Marry your rapist

Deuteronomy 22

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

I have seen this verse many times in arguments against the Bible. As can be imagine there are quite a few articles around the interwebz which aspire to defend this virtuous piece of writing.
The two top results justify this edict as punishment for the rapist.
Seriously.
There are many cultural differences of the time which are crucial to note in regards to this commandment. Girls were regarded very much as property, as they are still in some middle east countries, and as such, if a man wanted to marry her, he had to pay her father. A girl whose virginity was not intact was not worth much because men wanted virgins and it might be that she would spend her life alone and have no man to support her, leading to a very difficult life.
This is where the possible benefit of this passage comes in. The rapist would be forced to care for her since he defiled her. It also helps the father because no matter what happens (even if he does not give the rapist his daughter) he gets his price for his daughter.
There's another matter which is also important to realize and that is the age of brides in that culture. 12 years and 1 day is old enough to marry with your parents permission and 21 was old enough to marry without. A lot of marriages were arranged in biblical times. So an "unbetrothed virgin" is in many cases a fairly young girl.
Perhaps my aversion to pedophile rapists is just a cultural difference, but i cannot honestly think of any culture where this is the optimal solution.
What is really scary to me about this, is that faith overcomes any rational obstacle to this passage being wrong!
I cannot imagine the hell many girls were forced into because of this passage, being subjected to their rapist throughout the rest of their life. As far as it being a punishment for the rapist, unlike one of the articles which jokes she might not be the right girl for him (seriously? Rape jokes?), i have a feeling the rapist being of questionable morality at the time of the incident, might use the opportunity for ongoing sexual gratification at the girls expense. And he, not being a philanthropist exactly, might not be so careful with her physical or mental well being either.
It's a rapist, not a purse thief! It's a complete violation of human dignity, not a prank.
I'm by no means an ISIS sympathizer, but those men believe they are doing what is righteous. How they can commit such heinous crimes is because faith allows them to overcome the obstacles of reason and morality, just like the two articles i referenced earlier. This is why so many in the atheist and agnostic community regard religion as dangerous, because it can lead good men to do terrible things and still feel like they're in the right.
Why couldn't the commandment say she had to sacrifice a sheep and should be considered a virgin from that point?
I understand that there is no perfect solution to rape, but I can't believe that this is the best an omniscient god could come up with which is why I cannot accept that this scripture is from any deity.
It could be that God's ways are well beyond mine and that the real issue is me, but I still don't think this lines up even biblically and it might be scarier if it does. Read Deuteronomy 28 for the prize and price, biblically speaking, of this passage.

What if the evidence proved I was wrong?

Any time I watch a movie, I'm always thinking about the story of it. I enjoy analyzing the plot and if the movie isn't great, imagine where it could have gone. I recently watched a movie called "I Origins" which honestly was kind of a boring flick with some great story elements to it.
In the movie a scientist works towards ending the argument of how the eye evolved by proving its evolution through guided selection and gene manipulation. The story is told as if he's trying to disprove god, but in the end he finds incredibly, that something miraculous is happening. At one point the main character, who does not believe in god, is asked, if the evidence showed something different, would he change his belief?
I think this is a question everyone should ask themselves, believer and nonbelievers alike. The answer is one which tells whether someone seeks truth, or simply confirmation of what is already believed to be true.
I can say that my position would change if there was evidence for the miraculous considering I once believed whole-heatedly, but have changed my stance based on the evidence.
I have to ask myself: what would this evidence look like?
I can think of a lot of a lot of ways for a deity to reveal themselves to mankind which would be completely obvious. Imagine if a Christian at baptism developed stigmata as a mark from God, or if when Muslims prayed, Allah spoke form the heavens to the world like the prayers they play over the loud speakers at mosques. These would be extraordinary, but maybe it would be better to imagine something more subtle because maybe a deity just doesn't desire to be revealed so obviously.
I would say occurrences which defy the laws of nature would be a good start. If believers of any faith could perform miracles. If new kinds of animals which are different on a molecular level were discovered without an evolutionary branch, as if created.
It's important to realize that we cannot measure what we cannot perceive,  so there may be much more to our universe than we know, realize or even speculate, but it is simply beyond our grasp. There is still so much we don't know about what we can perceive. How could I not be flexible in my position? How can I not realize that 1000 years from now, my way of life will be as primitive to future generations as the vikings are to me now?
Humanity has made a lot of progress scientifically in its existence and I think there is much more to come. I think it is very interesting that as a species we have had many religious answers to how the world works, but now, our best explanations are natural and proven by science. Are there any examples where the explanation was scientific and is now best explained by religion?
A better question may be, if we studied our world without a confirmation bias towards religion, would religion ever be the answer? Would a non-believer study biology and discover God or Allah or any other specific or non-specific deity was the answer without guidance from a religious text?
This is the type of evidence that is needed to change the minds of those, like myself, who would seek the truth.
If I'm honest with myself, I hope for these shreds of evidence to come to light because I want there to be an afterlife. I want some kind of transfer of consciousness which makes me eternal. I fear death, and considering it is the one thing I'm guaranteed, it seems like a very compromising position. I'm forced to hope for more than mortality and in the mean time not let fear overwhelm me. I wonder how many more have felt exactly the way I do? I suppose that's the price of having this secret.
Sometimes it means I'm alone.

