Skepticism And Christianity

I had extensive dealings with people on the Internet who called themselves the skeptics. They did not act like skeptics; they acted like jerks. When someone told about a study that appeared to validate the existence of psychic powers, someone said that the study was faulty. I asked her why it was faulty. She said, “Because it produced the wrong result, dickhead.” Now it is certainly valid to test the claims that people make, especially about things that not everybody experiences. However it is not at all valid to decide that such things cannot exist, and that religion and spirituality is for fools and lunatics. There have been many people much smarter than them – people such as Solomon, Paul, Augustine and Eckhart – who fully believed in God and had many educated things to say on the subject. I would most certainly be rather dealing with one of these people than with people such as the above. I did not start out religious. I started out as a Commie. However I had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening whose only possible explanations were of the spiritual nature (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/logic-religion-and-spiritual-experience). When I seriously got involved in such things, I wanted to prove them to everyone. That got me labeled as a lunatic or worse. I have no reason to lie about such things at all. I am not making money that way. I had very real experiences, and I wanted to show people what they were failing to consider in their computation of their worldview. And in my case this has been many things. One thing that I did wrong was dismiss Christianity. I ended up finding out that Jesus was very much real, and that His powers are good. He has been transforming me from someone whom most people saw as a jerk to someone whom most people see as a good person. I experience His presence a lot, and it is a very wise and powerful presence. The people who started Christianity likewise did not have reasons to lie. They were persecuted. Why would people take these kinds of risks with their lives unless if they know that they are doing the right thing? They were not affiliated with the government or anyone trying to control the population. They were not looking for power. Certainly the religion can be used to control the population, but so can many things besides religion. With Christianity, we see a force that converted both the rulers and the ruled. When Marx saw an order based on exploitation he saw religion as part of the problem - “opium for the masses.” Of course Communism itself became a much bigger “opium,” as has what some Marxists call in America “the ideology of mass consumption.” However that is not how Christianity began. As for contemporary adherents of Christianity, many of them have traveled other paths before coming to Christ; and they cannot therefore be accused of being brainwashed or bigoted. I am likewise in no way a bigot. Once again, I started out as a Commie. However I had many experiences whose only possible explanations are of spiritual nature. I have known people who would have such experiences and not want their implications, so they would deny the experience. That is not logical; it is dishonest. What are the implications? That there are consequences to what we do. That we need to hold ourselves to a certain standard of behavior. That we must strive to be good. Not everyone wants these implications; so, once again, they deny their experiences. And some of them become the most vicious of these “skeptics.” I do not want these “skeptics” to suffer or go to hell. I want them to change their ways. I want them to recognize the same kinds of things that I and many, many others have recognized. I do not have the luxury of atheistic beliefs, even though often I wish I did. However even when I myself am trending in that direction, God would do something to remind me. So some people want to see something that is undeniable to everyone. There have in fact been such things. There was Jesus walking on water. There was Rasputin surviving bullet and poisoning. There was a man in India who survived without water for a ridiculously long period of time. Some people think that such things are impossible, so they deny them. But they cannot be denied. The problem is with these people's worldview. Certainly there is merit in things such as physics and chemistry and climate science, and there are many people who need to pay to such things more attention. But there is also merit in things such as what I have described. I had a brilliant mathematics teacher who was a devout Christian. He was loved by just about everybody, and he continued teaching well into his retirement. He told me that there was no contradiction between science and Christianity. I knew a man who wrote a book, to my best guess still sold on college campuses, to state that the axioms of modern physics are compatible with the existence of God. The people who think that only the atheists are rational or sane are fooling themselves. Many of them are also rude and mean and nowhere nearly as smart as they think they are. If Christianity was for morons, it could not have outlasted the Roman Empire, which was very powerful and had advanced knowledge of many things. Certainly some adherents of Christianity are only copying their upbringing; but why did so many people become Christians in the first place? They were not bigots. They were not brainwashed. They were not sheep. They were brave and intelligent people facing vicious persecution, and they held to their beliefs – and made them count – in face of severe violence and death from entities wielding far more political power than did they. Would people such as the ones I described do such a thing? Doubtfully. They are strong of tongue, but I do not think that most of them are as strong of heart. As for myself, once again, I cannot legitimately doubt what I have experienced. And I certainly hope that my testimony here motivates others to look further and deeper and correct their wrongful worldview and behavior. As for myself, I can say with full certainty that Christ has been making me a better person. I was doing many things wrong in the past that I did not realize to be wrong until Christ showed me why they were wrong. If this can happen to a militant atheist that I used to be, then it can also happen to these skeptics. And for people who have such convictions I would like to encourage looking further into why a religion started by disaffected radicals rose to the leadership of the world, and what this means for their own beliefs and their own behavior.