Reasons I doubted

I have written in the past about the things that caused me to leave Christianity, but today I will discuss the things that lead up to that deconversion. The reasons I doubted my faith in the first place.

1)The silence and hiddenness of God
This wasn't the main thing going through my head when I decided that I no longer believed in a god, but in hindsight it was definitely one of the leading factors in my path to apostasy. In my YouTube Video discussing my Christian upbringing I recall pivotal experiences , most notably the ones where despite hours of praying, I did not receive word from God, nor did I feel any supernatural presence. At the time I rationalised this by blaming myself, it was MY fault that I didn't feel the presence of God.

2)Natural explanations
I had grown up under the pretence that evolution was false and that the Bible was literally true. Upon learning more about science, I found it harder and harder to reconcile my literalism with reality. I gradually conceded point after point until I no longer considered the Bible to be the infallible word of God. First to go was a young earth, then the global flood, then the fixity of species, then a literal Adam and Eve (and consequently a literal fall) and finally the origin of life and the universe.

3)The sterility of the bible
Even the staunchest Bible-fanatics will have to admit that it's not exactly a good read and is actually quite boring in a lot of places (the begats?). I found this fact to be quite disconcerting, how was it possible that texts inspired by the omnipotent, omniscient God I believed in would be so unappealing and tedious? Surely God would have made the text be fascinating and engaging throughout, but this simply wasn't the case. I heard other believer claim that when they read the Bible the spirit speaks to them and the words "come to life" on the page (relates to reason 1). This simply wasn't the case for me, I found it incredibly laborious to read, yet I persevered and by the time I deconverted I had read the Old Testament completely once (some books many times) and the New Testament at least 4 times.


4)Immoral Old Testament
This was something that hadn't really occurred to me until I read The Age of Reason  and Biblical Blasphemy by Thomas Paine. It is no coincidence that within a few months of reading these books, I became an atheist, and immediately after reading them, I no longer considered myself a Christian, but rather some sort of Deist. I'll end with a quote from The Age of Reason.

"Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13):[KJ: I have used a different translation here (NLT), Paine quoted the King James version.] "After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals,  they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.  Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the generals and captains[a] who had returned from the battle.
“Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the Lord at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the Lord’s people. So kill all the boys and all the women who have had intercourse with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.""

Biblical Blasphemy by Thomas Paine

I've decided to post this work in its entirety and let it speak for itself, since it is rather short and is also in the public domain as far as I know. Thomas Paine was a very outspoken critic of Christianity, arguing from the Deist position that the Christian scriptures depict a god that blasphemes his concept of god. If I am allowed to speculate about this, I would say that had Paine known what we know now about the nature of life and its origin, and of the universe itself, that he would not be a deist, but rather a naturalist/humanist/atheist. But anyway, here is Biblical Blasphemy.

The Church tells us that the books of the Old and New Testament are divine revelation, and without this revelation we could not have true ideas of God.

The Deist, on the contrary, says that those books are not divine revelation; and that were it not for the light of reason and the religion of Deism, those books, instead of teaching us true ideas of God, would teach us not only false but blasphemous ideas of Him.
Deism teaches us that God is a God of truth and justice. Does the Bible teach the same doctrine? It does not.

The Bible says (Jeremiah xx, 7) that God is a deceiver. "O Lord (says Jeremiah) thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed."
Jeremiah not only upbraids God with deceiving him, but, in iv, 10, he upbraids God with deceiving the people of Jerusalem. "Ah! Lord God (says he), surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ye shall have peace, whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul."

In xv, 18, the Bible becomes more impudent, and calls God in plain language, a liar. "Wilt thou (says Jeremiah to God) be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?"
Ezekiel xiv, 9, makes God to say - "If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet." All this is downright blasphemy.

The prophet Micaiah, as he is called, II Chron. xviii, 18-21, tells another blasphemous story of God. "I saw," says he, "the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, who shall entice Ahab, King of Israel, to go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one spoke after this manner, and another after that manner.

"Then there came out a spirit [Micaiah does not tell us where he came from] and stood before the Lord [what an impudent fellow this spirit was] and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, wherewith? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail; go out, and do even so."

We often hear of a gang of thieves plotting to rob and murder a man, and laying a plan to entice him out that they may execute their design, and we always feel shocked at the wickedness of such wretches; but what must we think of a book that describes the Almighty acting in the same manner, and laying plans in heaven to entrap and ruin mankind? Our ideas of His justice and goodness forbid us to believe such stories, and therefore we say that a lying spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.
-Thomas Paine