HOW I GAVE UP THE FAITH

Having been a believer in Christianity and the Bible for several years, in July of 2018, after several months of close observation and reflections, I officially took up the position of a sceptic, and, a few weeks later (circa September), I was a full-on apostate. Many have asked me for an account of how and why I gave up belief in Christianity (including the existence of God) and religion altogether. It will take time and space to give a full narration of all events that led up to my apostasy, and memory itself may fail me in providing all the details as accurately as I should. However, I will give a comparatively brief account of what really led to me quitting the faith in this article. (I will, hopefully, do a more concise publication on this someday.)

1. In 2018, I did a personal Bible study on the gifts of the spirit, with a special focus on 1 Corinthians 12-14, to better understand some doctrinal subjects that I was arguing over with some of my Christian colleagues at the time; namely, falling under the anointing (or "slain in the spirit") and laughing in the spirit (or "holy laughter"). Based on that study, I concluded that those practices were false doctrines. But I also discovered something else—that there were apparent contradictions in the texts of those chapters. (I say "apparent" because of some people, especially Christians, who do not believe that these are necessarily contradictions.) A divinely inspired book, in my opinion, would not have such contradictions.

2. Sometime in 2017, I began to watch YouTube videos on science-related topics. This led me to resources about the theory of evolution. I had known about evolution from secondary school days, but I didn’t pay attention to it, partly because I was a playful chap, and partly because the idea of "monkeys changing into humans" was not taken seriously by anyone around me at the time, everyone being firmly religious. But having looked at the subject with a more informed mindset, it was clear that the evidence for evolution was too glaring to deny. It would take, in my opinion, total dishonesty or total ignorance to deny the facts and their obvious implications—that humans evolved from earlier apes. This, for me, damaged the idea that humans were created specially by God and distinct from animals. It also damaged the idea that there was a "first pair" of humans who sinned and passed death onto all mankind. To me, if there was no first human, then Christianity is false, because the atonement, even if it actually happened, would be meaningless anyway.

3. Christian leaders and followers whom I knew at the time subtly forbade asking questions that challenge Christian doctrine or searching for answers to such questions outside the coffers of Christianity and the Bible. This, though initially pleasant to my presuppositions, later became an uncomfortable thing to accept, especially as one of my favourite YouTube channels, It's Okay To Be Smart, would end their presentations with the injunction to "stay curious!" I thought to myself that it is only those who have something to hide, a vested interest to protect, or a lie to defend, that would try to stop people from searching for knowledge outside the coffers of their worldview. Could it be that the existence of God would fall apart on external investigation? Could Christianity be a cult in itself? I wondered.

4. One of my age-long worries with Christianity is the fact that there is never unity among Christians on doctrinal and practical issues. Of course, I would never expect any purely human endeavour to have unanimity on any subject, but for a body that claims to be divinely inspired by the witness of the holy spirit as well as to possess the ultimate guide for truth (the Bible), there seemed to be a lot of disagreement on several issues within the religion. If God was so real, powerful, wise and loving, wouldn’t he want all Christians to know the truth with as high an amount of unanimity as possible? Why then would he not do anything tangible to reduce the discord among Christians? This only pointed me to conclude that Christianity, like every other religion, is man-made.

5. I rarely saw real, clear, indubitable and incontrovertible miracles among Christians. (I say "rarely" just to be conservative; I'd prefer to say "never".) People share testimonies of miracles—I shared some myself—but upon closer examination, it becomes obvious that there is nothing mysterious or unnatural about the phenomena these testimonies narrate. So why are clear, obvious, indubitable, incontrovertible and verifiable miracles so rare, if at all existent? The same is true of answered prayers. People often claim that they said some prayers and those prayers got answered. But when I look closely at these answers, I see that they aren't any special at all. They are generally very well explicable by natural means or attributable to luck, coincidence, exaggerations or even outright falsehood. And people who accept these events as the answer to their prayers mostly employ confirmation bias. Why are answered prayers so rare, and why do they lack demonstrability? Should it not be trivially easy to demonstrate the supernatural power of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God by going to, say, Oshodi and healing a lame man under the bridge there, capturing it on camera and showing it to everyone? The lack of such evidence further made me disbelieve the Bible's claims.

6. I also wondered why there is so much evil in the world. I don’t necessarily mean the evils caused by human actions, like rape and theft. I mean natural disasters, outbreaks of diseases and similar phenomena. If it is truly Adam's sin that brought about the evil in the world, how come Jesus's act of righteousness was not enough to, at least, restore the world to 'factory settings'? I wonder.

7. There were other questions by the side as well. Some may seem trivial, but I consider them important. For example; if sentient aliens were discovered on another planet today, would the Bible still hold true? Does the sin of Adam affect babies, clones and self-aware robots? There are others, but I'll leave these for now.

Having gone through all these observations and reflections, what kept coming to my mind was that "I don't buy this anymore." I had private discussions with many friends whose judgment on Christian matters I trusted on some of these issues. The answers I got were, at best, unsatisfactory. But I didn’t throw in the towel just yet. I wanted to give God the benefit of the doubt. So I opted to pray. And my prayer was simple:

"God, if you are there, please show yourself to me in a way that I would know that it can only be you. I don't need this to prove it to anyone else; I need it for me. I'm losing my faith, God. Help me. I don't want to listen to anyone else. I want you to show yourself to me, directly in person. I need this. Please, God."

Not an ignoble request for a son to make of an all-loving father, I suppose. It should also be very easy to accomplish for an all-knowing and all-powerful God.

I said this prayer for days. For weeks. I wanted to believe. I tried. I gave it my best, to the best of my understanding. But I got nothing. I guess that wasn't good enough for God. Or, more reasonably, God just isn't there.

August 2018 was the last time I said a personal prayer. I haven't uttered one ever since. I haven't needed to. And nothing has changed in actuality between my days as a believer and as a nonbeliever. Nothing, except my views about everyone and everything around me. I am now more sceptical, fearless and in control of myself than I used to. I find myself being more tolerant of people's ideas, personalities and identities. I find myself being able to decide what to do with my time and my life, not having to wait on some supernatural entity who refuses to talk to me or show any attention (almost certainly because he's not even there at all) before I know the right or wrong thing to do.

Until such a time as anyone is able to reasonably demonstrate the existence of any god or the claims of their religion, I will remain in this position of disbelief.