Reading the Bible, losing his faith
ABC News is featuring a story about pastors who've lost their faith. Here's a taste - emphases mine:
Jack said that 10 years ago, he started to feel his faith slipping away. He grew bothered by inconsistencies regarding the last days of Jesus' life, what he described as the improbability of stories like "Noah's Ark" and by attitudes expressed in the Bible regarding women and their place in the world.
"Reading the Bible is what led me not to believe in God," he said.
He said it was difficult to continue to work in ministry. "I just look at it as a job and do what I'm supposed to do," he said. "I've done it for years."
Adam said his initial doubts about God came as he read the work of the so-called New Atheists -- popular authors like the prominent scientist Richard Dawkins. He said the research was intended to help him defend his faith.
"My thinking was that God is big enough to handle any questions that I can come up with," he said but that did not happen.
"I realized that everything I'd been taught to believe was sort of sheltered," Adam said, "and never really looked at secular teaching or other philosophies. ... I thought, 'Oh my gosh. Am I believing the wrong things? Have I spent my entire life and my career promoting something that is not true?'"
Yep. That seems to happen. It's no wonder so many Christians (and not just Christians) fear encountering - or worse, letting their children encounter - other ways of thought, particularly scientific ones.
Labels: freethought, media
4 Comments:
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At 8:15 AM, November 10, 2010
Mark had this to say...
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At 10:18 AM, November 10, 2010
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 6:30 PM, November 15, 2010
Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol had this to say...
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At 6:36 PM, November 15, 2010
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->What this tells me is that the preachers involved never went to a decent seminary. A decent seminary teaches enough about the making of the Bible that no one could believe it's divinely inspired, except in the loosest, most meaningless way. At this point in their careers, they should not be able to find anything in the Bible they didn't already learn about years ago.
The surprising thing is that they had enough intelligence to eventually recognize what they were teaching as the nonsense that it is.
But then virtually no christian preachers preach a religion that is anything at all like the one preached by the man they consider to be god.
Indeed. Many Christians, even (especially?) pastors of more fundamentalist or evangelical sects, don't study theology. They study religion, and how to be a pastor, and so on.
As the recent study showed, the stronger the faith, the less theological and historical knowledge lay behind it...
My kids are going to grow up to be horrible Christians, I guess... since both of their Christian-professing parents were trained as both historians and scientists.
If they grow up horrible intolerant-ignorant-fundamentalist-Christians the world will be a better place. I've know some lovely Christians in my life, but none of them found their faith challenged by science. Heck, one priest was also a physicist.
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