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Notes -
Does anyone else occasionally feel that Christianity is real and Jesus is the Lord? I grew up somewhat Christian going to church but my parents stopped making me go around 14 and I quickly became an atheist. However, throughout my life there have been moments (very short) where I believe in Christ. Tonight was one where my fiance and I watched a beautiful choir in a beautiful church and as I held her hand I felt God. I felt Jesus and his sacrifice.
Of course, intellectually I know this is nonsense Christianity has been proven to not be true and just a superstition but there is something about it that draws me back so close to almost believing it.
I mean, I'm a Christian so I would say I feel that more than occasionally. ;)
So far as I'm aware, no such proof exists. The general reasoning I see given for atheism isn't "Christianity is proven false", but "Christianity isn't proven true and so one should assume it is false until proven otherwise". The two positions are very different, with different implications on how you should think.
Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose you saw a unicorn on the street today. If unicorns are proven to be impossible, then you are probably hallucinating and should see a doctor. But if it's merely the case that we don't believe unicorns exist until we have proof they do, congratulations cause you just proved unicorns exist. That's why the distinction between "proven false" and "unproven, assumed false for now" matters. In the former, evidence for the false proposition can safely be considered faulty. In the latter, evidence for the proposition can potentially show that the proposition is true after all.
Back to Christianity, that means that if you feel you have reason to believe in it (which I'm not saying you do, only you can decide that), then you shouldn't set aside those reasons because "eh it's proven false, it's just superstition anyway". Instead, you should follow up on those reasons and see where it takes you. Maybe it changes your mind, maybe not, but it seems to me that it's worth investigating just to see what happens.
Personally, I would encourage you to continue to seek the truth as best you can. YMMV, but my own experience has led me to believe the wisdom of "seek and you will find". I spent many years being atheist/agnostic, and at times I despaired that I would ever be able to resolve the questions I had inside. But in time, God led me to the answers I wanted in a way that I could accept. Now looking back on it all, yeah the path was winding and at times dark. But given who I am, and how I see the world, it probably couldn't have worked any other way. So while the journey was long and tiring (mentally), it was my journey and I'm grateful for it. And it's not over yet, of course.
I hope you find the answers you seek, man. Even if you wind up deciding "yep it's all bunk", I hope you're able to have the peace of having found those answers. Good luck, and Merry Christmas!
No, you are still vastly more likely to be suddenly hallucinating in comparison to meeting mythological creature that nobody had found any evidence for hundreds of years. The same can be said about attributing internal feelings to hypothetical unseen all-powerful being and not some mundane neurological reason.
On the other hand, if I see a unicorn in the street, and the neighbor tells me yep, that’s what it is, and neither of us have been drinking, and the pack of neighborhood children run over and pet it, and they say it’s a unicorn…
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