Ryan Bell: Learning to Live Without Promises

Ryan Bell does a presentation on Learning to Live Without Promises at Freethought Festival 8.
Freethought Festival is a free annual conference hosted by the Atheists, Humanists, & Agnostics of the University of Wisconsin Madison.

[@denisbrandonmee-lee2587]

Several years ago, when I was caught up in sin, ambition, humanism and selfishness, I felt the same way. God did not and could not exist to me. If you're a man locked in a cave with no light, then light very well does not exist...at all. At if it did exist for some on the outside of the cave, it doesn't make a lick a difference to you that it exists for them and not for you. "Christians" are to blame for contributing to the reinforcement of these ideas when we don't share our light in the form of love. "SDA's" are to blame when we think that our light is only doctrinal truth which doesn't meet the felt need of the person. I think there are probably scores of SDA (and other Christian) kids raised in "the church" who develop a mental assent of God's reality without personal knowledge. Like Saul before he became Paul (Acts 9), he was perpetuating a very wrong and hurtful type of religion. It's our job as those who believe in God to somehow touch the lives of people like Ryan in a loving and respectful way that God can become real to them.

[@monkeydumbluffy7747]

I wholeheartedly believe that everyone's story is valid so as long as it's verifiable but from a person who also left religion as whole, I do beleive that any ideology has bad and good people in it and most people subscribing to an ideology are well intentioned. I just want you to understand that it is the fundametals of the christian ideology that made me move away, the fact that there is only one way to salvation or eternal damnation is ubsurd from an all-powerful and all-loving god who couldn't "allegedly" make a perfect world. There are many more problems with the doctrines itself but all-in-all I think the "I was in sin" narrative is applicable in all religions not unique to christianity, I hope you found peace in your religion and your a good person but I am a much better person without it!