About 7 years ago I met 3 American evangelical missionaries at a place I sued to work at. They were very friendly, and were eager to strike up conversation with me. As expected, eventually, they asked me about my ‘relationship with Jesus’. I told them I had none – and that i didn’t believe in ‘God’. They couldn’t believe their ears. I suppose a ‘non-believer’ was the last person they expected to encounter in a place like Uganda.
After getting over their shock, they began to tell me about how their lives were empty before they ‘found Jesus’. They then tried to convince me that MY life was empty.
I responded, ‘No, it’s not’.
‘Yes, it is!’ they insisted.
‘Actually, no, it isn’t’ I replied… and gave them a list of things that made my life meaningful, like:
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My friends
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My passion for music
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My band
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My family
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People I care about
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My job
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My fondest memories from my childhood
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Prospects of what my future might be like
All, to me, very important things that I cherish..things that make me wake up every morning… things that make me happy to be alive… and still they were trying to convince me my life was empty. WTF?
We went back and forth for a while, until they eventually gave up. They wished me well, and then they were off – and I was left baffled by their condescension.
I was reminded of this encounter with these evangelists after reading a very interesting recent post on one my favourite blogs, Common Sense Atheism. The author, Luke, in a post titled Christianity invents a “Problem” so it can offer its “Solution” compares religious proselytising tactics to cheesy television infomercials, where the vendors of a whole range of specialised household products try very hard to convince you of a problem you don’t really have, so that they can sell you their ‘solution’ to that ‘problem… which just happens to be their product.
Here are a few of the ‘problems’ that Christianity, for example, tries to convince you that you have, before it tries to sell you its ‘solution’:
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Your life is empty
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Your life is meaningless
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Your life is purposeless
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You are a wretched sinner unworthy of life
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You are doomed to ‘Hell’
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Demons are causing you and your family harm
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You and your loved ones are afflicted with a ‘generational curse’
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etc..
Then they sell you ‘Jesus’ as the ‘answer’ to these ‘problems’.
Of course, in Uganda (like elsewhere) this Jesus comes at a price – 10% of your gross salary (before taxation) every month, in addition to weekly offerings. Add to this - a lifetime of unquestioning allegiance to the institution of the church, and hours upon hours of your life spent on empty rituals that accomplish nothing besides shielding your mind from reality by giving you an occasional emotional high.
All this – for problems that are… imaginary.
James Onen
Ritah Nakuya
Phillip
Hassan Higenyi
Guest Writer
9 comments
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May 8, 2010 at 12:45 am
Keith
LOL! They got what they deserved. They were trying to convince you why your life was meaningless. Yet in order for anyone to become a believer, they would have to be convinced, by themselves that their lives were meaningless, directionless and needed a solution. They instead tried to sell you an idea and solution at the same time rather than engage you in any rational open minded debate as to why you might consider adding God to your life. The God they were trying to sell you wasn’t even God at all. Just a false belief in a false idea of God. I’m glad you put them in their place!
May 8, 2010 at 12:32 pm
James Onen
Ha ha.. they were indeed one annoying bunch, Keith.
“The God they were trying to sell you wasn’t even God at all. Just a false belief in a false idea of God.”
Every believer I meet considers his/her understanding to Christianity to be true. Mormons, Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, wacky Pentecostals, Prosperity Gospel peddlers, even Gnostic Christians (I’ve met one) claim THEIR understanding of Christianity is correct – and they have all kinds of apologetics to back it up. There are even some Christians who consider Catholicism to be heretical!
..and this is just Christianity. What about other religious conceptions of deities? (None of which you accept)
It seems to me that each person is going to tell me that his idea of ‘God’ is true, while everyone else’s idea of ‘God’ is false… and none of these ‘ideas’ about ‘God’ are testable or verifiable, so..
May 8, 2010 at 10:43 am
ilikebroccoli
nice post James… and timely too… i had just finishing this shot clip that Sam posted about praying for VISAS….
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xd2os8_let-god-give-them-visas-prays-ugand_news
it’s amazing how much krap these guys are selling….
May 8, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Savannah
I’ve never really understood what exactly is meant by;
1. “accepting Jesus as your Saviour”
a savior should be a person who rescues you from harm or danger” whether or not you accept him/her
2. “covered by the blood of Jesus”
It’s a metaphor for what?
