there is no way we can intellectually comprehend God but you are surely one of His own. (A rose by any other name…)
Did the validity, or lack thereof, of the Christian cosmology play any part in your thinking?
In becoming liberal, yes; in becoming an agnostic, not so much (though some: I came to wonder about the vastness of the universe and our speck of a planet in it)
There are, at latest count, between 1 and 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe. Our galaxy, which is considered average, has around 100 billion stars (though some scientists think the number is closer to 1 trillion). So our star (I’m not even going to try to count planets) is, at a minimum, one of 10 to the 23rd stars in the known universe.
Which was all created just for us. Right.
Dr. Ehrman, what are your thoughts on secular/atheist activism? For example, last week there was a big federal case here in Pensacola involving a cross on public property. The law suit was brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association, and the presiding judge ruled that the cross must come down. And of course the vast, vast majority of Pensacola residents are Christian, so everybody’s up in arms! The judge was absolutely right in this case, but legal issues aside, do you think these are worthwhile projects (going into these predominantly Christian communities), or do they just end up tarnishing the already negative perception of nonbelievers even more?
My sense is that a lot of atheist activists shoot themselves in the foot by being entirely negative and confrontational instead of offering attractive alternatives to faith-postions.
It doesn’t help their cause when they vandalize a Ten Commandments display or a Nativity display because they are exercising their freedom of speech. They could do much more to elucidate their position as an atheist instead of coming off antagonistically. Certainly I doubt most atheists do these things but they seem to focus on criticizing someone’s religious beliefs rather than on focusing on why they do not believe.
I couldn’t agree more.
Do you ever experience triggers and flashbacks?
I’ve been a practical atheist for about 15 years and a professing one for about 5. One thing I find myself missing is being able to find comfort in a situation that seems helpless by praying about it. I don’t recall that “God” ever did much of anything to help me resolve those situations but I could always count on him giving me “strength” if I persisted long enough in prayer. I’ve yet to find a psychological substitute for that but a couple of beers can help.
The strangest thing I have yet experienced however happened a few nights ago when I woke up speaking in tongues. It felt like some Scandinavian dialect was just rolling off my tongue more freely than anything I ever experienced when I was a believer.
I don’t believe you were ever of the Pentecostal persuasion but for those of us who were, like Dan Barker, sometimes we do still experience this “evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit”. Dan says he can still do it any time he wants and I can too but this was the first time it ever happened involuntarily in my sleep.
yes, that prayer thing sometimes happens to me too (ambulances and so on)
Screwtape
I fell into the fundamental pentecostal scene early in my walk in Christ – I babbled on for lengthy periods in “tongues” as did my colleagues (some of the women were quite professional about it all…:-) ).
May I suggest that God disabused me of the notion that I needed this to meet Him… but somehow I left the practice after only three to four years.
I continue to believe in a genuine gift – though never have seen it practiced (not much of a need for the most part) – but fully reject the charismatic “prayer language”.
HOWEVER, I have tried once or twice to speak in tongues out of curiosity – and find that if I “just let go” I am able to get that auto speech generated – and could prob get good with a bit more practice.
Based on my background in linguistic – I think that the explanation is rather simple – the human species has a VERY well developed linguistic capability with a HUGE variety of phonetic/phonemic options. Any person – regardless of belief – if they let themselves go – and simply let their tongue wag – will be create multiple speech sounds – and with practice get quite good at it.
The issue is that people only do that after they have been taught that this phenomenon is the evidence of the baptism in the HS.
What do you think??
Greg
Some of your concerns at the time you were making your decision regarding agnosticism still seem to be rooted in a very conservative belief system. As a former Catholic seminarian and then doctoral student at a world-class university, by our standards, we would have seen your beliefs as still very fundamentalist in nature. Fear of hell for becoming an agnostic/atheist, a supposed lack of moral compass, especially, seem very theologically naive. Perhaps it is merely relative to one’s context, and maybe liberal Catholic theologians are much more liberal than the Christian culture you experienced at PTS and in the liberal Baptist congregation?
I’m not sure you’re understanding my beliefs at the time. There is a difference between what I actually believed and what my irrational fears were. The latter were indeed rooted in a fundamentalist past.
That’s an interesting clarification. So it sounds like maybe your irrational fears may have been based on some kind of ingrained or habitual patterns of subconscious thought based on previous fundamentalist beliefs that no longer correlated with your contemporary intellectual beliefs. Something like that? If so, I would still think that those fundamentalist fears were still a deeper form of functional belief, even if you intellectually did not accept them any more. Does that make sense?
I guess it depends on what you mean by “believe.” In my way of looking at it, I didn’t “believe” these things at all, even if I feared I could be wrong.