Can God lie?

At one point in time I thought that because God is all powerful that the reason he couldn't lie is because even if he tried to, whatever he spoke or thought would simply come into being anyway. I never thought of God as restrained by time or ability.
But when I started looking for positive proof of God's supernatural interaction with our world, I was forced to ask myself: Can God lie?
Repeatedly in the Bible it is reiterated that God is perfect by nature and cannot lie. As I learned more and more about how the universe works, the reality points to a conclusion which is quite contradictory to the biblical account of creation.
In the Bible God makes everything in six literal days starting at evening. (There are believers who trust the day-age theory, but this is not consistent with the original verbiage.) The seventh 'yom' could be debated though.
We now know that new elements are made inside suns and from their death and, with enough time, that's how we get the elements we need for life as we know it.
We know the geological layers took longer than 6000 years to form because radiometric dating confirms volcanic lava flows much older than this. We know that evolution happens, and not just natural selection of existing traits, but the development of novel ones as well. We know that starlight has traveled more than 6,000 light years to reach earth.
As a believer my initial answer to this was that God made it this way. It's such a simple answer for someone of faith, but it raises a glaring contradiction.
If God made it the universe 6,000 years ago, or even 10,000 or a million years ago, he created it in a way which is deceptive and unnecessary. It would have taken an active decision on God's part to make everything with the kind of age we find. It would mean that if Genesis 1 is truth, then God lies.
This was my biggest problem as a believer. If God lies, what does that say about his nature? If Genesis is not absolute truth, how can we trust that all scripture is the word of God, especially considering Jesus is quoted referencing Genesis?
In order to combat this whole idea, young earth creationists have suggested that radioactive decay rates have not always been the same (no evidence for this when it comes to isotopes used for dating,) that evolution only happens on a "micro" level (without the realization that small changes over time become big changes,) and that starlight travels at, or has traveled faster than light speed or completely deny relativity.
This is how I know the Bible is not truth, because either the biblical story is one of a lying God because Genesis is false, or our universe is a deception created by God and both nullify the entire biblical story.

Does God suffer from self loathing?

Proverbs 6

16 There are six things the Lord hates,
    seven that are detestable to him:
17         haughty eyes,
        a lying tongue,
        hands that shed innocent blood,
18         a heart that devises wicked schemes,
        feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19         a false witness who pours out lies
        and a person who stirs up conflict in the   community.

 

There is a lot of contradictions throughout the Bible which lead me from doubting my religion to the truth that is wholly false. This one didn't come to mind until recent studies though. In these verses I can think of two which are easily verified within the text of the Bible and I'm sure I could find more with little effort.

 

Matthew 10

 

34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
    a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36     a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

 

Jesus says here he is creating conflicts even within households, the basis of community. In the word's of God as man (as told by the Bible,) he creates conflict. Is God mad at Jesus (himself?) for saying this or causing it?
As a believer I honestly would explain away such conflicts through a mask of interpretation and faith. Without even mentioning all the conflict God himself (again, as told by the Bible,) orders the tribes of Israel to enter into. If God really hates conflict then Israel should be known for its diplomacy!
The other one that really stands out to me is the "hands that shed innocent blood."
Biblically I think it's pretty easy to say no one is "innocent" since all have "fallen short," but I think most would agree babies would be considered innocent for the purposes of this verse.
Did God forget about the Passover event at this point? According to the Bible, God comes through Egypt and kills all firstborn of man and animals. How can a righteous God justify this massacre? God is omnipotent but he cant change pharaoh's mind without senseless slaughter?
Over and over again I see opportunities for the God of the Bible to be better. In fact, I'm sure a team of writers today could have come up with a more cohesive and compelling story. In all fairness, it's hard to collaborate with authors separated by so much time.
An omnipotent God can do, or will, anything, but does he spend his eternity in self loathing because even he does the things that he hates? Or maybe when he orchestrated the plot to shed the blood of the only "innocent man," he forgave himself as well?
I find it very interesting to be so close to faith that I can really see how absurd it becomes with a little reason. What do I expect from a fairytale though?

