25 Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian by Craig Duckett

25 Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian by Craig Duckett

The world simply does not behave the way described in the Bible
The words used to define Christian Doctrine are representative of things whose existence cannot be 'proved' outside of language
The Fall of Adam & Eve (and resulting Doctrine of Original Sin) is incoherent and contrary when compared to scientific evidence and other doctrines
The concepts of Heaven and Hell are equally morally and ethically reprehensible
Historical Evidence shows much of the Old Testament was appropriated from earlier Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite, & Persian Myths
The Account of the Flood and Noah's Ark bears striking similarities to the Epic of Gilgamesh and other pre-dating Creation/Flood myths
Persian Zoroastrianism altered Jewish Doctrine during the Babylonian Captivity
The influence of the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch on the mystical Good-Evil dichotomy of Christian Doctrine
The influence of Philo of Alexandria on the development of Christian Doctrine
The ancient gods and goddesses that were assimilated by the Hebrews to become Elohim EL & Yahweh YHWH

Myths of Dying-Resurrecting God-Men Born of Virgins that Pre-Date the Story of the God-Man Jesus
The Problem of Evil (Theodicy) and the Hiddenness of God
Natural (Empirical/Scientific) vs. Supernatural (Faith/Language-Based) Belief Systems
The Gospels are not 'eyewitness' accounts but anonymous third-person narratives
The 'Evolution' of the Christian Canon and Jesus' Godmanship
Saul/Paul of Tarsus and the 'Re-Creation' of the Christian Myth
Archaeology and Biblical claims
Biblical Criticism: Findings as to Who - What - When - Where - How - Why
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes
The Nag Hammadi Library, Ugaritic Texts, and Amarna Tablets
Canonical and Extracanonical books, the Gnostics, and Church Councils
Examined objectively, the Bible is rife with errors, contradictions, misstatements, and inconsistencies
Belief, Doubt, Disbelief and Critical Thinking
Science and the Scientific Method
Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

INTRODUCTION

An armchair polymath, for thiry-odd years I've been a student of comparative religion, theology, philosophy, mythology, literature, history, and science (after a long hiatus, I've even returned to graduate school and am currently pursuing another degree in Humanities). I've read thousands of books, have over four thousand in my personal library, five hundred of which belong to the subject of Christianity and the Bible (see partial list).

Prior to earning degrees in Humanities (e.g., Philosophy, Literature, History), I attended Northwest University to prepare for a career as a pastoral minister. I studied biblical exegesis, hermeneutics, New Testament (Koine) Greek, a little Hebrew, ancient near east history, and doctrinal interpretation. During this time I was 'on fire for the Lord'. I witnessed to anyone who would listen and brought several friends to Christ. Always a voracious reader—sometimes reading three or four books a week—I immersed myself in the study of religion and took full advantage of the extensive (and expensive) scholarly volumes in the school library.

Ironically, it was during my years at the Bible college that I was inadvertently introduced to information that would eventually lead me to question my faith. The more I researched, the more I uncovered cogent evidence and religious information typically hidden from the general church-goer (see DESCENDING BABEL for further discussion). I had no idea. Despite attending Sunday School my entire life and several years of 'confirmation' and bible classes, I knew so little, just a narrow band of teaching that supported sectarian church doctrine. Overwhelmed by what I was discovering, shocked and apprehensive, in time I could no longer embrace the belief that the Bible was the inerrant and inspired Word of God. This realization did not come easily despite the preponderance of evidence—a million pieces it seemed the more I looked—that showed the Bible was nothing more than a man-made composition, compiled to promote religious-political platforms specific to its time. I fought this knowledge every step of the way, I wept and gnashed my teeth, and prayed incessantly for guidance. I felt as if I was going through agonizing withdrawal following a long addiction, the psychoactive drugs of indoctrination and enculturation. After four years of honest soul-searching and book-searching, I conceded the realization that I was no longer a Christian. But my religious and Bible studies did not end there. For thirty years I have never ceased to research and inquire.

Throughout the years I've made several attempts to catalogue and discuss this information, but was quickly daunted by the sheer magnitude of the task. There was just too much to pull together from so many different sources—textual and source criticism, form and redaction criticism, socio-historical and rhetorical criticism, tradition, history, comparative myth and religion, language studies, linguistics, archaeology and anthropology, etc—hundreds-of--thousands of pieces of information that emphatically controvert the veracity of Judeo-Christian tradition and the Bible. I wondered how many others had attempted this before and were forced to give it up or else restrict their findings to sizeable bites. I found it remarkable that people continued to embrace the Bible as a supernatural document with so much contrary information available. To start uncovering this information all anyone had to do was commit to a couple of weekends of honest and dedicated research. In almost no time they'd have enough information to send them down a hundred different paths of inquiry, there was just so much of it, from so many different sources. The scholarly information alone numbered in the millions.

