Week 2 - Christian City Church (Victory)

Look out Pentecostals, this week we visit a handwaving, tongue-speaking happy clappy church! All we can say is, shlebberakakalebrellerrla!!!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• God
• Intrusion
• Atheism
• Christianity
• Pentecostal
• Speaking
• in
• Tongues
• James
• Weakley
• Andy
• Stapleton

[TheGodIntrusion]

... was no longer convinced of it.

[TheGodIntrusion]

In that case, you must send me a link to the material.

I believe everyone has a kind of "home team" that they barrack for, since that's how the human mind works. We build up our world around such a structure and resist any change that may upset it. In my case it took a long time (years) to dislodge. During that time, I challenged myself to do the right thing and try to disregard my childhood and build it all up from scratch. The christian belief was never rebuilt as I ...

[pentecostal7768]

I see... I am currently taking an apologetics course and it has only made my belief stronger.

[TheGodIntrusion]

Since then by the observation you can see on this channel (albeit light-hearted), my non-belief has been reinforced by observing religious practise and talking to religious people. I find pentecostal congregations particularly transparent as they seem to be big marketing machines with nothing but huge atmospheric buildup where the audience must be whipped into an emotional frenzy before anything "supernatural" happens.

[TheGodIntrusion]

A combination of many factors that built up over time caused me to doubt, and naturally, cease to believe.

I got into apologetics and found that that bible was no-where near as robust, accurate, and internally consistent as I had been led to believe. I also gradually found that the arguments christians made were not convincing and were either an appeal to emotion, poor scholarship or fallacious reasoning. All the people who's reasoning I resonated with were non-believers.

[pentecostal7768]

Might I ask what caused you to leave that belief?

[TheGodIntrusion]

A conservative evangelical (Calvanist if you like) view of the bible, e.g. Jesus died for sins, all are condemned, the bible is God's word

[pentecostal7768]

What have you been raised to believe?

[TheGodIntrusion]

...But being agnostic in principle, I am happy to hear evidence for some particular belief system. But somebody making a purely emotional appeal would be wasting their time, as I do not have any emotional need for a God.

I think you would find most atheists have a similar position, because it is a ridiculous claim to know everything. It's more like they are as much convinced that all the religions are wrong as the believer is convinced they are right.

[TheGodIntrusion]

No, it doesn't, and I can see we are going to argue semantics here.

I speak for myself (James, not Andy) when I say that strictly speaking I am agnostic, in that I cannot be certain. I am happy to go by the athiest tag (despite its negative image) because that's what I am in practise. I am not convinced by any of the religions I have investigated, or indeed been raised to believe.