The scientific conspiracy

When I was a believer, I had a strong tendency to shrug off new scientific data contrary to my beliefs. I honestly thought there was a conspiracy to disprove God through their findings because they were mad at God, didnt want to believe, or so they could do whatever they wanted without consequence.
When I started to study the science of evolution, it was really an attempt to pick it apart and find the fingerprints of God in creation. I would often see the unexplained as "God" and so it didnt need to be explained for me. My faith overcame evidence consistently with the biblical stories of creation and the flood.
There are a lot of convincing arguments on christian sites such as answersingenesis.org, and all you need is a little faith to make them feel true.
There are a lot of terms specific to christian scientists that help distinguish false secular science from science based on truth, terms like microevolution and macroevolution, historical and observational science.
These terms werent exactly helpful in my search for God, because they truly cloud up matters which are relatively simple.
For example, what they label as macroevolution is actually a whole lot of "microevolution," and all of it is just evolution. Of course there was a time when all evolution was considered false, but they changed theories with mounting evidence and invented terms.
As for historical and observational science? These are ridiculous terms.
But they sounded so good when I had faith to make them true, but when you get the rest of the story, its all baseless assertions and accusations.
I really missed quite a big observation though in my effort to deny reality in favor of the fantastical. The group of people I thought was conspiring against my faith is made up of geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, and many other scientific disciplines. Interestingly enough, the people who should have the most access to the "fingerprints of God" as I imagined they would be in nature, are made up primarily of people who do not believe the biblical story. I always thought that being in the presence of God always changed people, why did I not stop to wonder why I thought this group of people would deny God if they had physical emperical proof of everlasting life?
Interestingly enough there's quite a different group who conversely have much more collective faith than the educated.
In July of 2013, of prison inmates who chose to disclose their religious preference,  only 0.07% were atheist.
What does that say about those who believe and do not? Why is it that the people who should know for certain God's existence, if there is evidence for it,  do not believe? Is it possible that some people believe the Bible so they can do what they want without consequence?
Im careful not to read too far into this because if everyone in the world believed, it would still be false, even if I was the only one that realized it. I dont base my rejection of faith on what's popular or not it is based solely on the evidence which speaks directly to religion being the flawed creation of man, and not the perfect story of God. I also know the Christian answer to this: It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  The Bible is so clever in some of it's writings.
Im glad I am able to see the information with some objectivity and realize it is not scientists who have the agenda, but scientists who have to specify the religion they support who have a plan to deny reality, whether in ignorance or not.
There is an epidemic of invisible, undetectable, miniature, three-legged donkeys, which pop into existence with the birth of each child. They live off socks but are concerned with their weight so only eat them one at a time and they think live in washing machines. The evidence is overwhelming that they exist because there always seems to be one sock missing. Can you prove these creatures dont exist? You can prove my evidence is false, but you cant prove the creatures dont exist.
This is how "christian science" works. There is already a presuposition of God and so only the evidence which supports that is accepted, the rest is considered untrue, ficticious,  or tainted, and furthermore cannot be refuted because you can not disprove God exists.
With faith, God did it, is an acceptable answer, but what does the evidence really say?
There is a conspiracy, but the truth is out there.

