Can I be mormon, little m?
A man stopped me in the parking lot and began talking to me about the diameter of the sun as 360, and asked why we have 365 days. He started then multiplying 4 by 9 and 12 by 3 and they ended up as 360 and pointed to some trees next to the lot. Because some of the trees were in hibernation, he claimed this proved we weren’t actually coming up to a new year, but rather the new year was in the spring and the year is only 360 days long, not 365. I asked him about the southern hemisphere, and he answered with another analogy that involved the number of days the sun sat in equinox. I asked him multiple times what I all of this meant.
He asked me if I was Christian. I replied yes and he smiled. I then added, “most days.” He responded by explaining that Jesus was actually born in the spring, not the winter. I told him I believed him. He said, “Don’t believe me, believe the facts.”
I am thinking two things right now:
1. It was natural for me to say “yes, I’m a Christian.” But I don’t believe in God. I do believe in some of the values and ideas of Christianity.
I looked up Christian Atheism – and it’s a thing.
Wikipedia says:
- There are 141 protestants in the US.
- Only 90% of self-identified protestants believe in God – so there are over 14M self-identified protestants who do not believe in God
- Only 79% of self-identified Roman Catholics believe in God – so there are over 15M self-identified Catholics who do not believe in God
- There are 6.4M American members of the LDS church
- There are about 5 times as many self-identified Christians who do not believe in God as there are Mormons.
- A springtide research study shows that youth disbelief and doubt in God in the LDS church generally mirror that of the general youth population.
2. This guy’s belief in his numbers all adding up to some proof of supernatural existence is simply proof to me that relying on convictions, intuition, and others testimonies is problematic.
If I had a car that only turned left half of the time I twisted the steering wheel, would I keep using that steering wheel?