Considering Origin, Morality, Religion, Faith, Etc

My first clear mem­o­ries of attend­ing church are from around age 8 or 9. I can recall sit­ting with my moth­er in the sanc­tu­ary of a non-denom­i­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian church, hear­ing music and watch­ing a pas­tor teach. I con­tin­ued going to this church and get­ting more and more involved there through age 17. The only rea­son I stopped going to this church is that I began work­ing at a dif­fer­ent church help­ing with the music.

I’ve been in church near­ly all my life. As such, I’ve spent much of my time around oth­er church peo­ple. Peo­ple who share the same foun­da­tion­al beliefs on the­ism, gen­er­al­ly. I’m immense­ly grate­ful for the rela­tion­ships I’ve devel­oped through my church com­mu­ni­ty over the years. I’ve seen many won­der­ful, beau­ti­ful, pos­i­tive things come about through this body of Christians.

But if I hon­est­ly look at my ​“faith jour­ney” thus far, I haven’t chal­lenged it too much. I’ve con­tin­ued on, trust­ing the judg­ment of lead­ers I assumed are smarter, wis­er, and more edu­cat­ed and informed than I. It’s not that I haven’t been encour­aged to chal­lenge it. I think I’ve just been too lazy to do so, really.

I’ve had a list of grow­ing ques­tions regard­ing the Chris­t­ian belief sys­tem, but I haven’t pur­sued answers. I haven’t been too wor­ried about it, hon­est­ly. I gen­uine­ly believe I’ve felt God’s pres­ence and been relat­ing to him as his cre­ation and child these years. So I’m not, in essence, doubt­ing the beliefs as a whole. But I do feel it’s time I gath­er, more or less for myself, a clear path of rea­son for my beliefs. 

Always be pre­pared to give an answer to every­one who asks you to give the rea­son for the hope that you have.

1 Peter 3:15 (par­tial)

And if along the way I find rea­son­able argu­ments to per­suade my beliefs — well, I look for­ward to gen­uine­ly and earnest­ly con­sid­er­ing them!

What can be assert­ed with­out evi­dence can also be dis­missed with­out evidence.

Christo­pher Hitchens

Top­i­cal Read­ing List for 2020

Some of these books I expect and hope to chal­lenge or defend Chris­tian­i­ty, while oth­ers I’m just select­ing so I can spend time with ideas I wouldn’t oth­er­wise encounter right now. If you have any books, arti­cles, essays, debates, etc that you’d sug­gest I add to my list, let me know!

• Believ­ers: Faith in Human Nature, Melvin Konner
• Break­ing the Spell: Reli­gion as a Nat­ur­al Phe­nom­e­non, Daniel Dennett
• Can Sci­ence Explain Every­thing?, John Lennox
• Cold-Case Chris­tian­i­ty: A Homi­cide Detec­tive Inves­ti­gates the Claims of the Gospels, J. Warn­er Wallace
• Con­fronting Chris­tian­i­ty: 12 Hard Ques­tions for the World’s Largest Reli­gion, Rebec­ca McLaughlin
• Free Will, Sam Har­ris (this is more of an essay than a book)
• God’s Under­tak­er: Has Sci­ence Buried God?, John Lennox
• How Rea­son Can Lead to God: A Philosopher’s Bridge to Faith, Joshua Rasmussen
• Is God a Moral Mon­ster?: Mak­ing Sense of the Old Tes­ta­ment God, Paul Copan
• Knowl­edge and Chris­t­ian Belief, Alvin Plantinga
• Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation, Sam Har­ris (sim­i­lar to Free Will, this is more of an essay)
• The Moral Land­scape: How Sci­ence Can Deter­mine Human Val­ues, Sam Harris
• Out­grow­ing God: A Beginner’s Guide, Richard Dawkins
• The Rea­son for God: Belief in an Age of Skep­ti­cism, Tim­o­thy Keller
• Sci­en­tism and Sec­u­lar­ism: Learn­ing to Respond to a Dan­ger­ous Ide­ol­o­gy, J.P. Moreland
• Steal­ing from God: Why Athe­ists Need God to Make Their Case, Frank Turek

Pho­to cred­it: Alex Block via Unsplash