My name is Joshua Lancaster. I was born in August 1996, raised in a Christian family. Sang all the songs about God at Christmas, went to Church, sometimes. Stood to sing. While sometimes distracted, as for most of the church going time I was a young child. But over all I loved God, and Jesus. I thought it was all wonderful and couldn’t believe that anyone could deny that God existed. Atheists seemed insane to me. How can you not believe in God? As I became older I realized I was bisexual, which didn’t tear me from my faith. For a while. No one would ever say anything was wrong with it but I still didn't feel to comfortable going to church, given what the bible says about homosexuals. That they are to be stonned. And not in the modern sense. But eventually I started to not be able to understand why God could really be like that. I cant tell when exactly I stopped believing in God, I remember just last year I was a history-denier, claiming Evolution was just so impossible, crazy even to think. I also dont remember exactly when I started loving science, became open to calling myself a non believer, and to understanding Evolution. But I know that now I dont have religion, and I am truly great-ful for this. Today I came home from work to find a book had been left at my door, maybe from mum, or my sister, Jessica. Both religious, at least enough to believe in a God. The book is called “Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door: A Book of Christian Evidences by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler”, and in the top corner it has “FOR HIGH SCHOOLERS”. Now, I don’t know how stupid they may believe me to be, but I am going to read this book. Because if religion had such evidence that it always claims to have, I would believe it. I have moved from a life based on faith to one of evidence. Faith meaning to believe something without evidence, which is just crazy. So the very first argument it seems to have is that the Devil hates us, and wants to eat us up. This is in attempt to get us to not think of God as a killjoy cop and the devil as a hip guy trying to have some fun. That sounds all well and good, but I see no evidence so far. It is saying the devil isn’t interesting in giving us happiness or pleasure, only in devouring us. And now it is telling us that God doesn't want to spoil out fun, but that he wants us to enjoy life to the full (unless you’re homosexual, bisexual, transgender, a slave, a non [insert religion here], or wealthy of course). Oh my goodness, now it is giving us home work, to read certain parts of the bible and see how they portray god and the devil. Im not going to read this book if it actually has nothing to do with proving to someone who isn’t a Christian that the Bible is in any way correct. Its like me proving to people who don’t like Twilight that Edward is clearly better and if they read certain chapters they’ll see why he is better than Jacob and then tell them this is evidence it all really happened. I want to get to a compelling argument, something religions seem to have real trouble with, which sucks for me given I love a proper and educated debate, something I wind hard to find. Chapter two time.It is now talking us through a little bit of the Star Wars movie. My goodness, Im just going to have to start skipping things if this is how this book works. It is saying that people often believe that god is like the force, a faceless formless energy that mysteriously surrounds and guides the universe, but that its a myth. Yet from the evidence I have received for either so far, they are alike, in that they have no actual evidence for their existence. And now we get to more homework which seems to be at the end of all of the chapters. Looking to the front I see it was published in 1992, and so I guess the “High schoolers” back then weren’t to bright at all it would seem. Okay, no. I cant keep reading this. The entire book is “exposing myths” about the bible, but it doesn’t expose ANYTHING. It says things about God, with evidence given from the bible. Cant you see if I believed in God I wouldn’t be reading this book? I wanted evidence that ANYThING in the Bible was correct, and all I am given is things about the bible, from other parts of the bible. This doesn’t help me and doesn’t help them. When I read proper books I see compelling arguments about myths, or mis conceptions, and they are all accompanied by evidence, or at least logical reasoning. All I have gotten from this book is that Mr McDowel and Mr Hostetler greatly underestimated how children’s minds are. Maybe they should have written a book aimed at people who had never been brought up Christian, as opposed to Christians. This book implies the reader is already a Christian. Which makes it redundant except for maybe strengthening any beliefs. When Richard Dawkins writes books on the evidence for Evolution, he doesn’t assume the reader is an Evolutionary Biologist, he assumes they know nothing of Evolution, and starts from the beginning with compelling argument and evidence, something I see lacking in this book from only the first three chapters.
Joshua Lancaster on ‘Dont Check Your Brains at the Door’
