Talking snakes.

In the past, when I’ve spoken with nontheists about why they don’t believe in God, Christianity, the bible, or Jesus, often the reasons they gave was they weren’t raised Christian, and weren’t raised to take it seriously as a belief system.

Which is fair! It’s the very same reason I’m not Muslim. I was raised Christian, not Muslim, and was raised to favor Christianity. So if someone ever told me in my teens and early twenties, “Have you considered Islam?” I’d’ve honestly said no, I never have. And wasn’t interested in giving it a shot. If I were to give any religion a shot, it’d be my own. Eventually I did exactly that.

Nontheists do the very same thing. When they’re young, they don’t often think about why they don‘t believe in God; they simply don’t. Their parents don’t, and they mimic their unbelieving parents. They know this.

Now, if you encounter them when they’re older, when they’ve been studying atheism for a bit, and now they wanna debate Christians about the merits of religion, now they’re not gonna tell you, “I’m atheist because I was raised that way, and never considered religion a viable option.” No; now they’re definitely in the anti-religion camp, and that explanation—though true—sounds pathetic to them. Now they’re gonna say the reason they’re atheist is because [CURRENT POPULAR REASON]—whatever their favorite atheist authors are currently denouncing the hardest. Sometimes that’s ill-behaved Christians. Sometimes theodicy—“If God exists and is good, evil wouldn’t happen, but it does, so he doesn’t or isn’t.”

And sometimes they don’t believe because they find God, and popular Christian ideas about God, silly. The idea of a old bearded man in the sky, shaking his finger at us or hurling lightning bolts because we sin or don’t believe in him? Ridiculous.

In the second creation story, there’s a נָחַשׁ/nakháš, usually translated “serpent.” In Genesis 3 it has a conversation with the first woman. Seriously: A snake. Talking to a human. And the human talks back. And this isn’t fiction, like Harry Potter, where Harry talks to a snake too; this is a story Christians (and Jews, and Muslims) are meant to take seriously as an explanation for why God didn’t just make the world a paradise for us to live forever in: He totally did do that, but we sinned and ruined everything.

Skeptics simply can’t get past the talking snake. Heck, I’ve known Christians who struggle with it. I used to be one of them. I’m now of the opinion—same as many Christians, whether they admit it or not—this isn’t a literal snake. It’s the devil. Rv 12.9 Christians will pitch different theories about how this story took place—the devil transmogrified itself into a serpent, or somehow possessed an actual serpent—but I think in this context nakháš doesn’t even mean “serpent”; it’s means “devil.” But plenty of Christians have plenty of other theories.

Of course, skeptics find the idea of the devil silly too. Really?—a red man with horns, hooves, tail, and pitchfork, running amok, writing rock music, tempting Christians to not come to a full and complete stop at a stop sign? Ludicrous.

Now you can, and I have, wasted a whole bunch of time trying to explain the pop-culture depictions of God, the devil, the second creation story, and Christianity are filled to the brim with rubbish. These skeptics aren’t remotely interested in who God really is; they already don’t believe. In the very same way you don’t take Zeus seriously.

So shake the dust from your feet and move along.

Ditching the talking snakes.

There have been certain liberal theologians who think the issue isn’t with skeptics who think these things are silly: They think these things are silly.

Talking snakes?—we all know there’s no such thing. Nor talking donkeys. Nor bushes which burn but don’t burn up, floating axeheads, sundials which go backwards, manna from heaven, virgins conceiving a baby, faith healing, walking on water, and the dead returning to life and living forever.

In other words, all the miracles. And, well, Christianity itself. ’Cause some of these miracles are creedal—we believe God really did become human, really did rise from the dead, really will return and fix the world and raise us to live forever. Reject those things because they’re “silly,” and swap ’em with some weird interpretation which might not be “silly” but surely isn’t biblical or Christian… and well, that’s what these liberal theologians do.

They create a lobotomized form of Christianity which isn’t really Christian, doesn’t have the Holy Spirit in it, and don’t get a lot of converts. Because whenever people seek religion (and aren’t just marrying into it), they want miracles to be a part of it. Whenever people seek Jesus, they want him to show himself and prove himself. And he will! But liberal theologians don’t believe he will, so they feel justified in creating their warped, inadequate substitutes for a relationship with the living God.

Bluntly, miracles are a part of Christianity. Always have been. If you don’t care for them, there are churches filled with like-minded unbelievers, and you can go sit with them if you like, and try to conjure up explanations for why the bible’s wrong about them, and make disciples who even more eagerly don’t believe. Or you can have a God-experience and realize he never did turn the miracles off, and sometimes does even weirder things than we find in the bible.

And maybe also realize it’s kinda ridiculous to downplay miracles just because miracle stories might alienate skeptics. Makes far more sense to show skeptics a miracle, and make ’em doubt their own skepticism.