In my ‘version’ of Christianity (or agnosticism, or atheism, or whatever), the one thing no Christian (or agnostic, or atheist, or whatever) should ever be afraid of is humbly and honestly approaching the truth, whatever that may be. Even Baptists who know their own tradition eschew creeds and instead recognize the fundamental, inviolate authority of one’s own conscience.
Dear Dr. Ehrman, I am deeply touched and impressed by your dauntless courage for the truth .. something like “to your own self be true” … the core of a highly spiritualized being … spiritual … sometimes connected with a religion; however, a religious affiliation obviously isn’t necessary. The Dalai Lama has stated (Russian doc. Sunrise Sunset) that one does not have to be a Believer to attain Self Realization/Enlightenment. Case in point.
…or be a very clear thinker and articulate speaker (case in point – I listen to Bart’s material regularly)
Well… other than Bart’s insistence that Jesus is divine in the Gospel John…but one biff keeps him human….:-)
Excellent post. Have you ever thought about releasing a sermon you wrote during that time? There are many reasons not to: it’s intensely personal (though so is this thread), and with your publishing history it would be of significant interest and impossible to take back. But you know you have a fan base here that would love to read it. . . . . . . .
I’m afraid I don’t have written out texts of those sermons, just detailed outlines that I used as notes.
Dr Ehrman, this post is one of your best ones! I am currently a self identified Christian but with lots of doubts. Like you, I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment that was basically a strand of fundamentalism. In recent years I’ve moved toward being more liberal in my interpretations of of Christian theology. In fact, I seem to be following a similar path to what you’ve written about out so far. Here’s my question; concerning your fears of social costs if you came out as an agnostic, were they valid in retrospect? In other words, these many years later, was it worth it to identify as agnostic when you contemplate the full range of social/relational costs you’ve endured (whatever those are)?
Well, I certainly changed my friends, but not my family! And it was entirely worth it!
1Graber
With respect, social costs seem hardly a consideration to formulating one’s faith. It seems to me that “reality” might have a lot to do with it…:-).
BTW – have you asked the Creator about His thoughts on the matter??? Just curious.
Best
Greg
By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows-*
Alpha-
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.”
Josephsluna
Sadly, Alpha does not seem to understand the meaning of “pistis”.
1. Bill Moyers once said to Joseph Campbell, “You’re a man of faith, aren’t you?” Campbell responded, “Faith? What do I need faith for? I EXPERIENCE God every day!”
2. Paul stresses that God “counted” Abraham’s faith as righteousness but the Tanakh stresses how God valued justice and mercy as righteousness even more. Practicing justice and mercy is a major part of Judaism. There’s a Jewish story that I retell here in my own way: there was a man who could no longer maintain both his faith in God and his practice of following the Torah. He gave up the Torah. When an angel informed God of this, God said, “Would that he had given up faith in me and followed the Torah [i.e. live a righteous life]” (Talmud Yerushalmi, tractate Chagiga, 1:7). The story teaches righteousness over faith.
Dr. Ehrman, thank you for providing us with these insightful blogs! I am on my third book of yours, Jesus Interrupted, and in it, and also in these blogs, you state that you left the faith due to the problem of suffering and not due to the contradictions in the Bible. When I was a Christian, I too still held onto my faith after discovering biblical contradictions and was very much into the theology of John Shelby Spong. Though after much thought, I realized that I could not believe any of the supernatural claims of the Bible anymore and like you, could not reconcile a loving god with the suffering in the world. After becoming an agnostic/atheist, my view of scripture changed in that I now look at it as completely man-made, lacking the supernatural qualities of divinity. I also now realize that when I did believe, I was subconsciously forcing myself to find divinity in the Bible despite the contradictions. In my opinion now, contradictions and errors in a “divinely inspired” book is merit to disregard the divinity altogether. That is why I was surprised in Jesus Interrupted when you said that despite the errors/contradictions in the Bible, a person can still believe in god. With your current agnosticism/atheism, could you elaborate on how you still feel this way? Did the errors/contradictions in the Bible have any weight at all in your decision to leave the faith? Thank you!!
That’s what I’ve been trying to explain on this blog, what I believed for years as a liberal Christian who realized that the Bible was a very human book with human fingerprints (and mistakes) all over it. If you’ll look through this thread you’ll see a number of posts on just that issue.
Thank you for your reply! Yes, I very much enjoy reading your responses in this thread. I do understand the mental gymnastics liberal Christians must do (as I once did).
You say in Jesus Interrupted that the book is “about how certain kinds of faith- particularly the faith in the Bible as the historically inerrant and inspired Word of God-cannot be sustained in light of what we as historians know about the Bible.” Do you include the belief that the Bible is inspired but not inerrant as one of the kinds of faith that cannot be sustained? Also, if it wasn’t for the problem of suffering, or if you could somehow reconcile the problem of suffering, would you still be an agnostic/atheist? Thank you!
