I read a Sam Harris interview today about a Methodist minister named Tim Prowse, whose journey out of the ministry and into reality (in 2011) is in many ways very similar to mine (and others here). It's titled "Life without God."

If you replace his seminary experience with the typical LD$ programming (seminary, institute, mission, temple), you can see a lot of similarities, with the notable exception that he likely didn't begin public announcements testifying that he "knew the church was twoo" at age 2.

Reading this interview made me wonder if Joseph Smith deliberately selected FAITH as the FIRST principle of the gospel (AoF 4), knowing that he could lead us to believe almost anything as long as we didn't think about it, nor read any other opinions.

Here's the first question & his answer:

QUESTION: Can you describe the process by which you lost your belief in the teachings of your Church?

ANSWER: An interesting thing happened while I was studying at East Texas Baptist University: I was told not to read Rudolf Bultmann. I asked myself: Why? What were they protecting me from? I picked up Bultmann’s work, and that decision is the catalyst that ultimately paved the road to today. Throughout my educational journey, which culminated in an Ordination from the United Methodist Church where I’ve served for seventeen years, I’ve continued to ask the question “Why?”

Ironically, it was seminary that inaugurated my leap of unfaith. It was so much easier to believe when living in an uncritical, unquestioning, naïve state. Seminary training with its demands for rigorous and intentional study and reflection coupled with its values of reason and critical inquiry began to undermine my naïveté. I discovered theologians, philosophers and authors I never knew existed. I found their questions stimulating but their answers often unsatisfying. For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem. How do we harmonize this fact with the conception of an all-loving, all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly human product and the God it purports does not exist, other church teachings, such as communion and baptism, unraveled rather quickly. To quote Nietzsche, I was seeing through a different “perspective” – a perspective based on critical thinking, reason and deduction. By honing these skills over time, reason and critical thinking became my primary tools and faith quickly diminished. Ultimately, these tools led to the undoing of my faith rather than the strengthening of it.

You can read the entire interview at:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/life-without-god



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2012 05:55PM by PapaKen.

You refer to him as a "Baptist Minister" but the article refers to him being ordained as a Methodist minister. Maybe a small point but to a Baptist or Methodist there's a lot of difference.

You're right he is a Methodist, but he went to a Baptist University, so that's where the confusion set in possibly.

Right - thanks. I knew that but left it that way anyway.

It would be nice to get some comments on what people think of the article, rather than reading about "small points."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2012 05:56PM by PapaKen.

Another heartfelt conversion to atheism story. Is that a burning in the brain that I feel or just the oxycontin kicking in?