I still want to believe

One thing that is very difficult for me to explain or understand is that I still want to believe.
I would be willing to bet there are quite a few out there like myself in that respect. Even though I no longer believe, it doesn't mean I've stopped studying the Bible or looking for solid answers to questions I have.
The problem I repeatedly run into with the Bible is that at every turn there is some discrepancy. It is truly why I remain an unbeliever. Because the Bible proves false consistently.
Like I said though, it hasn't stopped me from searching its text. I'm sure some will see this as a longing for "the truth," but it's more like re-examining the scene of the crime.
Some of why I feel the need to continue to study is that I know I will get a lot of questions from my family and I need to be prepared to provide answers and I have never liked the answer of "I don't know." I do have to be comfortable with that answer sometimes though.
As a Christian I often looked at gaps in science with a mentality of "God did it" and I would just be amazed without wondering further on the how of it. I would be satisfied with not knowing because, to me, it was just another instance of a miraculous God.
It shouldn't surprise me that I still feel that way in some instances.
I have a hard time imagining an eternal universe and the evidence of the big bang seems to imply ours had a beginning, especially considering the universe is accelerating in it's expansion. Will the universe ever collapse? Or is it doomed to fan out until there's no way to observe its expanse? If it doesn't collapse will there be an end? Or will it just fizzle out like a bag of pop rocks in my mouth, losing its energy and slowly becoming black?
These type of questions lead me back to a place where I wonder, is there a God?
Lawrence Krauss has some very interesting talks about just this subject. It's all very compelling in the context of a theory supported by phenomena which cannot be observed directly. Sadly it's still more solid than the theory God did it according to Genesis 1:1 considering there is some evidence. But still the thought occurs to me, is God possible? Is it just an idea in my mind? Could the big bang have been caused by an external omniscient force?
I have to admit there's so many more possibilities than probabilities and honestly, with our limited scope of intelligence, an omniscient being may not be all that great in the end. Assuming something even close to what I imagine could exist, in the end God could be a lot more like the great and powerful Oz.
It's all conjecture coming from the mind of a dreamer. The last artifact of the faith taking its time to dissipate, like fog on an autumn morning in the forest.
Like i said, I still want to believe. Not in the biblical story, but in forever. Wanting something to be true, though, has no bearing on its actual merit.

Could another religion be true?

One question my wife asked me was if I thought I would find a new religion.
I think I can categorically answer that with a no. Although I'm not familiar with every religion, I can say I'm no longer comfortable with the premise of it.
Throughout the Bible there are many miraculous signs which would easily point to some other worldly power being in play. One of my favorites as a kid was when Elijah faced off against the prophets of Baal and called down fire from heaven. Such signs and miracles happen repeatedly throughout the Bible, God seemed to be especially eager in the old testament to prove he was above all other gods, but I have yet to see anything close during my lifetime.
Jesus performed quite a few miracles in front of the disciples that would make me never doubt, such as calming the storm. That's no cheap parlor trick. How on earth could the disciples ever doubt Jesus had supernatural backing after that?
The fact that the Bible says they ever doubted again indicates to me this is just a story. A man whom they saw heal the sick, feed the multitude with a few fish, and made a tree wither for not bearing fruit would be pretty convincing even in today's world of extreme magicians, but calming a storm that's something beyond anyone's capability.
I have to say, that it would be quite convincing to see someone calm a storm. I would be astonished beyond reason.
Once I realized that the Bible was not absolute truth, my eyes were opened to quite a few things I didn't realize before. As a Christian I looked at other religions as spiritual warfare with God's kingdom. Angels and demons all over the place influencing us for each side.
Religions are the concoctions of mankind originating from myths and fables. I've been fooled once and I don't intend to be again.
The thought has crossed my mind that maybe there is a spiritual realm and it is just beyond our abilities to observe it. Maybe its something akin to intuition where we know it exists but cant quite put our finger on it. It's kind of like dark matter in that respect, except with dark matter we have evidence it exists, even though we cant directly observe it.
I believed spiritual influence should fit perfectly into this category. Even if we couldn't observe God directly, it would be nice to at least see his unexplainable influence, it would even lead scientific minded down a road of evidence to God.
This is exactly what I expected to find when my transition started. I expected to find God's unexplainable influence everywhere.
I had been told it was here and assumed it was true, but it didn't take too long to unravel everything I knew considering how long I had spent weaving my own story of the universe along with just the right (mis)information.
The God of the Bible went to great lengths to show he was God, if that story was more than words on a paper, we should see it's continuation today. Even if only by a select few with a mustard seed's worth of faith.
Maybe most religions are making an attempt at describing this intangible but real thing, like the Greeks trying to explain natural occurrences by assigning them gods. But I have a feeling a larger majority are created by people with much less benign intentions. I would suspect most come as a result of men who seek profit and power, and are perpetuated by those who truly believe.
So forgive me if I don't run out to pick up a new holy book.
Not one of them can provide any evidence which would speak to a creator which intervenes in miraculous ways on a consistent basis. Not one.
Some would be quick to say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, and I would agree. Perhaps there is a supreme being that started it all, but unless he puts credible evidence into existence, I'll simply consider it a distant possibility.

