This post explains what happened after I lost my faith in Christianity, and became an Agnostic. It is the first of several posts which will bring any regular readers up to speed.
Months passed, and soon my family and friends all knew I was no longer a Christian. Some people became much warmer and sympathetic, sharing that they had experienced similar doubts, and others decided it would be best to avoid me lest I spiritually contaminate them. Their attitude was understandable I suppose, because as an Agnostic I could no longer see the harm in getting a bit drunk, which might have been upsetting for the more sensitive believers.
On a Wednesday night, I got together with some friends and we had a lad’s night in. My Granddad whom I loved very dearly had passed away a few weeks earlier, and still being emotionally raw from the funeral, I was looking forward to unwinding with my mates. The day of the planned event however, I allowed myself to get drawn into an argument with a fellow student at Bible College which escalated and escalated over the course of three hours. When the evening event rolled around I had a complete meltdown, got drunk off my face and was carried back to my apartment in pieces by my mate Tom. The next morning, a nauseous and hung-over me and a perfectly sober Sydney drove back to stay with my parents for a few weeks, just to get away from it all and escape. I knew that word had spread like wildfire about my drunken behaviour, and that it was the ‘talk of the town’. I was so angry at Christians, all Christians everywhere, that by this point I had decided I truly wanted to be an Atheist.
Sydney, being the generous sweetie that she is, wanted to cheer me up and so bought me a Kindle E-Reader (which is one of the coolest things I have ever owned). Along with a pile of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling books, I downloaded The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and read the whole thing virtual cover to cover over the next week. I spent most of the following three days thinking, pondering, meditating and analyzing to see if I could finally cross the Agnostic divide and become an Atheist.
While on some levels I felt free, released, with a limitless horizon in-front of me, losing my faith had left a terrible, gaping void in my life. Some might have said 'you haven't lost your faith, you have chosennot to believe', but I assure them it happened very much against my will.
In the absence of religion, the simple question ‘why?’ had been growing on my mind and paralyzing me from somewhere deep down in my gut. The book of Ecclesiastes read like the very script of my soul, everything was just meaningless!
If someone in this stalling economy wants to use their lives to do something significantly good for themselves or others, they first have to get rich simply to have any time or money to be charitable with! Everything else is mere survival! And as the writer of Ecclesiastes observed: if at the end we just die and lose it all, ultimately why bother? Why should I try to build something incredible if I have to toil my every waking hour to create it, and then die and no longer enjoy it? And who knows who might inherit my life’s work in a generation or two? No matter what I do, it could easily end up in the hands of some idiot who will ruin it all.
The whole circus of life became miserably absurd and pointless to me, and hopelessly geared to favour the wealthy and talented. It was all very well for people like Richard Dawkins to claim that a God-less view of life is a noble one filled with hope, but he is a famous public figure with money and time to spare. My life amounted to working, sleeping, working, sleeping, and a few moments of precious family time squeezed in wherever possible. The odds were good thatwithout money, success and time on my hands I would be swallowed up from the cradle to the grave in simply surviving, and then I would die. On top of it all, I looked at those who had time and money; I looked at the divorce rate and suicide rate among rich celebrities and despaired. Could anyone find meaning or purpose anywhere? Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless!
The endless horizon of possibility turned out to be a cliff edge, and I was staring over the precipice. I could see no reason to live in laughter, sadness, indulgence, denial, deep thought, constant entertainment or good company, because why?
If this was life, why was I submitting to it?
Why was I remaining in it?
Why not leave this horrific mockery as swiftly as possible?
Why not refuse to be a brick in the monument which elevates the ungrateful rich and powerful?
Why bother doing anything at all?
Why live?
Although I was never actually suicidal, these questions occurred to me and I had no defence against them. For a poor man with neither wealth nor title, life without God no longer looked grand, infinite and wonderful; it looked bleak, crushingly brutal and intolerably meaningless. This did not change my beliefs in any way though, because what if this wasreality? Just because it is cruel doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
A friend of mine from Texas got in touch having bought and read the first version of my book (which was titled Comic Divinity), and sent me an email, quoting to me a Bible verse from Matthew 12:38-40:
Some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
As a student of theology I knew that in this passage Jesus was saying that those seeking a miraculous sign from him would not receive one on their own terms, however they would receive all the evidence they needed in his upcoming death and resurrection. My Texan friend was making the point that I shouldn’t put God to the test, and that perhaps he had already given me everything I needed to believe. I found the email a little annoying, but the point she was making stuck with me; Jesus did say not to test God. I wondered if his silent response to my pleas for evidence were in fact frustratingly consistent with his character, as opposed to being proof that he did not exist. Had he given me all the evidence I needed?
After I completed The God Delusion, I was left with the impression of Richard Dawkins as both an outstanding scientist, and a desperately inadequate philosopher. He struck me as a fireman who could tell you all the details of the chemical composition of the water in his extinguisher, but had absolutely no idea how to use it to put out a fire. He could explain quantum-physics but couldn’t tie his own shoelaces – someone who is an absolute genius in one field of study, and a close-minded mule in another.
