I Wear Christian T-Shirts|World of A Neutral God| New Testament Worse than Old|Afterlife|Deathbed Conversions

It’s been a while since I made a blog post, so I thought I’d make a simple post about what I’m thinking about right now. The issue is, that you can always make time for things that you like, unfortunately blogging doesn’t fall into one of these things. Not that I don’t like blogging, I do like it, and will still continue, I just like it less than other things I could be doing.

However I do like to keep you updated slightly. University is a lot of fun, I’m going to a society every day, so that combined with still diligently studying Chinese and keeping up with my studies has made it so my free time is limited. Something has to go.

Anyway why do I still wear my old Christian T Shirts? Well I like them, so that’s it. They also aren’t necessarily about God exclusively. Like I have one shirt with the word “SOUL” on the front, though that’s not an idea I believe in, it’s not like Christianity has exclusive rights to it.

Also to be honest most people I know already know I’m not a Christian so it doesn’t matter so much.

It reminds me of something that a friend said about a popular children’s film in the UK called the chronicles of Narnia. The story of the lion aslan, blatantly and obviously to me represented the story of Jesus. However I’ve met people who had no idea that it was the case, it passed them by. That’s kind of what I hope my T Shirts to also be like.

There is also an element that I’m still pretending to my parents that I’m christian, meaning it would look strange to throw them away, and if I’m keeping them, may as well wear them right?

When I was a Christian myself I was also blatantly elitist about my religion. Often when I met someone new who was a Christian I would always think, oh, they don’t take it seriously at all, or they’re not true Christians. Because there are Christians out there who don’t take their faith seriously. So at the very worst, I think that’s how I would come across.

In fact, for so many young Christians in the UK you could not tell the difference between the religious and the non-religious. So it’s also useful to start those kinds of conversations if people are interested.

One thing it is not is to try and trick people (I guess except my parents) if people would ask (so far nobody has) I would say no.

I’ve actually stopped saying that I used to be a christian, because it always begs the question “why?” – instead I now say that I don’t really believe, and only when prompted say that I used to be, and even then I simply reply with “I didn’t think he was real” and only continue that conversation from there with someone who actually wants it.

Maybe wearing the T shirts are a bad idea, but I just want too, and I’m allowed too, so I guess I can. It is really strange though. I’ve convinced myself to wear them much less by writing this now.

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I’ve been thinking about a question that I have for believers, and that is “What would you expect the world of a neutral god to look like?” – as if to ask, if this is what you believe to be the world of an all loving God, what would one of a neutral God be like?

Because it’s my opinion, that if there is a God, he would most likely be neutral, one where he started everything, took a step back and walk away.

I think the common response from religious would be one where nothing existed at all, or one without life, as a neutral God wouldn’t care to create it.

But if we’re already going so far into ideas of the extreme then it’s not impossible to think of an neutral God that could create things, and did create something. What would that world look like, how would it be different?

Because the laws of physics show that a universe coming from absolutely nothing is possible (read a universe from nothing) and from there, nearly everything is accounted for. The only mystery we have not solved since the big bang is the origins of life, though we do have many theories, it’s still unfair to rule God out since God is still a hypothesis. One that every single time it’s been tested has never proven true however, but that doesn’t mean it’s proven to be incorrect, just unlikely.

Does it bother me that we don’t know these things about the universe? Of course it does! But that’s why we have science to figure this out. Yes while God may solve the problem to you, it cannot be a good enough explanation to me, and I see no good reason to believe it’s correct. Not to mention the fact that if life is so amazingly complex that it needed a God to create it, how much more complex is the thing that led to the origin to a God in the first place? It’s only taking steps back scientifically.

Anyway, back to my original point. 99.999…9% of the universe is completely inhabitable to human life. Space is so large and vast that even if the chances of life to occur on one individual planet were as low as one in a billion, there is still a really high chance of life to have occurred.

Then you have to look at religions, which all look the same, and all get the same silent treatment, and get the same coincidental prayer answers, and all have the exact same effect while doing the same kind of rituals. When one religion is indistinguishable in it’s success and effectiveness from another, it’s easy to see that this God, whoever he is, is very good at hiding.

Like when the most popular religions of the world have billions or members into the hundred millions, it’s easy to see just how easy it is for the human brain to feel like a God is real and they can communicate with it. If any belief system is correct, it means the vast majority of people are in the wrong. It’s easy to feel like a God is real, especially if you’ve been told about him your entire life and then everyone around you also believes.

It’s easy to be fooled and it’s easy to be wrong. The entire number of religions out there proves that, as each one of them claims the other to be wrong, yet while still being in the vast minority.

