This post was originally published at my old blog over at Livejournal.com. Because it forms the starting point for most of my atheism discussions, I thought I’d port it over here. The post has been edited only to add references to bible passages, and links to the Council of Trent.

Posted 2007 June 01:

I’m having a “crisis” of faith. It’s not really a crisis (as my death is far from impending, as far as I can tell), but that’s the popular terminology.

Now I’ve had this crisis for the last several years, but I’ve only just now been able to kind of boil it down to some core principles.

First, some background info… I was born into a Christian family, and raised in a Southern Baptist church — I’d say it was a liberal southern Baptist church, but the truth is that I never saw that put to any sort of test. I have absolutely no problem with any of the people in that church. They were all great role models, and morally upright people. Great parents, and supportive people all. I had no reason to challenge my faith back then.

So when my wife met me, I was still quite happily Christian, and devoutly but not antagonistically so.

We met, fell in love, I moved to Australia, and we got married. I ended up not attending any church for a long time. Was this a catalytic event? I have no idea. I don’t even know if it factors or not, but there it is.

The more I looked at the world, the more I started to see religion used to justify all sorts of evil. Hell, it’s been happening for centuries. The Crusades, the long-lasting conflict between Israel and Palestine, the modern-day terrorist attacks — these are all religiously motivated. When questioned, these people all use the religious texts of their flavour to justify their actions.

In a less extreme example, most of these religions encourage social intolerance by mandating that the practitioners’ of the faith go out and convert others to the same faith. When the world was being explored, missionaries went with the explorers to bring civilisation (meaning religion) to the savages, showing an assumption of superiority (these people must be converted) — and great evils were done. Look at the Stolen Generation as one example. Pushing our beliefs on other people is still done today. Look at the debate over creationism vs evolutionism. Creationists are demanding to have their religious beliefs taught alongside something which is demonstrably provable, and I think that’s wrong. Believe what you like, but don’t you dare tell me what to believe.

Another thing that’s also bothered me: Christian recruiting (or testimony, if you must). Every day I walk past a church sign on the way to the train station (actually, I walk past two churches, but one of them has a sign), and every week they have one or two new pithy sayings: “Jesus didn’t save himself so that he could save you,” and “It’s a shame Aussies don’t love the son as much as they love the sun,” and “If Jesus scored 100 wickets would you worship him then?” are some examples. While the above are not good examples for my following argument, many of these sayings seem to focus around fear: “Accept Christ, follow Christianity, or burn in hell for eternity.” In fact, now I remember one…

You could leave salvation to the last minute… if you knew when that was going to be.

And “evangelising” like that is nothing more than preying on people’s fear of the unknown.

So right from the beginning of my questioning, I found myself completely turned off any form of organised religion. I was content to describe myself at that point as a “generic, non-church-going, not denominational Christian.” But I couldn’t help but look further.

Now there’s no denying that the Bible (and I’m assuming the Qur’an and the Torah as well) were written by men. If you seriously believe that it is the literal word of god, then I think you have something wrong with your head. There’s been entirely too much messing about by people to even begin to seriously think that. Look at the events of the Council of Trent for one example.

So the Bible (and assumedly the other religion texts which form the basis of the Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) was written and edited by men. It was and it still used quite easily to justify so much that is clearly evil.

And it occurred to me: if it’s written in a way that people can use to justify their actions now, perhaps it was written THEN to justify another set of actions. After all human motivation and actions haven’t changed all that much in the last 2000 years, let alone the last 500 years (Council of Trent again). Look at the early parts of the Bible to see just how gruesome some of the early “righteous” were: there’s gang rape (Judges 19:20-29) and incest sanctioned by the righteous (2 Samuel 13), and ethnic cleansing sanctioned by god directly (Joshua 6:16-21, Joshua 8, and Joshua 10:28-41).

And when I started to look at the Bible again, this time asking myself what benefit could the author of this book (individual chapters of the Bible) have for writing what they did.

For much of the New Testament, this is obvious. Paul, through his letters, stood to gain (and has gained) much influence over the infant religion by influencing these early churches.

As for the gospels… I’m satisfied that a person named Jesus existed and said the things he said. As for his divinity there’s still a question mark… why were the other gospels not included in the Bible at the Council of Trent? What was in them, and who stood to benefit by their exclusion?

I’m not advocating conspiracy here… but I am thinking critically, and it’s led me to doubt many things.

Thanks for listening.

Edited to add: I’m not swearing myself to be an atheist here. I’ve been an avowed Christian for more than 2/3 of my life, and that’s not something shed lightly. I know I’m not satisfied with the dogma any more, and so I’m looking for my own answers. If you’ve found yours, more power to you… so long as you don’t try to force your answers on me.