Pastor and BIBLE SCHOLAR Leaves Christianity after 20 YEARS!!!

You can choose to be honest about your beliefs, but you can't choose to believe. You can't choose to be convinced. And that's where I am. I'm not refusing God, the God that I know is real. I I'm not angry at a God I secretly believe in. I'm not choosing rebellion over truth. I'm simply not convinced Christianity is true anymore. >> Fair enough. >> That's it. >> There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. If you read the Bible in and of itself, you will realize that it's full of contradictions and is most certainly not true. It speaks about polytheism, heenotheism, then monotheism, then later about trinitarianism, etc., etc. It's really a mess. Just pray is the only app out there that tracks every single of your prayers. And it stops every other app when it's time to pray. That means no more checking messages, no more doom scrolling when it's time to pray. I didn't partner with any other app for one simple reason. They're not habit forming. I would download an app, use it for 2 minutes. After that, I would get bombarded by ads, close it, and never open it again. It just prays in a completely different league. It notifies you before your prayer, manages the time window, tracks your delays, and documents your spiritual journey. On top of that, they have an amazing gamified interface where every prayer grows your garden. You can literally see your progress. Additional to that, it has the function of the prayer circles where you can pray together with friends and family. you can stay accountable and see who prayed or not. Okay. All right, guys. Welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, we don't hear that often from the Muslim world when it comes down to imams, when it comes down to shakes, students of knowledge, even that they leave Islam for another religion or to become an atheist or whatnot. But today, we're going to react to Dr. Todd Phillips, which uploaded the video why I left Christianity after 20 years as a pastor. Very interesting. And guys, before we do so, as always, if you enjoy my content, leave me a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Check out the links in the description box below to further support my work. And now, with no further ado, let's have a look. >> People ask me all the time why I stopped believing in Christianity and what caused me to lose my faith. Hey, I'm Dr. Todd Phillips. I'm a scholar of the Bible and a former megaurch pastor here in the United States. I used to preach in some of the largest churches in the country, and now I'm an agnostic. >> So, you really heard it right here. I need to stop this video and emphasize this. He was preaching in the mega churches, but he's a scholar of the Bible as well. >> Atheist. Now, what you're about to see are the eight biggest reasons I no longer believe Christianity is true. But they're not the only reasons. And no single one of them ended my faith overnight. It was a cumulative weight of all of them over about 10 years. So, the first three deal with belief itself. Why people believe religions that they believe, why a god who supposedly wants a relationship with us remains hidden. and whether belief is even something that we can choose. What if I told you that religious belief is shaped almost entirely by geography? Here's how I discovered this truth and why it caused me at least in part to step away from Christianity. This was really a massive hurdle for me as a pastor and it's something thinkers like Alex Okconor, you should check him out, they talk about this a lot. It really breaks down into >> get influenced by Alex Okconor and now Alex Okconor is going to become a Christian dude. I'd say three uncomfortable realities. The first one is this kind of idea of the lottery of birth. Your GPS coordinates at your birth are the single greatest predictor of your religious identity. And the numbers are crazy. If you're in the US, 70% of people are Christian. But if you were born in Pakistan, 96% chance you'd be Muslim. In India, 80% chance you'd be Hindu. Poland. >> Okay. Hey, so I don't find this a good argument. And I find it very, very strange that a grown ass man would be surprised by those facts. Alex Okconor is in his 30s now, I believe. Maybe late 20s. I'm not too sure. And now this guy is certainly in his late 50s, I would say. And he's shocked by those facts. How very American. So yeah, of course, duh. The religion that you are born with is determined by where you are born. Genius. But of course, we're not talking about the majority of people when we're talking about theology. We're not talking about cultural Christians or cultural Hindus or cultural Muslims. We're speaking about people that truly believe and why they do believe, right? So, yes, geographically, my parents come from the Balkcon, from the Slavic population, quote unquote, I would say Slavicized. Of course, I did a DNA test. I don't have any Slavic genes in me. Anyways, be that as it may, they come from the Slavic part and therefore they are Orthodox Christians. And yes, I was born into an Orthodox Christian family. However, then I did my research and I became a Muslim. Alhamdulillah. So when we're speaking about geographical religious belonging, yes, certainly I have to confirm here that this is the majority of people that adhere to a religion. But this doesn't say anything about the theology. I mean when it comes down to different worldviews, let's say philosophy, okay, the majority of philosophy has been created in Greece, in ancient Greece. But now the whole world has access to philosophy, to the rules of logic, etc., etc. So now you don't have to be Greek in order to use philosophy. Do you catch my drift here? Certainly the geography played a huge role for the longest time as well. But nowadays, especially