Atonement Through the Shedding of Blood

In my twenties, when I had my first major struggles with Christianity, I decided that the best starting place was to read the entire Bible.  I knew at the time that most Christian's haven't, and I figured making decisions which might have eternal consequences warranted reading the book that was supposed to tell me what to do.  I got about 80% finished, reading all of the Old Testament and most of the New, but I never actually finished.

Now, as an Atheist, I want to read the whole thing just to say I have.  So I started with Genesis back in April.  I'm only up to Leviticus now.  I'm reading from the Olive Tree app on my android.  This morning, I read their intro to Leviticus and this sentence stuck out to me:

"The book also shows that God graciously provides atonement for sin through the shedding of blood."

Graciously.  Shedding of blood.  Graciously.  Atonement. Shedding of blood.

Nothing seems gracious about that to me.  It used to sound so normal, and now it sounds so absurd.  In what other context in life would you consider the shedding of blood a gracious way of paying for a wrong?

"Honey, I'm leaving the office.  I'll be home soon."

"OK.  Could you pick up some lettuce for tonight?  Oh, and could you also bring home a live chicken or rabbit or something?"

"A live chicken?"

"Yeah.  You forgot to take out the trash this morning, so I'm going to let you atone for that by shedding the blood of an animal.  I think that's pretty gracious of me."

"Gracious?  What the fuck?"

"Well, wouldn't you rather sacrifice a small animal than wake up on fire?"

"Are you insane? What the fuck are you talking about 'wake up on fire'?"

"Well, I'm a loving and gracious wife, but I'm also a just wife.  It wouldn't be just of me if I didn't demand a payment for you not taking out the trash.  I have standards, and you have failed to meet them, so a price must be paid."

"What the fuck?  Are you going crazy.  Where did all this come from?"

"No, I'm not going crazy.  Crazy would be letting this shit go unchecked.  That wouldn't be loving or just.  An error like this must be paid for.  But I love you too much to light you on fire while you sleep, so I'll accept a substitionary atonement.  Kill an inoocoent animal for me and we can forget that this ever happened."

Gracious. Shedding of blood.

A Letter to a Friend

I have been having an ongoing dialogue with a theist friend from work.  Yesterday he encouraged me to study the Bible.  I thought about it for about 24 hours, and ended up emailing him this:

So yesterday at the end of lunch, you encouraged me to "really" study the Bible.  I don't remember your exact words, but the implication was that, thus far in my 38 years of living and 30+ years of identifying as a believer, that I had somehow failed to study the Bible as effectively as I could have.  Another way of looking at it is that you are saying that there is a way I could study the Bible now (perhaps studying specific parts of it, or all of it, or with a certain mindset or a certain level of intensity, or maybe a certain number of hours a day, or maybe even by praying a certain way before studying it so that otherwise inaccessible truths may be revealed to me) that would allow me believe in God, where all the rest of studying I've done in my life failed to give God a fair chance in my life.

I've been thinking about that most of the afternoon and evening yesterday, and most of the morning as well. 

You have been a believer (I use that term since you have, on almost every occasion expressed a dislike of the term "Christian", and always attempted to make the distinction between what you are, and "Christians.") since the 70s, you told me yesterday.  About 30 years.  I also spent 30+ years of my life convinced that there was a God, that I was a sinner, and that my only hope for Salvation was to accept Jesus into my heart and acknowledge the sacrifice He made for me.  In my adult life, I've spent hours reading the Bible, either on my own, or in response to a specific Bible study or Sunday school lesson I'd been assigned to learn.  I've spent hours praying, and have experienced intense emotions quite frequently during those times.  I interpreted those feelings as the Holy Spirit communicating to me.  I was sure that God was speaking to me, through the Holy Spirit, in a non-verbal way to answer my requests for guidance, comfort, a wife, etc.  I made important life decisions based on these "answers" with confidence that God was showing me the right choice to make. 

If your implication is true, and I somehow in all of my 38 years of living just haven't tried hard enough, or studied the Bible the right way, or the right parts of it, or have failed in some way to truly open myself up to God, then what does that mean?  I can tell you that for all of the time that I did call myself a Christian, I was absolutely sure that I did have a relationship with God, that he did answer my prayers, and that I was going to be in His family eternally when I died from this earth.  So are you saying that it's possible for a person to study God's word for decades, pray to Him that whole time, and still somehow not have a true relationship with Him?  Seriously?  What does that say about God?  Is He really making Himself so elusive that 30 years of trying to have a relationship with Him could fail?  Or maybe it wasn't Him.  Maybe it was me.  But I can assure you that I genuinely tried with all of my heart and all of my abilities to have a relationship with Him and to please Him and do His will.  I gave it everything I had, which is everything He gave me.  So do I not have enough?  Did He not give me enough that I could have a true relationship with Him?  How does that make any sense at all?  Seriously?  If He is that hard to find, how can any other amount of studying and praying bring me to Him?

