So, part of the reason I retreaded Christianity lately is because I also had an argument with a friend about of this. With that said, I'm not posting this to be petty or anything, but because I really do believe in my views and I do think they should be discussed as they are the kind of views that I would normally express on this blog.
As I see it, Noebel's big pitch to me about it really resonates. Either young earth creationism is true, the world is 6000 years old, adam and eve were real people who committed real sins, everything wrong with the world is because of sin, and as such, we need a redeemer to set things right, with that redeemer being Jesus, or the entire worldview falls flat on its face. I don't believe in compromise, in reinterpreting scripture, what have you. If you wanna do that, that's fine, but I personally don't think any version of the religion is worth following. It just seems philosophically inconsistent, and while some people can make it work, as I said, I see such christians as outliers from the trend. They dont fit in any category, they just exist. And that's fine. But it's not for me.
A lot of this argument happened because he was discussing some book talking about leaving christianity and it pushed some weird argument about how just because christianity is morally flawed at times doesn't mean that people should just LEAVE it, after all, other moral systems are flawed to.
But...to me, this is just this weird christian apologetics thing. Like, as we can tell from the noebel book in dissecting it, their entire pitch comes from presuppositionalism. They come at the subject from a position of faith, and selectively interpret the rest of reality around their faith. And honestly? A lot of christians who approach these subjects come at the subject similarly, they have SOMETHING that drives them to be christian, it's often beyond reason, and then they interpret reality around that belief. And people struggle sometimes to see past it. And that's where apologists try to get you. If you're questioning, they'll try to do damage control to get you to leave entirely. perhaps not all of them will be as rigid as noebel where it's all or nothing. They might suggest you adopt another version of the religion that reinterprets things to meet their super special version of it or something.
I just view such rationalizations as an exercise in futility. if you're having an existential crisis, what you need to do is calmly and objectively EVALUATE EVERYTHING. I questioned EVERY ASPECT OF MY WORLDVIEW and I reached atheism at the time through an objective analysis of the entirety of the evidence. The fact is, people who leave christianity don't really have a moment where they actively leave. They have a period of questioning where eventually, they just realize they have no further reason to believe, and they accept it. Christians will try to avoid reaching this point at all costs. The entire religion is based around this idea that above all else, you BELIEVE. And if anything is unforgivable in the religion, it's apostasy. There are entire sects of religion that will disown you if you leave. In the past, you'd even be tortured and killed for it. in many christian sects, those who leave apparently have eternal hellfire waiting for them at the end of their life, and many ex-christians still suffer religious trauma from those views.
But to me, I actually think that something happens to a person when they reach that point. It's a lot like that moment when Goku watches Krillin be killed by Frieza in DBZ. Or Gohan watching Cell stomp on android 16's head. You snap. You suddenly experience a radical transformation that changes you as a person. The veil is gone. You no longer have any blinders on. Again, to go back to dero's 1984 video, i find it amusing how he sees the bible as "the truth", while society puts everyone in VR headsets and tells them what to do. I dont deny society has many layers of indoctrination to it, but what really pushed ME to take the headset off was...leaving religion. That's why this blog is named what it is. Because I left the cave, and I'm not going back. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:11: " When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." For me, leaving religion was putting away such childish things. There's no value in it. There's no reason to hold onto harmful views that hold you back. Let go, and become an intellectual super saiyan.
Once you conquer a worldview that tells you that if you dont believe it, you're going to hell, you'll be able to see through everything, if only you put in the effort. Not all ex-christians do. A lot of them get lazy and leave religion but somehow end up with a lifetime of societal indoctrination unchallenged. But my deconversion will always remain with me, even believing in some level of spirituality again. Because at that moment I snapped, the veil lifted, and I was finally able to see the world for what it truly is.
As such, screw Christianity. Again, not trying to insult anyone who seriously believes in it. I find christians often confuse attacks against their belief system as attacks on their identity. This is not intended to do that. But yeah. it's not for me. I'm never going back to it. I literally don't see any value in holding Christian views, and while I'm not about to take away anyone's freedom to believe in that stuff as each person's journey is their own and people deserve the intellectual liberty to believe whatever they want to believe, but I see the belief system as authoritarian, restrictive, regressive, and harmful to humanity. Above all, it isn't even intellectually valid or true. Delving back into it recently for the recent blog posts makes me realize how much of it seems to be about selectively and dishonestly pushing evidence that supports such a perspective, while ignoring and downplaying that which doesn't. I have no use for it. And at this point, given I don't believe in the core narrative, I have zero reason to EVER go back.
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