Faith and Proof

Many Christians spend their entire life bashing everyone.  They hate members of other religions, they hate atheists, they hate agnostics.  Is there anyone that they DO like?  They even hate other Christians that do not belong to their denomination.  Why is this?  Well, the reasons are too numerous to list here, and I will write a post in the future that covers this in detail, but the overall reason is that their preacher tells them to.  The preacher wants money, and he will not get money if you leave for another church.  This is the basis for all of the hate that so many Christians have for everyone.  If you do not do exactly what they do you are wrong and going to Hell.  It doesn't matter that the other denomination's preachers are saying the same thing to their congregations.  All they know is that they are supposed to hate everyone that does not give money to THEIR preacher.

If Christians are this intolerant of their own brothers and sisters, how do you think they feel about people that do not worship the way they do?  What about those who do not worship at all?  They are taught that those who do not worship as they do are going to Hell, and also that it is their job to get these people into Heaven.  If these people totally reject what is being said Christians are taught to hate them even more as they have rejected the true word of God, and worshiping God is the only purpose that we have on this Earth.  This sets the stage for massive problems between Christians and those who have actually done a little bit of research and soul searching when it comes to matters of theism.

Atheists are always saying that they need proof if they are to believe in God, and the fact that there is no proof is why they do not believe.  They also lambaste theists for the fact that they believe without having proof.  They say that theists are stupid because they are willing to have faith in something that they cannot prove.

This argument completely misses the point of faith.  Faith means exactly what they are arguing against.  Faith means that you have no proof, but you believe anyway.  They have no proof that evolution is true yet they continue to have faith that it is.  I personally believe in evolution, but I do not do so because of proof.  I do so because to me the arguments for it are better than the arguments against.  What this means is that I must have faith that these better arguments are actually true.

I'm not very knowledgeable about Bible verses, but I'm pretty sure it says somewhere in there that God will not show Himself.  This would defeat the purpose of "faith."  There is no point in having faith in God if He shows himself to you, and faith is one of the key tenets of  most any religion.

Christians are always talking bad about atheists, and more importantly for this post, agnostics.  They say that there is no difference between these two groups, but obviously there is.  For those of you less versed in theological views, the quick version is that atheists do not believe in any god and feel that science can answer all questions (whether there is a current answer or not), and agnostics feel that there is no way to tell if any god exists or not until we die.  Basically, theists are optimists, atheists are pessimists, and agnostics are realists.

All of this leads to the point that I want to make: Christians are, according to the Bible, agnostics.  If God does not give you proof that he exists, you (obviously) do not know if he exists or not.  Faith means exactly that - believing without proof.  If you admit that you have faith in God, then you are admitting that you have no proof. Agnostics also believe that there is no proof of God.  Agnostics are free to believe in God or not because they are not atheists.  This means that if you have faith you are a Christian - an agnostic who chooses to believe.  An agnostic that does not believe is a non-Christian agnostic.

The difference between you and me is that I admit that I am an agnostic.  I admit that there is no way to know whether God or any other supreme being exists, but I choose to believe that He does (God, not Cthulhu or any other deities).  I know that there is a 50% chance that when I die I will go to Heaven/ Hell, and I also know that there is a 50% chance that there will be nothing and I will cease to exist in any way, shape, or form.

I know that this makes many people think that I am no better than an atheist (which I hate having to say because most that I've met are great people).  But what this actually means is that I have done more thorough research into this topic than you have.  It doesn't mean that I am a horrible person; it means that I know more than you do about theology and can admit that the preacher is not the end-all, be-all of Christian thought.  In fact, the majority of them know absolutely nothing about the real story of Christianity (Google "History of the New Testament" for a little introduction to what I'm talking about).  They only know what their preacher told them, which was told to them by an even older preacher, and so on.  There is so much more to it, and you will only discover this if you are willing to do a little bit of self-study that does not involve the Bible or a course developed by a preacher who just wanted to sell you something.

Remember, Christians are almost atheists; true atheists just go one god further.  And agnostics only acknowledge both of these without necessarily picking a side.