Then there is also the problem of evil, which makes me feel like a neutral God is more likely.

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But here’s the reverse. What would I expect the world of an all loving god to look like?

Well not the depiction of constant worship of heaven in the bible, and certainly not the world we live in today. But I also don’t think that it’s the idea of an eternal paradise where everything is exactly as you would prefer.

I would essentially see it as thus. A world where we are all born into heaven instantly, and never have to live with the threat of eternal suffering after death. In fact any God offering eternal suffering after death simply for not believing in him, when absolutely no good evidence has been supplied, he is by definition not all loving.

Then because we are all individuals it would have to be some kind of shared space which is catered to everyone. Like nobody wants to live in heaven with people who have been created specifically to make your heaven good, as you would be taking away from their heaven, and the people wouldn’t really be real.

Yet you would also want it to be like everything you want. So a kind of compromise would have to be made, I suppose with the option of going to your own special place with fake people just to be inclusive.

I personally don’t think that my life in heaven would really be much different than it is today. I reckon it would be mostly the same, however with a lot more of the highlights happening more often and none of the bad things. But even then I’m unsure if that would be the case, as whatever is rare has the most value.

My opinion is that if there is an all loving god, then he would know exactly what you would like and enjoy the most and be able to provide that to you in the best way possible. Not what we have now.

The very idea of a hell next to the image of an all loving God is just absurd to me, as well as having a test as the prerequisite to eternal happiness.

To be honest a society following the laws of the bible could never be a heaven to me. Not because I want to sin, but because the bible has justified some insanely nasty things incompatible with a good society. Like slavery, or original sin.

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I’m starting to think that the new testament is worse than the old testament. Essentially because all of the crimes of the old testament are finite, yet the ones in the new could be infinite.

If you were to die in the times of the old testament, then you would more or less be ok after you died. There may not have been an afterlife but you would not be tortured eternally.

However in the new testament it’s more of a different story. Hell is vastly worse than anything in the old testament, and so is original sin. The very idea that your born sick and commanded to be well or you will be tortured forever is frankly disgusting.

As well as that, the concept of second hand sacrifice also isn’t a great idea. Due to Jesus, someone like Hitler, who was catholic, could repent before death and find his way to heaven. Yet Anne Frank would not be there as she was a jew and didn’t believe in Jesus.

The whole problem with the new testament, is that it creates a massive problem to solve in the first place, and their solution (Jesus) only works for those who are Christians and everyone else is just fucked. It’s a problem that the new testament invented yet couldn’t even solve correctly.

The vast majority of people on the planet are not Christian, so heaven is going to be quite empty if it’s true.

Also, even as a Christian I myself doubted that I would get into heaven, as they talked so much about what you needed to do to get into heaven. Yes they didn’t talk about hell very much, but the idea of “will I or won’t I get into heaven” seemed prevalent, meaning the alternative is hell, or nothing, neither are particularly preferable.

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I used to think that if there is a God, you will know about it the instant after you die. But that’s not necessarily true. If there is a deistic truly enlightened God then I see no reason why he would create an afterlife at all. So even if you did die, and life did not continue, then that still would not disprove God.

Of course immediately finding yourself in hell would prove a God, at least sufficiently to me, as would finding myself in heaven still.

But if you find nothing after death (obviously you wouldn’t be conscious to realise however if you could) it still wouldn’t prove anything.

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I think there is a high chance that I will pretend to convert to Christianity. If I am on my death bed and know I will die soon, and the people surrounding me are Christian, I have no doubts what so ever that I will pretend to convert, just to make them feel happier about my death.

The idea of somebody you care about being in hell is never a happy thought to anyone, so I wouldn’t want people to feel sad about the idea that I would be there.

This is part of the reason why I think there are so many deathbed conversions. I don’t doubt for a second that a lot are genuine, but I think it would be silly to assume that all of them are true. If you do think that they are all true, then allow me to prove you wrong when I get there!

People also speak of stories of prominent athiests converting to Christianity after they died. My answer to this argument, is so what? What persuaded them? I want to know. Just because somebody else converted doesn’t mean that I can immediately follow, especially if they haven’t explained their side of the argument.

This however comes with problems, because as for believers, it validates their position. So this is why I’m writing this down now.

Perhaps in the future I will write on my will to read all the religious posts on this blog 5 years later, however perhaps that would give the game away, or just be kind of a dick move.

But I would like to have this here in preparation for when the worst inevitably occurs. People can look at this and say, this is a likely reason for his conversion.

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What did you think of this post format? Essentially I had a lot of ideas that were too short to put in one post, so I thought I’d write a big one about a collection of topics.

What did you think of the format?

What did you think of my ideas?