through the internet and through migration, of course, the world is changing and becomes much more multicultural. People have access to religious debate. >> There's a 90% chance you'd be Catholic. Look, none of us chose our starting line. And yet it's it almost entirely determines what we perceive as eternal truth. And the second is what I call the sincere seeker problem. I used to think about this a lot. If someone in Thailand is just as humble, just as prayerful, just as desperate for truth as someone in Texas, but they arrive at a totally different absolute truth, does it make sense to say one is right and the other's just lost? I don't think so. It started to feel like they >> Okay, this is ridiculous, man. And I really wonder how those people were pester for such a long time. And now you're speaking about moral relativism. Ultimately, the question that he's proposing here is if there is the possibility, no matter what the location is, for a person to derive truth with a capital T, ultimate truth. And my answer to this would be of course yes. Surely from the Christian perspective, I see where you have your hiccups here because it would boil down to people actually discovering Jesus and believing in Jesus. So I personally believe that this is ridiculous. Of course, why would anybody that never read the Bible come to the conclusion that there must be a Jewish man that has been sacrificed for your sins? That makes no sense at all. But when it comes down to the truth claim that there is one creator and one creator alone, that is transcendent of time and space. He is the creator of the universe of the world so to speak. This is a conclusion that people can derive logically, philosophically, even without any holy book. In Islam, this is described as the fyra, the natural predisposition to believe in a creator. And you see this all around the world. People do worship the highest entity in some way or another. And then they have certain additions to it. Even if you look at Hinduism, which is obviously polytheistic. Still the core of Hinduism is Brahman. So there is one God that they used to worship. But from there on they have all kinds of stories that they attribute to God. When it comes down to Christianity, you have one God, but well, this God has three different persons and whatnot. When it comes down to European pagan religions, nature religions from back in the day, they had all kinds of deities, all kinds of demi- goods. But then they had the all father which was the supreme entity. So the Islamic theological claim is of course superior here because we simply claim that there is monotheism which is the true religion of God to submit to the one creator that created the universe the necessary being. And now if a Buddhist would come to the conclusion that there is one necessary being a matter of fact I spoke to Buddhists and they came to that conclusion through in-depth meditation and whatnot. Yes, then they are upon the truth. If a Christian realizes, hey, there's actually just one God and the rest has been manufactured by the church ultimately, there is not a God man and whatnot, there's actually just one creator. Then that person has derived truth as well. So outside of cultural context, somebody can come to the conclusion that there is only one being that creates existence or is existence itself. But he wants to disregard it here and say, well, what if a Buddhist came to the ultimate truth and that ultimate truth is different from somebody else's ultimate truth? Oh, well then it's not the ultimate truth because this is how we dive into moral relativism and then ultimately nihilism. I can sit here then and say, well, the child molester came to his truth and he believes that it's truthful and the right thing to do to go out and molest children. So therefore, who am I to say that he is wrong? Now we have to draw the line somewhere. When we apply the rules of logic, it has to be coherent. has to be congruent and we can do that in theology as well. >> Weren't seeking a different god from my perspective, they were just living in a different ecosystem. If >> there is no difference, >> if truth is actually universal, it shouldn't look like a regional dialect. Right? An allloving, all powerful, universal God wouldn't design a system where your eternal destiny is almost entirely determined by which border you happen to be inside of. And >> no, he doesn't. And this is why God sent messengers to every single country of course messengers of pure monotheism and then people started obstructing the message. But when it comes down to this fixation of language and why did they reveal the Quran in Arabic? What is going on here? Okay, why was the Torah revealed in Hebrew? Why do you have the New Testament in Greek? Why do I speak English now as somebody from Balkam parents that grew up in Germany? Because this is the universal language right now that we're using. It's a communication method. So depending on the time frame, a specific language must have been used. And the Quran speaks about this as well. I'm paraphrasing here that people will complain why it hasn't been revealed in this or that language or what not. So this guy proposes here that if there is universal truth, it must have come in a universal language. Okay. And which universal language is that? Especially thousands of years ago. Now as I said, we have the internet and now even people like me here have to speak English in order to reach people out there. This is what we agreed upon. But back then, English was nowhere. English was not the global language at all. So therefore, what kind of language should have been the Bible or the Torah or the Quran be revealed in. >> And for me, once I saw that, once I saw that my faith was mostly based on geography, I just couldn't unsee it. It moved me from a place of real