Faith, It's Loss, and the Reason Why

Tim Prowse, and United Methodist Church pastor for 20 years, lost his faith and left the ministry. He discusses the process which led him to this decision in an interview with Sam Harris here. An excerpt:

Ironically, it was seminary that inaugurated my leap of unfaith.  It was so much easier to believe when living in an uncritical, unquestioning, naïve state.  Seminary training with its demands for rigorous and intentional study and reflection coupled with its values of reason and critical inquiry began to undermine my naïveté.  I discovered theologians, philosophers and authors I never knew existed.  I found their questions stimulating but their answers often unsatisfying. For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem.  How do we harmonize this fact with the conception of an all-loving, all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly human product and the God it purports does not exist, other church teachings, such as communion and baptism, unraveled rather quickly.  To quote Nietzsche, I was seeing through a different “perspective” – a perspective based on critical thinking, reason and deduction.  By honing these skills over time, reason and critical thinking became my primary tools and faith quickly diminished. Ultimately, these tools led to the undoing of my faith rather than the strengthening of it.

Reason and critical thinking are excellent tools in ferreting out the false and in seeking the Truth. Mr. Prowse discovered that just accepting dogma and the stories in the Bible weren't enough to live an awakened and authentic life. As the Buddha put it,

Do not believe anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything simply because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe traditions because they have been handed down for generations. But after observation and analysis, when you have found that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.