re: Good news for some. Pat Robertson says homosexuals will soon "die out"....

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As someone who has thoroughly researched the origins of the Christian religion and listened to a lot of what Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and others have to say, I can tell you that it has not changed what I believe at all. In fact, it has only strengthened my convictions.

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If a serious believer like yourself is looking for objective reasoning behind unbelief, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. is not the way to go. Almost everything they have ever put out is directed at people who already don't believe or are purely cultural believers just holding on by a thread. Their material typically has a somewhat condescending tone to it which turns off pretty much everyone who believes right off the bat, and they often describe and/or reference scientific and historical topics that are foreign to the average American. Basically, they are talking to agnostic/atheist individuals with postgraduate educations.

The best place for you to start honestly would be the numerous jewish and Christian biblical scholars who, while they still believe, objectively point out all the flaws and common misconceptions about the Bible and its history. It gives you a lot of information that you will never be taught in mainstream circles while still allowing you to feel like you are on the same page spiritually as the person in question. After that, moving onto the roughly 40% of Biblical scholars who are not jewish or Christian but have a deep understanding of the text and its history is the next step.

That is what really helped me starting looking at my faith objectively over the course of several years.

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You make it sound like everyone who believes in Christ and the teachings of the Bible are just ignorant and if they can only be shown the truth, they would abandon their foolish faith.

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I believe that if every Christian applied the exact same critiques to Christianity that they do to other faiths, they would all become merely cultural Christians who if asked would tell you much of the teachings of the church probably aren't true. Hoping for a flat out dismissal of religion is too much to ask because it is so ingrained in the culture.