When I sat down to write this I didn't think it would be nearly as hard to explain as it seems to be.

My reasoning is fairly simple. It starts with the Old and New Testaments. What was the criterion used to decide which books were, and which books were not a part of Scripture, as in the Word of God, and not as in a scripture, or old text? What about the Apocrypha? Who decided that they were *not* a part of Scripture? The Roman Catholics say one thing, the Eastern Orthodox say another, the Protestants say a whole mess of things, from Methodists with their Wesley, to Orthodox Presbyterians and their Westminster Confession of Faith. None of them entirely agree on anything, and all of them claim to have cornered the market on what is true and what is not, though recently that has begun to change, or at the very least become less rabid. In any case, each and every flavor of Revealed Religion claims direct and exclusive access to God. Obviously, in order for one of them to be right, the rest must be wrong if they have the only access to God.

Once we decide on which of these people we are going to listen to, what makes them any better than I to decide where the Voice of God is to be found? Did God come down out of the heavens, and tell them which books belonged, and which were utter crap? Is there a missing scripture, a Table of Contents, that has just been found, and is signed God, or at the very least, one of the Prophets? Did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, though he never went into detail on what exactly that meant, sit everyone down, and say "Listen, here are the books that are the voice of Dad, and these are just some nutcase talking...?"

I will admit I am just a bit sarcastic there, but when I think about it, the incredulity might be called for. In order to accept Christianity, I need to be able to set my entire trust and reasoning ability into the hands of a number of men, exactly which men is definitely up for debate, who are never widely spoken of, whose very existence is only known to those who have taken the time to look for them, as to what is infallible Word of God, and what isn't. Needless to say, on such an important matter, I am not terribly comfortable doing this.

But let's, just for the sake of argument, say that we accept the veracity of the Bible as the complete Word of God. The thing, regardless of whether you use the Catholic, or Protestant, King James, or New Revised, is loaded with conflicts, impossibilities, and logical paradoxes. I am not speaking of the euphemisms of being Born Again, or the miracles witnessed to throughout the book. I am more than willing to concede their possibility, and even probability. What I am talking about is the actual documented conflicts within the book, wherein we are directed to do a, and b is a condemnable act, and then later on, we are directed to do b, and a is the hell-worthy offense.

And this doesn't even touch the problems within the New Testament. Take the Gospels. I do not address the teachings of Jesus Christ, within them, as I find them to be admirable, and in fact, very in line with my own way of thinking. I address that he himself didn't write the Gospels, and they are merely an interpretation by his Apostles of events. The entirety of the New Testament, is first, written by four of his Apostles, when talking of the events of his life, and then, almost in their entirety, by Paul, who never, unless you take his word for it, even knew Jesus Christ. If I am going to accept the idea of original sin, and that I am born with, and regardless of what I do, will die with this Debt to God, it is rather important that I hear these things from the source. And as near as I have ever been able to tell, the Source has been stubbornly silent on the subject, and has never once spoken to me directly about it.

This is not to say that I don't think there is truth to many of the tenets of Christianity. On the contrary, I hold quite a few of them myself, such as doing unto the least of these, giving freely of what I can to those who are in need, and seeing that my household is taken care of.

However, I cannot subscribe to the greater scope of what is passed down to us, as the Bible, the Church, and Christianity. I just can't make the leap of faith in other's judgment necessary to accept all the judgment of men as the Word of God, and even if I could, it is not the ways of my ancestors, but rather it is the ways of a Desert Tribe, whose God makes very little sense at some points, and at others is downright evil, calling for genocide and slaughter of innocents.

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