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It seems that many atheists here used to be Christians. My question is: While practicing Christianity, did you believe in Sola Scriptura and/or "Faith ALONE"?
It seems that many atheists here used to be Christians. My question is: While practicing Christianity, did you believe in Sola Scriptura and/or "Faith ALONE"?
NO NO NO NO
I was a pariah from a young age for using Logic and reason to say that the Bible is NOT the "Complete and final word of God" and that nothing can be such...
I also got a lot of hate from fundies in my early adult years for pointing out that sola scruptura is just the crutch for someone who cannot think for himself and wants to use ancient writings to justify any and all maladaptive behavior such as racism, self loathing and bigotry (pointing to specific people as examples)
Basically that it was NOT a tool for intellectuals
As for faith, well, faith is another crutch that defies logic and reason and has no benefit as far as I can see. NOT that I do not enjoy a fictional book or fantasy show, but in terms of reality, no,because nothing unreal exists...
SO if someone has evidence, let me see it, if something has benefit, let us measure it; but in matters of religious beliefs, I see no logical reason or practical use for it. There is nothing positive that is unique or monopolized to any religion.
It seems that many atheists here used to be Christians. My question is: While practicing Christianity, did you believe in Sola Scriptura and/or "Faith ALONE"?
I was raised to believe it, and as a child I could certainly "talk the talk". But I now question whether I truly ever did believe it. At any rate, by the time I was 12 or 13, I was noticing how generically similar bible stories were to the Greek/Roman/Norse/Indian mythologies that I loved reading, so...
It seems that many atheists here used to be Christians. My question is: While practicing Christianity, did you believe in Sola Scriptura and/or "Faith ALONE"?
I did not even know (or think) about them as concepts.
I was raised to believe it, and as a child I could certainly "talk the talk". But I now question whether I truly ever did believe it. At any rate, by the time I was 12 or 13, I was noticing how generically similar bible stories were to the Greek/Roman/Norse/Indian mythologies that I loved reading, so...
Theists make much about "choosing to believe" but the only chosen beliefs are those that are baseless or at least inherently unsubstantiatable. That is tantamount to make-believe. If you truly base your beliefs on evidence and logic, then you don't choose your beliefs; they choose you.
I believed those doctrines because it's what I taught, it's all I knew, and I assumed the adults in my life knew what they were on about. It wasn't until I was old enough to reason and became more informed about the world that belief was necessarily replaced by doubt. For many years I assumed I'd eventually get it sorted, but when I realized that reality didn't at all work like I was taught to "believe" it to work ... it all came unglued.
So I could post hoc wonder if I ever believed at all, as you suggest ... I don't tend to see it that way, I wasn't faking it or trying to "fake it until I made it" ... it was unforced at first because I was a child and my credulousness was encouraged by everyone in my environment. In this one limited sense I never truly believed: I never based my belief on anything but hearsay from the holy book and its teachers. But that seems like a pointless distinction because by that logic, none of our evangelical posters here "truly believe" either; they were just way more successful than I at compartmentalizing away any line of reasoning contrary to the party line, in spite of there being no solid basis to do so.
Also if your life is sufficiently lucky and your ability to rationalize is great enough, you may be sufficiently comfortable and see no reason to "disturb the force".
Lots of stuff didn't make sense to me but I was too stupid and naive in my younger years to question any of it, hence a wasted life up until I was 60. I credit this forum for saving what life I had left since it was a place I could air my confusion and hash out things that confused the hell out of me about Christianity. Finally on a challenge from someone in here circa 2012 or so took 6 months to seriously study Christianity's background, how it evolved etc and came to the conclusion that hundreds of millions of other former Christians have come to over the decades: that Christianity is a false religion created by man using a fictional man-god as its avatar.
In place of the sola scriptura nonsense I believed as a Christian, since becoming an atheist I have been able to step outside the religious milieu and realize that everybody inhabits their own universe and no two universes are alike. We are the god of our own universe and we believe what we choose to believe and discard what we find worthless.
The central figure in here is not God or Jesus, it's what each of us as individuals and masters of our own universe choose to believe about God and Jesus, which is why there are as many beliefs about God/Jesus as there are people, which again is why there are constant arguments between Christians about which belief is the right one about God/Jesus. Why? Because you, Mink believe differently from Michael Way, who believes differently from Katzpur, who believes differently from Meester-Chung, who believes differently from O'Darby, who believes differently from Rbbi1, who believes differently from hljc, who believes differently from Heavenese, who believes differently from Charlie24, and on and on. No God or Jesus steps in to referee all this mayhem and discord and that pretty much proves that God and Jesus either do not exist or they simply don't care.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 11-27-2023 at 09:13 AM..
It seems that many atheists here used to be Christians. My question is: While practicing Christianity, did you believe in Sola Scriptura and/or "Faith ALONE"?
No. I was a child and had questions that caused the adults to label me a "blasphemer" or blow me off with "it is god's will" or "don't question god". I did pray and believed there was a god, but not Faith alone or with god. The cognitive dissonance with the religion I was raised with was just too much and I gave up on religion. That was after reading a lot of the bible and finding it contraditory at best. As I got older and explored a lot of other religions and "paths to spirituality" I determined that there was no god in any of the beliefs, god was used to excuse and/or justify bad behavior.
I would like to know why you ask the question? Are you religious, wanting to understand atheists (you won't be able to because we are not all the same), or are you an atheist looking for compatriots that think like you do?
I was raised to believe it, and as a child I could certainly "talk the talk". But I now question whether I truly ever did believe it. At any rate, by the time I was 12 or 13, I was noticing how generically similar bible stories were to the Greek/Roman/Norse/Indian mythologies that I loved reading, so...
I also loved the Greek, Roman, Norse, American Native, African myths. I read as many as I could find. And Joseph Cambell's The Power of Myth is a great book.
No, because I grew up Catholic. I'd never heard of the term 'Sola Scriptura' until now, but Catholicism recognizes other sources of authority aside from the Bible itself, such as papal decrees/encyclicals and the Catechism (which seemed to be largely a thing of the past once I entered Catholic school in the early '90s--I never once encountered the Catechism, much less read it). As for 'faith alone', we were taught early and somewhat often that a major distinction between us Catholics and those strange Protestants was that they believed that faith alone was sufficient for a ticket to Heaven, whereas we recognized that actions matter, and so therefore everlasting bliss necessitated faith *and* good works.
Man, it's somewhat strange to even be revisiting these thoughts of yesteryear.
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