From other things you've told me, you seem to believe that the Christian community is full of fair-weather fakes who do not have a true relationship with God (As I mentioned before, you almost always make the distinction between yourself and "Christians", so you've certainly gone to great effort to point out that there is a difference, making the implication that there are lots of fakes out there).  So the implication is that you are pretty certain you have a true relationship with God, but that you are suspicious of many other people claim the same thing.  What do you have as a basis for making this distinction?  What do you have besides feeling God in your heart?  Don't you think me and, excepting the truly deceitful, every other self professed Christian on the planet has felt what you feel, and been as sure of their relationship with God as you are?  What kind of being is God if this many people can be duped into thinking they have a relationship with Him when they really don't?  What kind being would make it so damned hard to really get it right that even the people that are trying with all their might can fail?  It makes absolutely no sense to me.

As for studying the Bible, I've been doing it more in the last few months than in the last few years, and I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  I will examine it with a critical and questioning eye.  If God truly exists, I'm still giving Him plenty of chance to show me.  If He is as elusive as you seem to think, and I end up in Hell because of it, then what else could I have done?  It's not like I'm sitting down here shaking my fists at Him in anger and avoiding him.  I'm spending 2-3 hours a day reading a mixture of the Bible, and other people's opinions on it (Atheists and Christian Apologists alike).  So if He is really there, I'm exposing myself to His book, and plenty of discussion about Him and His book where he could lead me back to Him.  If that's not enough, He could blind me on the roadside and speak to me directly.  I'm not trying to hide from Him, but it really feels like He's trying to hide from me.

Faith and Prayer

Do you have faith the size of a mustard seed?

No?  Then why are you preaching to me?

Yes?

Do you believe that you can move a mountain?  Do you believe you can pray for and receive healing?  Even if 2 or 3 are gathered in the name of Christ?  My friend's dad cut off the tip of his thumb with a skill saw.  Will you sincerely pray that his thumb would be restored to its original condition? 

When you get sick, do you stay home and pray, or go to the doctor?  If you need surgery, will you take anesthetics, or will you pray for the pain to be suppressed?  If you discover that you have cancer, will you pray, or will you go to the doctor, or both?  If you could only choose one, which would you choose?

If I put myself in all of the situations above, and I pray to Zeus instead of Jesus, will you expect my outcome to be any different than yours?  Will Zeus make me well?  Will he restore an amputated thumb?  Will he cure cancer?  What is the difference between praying to Zeus or Jesus?  Which of the situations above would yield a different outcome when praying to Jesus instead of praying to Zeus?  Will either Jesus or Zeus outperform a doctor?  Have you personally known of anyone who has had an amputated limb restored, or cancer cured by prayer alone?

The Tower of Babel

A few things about the Tower of Babel don't make much sense to me.  The flood had already occurred.  God was already grieved that he had made man on the earth, and had already hit the reset button on planet earth, destroying all but Noah's family.  Yet, before we get to the halfway point to the first book of the Bible, the feeble humans are already ruining His plans again.

And how, might you ask?  Well it looks as living together peacefully and speaking a single language are part of the problem.  They cooperated to build a city with a big tower to "make a name for themselves" and avoid being scattered over the face of the whole earth.  The Omnipresent lord "came down" to see what they were doing, and was alarmed to discover the fruits of their labor, saying:

 “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

First of all, who is God talking to?  I'm not sure who overheard his words here, nor am I sure who the "us" is that's going to come down and confuse the language of mankind.  Also, it doesn't seem very accurate for God to say that if he doesn't, then nothing that men plans will be impossible for him.  After all, even God doesn't seem to be as powerful as an army in possession of iron chariots. Is he saying that if enough of us team up and cooperate, we'll be as potent as God?  And what mankind would have been immensely powerful as a united team.  These are the descendants of Noah, right?  I mean God just killed everyone on the planet, deciding that only Noah and his family were good enough to live, and almost immediately humanity isn't good enough to be trusted with power?  If only these people were properly inspired, what could they have accomplished by working together?  Clean water and a working sewage system, modern medicine, etc?  Why is God's best option to impede us rather than leverage the, apparently, peaceful cooperation of all mankind to build churches and hospitals and all manner of thing that would demonstrate the power of God?

What bothers me even more is where we are today.  Language and distance are hardly a barrier to mankind anymore.  We can fly into space, and have built many tall buildings which surely dwarf the Tower of Babel.  We're supposed to believe that God is all powerful and all knowing, which would imply that at the time he destroyed the tower of Babel and confused our languages, he already knew about the internet and life in 2011?  Surely much less is impossible for us today than for mankind at the time of the Tower.  If God chose that time to disrupt mankind, shouldn't He have done something more permanent, preventing us from coming to the position we're in today?  Or perhaps He should have waited until today before shaking things up?

