Leaving Religion Behind: A Portrait of Nonreligious America

im a christian

i know how u feel. i search around a bunch of different reliogions because i didnt know what was the the truth. after a while i found christianity. i founnd that i like it and i believed in what they said, but i didnt believe in all the christain churches. i searched a bunch of them and finally found THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS and i found that i believe what their church said the best. most know it as the MORMAN CHURCH and they have the bible, but they also have THE BOOK OF MORMAN, THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE, and THE DOCUMENTS OF COVANANTS. maybe u should read them. they might help u understand christianity better. they might not, but u never know until u try it.

thanks for your time and bye

Thanks so much for the conversation.

Thank you for your kind words Dryfire, it has likewise been refreshing to 'talk religion' with an understanding Christian who doesn't automaticaly think I'm evil or something just for simply being an atheist.

It's interesting that you describe God as omnipotent, omniscience (the capacity to know everything infinitely, also commonly attributed to God) requires that an omnisciencent being can see, or knows, what will happen in the future. Not what 'might' happen but what 'will' happen. If this is the case and if a truly omnisciencent being exists, then the future is pre-determined and if the future is pre-determined with no chance of us changing it, then logicaly free will cannot exist.

If God exists in the way the Bible describes him, then that makes us little more than automatons carrying out a set of pre-programmed actions.

Personaly, I'd like to think that my life has a little more meaning to it than that.

I agree that all good conversations must come to an end. I wish you a peaceful and happy future and I hope that our conversation inspires you to continue to study the history of your religion. And remember, if a total stranger does you a good deed, pay it on and help make the world a better place. ;)

Sir, it's been a pleasure.

Quazi.

Interesting

The first answer is indeed admirable, but unfortunately I feel compelled to bring up Ecclesiastes. A rather cynical point of view, but it does have a message I would like to impart to you. In summary, Solomon (the book itself and tradition seems to indicate that these are his words) found everything to be meaningless. How could this be? This man who lived during the golden age of his country (which was relatively peaceful), wealth of great immense, wisdom given from God, and his very own harem. (Maybe that was the problem. He just had too many in-laws!) How could this man have nothing to be happy about? He built the temple for his God, but he is still not happy. The only thing he found to be worth a man's trouble was to obey the Lord (Ecc. 8:12) even when doing what is evil seems profitable. Of course you might say that this can be expected by any religous book in that we are to obey our divine master. In that case, it just seems to make sense to me to please the righteous Judge of the universe. Yet, as I have said before, the answer was admirable and you are entitled, as a human being, to your own opinion.

I guessed the historian part during our discussion, though the musician and a painter is a surprise. I play the trumpet myself, but I don't think I can consider myself a true professional. Maybe an experienced ameteur. Also, from the way you answered your second question you might want to add a philosopher.

Which of course leads us to your last answer. I completely understand and agree that it is aggravating to feel inferior to someone else or to be subjugated by another. You might identify well with the Leviathan in Job 41:1-9. Like animals we are to procreate. Does "be fruitful and multiply" ring a bell? Servitude. A rather cruel and disgusting word. Yet can you be an equal to an omnipotent God? Who is righteous while you fall short of His glory. (I'm sorry if this seems I'm going on a "Hell and brimstone" sermon.) Yes, we are to serve God. Christians, and saddly many who bear the name don't do this, are to obey the commands and teachings of God like the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the instructions of the apostles and the prophets, etc. Is there anything terrible about loving your neighbor or not to lust after a woman? As for the desire to know, I doubt God wants us to stay in the dark about things. However, I do believe God doesn't want us to put our hopes and trust into it, because again I point back to the message of Ecclesiastes.

I thank you for answering me. Your honesty and sincerity is refreshing. One last thing. I don't know how much longer we will be able to keep up this dialogue. I do wish if you would find someone nearby to answer your questions. I'm not tired of doing it, but it would be more beneficial for you if you were to find someone a little more local. Don't expect all of your questions to be answered to your expectations. Be patient and understanding.

I'd also like to add this about Biblical Chronology...

Excavations by William Albright in the 30s found no traces of the simultanious destruction of Canaanite cities in 1400 BC which could be expected from an Exodus in 1440 BC and the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan forty years later. This was confirmed by Kathleen Kenyon's careful excavations in the 50s at Jericho, where she found that the site had been uninhabited at that time. The Bible dates the Exodus in the reign of Thutmoses III, whose records do not mention the expulsion of any group that can be identified with the Hebrew slaves, nor any events which could be identified with the Biblical plagues. Thutmoses III and his successors retained a strong grip over Palestine, yet Exodus makes no mention of any Egyptian presence there. For these reasons Albright re-dated the Conquest to 1250 BC, which would fit with evidence of destruction at Bethel and other cities from around that period.

