Bart Ehrman, Renowned Biblical Scholar, Former Pastor- Now Agnostic

[stromboli]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ln-S7ZraUc


I relate to this strongly because I made a similar intellectual journey as a Christian. Enjoy.

[GalacticBusDriver]

He's one of those who uses the term agnostic, I believe, to avoid the baggage that the term atheist carries. According to what he wrote in the forward to one of his book he claims not to believe. Whatever he wants to call himself, I love his writings. Very interesting to hear a biblical scholar speak frankly about the buy-bull. Especially when you know he's not trying to convert you nor will he pass the plate.

[SGOS]

It's a joy to watch someone wake up from his fog, and to hear them relate the events of their awakening.

[stromboli]

I'm going to be reading his books, but I can definitely relate to his journey. I am a natural student of things that interest me, and Christianity has a long history to study. I became a Christian believing there was truth there, and found out I had left Mormonism for another form of BS.

[SGOS]

I only explored other mainstream Christian sects.  Mormonism was not considered.  Eastern religions had little appeal for me, so on a smaller scale, I went through a similar search, but most of my search was just reading the Bible and furthering my education.  In the back of my mind, I seemed to intuitively sense that all religions had the common denominator of not enough evidence for extraordinary claims, so I really only officially excluded Christianity.  But once I realized evidence would also be missing in the hundreds of others each of which claimed to have an uncontested monopoly on ultimate truth, I decided picking the right god would never be a certainty, since all were equally unlikely.

[stromboli]

I only explored other mainstream Christian sects.  Mormonism was not considered.  Eastern religions had little appeal for me, so on a smaller scale, I went through a similar search, but most of my search was just reading the Bible and furthering my education.  In the back of my mind, I seemed to intuitively sense that all religions had the common denominator of not enough evidence for extraordinary claims, so I really only officially excluded Christianity.  But once I realized evidence would also be missing in the hundreds of others each of which claimed to have an uncontested monopoly on ultimate truth, I decided picking the right god would never be a certainty, since all were equally unlikely.

When I left Mormonism I theoretically started with a clean slate, but I was working with a bunch of Christians who were all active in proselytizing against Mormonism, so I sort of fell in with them. Was still a newbie religiously. There was also an active exmormon ministry in the area, and I needed something to replace Mormonism for my family. All of the exmormons I encountered were Christians, so Christianity won by default.

[josephpalazzo]

Talking about Santa to a 5-year old is serious business. When that child turns 6, the discussion is more like a casual talk over coffee with a longtime friend you haven't seen for quite a while. At 7, it's a real talk about a fictional character. Somehow, theists never get older than 5.

[Solitary]

Interestingly I became an atheist at six. How many people have became agnostic or atheist after actually studying the Old and New Testaments, as well as all other religions? I think people need religion to justify their existence. Solitary

[stromboli]

I'm a hard learner and need serious evidence to change my thinking. It took 2 years of some very inrtense study to get me out of mormonism, even though the fallacy of the church was glaringly obvious after only a few weeks. After dragging my wife and family out of Mormonism and into xtianity, I didn't want to do it to them again, so it took awhile. But same story- I started seeing fallacies early, it just took a whole lot of reinforcement to drive the point home.

I am a hard atheist now because of a long transition intellectually, but I am very confident in my decision.