1. Trying to talk to God, interact with him or engage him without letting church leaders manipulate the process or re frame it on me – absolutely failed time and time again. God doesn’t work without a human being behind the curtain.

2. Religion/Christianity relied on cult tactics to convert, indoctrinate, keep members and create in them eternal allegiance. For instance, relying on emotions rather than logic or reason as seen by constant singing, emotional praying, passionate preaching etc. Non-sensical actions like praying in tongues which separates you from outsiders that you view as fallen and as non-understanding. Encouraging food deprivation through fasting. Sleep deprivation and stress by extremely motivating people to evangelize / serve the church before the lost go to hell. Giving money to receive a blessing. Relying on mob mentalities/group think. Punishing and ostracizing those who voice doubts or tough questions. Creating scape goats/villans – gays, porno, video games. Constant repetition of scriptures and encouragement of Bible reading. Building confusion with too much information and then offering the solution. Gaining all the intimate knowledge of vulnerable people and then telling you to give you money and stay with the church/god forever without any hope of being able to function on their own. Creating an us vs them mentality. Separating them from the outside world. Making them adopt an entirely new way of seeing / interacting with the world. Relying on indoctrination etc.

3. I guess I could always forgive God for not answering and see it as a test of my faith. I could forgive the church for using brainwashing techniques as an immature and unconscious crutch. But ultimately I could not forgive a God, a church and pastors for perpetuating a system that solely relies on the exploitation of human psychological weaknesses, false conclusions and malfunctions. A belief system that goes on auto pilot and has no emergency brake, emergency light or possibility to know when it is going over the deep end is a suicide mission to me. There are no reformation controls built in, the only thing that really caused reformations was the understanding of science or true human nature. God, church and Bible will go on forever and full blast, no matter what the truth is nor what is right. That was so dangerous I had to quit.
I didn’t want to be part of a group that was innoculated against truth, reason, science or common sense.

4. Once I learned psychology and the essence of the scientific method I truly saw that all religious mystical experiences can be replicated through stress, brain damage, artistic sensitivity and manipulation. Why should I believe my own implausible religious experiences or those experiences of people who supposedly had them written down in the bible, or who preach them as testimonies? They do not differ from malfunctions or manipulations. I shouldn’t believe them. It is not wise, nor healthy.

5. Also if you take the bible literally and absolutely faithfully it does not function. Its philosophy does not function in the extreme and therefore does not function at all. It only works if you water it down. Then why not get rid of it all together and just drink water?

The fundamentalists that I know have chosen to believe without questioning. I am not trying to make a case about them, but rather to ascertain whether the person I am talking to shares this belief. You don’t, which is good. That makes it more interesting to talk to you.

What scares me about my brother-in-law is that in other ways he is smart. His job is to inspect airplane maintenance facilities. He does electrical wiring in his own house. Most of science and technology are things he embraces. But then he has posters up for his children showing how all the layers of fossils, all over the world, were supposedly caused by one biblical flood. It’s a mental disconnect that I can’t understand. He has a mindset of “scientific discoveries are great, except for those in the field of the history of life, and those must be proclaimed false, because they are not in agreement with the bible.” Visiting him makes my brain hurt.

I’m not ridiculing, merely describing what they have told me their beliefs are.
Heh. Well you clearly see such things as ridiculous…

I have a brother-in-law who is a charter member of the creation museum. For him, when reality differs from the bible, its reality that has to give.
OK. Well I’ve never been faced with having to deny reality….

Perhaps your brother in law just isn’t that smart

And a scientist who is unable to admit error is not likely to contribute much that is useful to his field.
Neither is a fundamentalist. I still do not get why you are trying to make the case that fundamentalists have no choice in what they believe.

But I cannot answer this question in a general sense because the area or extent to which you are able to show the bible as inconsistent will influence how I respond.

I wasn’t asking “would you discard it, based on certain evidence that I will show you?” I was asking you “would you be able to discard it, if the evidence were sufficient?” Different question.

…what do you gain from ridiculing only those who you might describe as fundamentalists? Why should a fundamentalist be unable to admit error as opposed to a scientist?

I’m not ridiculing, merely describing what they have told me their beliefs are. I have a brother-in-law who is a charter member of the creation museum. For him, when reality differs from the bible, its reality that has to give.

And a scientist who is unable to admit error is not likely to contribute much that is useful to his field.

Ubi:But Grant, would you, for instance, be open to discarding large chunks of the bible as wrong if you found they were not lining up with observable reality? Not just your interpretation of it, but the text itself? That’s the comparison I’m making here.

That sounds like it would be a very difficult thing to show. Let’s put it this way .. if you’ve got anything that does what you describe then my opinions will become indefensible.

But I cannot answer this question in a general sense because the area or extent to which you are able to show the bible as inconsistent will influence how I respond.

I appreciate that you realize that there may be translation errors. That’s good to hear. At least we don’t need to have the biblical infallibility argument.

Oh, I don’t know. You probably don’t know what infallible means

Frankly, I’ve met a number of self-proclaimed Bible students who I believe engage in the latter whilst calling it the former.

The former is challenging for True Believers.

This is a very important point that Grant raises. Bible students, Bible scholars and theologians are fully capable of searching for truth in our field of study and adjusting our thinking according to what we find.

That’s one of the ways many of us ended up here, as de-converted Christians.