Why believe and why I don't mind being confused.

Last month I was interviewed on a podcast by Cameron Reilly as a follow up to my What would it take for me to become an Atheist? post. It was a strange experience if only because I felt a bit like Cameron tried to do a bit of a "debunk the Xn" on me, whether he was aiming to do this or not I'm not sure. I think I was kind of hoping to talk more about the things we had in common rather than our differences. None the less it was weird to both walk away from the experience feeling like I had been "Beaten by the arguments" but yet not convinced to give up what I believe. I truly disconcerting place to be in. None the less if only for my own sake I did say I'd post on some of the issues raised that I felt I didn't answer very well (which was pretty much most of the issues)

Cameron started by asking me about the Egyptian God Horus and the similarities with Jesus as outlined in the film Zeitgeist which at the time I hadn't seen and now I have.

Part one of Zeitgeist looks very much like a "loose change" for Christians (loose change being a 911 conspiracy movie), part two is 911 conspiracy and almost a complete knock off of "loose change" which for me doesn't do very much for the films credibility. There were obvious mistakes of the film like the implication that early Xns believed Jesus was born on the 25th (the gospels make Jesus birth look like summer (which is the time time shepherds watched there flocks) and that there were three kings rather than just three gifts. It also implied that the gnostic tradition was the was the earliest Xn tradition who the catholic church who got rid of and then emphasised the historicity of Jesus. For me one of the biggest unanswered questions was why would a Jewish sect who's big story is their escape from Egypt appropriate an Egyptian God. I'm sure that any two people who want to debate this movie can out google themselves to their hearts content and their is plenty of pages supporting both sides.

All of that aside I'm happy to bet that the Jesus Project recently featured on Point of Inquiry does not come to the same conclusion as this documentary. If they do then it's time for me to seriously examine what I believe about Jesus.

After this we got into some deeper how can you believe in Jesus / God questions. I really tried to answer some of these questions way to quickly and most of them I should have said "I'll have to think about that" but I didn't.

The big thrust was why do I believe in God and why the Xn God. The short, not thought up on the spot, answer is that I just have an innate sense that there is something bigger than myself, something transcendent, something other in life. In part this inspired by the incredible beauty and brokenness that I see all around me and the incredible unreached potential of humanity on an individual and collective level. Jesus just happens to be the best representation of that innate sense of what this transcendent thing is.

One of the questions I wasn't sure how to answer at the time was why don't I pray to other gods. This is something I have never tried and probably never will partly because of my belief that all religions and denominations are trying to understand the transcendent in life. They are trying to understand what God is like and what that means to us. Which is why we can learn from each other. I'm not going to go through and test each religion because I do not hold the belief that I (or Xy) is right and everyone else is wrong. I believe that Xy as I understand it at the moment makes sense of my world as I experience it. As I continue to wrestle my ideas will continue to change, whether this causes me to wave outside of Xn orthodoxy or even theistic orthodoxy I don't know. I'm certainly not going to look down upon anyone just because they have a different view than me. These are precisely the people I can learn from.

As much as it may look like, from the above few paragraphs, that I'm not moved by the arguments of atheists and other secular humanists the truth is I am. It would be easy if I wasn't but I am. Unfortunately I often find my self in a space of doubt or confusion rather than a space of confidence either way. CS Lewis famously once said that Jesus was either a "Liar, Lunatic or Lord", and perhaps the same can be said of me or any other Xn. As I continue to wrestle with what I believe. I sometimes worry that I am more likely to booked into a mental asylum than to become an atheist. Dawkins or Harris said something along the lines of if someone said they spoke to an invisible being we'd put them in a mental asylum. Sometimes I wonder if that's where I belong. But it's not all preparing for the padded cells, one of the glorious things about confusion and faith and a lack of confidence is that this produces (in me any way) more love for others. To be a confident atheist i would tend to a destructive nihilism. To be a confident Xn I would tend towards self righteous arrogance and intolerance.

Thank you God for Confusion.