3. “saved from sin”
If sin is defined as “Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God” how can I be saved from my own deliberate acts?
4. “Jesus died for my sins”
but I sinned after Jesus died…
…etc
these are said countless times when proselytizing, to the excitement of the congregation. I wonder how many in the same congregation really understand the meaning of these abstract concepts.
May 8, 2010 at 11:51 pm
James Onen
Savannah, it’s all a pile of bollocks, basically.
May 11, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Komagi
…reminds me of my early years in high-school…where a bunch of older students would corner a freshman and scare the living day-lights out of him/her just so that they could get “saved”…
…xtianity, at least the way it is practiced in Uganda is based on fear, intimidation, debasement, and all things negative….
May 12, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Keith
On the contrary James, ideas of God are testable and verifiable. The holy books that talk of this entity called God clearly outline what he is and what he supposed to stand for. It’s people who constantly misconstrue what that is for their own vile intentions or misguided concepts.
This thing of going around saying this sect is wrong, that sect is wrong as is done in the faith is ridiculous. Because people have turned to religiousity rather than following what the founder of their faith tells them.
They’ve turned their belief from something personal into a band wagon thing. & we all know what happens when mob politics occurs….
And for the record, I’m one person who will never sell anyone my idea of God. God is supposed to be personal. You have to be convinced all by yourself as to whether he is plausible or not. Via what people tell you and what you’ve learned and studied as you live your life. The only duty of any person who believes in Jesus is to tell you about him and God and ight for you or what isn’t. Then leave it entirely up to you to accept it or not. It’s not their place to force you to believe, to openly condemn or laugh at you if you don’t, or to call you a fool for not seeing things as they do. Because you have free will and it must be respected. It’s up to you to determine your fate. That is why even though I don’t agree with the atheist position. I wont ridicule or disrespect it. The only thing I ridicule is this idea that one position is better than there other.
For the fact is unless we can finally learn how to manipulate time, to go back to when everything began, we have no basis right now for saying which side is without fault. For the fact is just because something can’t be proven now, doesn’t mean it can’t be proven in the future. For me if you can’t disprove the existence of something. You can’t categorically rule out its existence. For the truth is, your understanding of reality at that might is most likely too primitive for you to get to the bottom of such a thing. Because way back when humans had no concept of what atoms where for example. or numbers either. Yet it never stopped atoms or numbers being there. Eventually our understanding caught up so that we could get to the bottom of what they were.
Like wise I see no basis for an atheist and a believer to constantly argue back and forth on how the universe came to be. Bottom line we all know it had a starting point and one day down the line, it will be revealed to us either through science or through actual proof of a supernatural entity how it all actually went down. Whether we like it or not. For as long as the universe exists, the truth will always come out in the end. So why spend time bickering over who is right or not? I’d rather spend time openly rebuking the parts of either position that deny free will, consist f blind faith, deny the promotion of a quest for a personal understanding of the truth and the betterment of life on Earth and promotion of harmony amongst all humans. But that’s just the idealist in me talking and my take on things.
May 12, 2010 at 9:12 pm
James Onen
Hi Keith,
You said:”On the contrary James, ideas of God are testable and verifiable. The holy books that talk of this entity called God clearly outline what he is and what he supposed to stand for. It’s people who constantly misconstrue what that is for their own vile intentions or misguided concepts.”
First of all, please provide testable and verifiable (logical or empirical) evidence that ideas about ‘God’ are valid.
Secondly, you say people misconstrue ‘God’. I imagine you are trying to claim that YOU have properly construed this ‘God’? Well, and I ask AGAIN – how have you arrived at the conclusion that you are right and they are wrong? It’s no accident that I keep asking you what objective criteria you are using to justify your ‘concept’ of ‘God’, and you haven’t provided any. Then later on you said:
“And for the record, I’m one person who will never sell anyone my idea of God. God is supposed to be personal. You have to be convinced all by yourself as to whether he is plausible or not.”
Then what’s the point of claiming others have misconstrued ‘God’ if YOUR idea of ‘God’ is not something you want to sell to anybody? Assuming that YOUR idea of ‘God’ is the correct one (by approximation) and the other ideas of ‘God’ are false, and believing these false ideas of ‘God’ (e.g. Mormonism, Jehovah’s witness, and others) can get believers of those false ideas of ‘God’ sentenced to an eternity in hell, don’t you think you have a moral obligation to sell your ‘properly construed’ idea of ‘God’ to them, if you believe it is right?