The quest for answers and my uncle's soul

I should preface this post by saying when I began my search for the reasonable answers I was a young earth creationist. Part of why I believed this was because the Bible said so. By tracing the lineage of the age of the lives recorded in the Bible you could estimate the earths age at over 6,000 years. With that knowledge I filtered the information I learned about geology, biology and evolution through that lens.
Some might say I was naive, but I was quite knowledgeable about the theories Christian scientists presented to support the young earth claim. Such as reptiles growing for the entirety of their lives. If people lived to 600 years old, it makes sense that lizards could grow to dinosaur sizes with that kind of life span. I was aware that DNA breaks down over time and of these discoveries of soft tissue in dinosaur bones which, to me, proved they were younger than 10,000 years (the theory at the time for how long it takes dna to break down but i cant find a reference for at the moment.) I looked at examples of the rapid developement of layers in the earth's surface as examples of how they could be formed on the timeline I believed to be true. I considered the Bible to be absolutely historical fact, inspired by God, the Word of God, perfect, and that evolution was only brought about as an alternative to the creation story.
I remember watching a documentary where a scientist said he loved digging up fossils and seeing how the evidence supported his theories. I thought to myself that it's the same process for Christian scientists, just a different theory, and that it was logical that secular scientists would look for the evidence to refute God's creation and highlight it.
I started my search to give my uncle logical understanding for faith by listening to debates about creationism vs. evolution on youtube. I know men much more intelligent than myself who believe the creation story so i needed to take the time to study and gather the information they had to offer as proof for its validity. There are a lot of videos though and they range from absurd to thought provoking, the most recent of which that I listened to was Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham.
These type of talks brought me down rabbit holes so deep Cpt. Nemo would envy me, but they pointed out some very serious flaws with my theory. How did Noah fit all those animals on the ark? Ken Ham talked a lot about "kinds", a word I cant find a solid definition for anywhere as far as taxonomy is concerned and is pretty vague on creationist websites, but thats not what I believed. All he was saying was that evolution was true, just on a much shorter time scale. I refuted any evidence of "microevolution" because I knew it was just evolution on a shorter time scale. It's important to add that with a "God" variable, there are an infinite number of possibilities. (I have a book at home about geocentric theory published by a Christian group.) So maybe God didn't stop creating. Maybe coyotes "evolved" more teeth through breeding with wild dogs.
I also was quick to point out that examples of evolution like the peppered moth only showed animals switching to a trait which they already had. They were black sometimes at the start, why should we be surprised when we still have a black moth at the end? It's not like it developed a turbine engine on its tail or a telepathy sensor or even a third antenna.
I also listened to talks surrounding theology, philosophy, and atheism to be able to approach my uncle in a well rounded way with understanding of where he was coming from. In the end I knew it would be God who turned things around for him though.
Sometimes these talks were infuriating. Most atheists doing any sort of interaction with christians were borderline rude, and to be fair a lot of christians they spoke with believed on the word of the Bible alone or because of the words of others which were blatantly untrue, which even aggravated me. If the Bible is truth it should match up undeniably with reality no matter how far fetched it may seem.
A little more than a year ago, i watched a show called the Athiest Experience. The host mentioned a website of outdated or false creation arguments. They were specifically talking about moon dust on the show if I remember correctly.
I had personally used many of the arguments on this site as they had been taught to me. Seeing them now on a "not to use" list was.... dissapointing and confusing. It meant that I had unknowingly lied to others in support of my beliefs which didnt sit well with me at all. Did anything I knew about creationism apply at all any longer?
Even more troublesome to me was that the christian theories had changed many times even in the last decade. My mom once told me one of the things that made the Bible so special was it's relevance and timelessness,  but this was not timeless. The christian theories evolved as quickly as science was making discoveries because it had to. For every new evidence against creationism, there must be an answer. Even recently at the discovery of gravity waves predicted by the big bang theory, the next day I read an article saying scripture predicted it first.
The more I studied the more problems I encountered and that lead to an ever changing stance as to how existence came to be through creation, but I didnt like it.
I felt like a child trying to explain a crime scene formed of liquid paint to a police officer, but I was both the child and the officer. Everything I believed seemed fuzzy and formless and my faith was at war with my mind.
Its hard to explain how difficult it was for me. I hadnt told anyone, not even my wife, that I was studying all these facets of the creation story with the intent to reinvigorate the faith of my lost uncle and I felt like I couldnt share it because I would never want to shake anyone elses faith. That was the complete opposite of my intended goal. All I had at this point was that my most of what I thought I knew was false, and there were no good answers to my questions.
My faith held but was what I believed evident beyond the pages of the Bible?
Then came evolutionary biology...