http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2014/07/freedom-of-mind.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FypxUn+%28Debunking+Christianity%29
I think this is a case study that supports the reformed view on those who have “fallen away” from the faith (they never believed to begin with). I’m not sure I hold to this view, but the more I speak with atheists and their experiences being Christian, the more it seems to make sense. A few comments on this fundy atheists article will suffice to make my point.
"To be part of a religion, a person must subscribe to a set of unquestionable beliefs or dogmas”. I don’t know what church this guy went to, but it must have been a pretty hardcore fideist church. I’ve personally never been to a church where I was explicitly discouraged from asking questions or was taught that having intellectual doubts was sinful.
"Right from the start, the Bible forbids the attaining of knowledge, and condemns independent thinking.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17 (ESV)”
This is a topic often abused by fundies so here’s an article that refutes arguments like these; http://www.tektonics.org/qt/smithg01.php. Basically these verses seem to refer to familiarity with good and evil, not basic intellectual understanding of it. Moreover, few Christians actually interpret that verse to mean it is against God’s will for mankind to know good from evil. If they did, they wouldn’t spend so much time on ethics as the author later points out they are so obsessed with pretending to follow.
"Not being in charge of their own minds enslaves Christians. They have to pretend to not like things they do like. They have to self-censor their speech and thoughts so as not to betray to other believers, that they are perfectly conformed to the demands of the religion. Internally they feel guilty and conflicted for not measuring up to the religious standards. Jesus is quoted as saying that his disciples must die daily, and indeed Christians die a little more each day, giving up who they truly are, to be more fully enslaved by the demands of their religion. There is much misery in religion because of this, and it turns people into fakes, who must constantly expend energy to maintain the illusion of perfect conformity. They are like a hamster running endlessly on the wheel, trying to please their god.”
^ This pretty much reflects the fact that when this person was a self-professed Christian, he/she was really pretending and trying to put on a show. No wonder he/she thinks Christianity is enslavement of the mind! This is simply a case of hasty-generalization. The author is assuming that what was true for him/her as well as many of his/her atheist friends must also be true for all current Christians and people of all religious faiths in the world. As a current Christian I can say that I do feel guilty about many things I do which I consider sinful. But this feeling of guilt is counterbalanced with the immense hope I believe there is for me and my brothers and sisters in Christ to be better people and to do more for God and others. Thus my dying to myself daily is dying to my sinful selfish self on a daily basis, not trying to kill all my desires or turn myself into a robot.
When you are a Christian for long enough you begin to see how awful you can be as a person. You stop seeing yourself as a victim but also as a perpetrator of suffering in the world. To give an example of this, last night I was traveling on a light rail with my family. I found myself overhearing two gentlemen sitting across from me talking about where they were supposed to get off. The problem was, we had already passed their stop. But my selfish mind was thinking “why tell them? They’ll figure it out on their own… eventually”. I couldn’t believe myself, even a simple act of kindness on my part was being brushed aside by my mind for the sake of my own comfort and laziness. I recanted of this thinking and told them where we were and that they needed to get off and turn back to reach their stop. Even still, I could have easily just not done anything and I think if we are honest we all do things like this on a daily basis. We really do believe that such behavior isn’t a big deal because we don’t think we have any obligations to one another as fellow persons.
The dual teaching of Christianity is that while we have failed as God’s creations there is hope and an assured hope to live they way we were created to live in Christ and His sacrifice and victory on the cross.
One final point, if Christianity is truly enslavement of the mind, how do you explain just how many forms of Christianity their is? How do you explain liberalism in Christian theology? If Christianity does enslave our minds, it must do a fairly poor job of doing so, after all it failed miserably to keep control of so many atheists minds. It seems to me that to whatever ideology we possess, that ideology also possesses us.
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