certainty in my faith to a place finally of kind of honest empathy for the billions of people who are just as sincere as I once was. Another reason I stopped believing >> once was yeah that is good I guess especially for an American I can understand this is a very American perspective here he understood oh wow my religion is actually dictated to me because I'm born in America yeah that is true but so are other things as well your political orientation your language that you speak the food that you like etc etc you name it so therefore yes if we're seeking truth we have to get over our own biases and understand that we are of course shaped by our environment that's just what it is really wondering that this didn't see it for 50 years of his life. >> Living in the Christian God is the issue of divine hiddenness. When you look at the narrative of the Bible, God supposedly establishes this clear precedent of making himself known in very clear objective ways like burning bushes, pillars of fire. He walks with Adam and Eve in the garden. Eventually, he comes to earth supposedly as Jesus to perform undeniable miracles to prove who he is. Right? If those stories are true, then they prove one thing. that God is fully capable of providing objective physical evidence of his existence without overriding our ability to choose him. And a common argument I used to preach and I certainly hear from Christians all the time to explain why God's actually silent today is that a direct revelation would somehow force us to believe and destroy our free will. But I just cannot tell you that logic doesn't really hold up at any level. Knowing someone exists is not the same as being forced to love or even to follow them. >> Even in the biblical story, Satan has absolute objective knowledge that God existed and he still chooses to rebel. So, free will all over the place. If knowledge were the same as coercion, that rebellion wouldn't have been possible. Look, the reality is that an all- knowing God from my perspective would clearly know exactly what every single person on the planet would require to be convinced that he exists. He would know, for example, exactly what I need to see and know and understand and exactly what I would need to get from him to believe he's there. And yet, he hasn't done that. If he's all powerful, he could provide that evidence right now. if a relationship with God is the most. >> Yeah, if you see it that way, of course, who tells you that this is what God wants for you at all. I guess that's a Christian thing. Yet again, I mean, when it comes down to Christianity, God is not hidden at all, right? Because in Christianity, you do believe that God revealed himself through Jesus Christ. So therefore, they have your evidence. Jesus Christ actually walked on earth. He made wine out of water, yada yada yada. So the Christians believe that God is super personal and he was there. When it comes down to Islam, it's very different. We believe that this life is a test. It's a test of if you can really look through this deception here and understand yes there is a creator behind it. Again, we're not talking about the creator that will hold your hand, will sing kumbaya with you, hug you and kiss you. We're simply speaking about the creator, the king of the universe. If you can actually see through all of this here and understand that he is behind it. important thing in all existence. It just doesn't make sense that he'd remain hidden behind a veil of, you know, 2,000y old texts and subjective feelings. And that's really what it comes down to. Look, a loving father doesn't keep himself hidden. He shows up. He provides for his children. If if if a if your child is about to run out in the street and get run over, you you go out there and you grab them and you take over the control of that situation to save them from that death. A good father doesn't leave people alone, children alone to struggle in the dark. For me, the idea that God is hidden to protect us and our free will, is more of an excuse for the absence of God. At some point, a hidden God and a non-existent God look exactly the same. I didn't choose to >> A hidden God and a non-existent God look exactly the same. Yeah, sure. If you never had a experience of God, it can look like that. I will most certainly agree with this. But the question is, of course, how do you want to see God? How do you want to perceive God in this world? You are in a world that is made out of matter, out of time. You yourself are subject to time. And now when we're speaking about God, we're not speaking about Jesus here. Obviously, I think even this guy gets it now because he doesn't believe in Christianity anymore. We're talking about the creative force behind it. So the creative force cannot be bound by time and space. If it creates time and space, it has to be transcendent of time and space. Otherwise, it wouldn't be the creator. Otherwise, it wouldn't be God. So therefore in and of itself for this being and when I say being I really don't want you to imagine a being I'm speaking about the essence I'm speaking about being itself existence itself the ground of reality if you will the source this source cannot be visible in this physical world it's completely impossible to paint a mental picture if you look at the night the night is dark because there is no sunshining right so once the Sun starts shining, the darkness disappears. Matter of fact, the darkness is not even real. The darkness is the absence of light. It is the same world that you're seeing, that you're perceiving, but it looks very, very different. Right? When the night sets, but when everything gets illuminated by the light, the night disappears. It's not existent at all anymore. It actually never was. And I would say that this is the reality of this creation. This creation seems