A late Exodus date also has some support among Christians such as Kenneth Kitchen, who strongly promotes a late date, and suggests about 1255-1215 BC. It cannot be later, he says, because the Pharaoh Merenptah refers to Israel in Canaan in 1209 BC. It cannot be in the 15th century BC, in part, because the legal form used in the Sinai covenant was not yet in use, and at that time there would have been no Delta capital to march from.

Many archaeologists, including Israel Finkelstein, Ze'ev Herzog and William G. Dever, regard the Exodus as non-historical, at best containing a small germ of truth. In his book, The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200 BC, recognized by most archaeologists as the earliest settlements of the Israelites.' Using evidence from earlier periods, he shows a cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures. Finkelstein suggests that the local Canaanites would adapt their way of living from an agricultural lifestyle to a nomadic one and vice versa. When Egyptian rule collapsed, the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism. Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the possibility of a Semitic tribe coming from Egyptian servitude and that a Moses-like figure may have existed in Transjordan around 1250-1200.

In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus recounts a tale identifying the exodus both with the Hyksos, and with the expulsion of a group of lepers, led by an Egyptian called Osarseph. This tale actualy turns out to be a mixture of events of the Amarna period, (when Akhenaten reigned) and events both before and after the Armana period.

So, it seems the Biblical version is also a rubber chronology and that Exodus could have happened anytime within a time period of 250 years. All we can really go on is matching known events within this 250 year period, which makes the Atenist expulsion the likeliest version of events.

Egyptian Chronology

Simple really. While the overwhelming majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many of the details of a common chronology, disagreements either individually or in groups have resulted in a variety of dates offered for rulers and events. The current scholarly consensus of ancient Egyptian cronology has often been called a "rubber chronology" that could be stretched or shrunk. Many scholars claim that the Egyptian cronology could be out by as much as 100 years, (some say even more) about the same difference in cronology that you mention.

Now for your questions.

1) The love of life, nature, my family, friends, basicaly the same as anyone else really. I'm a musician, landscape artist and historian. I live every day as if it were my last, because you never know..., but I'm also attempting to leave some sort of legacy, kinda like a way of saying 'I was here!' through my song writing and recordings, paintings and historical writings. Just because I'll be dead, that doesn't mean that anything I did in life doesn't matter, especialy if people after my death get some form of enjoyment out of my work. I'm also a great believer in the 'pay it on' principle, where you do spontanious good deeds for people in the hope that they'll feel so good about what you did, they'll be inspired to do the same for someone else, and when they ask 'What can I do in return?' that's what I always tell them. I believe that with enough good deeds happening, a larger amount of goodwill can be generated throughout the world creating better understanding of others viewpoints, making the world a better place to live in.

2)To give mankind a true purpose, one would have to give mankind a 'purpose giver' .

According to religion, it seems to me that mankind's purpose is simply to serve God. (I apologise if this seems disrespectful to you, but you did ask and I wouldn't feel I'm giving an honest response if I didn't mention it.) To me, being created just to be the servant of another entity for all eternity is just unacceptable. Possibly a fate worse than eternal nothingness. I do after all live in a society where everyone is considered equal and I honestly find the notion of eternal servitude repugnant.

Biologicaly, the purpose of all life is to procreate. As a young man I thought I understood this, but until I had children of my own, I never realised just exactly how true that is. The protective instincts that kick in when you see your children for the first time is quite overwhelming, so from this I surmise that our instinctual purpose is to raise children, love them them, care for them, protect them (by making a better world for instance) and teach them in the hope that they will pass all this on to their own children. But It's important to allow them the freedom to make their own way in life.

Mankind also would appear to be naturaly curious about everything around them and obsessed with acumulating knowledge, so that would also appear to be an instinctual purpose.

Dating problems with the Exodus and Akhenaten

From what you and other sources have told me, Akhenaten ruled from about 1355-1320 B.C. And if the hostilities to the followers of Aten can be believed, then the Atenists (or whatever they called themselves) would have left by at the latest 1310 B.C.

Here's the problem. It seems, for the fourth year of Solomon's reign to be about 480 years after leaving Egypt, that the Exodus is placed about in the years 1450-40 B.C. Why? Well for the accounts of I, II Kings and I, II Chronicles to match up with the reigns of other foreign kings, the assumed date for the fourth year of Solomon's reign would be about 966 B.C. After doing a bit of math, the Exodus occurs in the 1440s B.C. (1446 B.C. to be exact). This of course is about 120 years before Akhenaten. Hopefully you see that the dates for the exodus and the flight of Atenists are too far apart for there to be any real connection.

Seeing as how I have answered many of your questions and objections, do you mind if I asked you a couple: 1)What makes you get up in the morning if you believe that when you die nothing you did really matters because your...dead? 2)What is the purpose of mankind?

I haven't been able to get a copy of J. McDowell's book yet, but I will pretty soon.

