Background
I was raised in the Churches of Christ and my family is all very serious about Christianity. About 3 years ago, I started to ask some hard questions, and the answers from other Christians were very unsatisfying. I used to believe that the Bible was, you know, inspired by a loving God, but its endorsement of genocide, the abuse of slaves, and the mistreatment of women and children really started to bother me.
I set out to study these issues as much as I could. I stayed up past midnight for weeks reading what Christians have to say, and this process triggered a real crisis of faith. What started out as a search for answers on Biblical genocide led me to places like commonsenseatheism.com. I learned that the Bible has serious credibility problems on lots of issues that no one ever told me about. Wow.
My Question
Now I'm pretty sure that the God of the Bible is man-made and Jesus of Nazareth was probably a failed prophet, but I don't have good reasons to reject the supernatural all together. I'm working through the sequences, but this process is slow. I will probably struggle with this question for months, maybe longer.
Excluding the Supernatural was interesting, but it left me wanting a more thorough explanation. Where do you think I should go from here? Should I just continue reading the sequences, and re-read them until the ideas gel? I'm coming from 30 years of Sunday School level thinking. It's not like I grew up with words like "epistemology" and "epiphenomenalism". If there is no supernatural, and I can be confident about that, I will need to re-evaluate a lot of things. My worldview is up for grabs.
Your experience sounds interesting -- I would encourage you to offer bit more detail about what you believed that was wrong, and what was the exact thing that made you change your mind.
I was a Rand-ish egoist, although unaware of the fact that someone like Rand existed. Also, it was the time when the earthquake in Japan happened, and when I stated that I didn't care at all for those who died, it started. I cannot state what exactly changed my mind - first, I do not recall it precisely enough and second, I don't think it was a single argument that caused me to change this worldview. Instead, it felt like one hundred good arguments sieging my worldview, rendering it indefensible.
Upon realization of this, I changed it.
This change was actual... (read more)