Publications
Partners
What motivates people to remain Christian….?
Some Christians find it hard to dump their faith in Jesus Christ, despite the lack of verifiable evidence of his historical existence and the glaring failure of his promise to physically return to earth.
So what is it that motivates people to remain Christian in this day and age; when faith is not a virtue anymore and the prescience Bible has become redundant?
Well Christians will tell you that they have more then the Bible and an inner witness by Holy Ghost revelation knowledge that its teachings are true. It’s called a personal testimony.
They have been fooled by a subjective experience of the validity of the Bible's claims and promises. They live by their emotions. Their minds have been bypassed. They are bound by their feelings about God and his love.
There is no other story like the Christian story. God, the creator of the immense forty billion light year universe filled with trillions upon trillions of galaxy’s, stars and planets, loves and cares for me so much, that he came to our single insignificant pale blue planet, as a baby boy called Jesus and died for me on a cruel Roman cross, and is ever present to help me through life and welcome me into his everlasting arms of comfort when I pass on.
He who was born from lowly and humble origins, abused, mistreated and crucified for my sins gets the comeuppance over Satan and death by rising from the grave, ascends to heaven to sit on his royal throne next to God.
We thrill at the idea that he could take out his opponents with his Godly power at any time if he so chooses. The typical superhero fantasy myth just when you think he's defeated he, Jesus gets power from God, sets the captive free, breaks the chains of hell and the grave and is coming back again to serve justice and judgement upon Satan, demons, his accusers and all unbelievers.
Myths are powerful because they resonate with something within us and the Christian gospel myth seems to resonate more than other myths. Who needs Christian apologetics with a story like this? Who needs to defend such a story at all? The story itself provides the only evidence people need to believe. Just tell the story. Claim it as a properly basic belief. Tell us the Holy Spirit testifies to this story through an inner witness. After all, it does resonate with us.
Why? Because we want it to be true, we want to believe we can be forgiven for things we have done wrong. We want to believe there is divine help when in trouble, or divine healing when sick. We want to believe there is life after death too. And we want to believe we are so important that God would take notice of us and redeem us.
Never mind the fact that we haven't a clue as to how a child could be 100% God and 100% human or that we only find virgin birth stories in pre-scientific cultures or that we cannot make any sense whatsoever as to how the death of Jesus atones for our sins or that no one has ever actually seen a man resurrected from the grave, nor do we have a clue how this is even possible, or why we should ever believe it, since it was first told us by ancient prescience superstitious people.
No, to be a Christian you have to switch off, ironically the brain God gave you and embrace your emotions. Walk with them, live your life by them because it makes life more comfortable for you and the alternative that there is no personal God is too ghastly to contemplate.
When anyone questions your faith, appeal to an emotional subjective experience of God and claim God’s ways are mysterious and beyond human comprehension - his ways are not our ways. The bottom line is the Gospel story has the power to persuade and offers the believer a great deal more than atheism; even though it is a myth it still has the ability to resonate with something within us.
Nevertheless I'm here to tell Christians that their faith is a delusion because it is based on a myth. As an atheist I have nothing to offer you, but truth and reality. I cannot promise you divine help in times of trouble, answered prayers, divine healing, nor divine forgiveness either.
Atheism offers no hope of seeing your loved ones again after they die. I have nothing more to offer but knowledge and understanding. You will have to find your own job, your own parking bay, your own rental and water and lights payment etc.
Yep atheism means that there is no doting heavenly Father ready and willing to meet all your needs, desires and wishes – not that he ever existed as he was only always there in your childish imagination.
You see why it’s easier to be a Christian than it is to be an atheist. It's hard to compete with a fantasyland. People would rather believe a delusion than face the truth. The genius of Christianity is that it makes all wrongs, in actuality, offences against God and not against man only. It's God who has been offended.
The good news is that God is ever willing to forgive. That means that, ultimately, it doesn't matter whether a human victim forgives. God always will, because he's made atonement for all "sins"; and if God forgives you, you're forgiven indeed.
Your allegiance and devotion to the Christian gospel might have helped you but its effect is nothing more than that of a placebo effect. Placebos might serve a purpose but they are not real and anyone who thinks they are real is delusional.
Evolution through the placebo effect seems to have provided a reward for those who have faith in a personal God despite evidence to the contrary -but it is now time to evolve some more and rid yourself of your addiction.
Wiki tells us that “because the placebo effect is based upon perceptions, expectations and conditioning, the effect disappears if the patient is told that their expectations are unrealistic, or that the placebo intervention is ineffective.” - this could be why Christians are adverse to someone telling them the truth about their faith in God and why Jesus told them to run away from skeptics.
Christians believe that a functioning Biblical personal God has anchored both the distance past and their future in himself, yet without any proof that the purported mighty acts of God are true, this faith is built on a mythical past and mythical future; not reality.
It’s sad that not many Christians are called upon by science, reason and logic to be brave, honest and independent by giving up “blankie” but would rather blot out their conscience, remove all truth from their minds and believe and live a lie.
Still there is hope, as more and more of the world become educated and move beyond superstition and magical myths, Christianity (and all other religions and their gods) will soon be dumped and discarded to the dustbin of history just like all previous religious myths have gone.