This book was the Bible that the modern-day Arch-Bishop of Atheism had to offer, and it made both fascinating and exasperating reading. I was very impressed with the science contained therein, but was constantly wearied by Dawkins’ insistence that there cannot be anything ‘out there’ that we will not one day prove in a lab, that isn’t merely a law of nature obeying itself. By its very nature the supernatural is something he can’t understand or measure, so how on earth did he come up with any data by which to calculatethis probability?
Dawkins implied from the outset that his philosophical outlook was a correct, neutral one from which to evaluate the probability of the supernatural existing or not. The problem is we cannot get behind our core philosophical outlook to see whether it is neutral and therefore a valid starting point! We cannot even think about thinking without doing it through a pre-programmed filter! To even think about thinking you have to have a philosophy on philosophy! So how can the philosopher ever know that the way they are thinking about thinking is neutral and therefore valid and unbiased? There is simply no way for any of us to view our own basic core outlook from a neutral position and evaluate whether or not it is the most unbiased one, because we have no way whatsoever of knowing which philosophical outlook is the neutral one!
OK, I am aware that the last paragraph will sound like incoherent gibberish to many of my very worthy readers. Let me think of a better way of explaining it…
We are all wearing contact lenses of differing colours and distortions, and we cannot take them off. We have worn them all of our lives, they have always been in our eyes, and they always will be. Everyone has a slightly different view of the world, but no-one sees it perfectly clearly.
Even when we look at a set of contact lenses in the optician’s window, we are already looking through our own different sets as we do so. Thinking about thinking is a bit like that; it’s like inspecting a set of warped lenses without realising you’re already wearing some! We can never get that first pair off, and see the world as it really is. When we choose our philosophical outlook, we are already using a philosophical outlook to make that choice.
Richard Dawkins wearing his set might perceive a perfectly straight line. He might write a book about his straight line, publish it and give the book to someone else, but when they see it through their differently distorted lenses they will protest that he has merely created something crooked.
When it came to the supernatural, he seemed to be saying ‘my outlook is right, and yours is wrong’.[i] He was saying that if I didn’t have the same contact lenses as him, I needed to wear an additional pair of corrective Technicolor Dawkins-glasses to see the world clearly.
Even when I wanted to be an Atheist however, I could not intellectually assent to what he said. There was obviously no way he could ever prove whether his claims were correct or not, because had no data on the supernatural. The supernatural force that healed my arm cannot be harnessed and studied in a lab, and Dawkins simply cannot know if we will be able to control it in the future or not. How could he possibly know either way? It was merely his opinion, and it struck me as pompous and arrogant in the extreme. I knew I could never accept his insistence on the non-existence of the supernatural, first and foremost because I had experienced it first hand.
We are all wearing faulty contact lenses, Richard Dawkins included, and none of us can take them off, Richard Dawkins included. The only person who theoretically could see everything without contact lenses, who could describe the colour ‘red’ to you accurately, or who could show you what a straight line truly looks like, is someone who knows everything. Only that person could view all philosophical outlooks, and choose the neutral, unbiased one. Only a God could truthfully say ‘my view is right and yours is wrong’, and Dawkins would be the first to tell you he is not one.
For the rest of us who are stuck wearing contact lenses with all their tints and distortions, it all boils down to this; we choose the philosophical outlook which seems the most justified to us as individuals and that is all that anyone can be reasonably expected to do. We each choose the pair of glasses we will wear, and all we can do is try in good conscience and ignorance to pick the clearest ones.
I was never willing to be one of those Christians who would slam their hands over their ears and shout ‘I’m not listening!’ when confronted with uncomfortable evidence. When it came to reading Dawkins’ New Atheism, I was equally unwilling to explain away every single event in some cherished belief system, and I felt on many points that this was exactly what I was being asked to do.Three supernatural events held me back from becoming totally Atheist: the healing of my arm through laying on of hands, the accurate prophecy I received at sixteen, and the fulfilment of that prophecy. The big question was whether the supernatural force was some power like electricity or radio-waves that we have not yet learned to control, or was it an actual person?
I decided to re-read over the prophecy (in my overwhelmingly pro-Atheism state) and to decide whether it was a real message from God or just a load of waffle about which I had got over-excited. I strongly suspected it was the latter.
Below I have copied a few short excerpts from the prophecy, and attempted to explain how they applied to me at seventeen. As you read, please bear in mind that these are just small snippets and you are only reading one half of the conversation. Without being me, and experiencing how these things applied, you cannot quite get the full picture. I have tried however to fill you in as much as possible.
So anyway, read on as I put one of the most personal things I have ever received on display for the world…
You're thinking on two levels – You have thoughts that people don't know about, thoughts you’re struggling with that you’re not sharing with anyone. You feel guilty because you’re not sharing in an open way with your parents and friends, and God is saying he wants you to take those things to him.