The Aten was already considered to be a god when Akhenaten adopted it, he simply made it monotheistic, so there were effectively two different versions of Aten.

To study the monothistic Aten worship, it is always better to look at Akhenaten himself, of which we actualy have quite a lot of information, because he developed it.

Try http://www.crystalinks.com/akhenaten.html, or even better, if you ever get a chance, watch a program made by ZDF Productions for the Discovery Channel called 'Sun King' but please remember, I'm not claiming Atenism itself developed into monotheistic Judaism, just that the monotheistic Atenism influenced Semitic Polytheism to become monotheistic. An influence that can be seen in the remarkable similarity between The Great Hymn of the Aten and Psalm 104.

Whether the sun is regarded as a god or not makes little difference, it's the aspect and notion of monotheism that is important here.

We know that Akhenaten appears in history just prior to when the first archaeological and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture is found. We know that many Atenists left Egypt as outcasts after Akhenatens death. We know that this period is also associated with a serious pandemic, possibly the plague, which came from Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East, killing Suppiluliuma I, the Hittite King. We know that Suppiluliuma I died in 1322BC, not long after Akhenaten died so this event can also be dated to around the same time that the Atenists were leaving Egypt. We know that a group of nomads called the Habiru (Hebrew?) were taking in outcasts and later attacking Canaan. We know that just after this time and in that place Judaism was born.

This all just seems far too close to the story of Exodus to simply be coincidence.

My comments on the Islamic/Judaistic/Christian God all being the same was simply comment on them all sharing the same origin. Obviously cultural difference causes the notion of the Abrahamic God to differ, essentialy everyone is convinced that their culture is correct and that they are God's chosen people. It's interesting to note that during both world wars, soldiers on both sides prayed to the same God asking him to aid them against the enemy because they both assumed they were rightious and the enemy was evil so it's quite obvious that different cultures tend to just assume that they are God's favourites and anyone who says differently is wrong. Even Constantine claimed that God had chosen him to fight in God's name and spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, hence the Catholic Church being in Rome, but essentialy he claimed that the Romans were now the chosen people. But it's interesting though because this is a prime example of how new religion develops from old religion via culture, is then written down in a holy book which each different culture then claims as proof that their version is the correct one, which all really suggests that each culture's notion of God is man made.

Thanks

I googled Aten for my own benefit and had some interesting finds on the subject. http://www.touregypt.net/atenwor.htm says that there is very little to go on for worship practices of Aten. What information there is, there is very little relationship between Atenism, based on old sun worship, and the God of the Jews. http://www.egyptianmyths.net/aten.htm refutes the idea of this cult being monotheistic because Akhenaten visualized himself as a god and performed the rebirth and death cycle similar to other sun gods like Aten and Ra. In other websites including the two above, Aten was originally thought to be the sun disk and evolved over time, and with the help of Akhenaten, as a completely separate god from Ra and others. Biblically speaking the sun is a created thing (Genesis 1:16, Psalm 136:8) and not a god. Many find parallels between the plagues in Exodus and the gods of Egypt. For example, the gods Hapi, Anuket, and Anqet were defeated when the Nile turned to blood. Hatmehyt was indirectly affected as well because the fish in the Nile died as a result of turning to blood. Ra, Aten as well, is put to shame when darkness came to the Egyptians for three days yet the Israelites had light. With this being said, it is most likely that Moses and the Hebrews walked out of Egypt under the influence of a sun god.

Islam is an Abrahamic religion, but to say that God and Allah are the same is a little deceiving. According to Muslims, Ishmael and his descendants (basically all Arabs) are the chosen people and not Isaac and the Israelites. Muslims feel that the Jews corrupted their own scriptures while the Jews maintain that they have received God's word through Moses and the prophets. Allah guarantees salvation by dying for the cause of Islam. God told the Jews that forgiveness is made by Him accepting sacrifices and later, seen in Isaiah 53, His servant would bear the sins of the world.

Which of course leads to Jesus. Isaiah 43:25 says, "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for My own sake, and remembers your sins no more." Then read Isaiah 53 which talks about how the servant of God will suffer and die "for our transgressions...and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." The Jews, both in the O.T. and in the N.T., believed that only God could forgive sins. For this servant to do the same thing, he must be God. Jesus frequently says and does things to indicate that He is God, but the Jews did not accept Him. Instead, they believed He was being "stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted" for His "blasphemy". In reality, Jesus was our Passover Lamb and was "condemning sin in sinful man" (Romans 8:3) so that our transgressions (or sins if you prefer) may be blotted out. Basically, I'm saying that there is good proof that the Jews should have been looking for a Divine Messiah.

How do you like J. McDowell's book or do you have it yet?

Dryfire, please take all the time you need with the Great Hymn to the Aten.