real. But if God, his light, his eminence would illuminate this world, then the world would disappear. Because God, the ultimate reality in Islam, al-Hak, is what is really true. And once that light is shed, this game here ends. It is over. Time and space as we know it ends once it is illuminated by God. And therefore, for you to want to see God here is essentially a death wish. And I believe that this is what the Bible says as well, right? Nobody has ever lived after seeing God's face. I'm paraphrasing here. It's completely impossible. I'm very very grateful that I was a crazy bastard back in the day. And I did a lot of psychedelics as well. Right now it's over 10 years ago. I think this was around 2011 and 2012, but I think I continued till 2016 or so, something on those lines. Anyways, during that time, I shattered my ego. I shattered my own psyche. I went deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole and I saw for myself that this reality truly is just an illusion. It's not existent. It seems to be, but it's not. It's almost, yeah, like a projector in the movies, you know, when you see that movie appearing in front of you, but it's just being projected onto a wall. It's not really there. And the only thing that is real is the existence that is giving existence to this illusion. And that existence is God. but very very different from the understanding of God in Christianity. Of course, >> stop believing in God. This is one of the things I wish Christians really understood better. You know, people will say in the comments, "Hey Todd, you were warned or when you stand before God on judgment day, you'll know the truth." As if I'm standing here with this full belief in God and just refusing to submit to him. That's just not the case. That's not what happened. I was a Christian for most of my life. I preached the gospel for more than 20 years. is I taught people how to be saved. I prayed and studied the word daily and defended Christianity. I built my entire life around the word of God. And I believed I had an intimate relationship with the Christian God. And then over time, I simply became unconvinced. That wasn't a choice in the way I choose a shirt to put on each day is a choice. I didn't wake up one morning and decide, hey, I think I'll stop believing in God today. I just reached a point over years of questioning where the reasons I had for believing no longer convinced me that the Christian God was real. And >> absolutely fair enough. Look into Islam. >> You know that's true, Christian, because you can't force yourself to believe things either. You can't choose to believe in Islam just because a Muslim warns you about Muslim judgment. You know, you can't choose to believe in Mormonism just because a Mormon comes to your door and tells you that you've been warned. You know, you can't choose to believe in a Greek god or a Hindu god or any other god claims just because someone threatens consequences. >> No, of course not. It's all about consequences. Simply really do your research and look into the claims into the truth claims of Islam. >> Belief doesn't work that way. And you inherently know that if you're a Christian, you can choose to study, you can choose to listen, you can choose to stay open, you can choose to be honest about your beliefs, but you can't choose to believe. You can't choose to be convinced. And that's where I am. I'm not refusing God, the God that I know is real. I I'm not angry at a God I secretly believe in. I'm not choosing rebellion over truth. I'm simply not convinced Christianity is true anymore. >> Fair enough. >> That's it. Look, and if God exists, he knows that better than anyone. >> So once I understood how strongly >> there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, you have every reason in the book to not believe that Christianity is true. Actually, no pun intended. in the book is really like that. If you read the Bible in and of itself, you will realize that it's full of contradictions and is most certainly not true. It speaks about polytheism, heenotheism, then monotheism, then later about trinitarianism, etc., etc. It's really a mess. >> Only geography and culture shape religious belief and how hidden God remains and that I couldn't simply choose to believe. I had to go back and examine the entire foundation Christianity depends on, which is the Bible. So, some of my questions were around the idea if the Bible is a clear revelation from God to humanity, I'd really expect it to look and actually function differently from an ordinary human book. But the more closely I examined the Bible, it looked exactly like what we would expect if humans actually wrote it. If God wrote a book, I would expect it to sound more like God wrote it. And I don't honestly mean that as a cheap shot. I used to believe the Bible came from God and I preached it that way. I built my life around it. I preach that others should trust it and obey it and build their eternity and lives around it. But if this book really comes from an all- knowing, perfectly good, allloving God, why does it sound exactly like the ancient world that it came from? I mean, really, why does it contain laws condoning, endorsing slavery instead of just saying slavery is wrong? Just don't do it. God has no problem saying murder is wrong and lying is wrong and stealing is wrong. Why does it treat women in ways most of us, I would like to say all of us, would never defend today? Why does it prescribe death for breaking the Sabbath? Why does it contain so much violence that later on Christians have to explain away and soften and contextualize and defend? And look, I understand the Christian answer. I gave the Christian answer from the pulpit for two decades. I knew how to talk about context and progressive revelation and ancient culture and, you know, God meeting