I just got a letter...

wonder who it's from?

What’s up nonbelievers, doubters, and skeptics?

My whole online “schtick”… if you will… is being an atheist in the Bible Belt.

Some people get it. Some people don’t. And that’s okay.

I don’t really care if people think I’m wasting my time by talking about a god that I don’t believe in.

Why do they care how I spend my time anyway? Lurk much??

Being an atheist in a mostly-Christian country is a funny thing sometimes.

I see posts about Jesus a lot on social media from my family, friends, former coworkers, etc. I don’t comment on most of them—occasionally I do when they have anti-LGBTQ language and things like that—but, for the most part, I just scroll.

I just saw yet another 7 year old getting baptized on my feed. What is it with that age? It seems like every month or so I see a new 7 or 8 year old getting baptized. Is it because they’ve stopped believing in Santa and now graduated to fully understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ? Who knows?

Well, one particular post that I saw struck a nerve with me (I think I may have already talked about it, but, nonetheless, here it is):

And my response was this:

Many religious people assume that nonbelievers reject Jesus because of bad experiences with religious people.

But here’s the thing… most of us just stopped believing because there’s no evidence of any gods.

In fact, the main reason that people believe Jesus is the son of God is because of an old religious book passed down for generations. Sure, they can talk about their personal relationship & experiences with Jesus, etc, but they likely would have sought out and found some other gods if they didn’t come across Jesus first or get indoctrinated by their families.

None of the gospels were written until decades after Jesus died. Is that reliable enough for you to believe what they say? It was for me for a long time until I started thinking more critically.

People do indeed let us down, but that’s not why most of us leave Christianity.

My post currently has 53 comments. FIFTY THREE! Mostly from Christians trying to tell me why I’m wrong.

One of those comments was from my mom’s best friend, asking if her husband could write me a letter.

Isn’t it wild? I make a post about being an atheist once in a blue moon on my personal social media, and they want to write me a letter in response?!

Being the age of content creation, how could I refuse??

So, I gave the address, and he wrote the letter.

I’ve decided that I don’t want to make the letter public, but I will go over some of the main talking points here.

I did post the full letter in my private community (ExChristianCommunity.com) if you’re interested in reading the whole thing.

Some highlights:

There are over 5,000 Greek New Testament manuscripts that range from the entire New Testament to scraps of papyri which contain as little as a part of one verse. Some fragments date back to within 25 to 50 years of the original writings. This is astounding considering we are going back 2,000 years. What is even more incredible is that all the manuscripts are identical. Let me for argument's sake compare these facts to other ancient manuscripts. Plato: date written 422-347 B.C., earliest copy A.D. 900, year-time span between original and copies 1,000 years, number of copies ten, accuracy of copies unknown. Aristotle: date written 384-322 B.C., earliest copy 1,100 A.D., year-time span between original copy 1,400 years. Homer (Iliad): date written 900 B.C., earliest copy 400 B.C., year-time span between original and copy five hundred years, number of copies 643, accuracy of copies 95%.
New Testament: date written 25-100 A.D., less than one hundred years, number of copies 5,600, accuracy of copies 99.5%.
Kev, when we look at written historical evidence, there are more than 19,000 copies in the Syrian, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages included in the 99.5% accuracy figure.

Much of the letter seems to be copied and pasted from apologetics websites.

He asks this question:

If there were two Christians and one lost his or her faith, would the other Christian hope and pray that who left the faith would return to faith in Christ? The answer is an unequivocal yes! Now there are two unbelievers, if one became a Christian would the other hope and pray that they would deny there Christianity, and return to unbelief?

I truly don’t understand this question. Why would the nonbeliever pray? To whom?

I also find it funny that many Christians think that atheists want everyone to lose their faith and join us on the dark side.

That’s just not true; I’d say that most atheists are fine with believers, as long as they’re not spreading hate or harm and weaponizing their religion.

The final paragraph of his letter is a doozy, but I’ll leave that as a teaser to make you join my community MWA HA HA! (p.s. that’s ExChristianCommunity.com)

I often get messages/comments that are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

They act like they’re being sincere and meaning well, and then they slip in an insult or insinuation that I’m living incorrectly.

Exhibit A:

“I’m sorry for whatever happened to you or your followers.”

Do they genuinely think they’re being kind here? My inclination is no.

Believers often assume that something happened to us, and this comment goes right along with the post from earlier.

So many assumptions about those who don’t believe. Always.