Xbeliever

Christian , I don’t believe in your faith healing claims

Christian do you understand why I have a problem with believing in miraculous healing and resurrections ? So far after years of this I’ve never seen any real evidence, at the church i used to attend people are still in wheelchairs , several people have died of cancer, people with tumours have not been healed, so from my personal experience I have seen no evidence of healing. All of the research I have done hasn’t provided any sufficient evidence, I am still searching around. Even the Christian community cannot decide if faith healing is true, and disagree on this matter. I refuse to believe the claims on the website forwarded as evidence of healing healingherald.org as there is to date no real evidence , and from the claims about resurrections in Brazil they seem more than happy to spread false stories.
Therefore I remain skeptical of faith healing , and as this is meant to be evidence of the holy spirit and jesus I maintain my position as an atheist.

I hope you appreciate my points and can understand why I take this view. I’m always willing to reconsider if the evidence is there.

Surely if the claims on healingherald in Nigeria are true the world would know, they claimed the following
Lepers noses , ears and fingers grew back
300 wheelchair bound people were healed and no longer need their wheelchairs
500 amputees limbs grew back
8 year old girl was raised from the dead
Teenage boy taken from the morgue and raised from the dead.

This was never reported in the news as far as I know, no other charity or organisation reported this, no medical evidence no first hand witnesses, therefore the sensible view is to treat these claims as a lie.

The bible does have good advice which I’m more than happy to take , beware of false teachers and test everything.

The Christian Spirit realm

When Christians talk about the spirit realm what do they really mean. Even as a xtian I had trouble believing this. Do they think there are angels and demons flying all around us? Always ready to attack, sometimes the demons get us, sometimes the angels save us . prayers mobilizer angels to save people. Xtians talk about spiritual battles and that life is a battle?
Do they think the spirit realm looks like something out of the lord of the rings? The belief is hardly biblical.
A few questions , if god is omnipresent even in the spirit realm how do the demons operate in front of god?
Why doesn’t god stop them?
How many demons are there?
I really think the way to tackle this stupid belief is not to dismiss it but ask the deluded Christian really probing questions , like the ones above, and really make them think about it, you never know they may realise they are deluded ?!

It was the church that made you stop believing!

Why do Christians insist on saying the reason we became atheists/agnostics/unbelievers was because of a particular bad experience in church? Sure churches show the typical cross section of society, from the good to bad, and sure , some people’s actions in church can make you question Christianity. But in reality we/I stopped believing because we started critical thinking, examined our doubts and came to the logical conclusion that god , Christianity , religion , is man made and has no hard evidence. Just because a new church is full of open minded liberals doesn’t make Christianity true.

Atheists don’t love their wives as much as Christians

Got this response to a comment I made about me , even as a Christian , not being able to love my wife second to god, I could never get it..I always felt a greater love for my wife and family

……
If you were to compare an atheist whose first love is to his wife/her husband compared to a Christian whose love for his wife/her husband only comes second to Jesus,that the Christian’s second love commitment to their respective partner is even greater that the atheist first love commitment to their respective partner.

Re read it, and re read again , so basically athesits can never love their partner as much as a Christian can!!!???

Quote from The Fallen from grace blog

I just love this

If I have a choice between the Heaven of Mohler, Warren, Wilson and Hohnholz and the Hell of Hitchens……Give me Hitch and hell every time

From the Fallen From Grace blog

My response to who I think Jesus is or was

Below is my response to a Christian friend who asked what I now thought of Jesus.

What’s your opinion?

Re my beliefs in Jesus, to put it in context, I don’t believe in the God of the bible, or god as described in the bible, so my response to the belief in Jesus will be in this context.
In Bart Ehrmans book  Jesus , Interrupted he still claims that there is sufficient proof that a man called Jesus existed ,and he has had quite heated arguments with atheists who deny the existence of Jesus. I have looked at articles that claim Jesus is totally fabricated, and ones saying he actually existed, also I have read things saying that he could have been a number of people or prophets and then rolled into one messiah figure.

I 100% do not believe in the virgin birth, and any of the miracles in the bible, also as I don’t believe any of the bible is god inspired , any of the parts of the gospels that state what Jesus was thinking or praying in private cant be true, as it is pure speculation. Not one of the NT gospel authors knew Jesus, so all these personal accounts can’t be true, therefore that leaves an over arching story of a man called Jesus. 
The crucifixion may well have happened but again I 100% don’t believe in the resurrection.
In terms of an historical Jesus I’m on the fence, I can see both arguments for a real historical Jesus and a mythical Jesus, however I’m inclined to think that the Jesus described in the bible is a mixture of people and stories.
In the book I mentioned above there is a very good chapter called Liar, Lunatic or Lord, Finding the historical Jesus it is very interesting , and Jesus is described as an apocalyptic prophet, and in the context of those times and the messages in the gospels it makes sense.

So my view on the historical Jesus is that he was probably a mixture of different prophets and stories of that time, and he/they were apocalyptic prophets.
In terms of the teachings, I don’t see anything special in them compared to what other religions say. Obviously the love one another as yourself is good stuff etc but this type of teaching is found in other religions. However there are other sayings or teachings that (now) seem totally crazy to me i.e. divisions in families , leaving your family etc, however in the context of an apocalyptic prophet it makes sense.

In terms of the disciples seeing Jesus after his death, they may well have, there is a well known phenomena where people see their dead relatives or friends, it is a physiological condition as they miss the person so much. Also in the context of that time people were very superstitious and  obviously didn’t know anything about science and phycology so many things would have been attributed to the supernatural.