people where they were. I knew all the ways to make the Bible sound like it made sense. But that answer only worked because I started with a conclusion that the Bible was perfect and couldn't be wrong. Because if ordinary people can take a look at this Bible and just look at parts of it and immediately say that shouldn't be in there, then we should all ask why a perfect God put it in there in the first place. >> Ah, well, it's not a good argument either because nowadays society has been liberalized hardcore and this guy is a boomer as well. So therefore understand why he has this liberal stance. But that doesn't define truth. Truth can be absolutely uncomfortable. It might not even sound true to you. But who are we to define what is true and what is not? Our society nowadays has all kinds of new problems. Of course when it comes down to women being so empowered, so liberated. Women are opening up only fans. Now I think the statistic last time I checked was in America every 10th girl so 10% from the age of 18 to 25 or so is having an only fans. That is insane. So every 10th girl now in America is a prostitute. An open public prostitute, mind you. Back then the prostitutes even had a bit more decency and they would hide away in a hotel room or whatnot. But now they're just doing it publicly as if it's nothing and we are supposed to accept this as the norm now and this is totally normal and yeah, this is what people should do. We are all free. So long story short, I couldn't care less what society now thinks, what they believe is right or wrong. This doesn't define what revelation is. And I'm not defending the Bible here whatsoever. I'm simply saying you cannot define revelation just by what the current norm is. >> For years, my job was to defend the Bible. >> Now I have to be honest about what I see. The book looks deeply and unmistakably human. There isn't one Christianity. There are thousands of Christianities. The Baptists think they have the correct version. The Catholics think they do. The Calvinists think they do. the Pentec Well, when it comes down to sectarianism, it is not so hard to trace back the origins of Christianity and then come to the conclusion who the original church was. And it's not so hard with Islam either. It's not so hard with any other religion, matter of fact, to trace it back to its origin, to trace it back to its orthodoxy, so to speak. >> Your voice, the evangelical gospel has an Adam and Eve problem. Original sin only works if Adam and Eve were real historical people. And I don't think they were because if Adam and Eve weren't real people, then there was no historical fall of man. And if there was no historical fall of man, then one of the central pieces. >> Okay. So now you're Darinist. Basically, if you don't believe that God created two people first, if you don't believe this, you're subscribing to evolution potentially and therefore, yeah, you're looking for the historical Adam and Eve. Obviously, nobody will give you a trace of the historical Adam and Eve. This impossible. Essentially, he's moving the goalpost now. Okay, let's find the historical Adam and Eve and then I will believe >> of evangelical Christianity just collapses. Now, I know people in the Christian community will say, "Hey, people still sin." And of course, people do harmful, selfish, cruel things. And that's not the point. The point is original sin. The point is the idea that humanity inherited guilt and corruption, death, and a broken relationship with God because the first human beings, Adam and Eve, just just disobeyed God in a in a real garden. At least that's the story. But if Adam and Eve aren't historical people, then there wasn't a single, you know, first couple who brought sin into the world. You know, there was no moment when human nature fell. There was no curse that suddenly entered creation because two people just ate from a tree. And that creates a massive problem for the version of evangelical Christianity I preached for more than 20 years. Because the story that I preached was simple. God created the world and it was good. Adam and Eve sinned. Humanity fell. Sin entered the world. We inherited guilt and separation from God from Adam and Eve. And then Jesus came as a solution for Adam's fall. That was it. But if Adam isn't historical, >> it's not simple at all because okay, Jesus came and he fixed what exactly? You're still separated from God. As you said, you're seeking God and you cannot see God. There is no personal God for you. Where is God? You still have all of those questions. Nothing has been fixed at all. Moreover, you said as well that people are still sinning. So therefore, what now? God himself crucified himself in order to remove original sin, but you're still sinful. What's the whole point, man? Anyways, guys, I'm going to cut it off here. I understand why this guy left Christianity. I left Christianity as well, but now he's getting into this atheistic perspective where he becomes intellectually lazy ultimately and doesn't want to seek any further into theology. Honestly, I don't want to blame him. I get this as well. I know many people from the diet niches back in the day. They get frustrated with carnivore. They get frustrated with veganism and then they ditch their diets altogether and they become fat souls. That can happen too. And this guy is the theological spiritual equivalent to that. Don't be lazy. Look into Islam. All right guys, but this is it for today's video. If you enjoyed it, leave the thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Check out the links in the description box below to further support my work and our brothers and sisters in Gaza, Sudan, and Syria as well. Download the Just Pray app. It is an amazing tool to get your salah on point. As always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.