I received this prophecy six months before I was hit with the overwhelming anxiety attack I mentioned in chapter three. When it happened, I didn't know what to do or how to cope; I was terrified and couldn't talk to anyone at all – I couldn’t even put the feeling into words. At that age I only saw two alternatives if I wanted this panic-attack to ever lift; getting drugs or turning to God.
You've heard your parents say things, but now you need to know for yourself, and that's valid and that's OK - but because that feels so strange and uncomfortable to you, you feel guilty, you keep burying it at a deeper level. "You're missing the point" is what I'm hearing God say.
The time to take personal responsibility for my faith had come. I could no longer believe because of how I was raised, the time had come to explore Christianity for myself, and to draw my own conclusions about it.
You're sorting in your life right now. He wants you to know that's OK with him, and he loves you in the midst of the sorting. You've had questions like "Am I a sinner because I'm not sure?" and he's saying "It's OK, everyone comes to that place of crisis in their faith."
The sorting was happening, more so then than at any other time in my life. The knowledge that I was meant to have questions and allowed to be unsure was both encouraging and relieving.
He's given you a safe framework; a box around you, and even as things are stirred up he's saying "I'll keep you safe if you do it my way. But come to me! Run to me! Talk to me! I love you and I know what you're going through!"
That year from seventeen to eighteen I was in a safe, sheltered world of home, college, and church, and my world was smaller and quieter than it had been for years. In that time that I really did come to God, run to God, and talk to God. I found that in my prayer, worship and Bible reading the anxiety became less, and sometimes went away completely. I found that God worked as a remedy to the anxiety, as long as I remained 100% committed.
Father, take him back to the things that happened in his past that you did for him, how you reached out to him from the very start. Encourage him that those things are true, those things are solid, and those things are a part of his spiritual identity, may they grow stronger!
Whenever I listened to this section, I felt strongly that ‘God reaching out to me from the very start’ was the healing of my busted arm as a kid. He had proved himself to me when I was so young that I wasn’t even capable of passionately seeking him, and the prophecy said he did this for a reason – because I would need those things now.
These snippets of text are only fractions of one half of a conversation. The way the whole prophecy spoke to me, and the way it was fulfilled in my life are the other half, and without those firsthand memories no-one can comprehend how scarily accurate it was. But it truly was, and without being me no-one cannot objectively say that it wasn’t.
I couldn’t get past the conviction that the healing, the prophecy, and the fulfilment of it were genuinely supernatural. I knew what I had been at sixteen, and what the prophecy had made me by the time I was eighteen.
I also could not believe with any intellectual integrity that these signs were a nameless force, because the prophecy was personal; it was addressed to me from someone. The supernatural force behind the prophecy asked things of me, felt things about me, and wanted to be involved in my life.
Dawkins offered various natural explanations for all this, but I couldn’t help it, even though I truly, deeply wanted to, I just didn’t believe him. Supernatural power keeps cropping up all over the globe, not just as a force but with evidence of supernatural personhood, so why not believe the evidence? Why should any unbiased person try to explain these phenomena away as an as-yet undiscovered force or an implanted memory? If the evidence points to a supernatural person then that is what I will believe in.
At this point the New Atheist might try to undermine my definition of ‘evidence’, but considering that I have more data on it than them (my experiences), I can’t see why I should accept their opinion on the matter. My contact lenses are just as good as theirs, and they haven’t seen what I have.
My good friend Kevin once mocked postmodern theology with the phrase ‘I think the concept of truth should be expanded to include things that aren’t true – but only insofar as it suits me’. Pure genius. Asking me to ignore and undermine my own mental faculties whenever they contradict the creed of New Atheism makes just as much sense – even to an Agnostic wishing to become an Atheist. I might as well try to explain away the existence of my dog whenever it happens to get on my nerves (the Dog Delisuion). Something being inconvenient or annoying to someone does not make it a lie. The miracles happened, and I am convinced they came from a person, no matter how much that regrettably upsets any Atheist readers out there.
For the thinker with integrity, forcing real-life evidence (perceived through our already preset mental faculties) into a rigid belief system is the road leading to madness, and I had to say “sorry Dawkins, I wasn’t willing to do it for fundamentalist Christian nut-jobs, and I’m not willing to do it for you either”.
Even as an Agnostic utterly disillusioned with Christianity and determined to find a way to be an Atheist, I simply could not compromise my philosophical convictions or ignore the balance of probability. This force was a person, who in both the healing and the prophecy had called himself Jesus.
Despite having a mile-high pile of complaints against God, despite resenting Christians for all their false promises, in a similar manner to the oft-quoted C.S. Lewis: “I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.
The reality of ‘the way God reached out to me from the very start’ (see prophecy) was like a fly that would not be ignored, refused to be swatted, and would not go out of the window. It was impervious to my reasonable requests to be left alone, ignored me when I yelled at it, and came out buzzing cheerily after I burned the whole house to the ground.
PART TWO COMING SOON.
[i] Please note, I am not arguing against scientific data here, I am arguing against claiming to have statistical odds on the existence of something which by its very nature is beyond our capability to monitor and evaluate.