But since you have established no clear objective criteria (besides your personal opinion on these matters) by which one can determine what the ‘right ideas’ about ‘God’ are, the whole excercise will be one of futility.
Unless you can provide OBJECTIVE criteria, you have no grounds of claiming that others have misconstrued ‘God’, and not you.
You said:”This thing of going around saying this sect is wrong, that sect is wrong as is done in the faith is ridiculous. Because people have turned to religiousity rather than following what the founder of their faith tells them.”
Its not ridiculous, actually. It’s a BIG problem for Christianity, because not believing in the ‘right idea’ of ‘God’ can mean an eternity in hell (according to orthodox theology). If this were not the case then why worry about heretics? This is why it is important for there to be an objective criteria by which we can determine how to interpret the words of the ‘founder of the faith’. Again I ask, how sure are YOU that YOU are following what the founder of the faith told you to do?
In Luke 14:26 Jesus said: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.’
So do you hate your family, Keith?
I suspect you don’t – yet you consider yourself a desciple of Jesus, right? Well, well, it turns out you are no different from the ‘other Chrsitians you criticise..not doing what the ‘founder of the faith’ told you to do!
May 12, 2010 at 9:35 pm
James Onen
Hi again Keith,
You said:”For the fact is unless we can finally learn how to manipulate time, to go back to when everything began, we have no basis right now for saying which side is without fault.”
Well, generally speaking, if someone making a claim about something doesn’t have evidence to back it up, then we are justified in rejecting that claim, even now.
You said: “For the fact is just because something can’t be proven now, doesn’t mean it can’t be proven in the future.”
I agree, this is why I get frustrated when people say but scientists as of now cannot explain XYZ, therefore it must be ‘God’! Invoking ‘God’ as an explanation for as yet unsolved mysteries is a sign of intellectual laziness. We eventually found out the cause of thunder, volcanoes, famine, floods, where as in the past it was insisted upon that gods were responsible for those things.
You said: “For me if you can’t disprove the existence of something.”
I agree. Proving a negative is impossible, unless of course the proposition in question is logically incoherent (such as the existence of a square circle).
You said: “For the truth is, your understanding of reality at that might is most likely too primitive for you to get to the bottom of such a thing. Because way back when humans had no concept of what atoms where for example. or numbers either. Yet it never stopped atoms or numbers being there. Eventually our understanding caught up so that we could get to the bottom of what they were.”
You are absolutely right, Keith.
You said: “Like wise I see no basis for an atheist and a believer to constantly argue back and forth on how the universe came to be.”
I disagree completely. Theoretical astrophysicists are hard at work trying to unravel the mystery of the universe’s origin. Several models are in play at the moment (sting theory, multiverse, cyclical universe, etc..) and scientists are hard at work trying to see how strong a case they can build to support any one of these models. It is hard work, but they’re trying. This is not an atheist-theist issue. This is a SCIENCE issue, and those concerned are carrying on without paying attention to our petty squabbles, I assure you.
You said: “Bottom line we all know it had a starting point and one day down the line, it will be revealed to us either through science or through actual proof of a supernatural entity how it all actually went down. ”
This is not true, actually. Where as the Big Bang only speaks of the expansion of the universe, it says nothing about the origin of the matter and energy that did the ‘actual’ expanding. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang) For all we know, our universe might be one out of an infinite number of universes in existence, or the matter and energy that expanded to create space-time might have always existed, or existed ‘timelessly’.
And if there was a ‘thing’ that originated everything, why does it have to be a ‘supernatural entity’? It doesn’t have to be, you know. Could have been anything..a quantum fluctuation..anything.. Allow me to quote you, because you made a good point earlier: “For the fact is just because something can’t be proven now, doesn’t mean it can’t be proven in the future.”
You said: “So why spend time bickering over who is right or not? I’d rather spend time openly rebuking the parts of either position that deny free will, consist f blind faith, deny the promotion of a quest for a personal understanding of the truth and the betterment of life on Earth and promotion of harmony amongst all humans. But that’s just the idealist in me talking and my take on things.”
Don’t worry, Keith. I have enjoyed talking to the idealist in you.