I'll borrow from the author(s) of godisimaginary.com and ask this question.  Does the story of the Tower of Babel sound like something from an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving being, or does it sound like something written by primitive men who had no way of knowing that in the future, mankind's accomplishments would dwarf everything about their current level of technology?

Contradicting?

 

On Fasting:

No:

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” --Mark 2:18

Yes:

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. --Matthew 6:16

 

On Divorce:

No:

He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. --Mark 10:11

Well, Sometimes:

I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” --Matthew 19:9

 

Preaching to Non Jews:

No:

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. --Matthew 10:5

Yes:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, --Matthew 28:19

³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Many Samaritans Believe

 ³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers.  ⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” --John 4:35-42

 

Family vs Relgion:

Pro Family:

⁹ And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe^[a] your own traditions! ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’^[b] and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’^{[c] 11} But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— ¹² then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. ¹³ Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
 ¹⁴ Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. ¹⁵ Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” --Mark 7:9-15

Pro Religion:

 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. --Luke 14:26

²¹ Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
 ²² But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” --Matthew 8:21-22

Christians are Cool, Right?

So as a Christian, I could never understand why the atheists and other nonbelievers considered us such assholes.  All my friends were cool.  Sure, there were a few Christians out there who may be a little on the obnoxious side, but they still were guided by love, right?

Now that I'm a doubter, and "in the closet", I totally understand.  I've thought through the process of coming out several times over the last few weeks, and thought about what sort of response I'd receive.  It's kind of scary.  Maybe nothing at all would change, but I kinda doubt it.  Some things would change.  I won't venture to guess from who, but out of all of our friends, I suspect we'd get ostracized by at least a few of them.  I'd also be afraid of how it would affect my job.  I work in a company where at least half of the employees seem to go to the same church as my boss, and they're all very outspoken about their faith.  In the employee handbook, my boss states that he'd never discriminate against someone for their beliefs, but he'd be happy to talk to anyone about his if they wanted to.  He's a truly nice guy, but I really wonder if my potential at the company would be the same if I was out of the closet compared to staying in. 

It's funny how just changing your mind about something can make you afraid for your job and your friendships.  I now understand why a friend of mine moved to Oregon just because it was the least religious of the states in the U.S.  I thought it was silly at the time, but it makes sense to me now.  The more and more I doubt, the more I realize that life as a nonbeliever in the Bible belt is going to be challenging.

Actually, what scares me the most is how life will be for my daughter.  Christians... my buddies... really do start to seem like assholes when I think about how they'll probably treat my daughter for not being a part of their group.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until something specific happens, but I can't say that my outlook is good.

Truth and Numbers

I've been reading and listening to podcasts in every spare moment, taking in a ton of new information.  When I haven't been doing that, I've been rolling it all around in my head, trying to process it.  Here are a few points that have stood out to me in the last day or two.

Denominations

I heard the other day on the Atheist Experience podcast that there are 38,000 distinct Christian sects.  They didn't cite the source of that number, and I am not sure how a sect differs from a denomination, but I don't think it really matters as far as the point that it led me to.  This wikipedia page sufficiently demonstrates that there are lots of subgroups within Christianity, and if you look at the timelines, you can see that over time, we end up with more subgroups, rather than less.  Supposedly the Bible is the one source of truth on this planet, but over time believers of the bible fragment further and further as they interpret it differently.

On the other hand, you have science.  Science attempts to discover all that can be known about the world we live in.  What hit me over the head the other day is how significant it is that science does the exact opposite of what Christianity does.  On the timeline, you see convergence rather than divergence.  That is to say, there are not 38,000 different beliefs on the law of gravity.  As far as I know, there are not even 2 different beliefs on gravity.  We just have the one.

So with Christianity, they started with the whole and absolute truth (The Bible), and over time they drift and drift apart, where in Science, they started with hypothesis and theories, and they gradually zero in on a single thing that we can all agree on.

Sure, you can find examples in science today where there is disagreement.  But over time, do you think the number of views on any given theory will increase or decrease?

Another thing I wonder.  Have Christian sects/denominations ever merged?  Have 2 groups ever decided that they did, after all, agree on a point, and that their division was no longer necessary?

Pi

While reading Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, I was actually surprised to find something I never knew was in the Bible before.  It makes a significantly poor use of Pi in two places.  Additionally, in the two locations it describes containers of the same dimensions, but gives two significantly different calculations of the volumes of those containers.  Not what I would expect from divinely inspired texts.  Here are the two verses:

1 Kings 7:23-26 (New International Version)

 ²³ He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. ²⁴ Below the rim, gourds encircled it—ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.
 ²⁵ The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. ²⁶ It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths.

2 Chronicles 4:2-5 (New International Version)

² He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. ³ Below the rim, figures of bulls encircled it—ten to a cubit. The bulls were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.
 ⁴ The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. ⁵ It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held three thousand baths.