No, I wasn’t at all thinking of people who believe that the Bible is inspired but not inerrant.
And I’m not sure if I would be a believer if it weren’t for the problem of suffering. I suppose I would be!
Thank you for answering my questions Dr. Ehrman, it is very much appreciated! I like how Bart Campolo describes liberal Christianity as a stepping stone to atheism. He says how towards the end of his Christianity, he realized that the god he believed in thought how he thought and liked what he liked and therefore was just a product of his mind, as is everyone’s “god.” After disbelieving in the supernatural claims of the Bible, the doctrine of hell, and other things, he realized there was nothing left. What are our opinions on this view of liberal Christianity? Thanks!
I think once you eliminate the supernatural, there is still a lot left to ponder and aspire to.
Bart
For whatever it is worth, one does not have to be “a liberal” to recognize contradictions and errors in the Bible – nor the evolution of doctrinal development that you have discussed (to one extent or another).
One can be a full-out follower of Jesus Christ – eschew all the phony labels (mostly spawned be neo-fascists – but, sadly, adapted by their “antagonists”) – as is even seen in the Bible by all those who did not have a Bible, e.g. Noah, Abraham, etc.
Dr. Ehrman, from what you said in Misquoting Jesus,
“For the only reason (I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that he didn’t preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them.”
-it seems as though you would include the belief that the Bible is inspired but not inerrant as one of the faiths that cannot be sustained in light of what historians know about the Bible. Thoughts?
There are different views of what “inspiration” involves. In that quotation I was referring to a specific form of that belief, the one that claimed God inspired the very words of the text — i.e. something like inerrancy/infallibility. There are other ways one can consider the Bible inspired (e.g., that it’s ideas ultimately come from God)
Dr. Ehrman, thank you for answering my questions. I really enjoy your blogs and I think it is such a great opportunity and very kind of you to interact with your readers!
ajh22
What does “liberal Christianity” even mean? “Conservative Christianity”? Etc.
May I humbly suggest that there is only “followers of Jesus Christ” – and not followers… and that one’s Bibliology has very little to do with such following.
Of course, the big scourge is – what is it to follow JC…. Well, well, well…:-)
(apparently for 81% of American white evangelicals that means supporting and defending and lauding a serial adulterer, manipulator and abuser of women, inveterate liar, complete con-man, fraud, narcissist, psycho-path…. This crew sounds more the sewage of the world rather than the light of the world.
ajh22
Faith in a Creator is completely irrelevant to faith in the inspiration of the Bible or a notion of Biblical inerrancy. Muslims and Mormons alone are great examples…:-).
Regardless, I have faith in a genuine resurrection of Jesus Christ – and a personal Creator (albeit not the typical one described the evangelical peddlers) all the while recognizing that there are clear contradictions in the Bible. Completely unrelated issues.
In fact it concerns me that people would loose faith in a Creator over the nature of the Bible – that they have intertwined the two in such a way that they have become one. This is simply another failure of evangelicalism.
Greg
Not only can one believe in God even though there are errors/contradictions in it, one can believe without the Bible. Or the Koran or any religious scriptures. Faith in God does not depend on faith in the Bible. People have believed in gods and God for ages and in places and traditions that have had nothing to do with the Bible.
SB – Exactly.
Evangelicals have become so brainwashed – the Bible has become God – talk about a Satanic lie…. (yes, one can even believe in Satan without the Bible…:-) ).
Man, this is exactly how I feel… Far too long I held on to my faith, until I realized that by even acknowledging it was a huge lie… Expressing my lost faith was a huge relief, and I assume is very much on par with what it’s like to “come out” as a gay/trans person… it’s not fun, but it’s necessary….
chRxis
I am curious why you had faith in the first place – and why you felt like that basis – as well as content – was invalid.
Greg
Dr. Ehrman,
I’m not sure if you’ll see this comment since this blog post is eight years old, but I wanted to share my deepest appreciation for you and your blog posts. As someone who grew up in a fundamentalist church but has since given up their faith for many personal reasons, reading (and listening) to your blog and your podcast Misquoting Jesus has brought me immense comfort and contentment. I still have deep ties to Christianity even though I no longer believe and being able to read someone else’s experience moves me deeply. I have had a lot of the same personal conflicts that you mention above, socially, morally, and religiously and it is extremely heart warming to hear someone else’s experiences and read other people’s comments as well. Blog posts like these remind me that I am not alone in my beliefs and my experiences.
Thank you again for your blog (and podcast) and for all of the amazing work that you do.
Thanks!