Recently I have been compelled to start a journey to
answer the question, "how do I know my beliefs are
true?" Like most people, I have merely accepted what
everyone that I love and trust in my life has told me
to be true. It was not until recently when I was giving
a good friend of mine some grief for his religious
beliefs that it occurred to me that I have never taken
the time to verify why my own beliefs are true.


My entire life I have been fed the notion that the
Bible is 100% literal, accurate, truth. So you can
imagine my surprise when I began a course to
investigate the testable claims of the Bible and
discovered that many things in the Bible conflict with
history. Not only conflict, but overwhelming evidence
to the contrary exists to some of the most popular
claims in the Bible.


First of all, it is a well established historical fact that
Hebrews have never been enslaved by Egyptians.
That was a total shock right out of the gate. I'm not
going to flesh out why. There is plenty of information
out there regarding that.


Secondly, I have never accepted a literal, global flood
but I discovered that the flood story was actually
passed around to all of the Middle Eastern cultures.
The story is all the same. <Insert deity name> wants
to destroy humanity and picks his disciple <insert
person's name> to save a few people and all the
animals. This is not a story unique to Judaism, in fact
it predates Judaism several times.
Just a few excerpts from the flood stories that
predate Judaism, same story, different players:

SUMERIAN:
The gods had decided to destroy mankind. The god
Enlil warned the priest-king Ziusudra ("Long of Life"
of the coming flood by speaking to a wall while
Ziusudra listened at the side. He was instructed to
build a great ship and carry beasts and birds upon
it...


BABYLONIA:
Three times (every 1200 years), the gods were
distressed by the disturbance from human
overpopulation. The gods dealt with the problem first
by plague, then by famine. Both times, the god Enki
advised men to bribe the god causing the problem.
The third time, Enlil advised the gods to destroy all
humans with a flood, but Enki had Atrahasis build an
ark and so escape. Also on the boat were cattle, wild
animals and birds, and Atrahasis' family...


ASSYRIAN:
The gods, led by Enlil, agreed to cleanse the earth of
an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was
warned by the god Ea in a dream. He and some
craftsmen built a large boat (one acre in area, seven
decks) in a week. He then loaded it with his family,
the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures...


CHALDEAN:
The god Chronos in a vision warned Xisuthrus, the
tenth king of Babylon, of a flood coming on the
fifteenth day of the month of Daesius. The god
ordered him to write a history and bury it in Sippara,
and told him to build and provision a vessel (5 stadia
by 2 stadia) for himself, his friends and relations, and
all kinds of animals...


ZOROASTRIAN:
Enlargement of the earth was necessary again after
600 years. When the population became too great
after 900 years, Ahura Mazda warned Yima that
destruction was coming in the form of winter, frost,
and subsequent melting of the snow. He instructed
Yima to build a vara, a large square enclosure, in
which to keep specimens of small and large cattle,
human beings, dogs, birds, red flaming fires, plants
and foodstuffs, two of every kind...
Finally, I learned that not only is the military takeover
of Canaan as described in Joshua not an historical
fact, but there is overwhelming evidence to the
contrary which points to the fact that Judaism
flourished from within Canaan and eventually
became the predominant religion with no warfare at
all.
You can imagine what learning these facts had to do
to my faith. Having learned that the Bible is 100%
literally true, and learning facts to the contrary
constitute a huge philosophical problem for me. I am
not the type of person who can look at hard evidence
and say, "well, that conflicts with the Bible, so it's
false." Nor do I find people with that ability
particularly virtuous, even though cognitive
dissonance is praised as a virtue in just about all
world religions.


Continuing my journey to investigate the claims of
the Bible has been an interesting experience thus far.
It has given me the opportunity to gain lots of
different perspectives, not only on christianity, but on
life and other religious beliefs in general. Having
talked to numerous christians about my
philosophical belief problem in the face of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary of my
established beliefs has certainly been interesting. I
have spoken with christians who range in
philosophical differences from "you absolutely
cannot be a christian unless you believe the Earth is
literally 6,000 years old" all the way to "yes, many of
the stories in the Bible are only allegories meant to
convey the nature of God, many of the events of the
Bible definitely did not happen" and everything in
between.


Numerous christians have told me that my lack of
faith is nothing more than a hardened heart and
open rebellion against God. Other christians have
told me that my honest search for truth is closer to
Christ-like than many will ever get in their entire lives
of blind, unquestioning devotion.
After several months it has finally occurred to me
that my entire life I have not been sold christianity. I
have been sold an orthodoxy. Biblical literalism is a
very young, theological idea prevalent mostly among
Protestants, and Baptists fall on the farthest end of
that literalism spectrum. Christians have always
accepted the Bible as "truth" but they have not
always accepted the Bible as "actual literal events".
Biblical literalism is fairly new to the theological
game.


My journey is not complete but I think what I have
learned the most is many people have many wildly,
differing opinions on whether I'm drawing closer to
Christlike, rebelling against God, being a heretic,
being a vigilant seeker of truth, doing something God loathes, doing something God admires, etc. Despite all of their differing opinions, they all have one thing they agree on,


"MY BELIEF IS THE CORRECT ONE!"

You nailed it.

There should be ample evidence of a global flood. But we see nothing, some of the Egyptian pyramids were being built through that period, so how could there have been a global flood?

This is pretty damning evidence right there.

The search/quest for truth is never a easy one........ You fight against your very own indoctrination, you find yourself shocked/depressed after realizing the truth; and finally make your own moral/philosophical code.

That's why it's rare, if not impossible, to see a dumb atheist.

I am presently witnessing a global flood!!! It is a global flood of stupidity in and around all christian churches!!!

Have always believed no religion leads to God