I came to realize that most people didn't want to do the research, to uncover waiting evidence or scholarly information, for fear of undermining their belief systems. Today I sincerely believe most people already suspect deep inside what they will find, so they don't bother to look. They might scratch the surface, hash out the same 'safe' arguments that have become something of a cottage industry for apologists and skeptics alike, but when it comes to digging deep, really getting their hands dirty, feeling a bit panicky and uncomfortable, fearful even, most would rather rely on what they'd like to believe, what they already think they know, what promotes encouragement and promises them hope. This is understandable given human nature, although not very commendable. Offering up 'explanations' for a few hundred bible 'difficulties' gives the appearance of honest analysis, but what about the other five-hundred--thousand? If there are over half-a-million 'difficulties' in the Bible, doesn't this undermine the basic claim that it is the inerrant and inspired Word of God?

In the end it comes down to how honest we're willing to be with ourselves, how far we're willing to go, whether or not we have the courage and stamina to do the work, stand up to what we fear the most, acknowledge it, accept it, finally admit what we've so long pretended not to know. What follows are twenty-five things I've struggled with over the years, each in their own way, one hard-fought step at a time. I did not start out determined to undermine Christianity or the Bible. To the contrary, it was because of my love of God that I wanted to know the truth, to acknowledge and accept it, even if it became the last thing I wanted to hear, even if in the end it threatened to break my heart.

01 / THE WORLD SIMPLY DOES NOT BEHAVE THE WAY DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE

There is the world we live in and then there is the world of the Bible. In our world, the 'real world', the world of flesh and matter, there is no magic, no metaphysical conjuring, nothing supernatural or transmundane. What exists is experienced empirically—through the five senses—and therefore measurable, testable, subject to examination and experiment and ongoing scrutiny. Sure there is talk of the supernatural, of the occult, of miracles and faith healing and psychic phenomena, events or agents that can nonchalantly circumvent the laws of physics. There are books and movies and TV shows and sermons from the pulpit and paintings of supernatural entities like angels and ogres and ascending gods aglow and crowned with halos. But in the 'real world', the world outside of language and art, the world we live in each day, there none of these things. None. And make no mistake about it, science has looked.

Science has been looking into claims of the supernatural for centuries, spent hundreds of millions of dollars, rigorously tested the various assertions of preternatural behavior, and found that the world simply does not work this way. If someone claims they can communicate with your dead loved one, they are lying to you. If someone claims they can lay hands and cure cancer, they are lying to you. If someone claims they can levitate or walk on water or read your future, they are lying to you. The evidence is clear and specific: Any claim that contradicts the laws of physics is either an intentional lie or an unverifiable belief. This is not merely a 'naturalistic presupposition' as bemoaned by Christian apologists, but simply the way things are. The way this world works can be proven again and again, rigorously tested, realistically examined, with millions of experiments. If the apologists want to make 'supernaturalistic presuppositions' can these likewise be proven, tested, evidenced, anywhere in the world? Where exactly does the supernatural realm exist? Where is the only place that apologists can point to for proof?

Only at words. Because they are unable to point to anything in the world, they can only point at words in a book and forced to manipulate language in order to argue, defend, and debate a supernaturalism that is nowhere else in evidence. All things being equal, whose presupposition is the more rational, the more intellectuallyhonest, the more coherent? The person who presupposes a natural world susceptible to and driven by natural laws based on known evidence, or the person who presupposes a supernatural world based solely on words in a book? If all the books went away tomorrow, all writing, all language, we would still be able to deduce our natural world and its natural laws. Without words what could the apologists deduce? What defines reality? Interaction with the world we live in or words in a book? If all the words in the world were suddenly removed, isn't reality that which remains? This is one of the reasons why religious books have become so important to religious believers because without having words to point to they would have no other evidence of the supernatural, and in order for religion to hold sway you must buy into the notion of the supernatural.

Most religions claim that life is more than the flesh and matter we see around us, that encloses us, of which we are composed. In addition, religions suppose some sort of spiritual or supernatural realm that exists 'behind' everything, beyond the scope of science and measurement, imperceptible and undetectable, and that our 'true selves' are really spiritual entities, not material at all. Since all this depends on claims that are outside the scope of science and therefore undetectable, how does religion 'know' to talk about it? If the spiritual realm can't be seen or measured, or Heaven, or even God, how did religion come up with attributes, characteristics, features, properties? Isn't religion simply a case of word association, of words pointing back and forth to other words since they are unable to point anywhere else? If not for words, where would God, Satan, Heaven, Hell, Eternal Life, Sin, Salvation, Jesus, Holy Spirit, et al, be found?