'El' did eventualy come to mean a generic 'god', but the very earliest recorded mentioning of the word 'El' is in context with the polytheistic creator god who was actualy 'named' El, it stands to reason that the later context of the word originates with the first. Add to that the location of El's worship, Canaan, the very same location of the worship of the later monotheistic creator god, also named El, and the implications would seem obvious. The only real difference between the polytheistic El and monotheistic El is that the monotheistic El didn't create a pantheon. Other than that, they share many characteristics and the similarity of their associated flood myths seems to confirm the development of one to the other.

I realise that the Bible says Abraham worshipped one God, but then, one can expect a text that claims to worship a monotheistic god to also claim such a thing of it's own historical characters.

The Christian God and the Islamic Allah are essentialy the same entity, both being developed from the Judaistic or 'Abrahamic' God. All three are, after all, regarded as 'Abrahamic' religions. Infact, Islam is probably closer to Judaism than Christianity as they are both strictly monotheistic rather than worshipping a trinity.

The original Judaistic notion of the Messiah didn't actualy regard him as God, but as God's representative, similar to a prophet, Islam shares this view. The Messiah as God is a purely Christian notion, yet it relies on Judaistic Messianic prophecies for confirmation.

Psalm 82 reads, to me, to simply be criticism of the worship of the earlier polytheistic version of El, something that's to be expected from a religion that has just become monotheistic and is seeking converts. I'm suggesting it's actualy the same sort of proclamation that Akhenaten made when he transformed the Egyptian religion from polytheistic to monotheistic.

Jesus is mentioned in two passages of Joshephus' work 'The Antiquities of the Jews'. One passage, 'Testimonium Flavianum', discusses Jesus' career.

The Christian author Origen wrote around the year 240. His writings predate both the earliest known manuscripts of the Testimonium and the earliest quotations of the Testimonium by other writers. In his surviving works, Origen fails to mention the Testimonium Flavianum, even though he was clearly familiar with the Antiquities of the Jews, since he mentions the reference by Josephus to Jesus as brother of James, which occurs later in Antiquities and also other passages from Antiquities such as the passage about John the Baptist which occurs in the same chapter as the Testimonium. Furthermore, Origen states that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ" and did not accept Jesus as Christ, but the Testimonium declares Jesus to be Christ. Thus it could be inferred that the version of Antiquities available to Origen did not mention Jesus at this point at all. This suggests later embellishment upon the writings of Josephus.

Words, sarcasm, and the spiritual factor

I do not reject that there was a pagan god named El who had a wife named Asherah (later to be called Ashtoreth). Eventually, El had a son named Baal who grew in favor with most Middle East peoples and soon took El's place (like Zeus did with Cronos) and took Ashtoreth as his wife. Anyway, how do you know if El doesn't simply mean God? Obviously based on the context you would know that. Deus in Latin means god and doesn't necessarily mean God. You see? It's all based on context and if you were to read the Bible, you would find that Abraham worshipped one God. If I were in an Arabic country, I might tells someone that I worship God or Allah. However, I would have to be careful and specific in making sure that those listening to me understand that I mean the God of the Bible and not the god of Islam.

Problems with comparing God to polytheistic gods is that He doesn't share His glory with them and denies their existence (Isaiah 42:8, 43:10). Also when the Israelites were overtaking Canaan, don't you think that one of them would have realized that they're were killing people who also believed in El? Abraham originally sets out to Canaan with his father, but follow the Euphrates River up to Haran. There, Abraham's father dies and God tells Abraham to go down into Canaan. Haran is well north of Canaan so he most likely did not flee from Ur to Canaan. If he was fleeing and found safety in Haran, why would he have to keep travelling to Canaan?

Now for sarcasm. Why would Psalm 82 be included for Jewish praise to God if it literally meant that there were other gods? This psalm obviously is used to attack unjust rulers and leaders. At the time, rulers often considered themselves gods or sons of gods and so the psalm adequately rebukes them. In Romans 13:1, we find that God establishes all earthly authority. This can also be seen when God chooses Saul, David, and others to be kings over His people. Because not all earthly rulers will do God's will, the psalmist creates a scenario in which God gathers all the rulers ("gods") and puts them to shame and gives the verdict that they "will die like mere men" and "will fall like every other *ruler*". (Emphasis added).

Obviously, no one who doesn't accept the idea of a omnipotent God will believe that there are burning bushes that don't burn up or people coming back to life. But if someone accepts the possibility for such things to happen, then it is perfectly rational to believe that such things are possible. If His death was fabricated, then: Josephus would have said something about it (he does talk about the resurrection), the Jewish authorities would've realized that it wasn't Him, there would have been no martyrs for Him (there are those who'd die for what may be the truth, but who dies for what they know to be a lie?), and the conversion stories of Paul and James His half-brother wouldn't have happened.

I would like some time to compare Psalm 104 to the "Great Hymn to Aten."