All of this led Sanger to begin thinking deeper, reading the Bible, and starting to piece together evidence. Much of the process began in 2020, just before COVID-19 shut everything down. But there wasn’t necessarily a moment in time where it all came together; instead, it was a process.
and in a time of radical upheaval and a dire, uncertain collective future - one deeply enmeshed with the certainty of individual mortality…
…people lean on the easiest crutch they can. damn me if COVID wasnt the catalyst for the next great filter.
Sanger told CBN News the skepticism he held for most of his life went back to his childhood and his unsure perspective on all religions. Despite that reticence, he did dabble in attempts to communicate with a Higher Power.
“I wasn’t necessarily praying to God, per se, but I had a sort of internal dialogue,” he said. “And sometimes, I even wrote it out …. with some supremely wise being, and, sometimes, I would even call that being ‘God,’ not that I believed that that was God, but in order to just sort of clarify my thought.”
Sounds like praying to a god to me.
“There was a period of time in which I knew things were changing, but I can’t pin it down to a particular moment when I just decided I now believe that God exists,” he said. “There is a moment when I said, ‘OK, I have to admit that what I’m doing now is praying to God,’ and there also was a moment when I prayed something like the Sinner’s Prayer after, I guess, two months or so into reading the Bible.”
Sounds like you kind of always did, and you chose Yahweh, because that’s probably culturally familiar.
It’s kinda interesting that “mocking atheists” were the impetus to deconstruct, but he didn’t apply skepticism to both claims. There is simply no way to end up at Christianity by applying skepticism, because the Bible definitely doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and the evidence we have can only get you to deism or polytheism at best.
I don’t know for certain, but it certainly doesn’t sound like he was using skepticism to inform his epistemology. It sounds more like he just grew up as an atheist and never bothered to steelman his own beliefs.
“The Bible withstands scrutiny, which was a great surprise to me. I thought it couldn’t. I was wrong.”
This surprises me - it’s certainly not been my experience that it does (and definitely from a historians perspective).
It would be interesting to hear him talk about this with someone who isn’t a “mocking skeptic”.
I wonder if his conversion will stick.
Right? The question I’d ask him is: “So which denomination would you adhere to, or would you start your own?”
And the crazy part is that I wouldn’t even be asking that mockingly but rather with genuine interest, because, frankly, denominational squabbling is what majorly contributed to my own departure (certainly not the only factor, but it definitely played a heavy role).
Yeah, I mean Wikipedia is a great place to stark looking at biblical criticism/historiography as well, which I guess is kind of ironic.
I’d love to know what his “proofs” are for his belief, and if there’s an element of the Pascal’s wager type thinking at all. I come from a family of scientists who are also Christian so I’m fully aware of the way people are able to hand-wave away the things that don’t mesh with their worldview.
The denomination hopping eased me out of faith too - I went from evangelical to Anglican, to Society of Friends, to being totally unengaged. If I was going to go back I’d still stick the the quakers to be honest - at least they know the value of shutting up!
I come from a family of scientists who are also Christian
Interesting, I’d be curious to learn more about this if you’re willing to share.
at least they know the value of shutting up!
Ha! That’s true, I actually did quite like Quakers based on the rare run-ins I had with them in the distant past…
I’d be curious to learn more about this if you’re willing to share.
What aspects are interesting to you particularly? I’d be happy to give you an insight!
Both my parents are physicists (my dad got his PhD, my mother taught Physics her whole working life) and my grandfathers (also practicing Christians) were both scientists; my paternal grandfather was a research scientist working with radio telescopes who had some pretty hot takes on life.
How do they reconcile the holes?
Why do they think their denomination is right and not all the other thousands out there (if they do)?
Do they know about your (lack of) beliefs? If so, how has that played out, or if not, will you ever mention them?
I’ll start with the easiest one! They’re members of an independent church which is a member of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK. My dad’s background is Anglican, and my mum’s is Baptist. They’re both pretty okay with individual differences (as long as it’s a protestant one!), so they’re open to minor differences in belief - you can basically write these down to different interpretations of the scriptures. They are okay with discussing these differences.They were okay when I was a member of a Quaker congregation, but they don’t really get Catholicism - they see some stuff as idolatrous but they’re not anti catholic.
Their reconciliation of the ‘holes’; this one is trickier. The fact that it’s difficult to pin down a historical Jesus (when we know about other people factually from the same era) is just sort of glossed over. Regarding the possibility of metaphysical stuff they’re actually pretty chill with admitting that there’s things we don’t know, in part because of things like dark matter, or the development of a knowledge of atomic particles etc - for them I think it’s more a case of “we can’t prove it yet” rather than “it can’t be proved”. They love science because for them it’s a proof of the elegance of creation; they believe that evolution, for example, is perfectly in line with a creator God - for them God is the spark at the beginnig of everything. A good summary of their attitude to the holes is:
Science is full of stuff that seems counterintuitive to “rational thought” (ie. Virtual particles etc) so why is that any weirder than an irrational belief in a God whose existence you can’t prove?
Lastly, I’ve never outright told them I don’t believe. Partially because where I stand fluctuates daily, but mostly because my life is enough of a tell - I have lived out of wedlock with my partner for the best part of 10 years, I drink to excess, don’t attend church, etc., and I have spoken to my sister (who I know will talk to my parents) about not being a Christian in any practical sense. They know I’m a good person and for them I guess it’s not problematic (and they’re not “fire and brimstone” types so I don’t know if they’re worried for my eternal soul or not but they’re content seeing me happy and being true to my conscience I guess!
I never knew about virtual particles. Huh… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle
Partially because where I stand fluctuates daily
🫂
One of my friends thinks divine beings are aliens, perhaps time-traveling ones given their godlike powers as Scripture sometimes seems to describe when it comes to the unfathomable. I’ve wondered if this whole life and universe is a simulation in a supercomputer, of which God is the developer, who we’d meet at the end of our “lives.” But I don’t know…
I’m not the person you asked, but I have chemists in my family who are also Christians, and it comes down to not taking the Bible literally. That’s mostly where Christians get in trouble, anyway, since it’s not even historically accurate much less scientific. Then you insert God into a position of being the architect of life’s mysteries, and science is an endeavor to comprehend the complexities of the universe Yahweh created. To uncover the mysteries is to seek God.
I don’t really find that logic personally compelling as a reason to believe, but that’s how they’ve kind of “squared that circle” so to speak.
This is what we call “hedging your bets”.