To date all the evidence has determined that life is strictly a natural phenomenon, that who we are—our selves—is material, a series of physical interactions, dependent upon the biochemical workings of the brain. Our sense of self, our personalities, the way we perceive the world, can be severely altered by head injury, stroke, or chemical imbalance. With a serious enough injury we can even be considered 'brain dead' although all our autonomic functions (heartbeat, constriction/dilation of blood vessels, constriction/dilation of the pupils, digestion, respiration, perspiration, relaxation and contraction of the bowels and sphincters, erection and ejaculation, child birth, and tear formation) operate normally. That sense of 'who were are' can be altered, reversed, even 'die', because it's fully dependent on our brains, a broad synthesis of our material surroundings, environment, cultural prejudices, parental influences and biases, birth order, sex, physical appearance, shared experiences, stored memory, bones, flesh, blood, eyes, ears, mouth, and a steady oxygen supply. Everything we think we are we owe solely to the state of our flesh and empirical surroundings, a process impossible to remove from the intrinsic network of matter. With all the above suddenly in absence, what would remain to 'stand' in judgment before the Throne of God, and what mechanisms (or lack thereof) would propel interaction with the Divine Inquisitor? We are natural entities, part and parcel with the natural world, expressly subject to natural laws. We are like all other animals in that respect, who exhibit no supernatural tendencies. Unless these animals appear in the Bible.

In the Bible animals can talk, wizards and witches summon spirits, demons possess pigs, sticks turn into snakes, food falls from the sky, people walk on water or through walls or remain lost for forty years in an area roughly this size of West Virginia. In the Bible the dead can come back to life, enough rain fall in seven weeks to cover the entire planet, all sorts of magical things happen that have no basis in the way we know the 'real world' works. If you know the world doesn't work this way, if all the evidence shows it impossible for the world to work this way, then what are your reasons for believing the Bible when it claims otherwise? You'd consider yourself crazy if you believed Greek and Roman myths that claimed the same types of things, or fairy tales, or old European fables, simply because you know how the world works and it doesn't work that way! And yet, when the Bible makes claims contrary to the way you know the world works, not only do you believe and defend it, but consider all those who don't as the ones who are living in error. Is this an honest assessment? Shouldn't what we believe somehow coincide with what we actually know?

The short answer to all of this? The Bible and Christianity don't stand up under scrutiny. There are too many glaring contradictions and inconsistencies, incoherent reasoning and moral repugnances, ethical sidesteps and magical presuppositions. As a spiritual entity it is corrupt and self-serving, ego-centered, narcissistic. When Hitler's "Final Solution" was to send six million Jews to their deaths we condemned him as a monster; when the Christian God sends these same Jews to Hell we are suppose to praise and adore him as the Highest Paradigm of Moral Intelligence. It makes no sense, unless we are living in abject denial.

02 / THE WORDS USED TO DEFINE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF THINGS WHOSE EXISTENCE CANNOT BE 'PROVED' OUTSIDE OF LANGUAGE

Instead of saying God, Heaven, and Hell, you could just as easily say Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo. Like God, Heaven, and Hell, the only way you can know anything about Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo is through word association. But this isn't exactly true either. In all actuality, you don't know anything about Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo other than the words associated with these terms. You can't point to Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo, or see them, or measure them, or know what they're suppose to be or whether they even exist, or where, or how. In fact, any words used to define Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo are applied not because of anything experienced in reality, but solely out of artificial and abstract word associations. The only we think we know anything about Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo at all is through word associations and for no other reason! Since the existence of Glavin, Homatron, and Jyklumoo cannot be proven and nowhere in evidence, anything said about them is completely contrived, invented, speculative, made-up. If I say "Glavin is All-Knowing and All-Powerful" how do I know this? Since the existence of Glavin cannot be proven and is nowhere in evidence, I could just as easily have said "Glavin is ignorant and weak." Why? Because 'Glavin' is by itself a meaningless term that appropriates meaning solely from the words associated to it and from nothing else! This being the case, any words could be associated with it no matter how far-fetched, ridiculous, or contrary. You can't prove that one set of word associations is correct and a different set of word associations is incorrect, because 'Glavin' is composed of nothing but word associations. And that is the nature of religion.