re christian morality is dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote in article ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes i love god just as much as she loves me if she wants to seduce me she ll know what to do but if he she did you would probably consider it rape of course not i would think that would be great fun not having ever felt the joy and peace the christians speak of with a longing gaze this is not what i got when i believed i just tried to hide my fear of getting punished for something i never was sure of the bible is hopelessly confusing for someone who wants to know for sure god did not answer in the end i found i had been following a mass delusion a lie i can t believe in a being who refuses to give a slightest hint of her existence obviously there are many christians who have tried and do believe so i suggest they should honestly reconsider the reasons why they believe and analyse their position in fact it is amusing to note in this context that many fundamentalist publications tell us exactly the opposite one should not examine one s belief critically i ll tell you something i left out of my testimony i posted to this group two months ago a day after i finally found out my faith is over i decided to try just one more time the same cycle of emotional responses fired once again but this time the delusion lasted only a couple of hours i told my friend in a phone that it really works thank god just to think about it again when i hung up i had to admit that i had lied and fallen prey to the same illusion no one asks you to swallow everything in fact jesus warns against it but let me ask you a question do you beleive what you learn in history class or for that matter anything in school i mean it s just what other people have told you and you don t want to swallow what others say right i used to believe what i read in books when i was younger or what other people told me but i grew more and more skeptical the more i read i learned what it means to use reason as a student of chemistry i had to perform a qualitative analysis of a mixture of two organic compounds in the lab i hated experiments like this they are old fashioned and increase the student s workload considerably besides i had to do it twice since i failed in my first attempt however i think i ll never forget the lesson no matter how strongly you believe the structure of the unknown is x it may still be y it is very tempting to jump into conclusions take a leap of faith assure oneself ignore the data which is inconsistent but it can still be wrong i found out that i was after all using exactly the same mechanism to believe in god mental self assurance suspension of fear filtering of information in other words it was only me no god playing any part the life death and resurection of christ is documented historical fact oh and i had better believe this dan many ufo stories are much better documented than the resurrection of jesus the resurrection is documented quite haphazardly in the bible it seems the authors did not pay too much attention to which wild rumour to leave out besides the ends of the gospels probably contain later additions and insertions for instance the end of mark is missing from many early texts says my bible jesus may have lived and died but he was probably misunderstood as much as anything else you learn how do you choose what to believe and what not to this is easy i believe that the world exists independent of my mind and that logic and reason can be used to interpret and analyse what i observe nothing else need to be taken on faith i will go by the evidence it makes no difference whether i believe george washington existed or not i assume that he did considering the vast amount of evidence presented there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities were you ever willing to die for what you believed a liar how do you know what my attitude was try reading your bible again i was willing to die for my faith those who do are usually remembered as heroes at least among those who believe dan do you think i m lying when i say i believed firmly for years it seems it is very difficult to admit that someone who has really believed does not do so anymore but i can t go on lying to myself blind trust is dangerous and i was just another blind led by the blind but if god really wants me she ll know what to do i m willing i just don t know whether she exists looking at the available evidence it looks like she doesn t petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
