Space For Doubt

It wasn’t much of a room per se. A hard dirt floor covered in plastic moisture barrier. Cobwebs everywhere. About 20 inches of floor to “ceiling” clearance. A headlamp lighting my work area. I was attempting to dig a storm cellar underneath my house, in my crawl space. My phone was playing an audiobook on Egyptian history. I was covered in dirt and sweat.

This was the setting for the beginning of my deconstruction. The audiobook was the spark that ignited 33 years worth of pent up fuel.

I have always been intrigued by history. I’d never consider myself a history buff or aficionado, but I do love me a good occasional historical documentary, book, etc.

For some reason that has long ago vanished into the ether, I decided I wanted to learn about Egyptian history. What better way then to listen to an audiobook while doing a chore? Multi-tasking for the win! I did a few minutes of perusing reviews, made my choice, and got to work listening/digging.

I think I was around 1/4 of the way into the book, likely day two or three of my storm cellar project, when the bomb went off.

Here I am, hunched over, shoulders and back aching from the awkward digging. My history lesson reaches the part about the building of the pyramids and other great monuments of Egypt. It starts giving out dates for this project or that.

Then everything in my head stops for a moment.

Wait. Isn’t that right when the biblical date of the flood was supposed to be? And all of these monuments that date immediately afterward? How would they have been built when there was only a tiny remnant of humanity near Mt. Ararat?

It didn’t compute. How could this be?

I kept listening and kept digging. I learn there were TWO methods of dating these events. One was the typical radiocarbon dating. The other was via archaeology. There is essentially an unbroken line of rule in Egypt, where records have been preserved for thousands of years. Transaction receipts, ruling pharaonic records, etc. This allows us to work backwards through history without the need for C-14 dating methods.

The two methods agreed. They. Agreed.

Casting doubt on any one system of measurement would be a reasonable argument if you had legitimate data, but to cast aside two independent ways of arriving at the same date? Every synapse of my engineer brain said that was impossible. The bible had to be wrong. Or at least the current interpretation I was working under had to be wrong.

I finished up my work for the day and went inside, now on a mission. I needed to look up other independent sources of knowledge to fact check this audiobook.

Over the next few days I did exactly that. To no one’s surprise, there was agreement on all fronts from all sources I found. I expanded my reach. I looked up other civilizations that existed during this flood period. There were many! There are unbroken records of occupation going as far back as 7,000 BC in several areas of the world. The flood supposedly occurred in ~2,350 BC.

Then I started looking up the feasibility of the flood happening in the first place. There were a few very poorly supported and obviously bias articles in favor. On the other hand, there was a >95% consensus, supported with extremely convincing arguments, strong science, and sound logic, that this was not a thing that even COULD happen. (Short of God Himself creating a LOT of water, skewing the evidence during and afterwards, and then removing all of that new water)

And just like that….I no longer believed in a worldwide flood. I don’t remember there being a specific day or time the switch was flipped. I do remember one day just realizing “I don’t believe this anymore”. The limited flood theory is something I still do buy into conceptually (I’ll get into that in another post).

What I really want you take away from this story is this: There was no conscious decision on my part to abandon my old belief. It just happened. There was no going back for me. I could not have chosen to believe in the old story anymore even if my literal life depended on it.

In another post, I will go into more about the specifics of why the flood is such a problematic story. Every facet of it falls apart when examined under close scrutiny.

This was a turning point for me. I had abandoned one belief. What else might there be out there that I was believing incorrectly? The flood narrative led me right into the tower of babel, which somehow put me back at the traditional 7-day creation account, which led to the Exodus, which led to…..

Each domino fell one by one, but not immediately. I spent weeks of research into each belief before ultimately letting them go. [UPDATE:10/29/24] I need to ammend this to clarify that I am letting go the standard interpretations of these stories. The exodus, creation, etc, I believe can have valid interpretations. They just differ greatly from the traditional SDA one.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and we were discussing how our faith sometimes feels like a house of cards. Pull one card out and the whole house collapses. They asked me “what does your house look like these days?”

“Well….I guess it looks a lot more like an empty field with two pillars in it.” I said. “One is my belief that universe was created by an intelligent designer, and the other is my belief that Jesus was/is real and was who he says he was.”

My “house” currently has two, so far unaffected, foundational pillars. It is with these pillars that I am attempting to build some semblance of a new abode. The detritus of the previous house now having been mostly cleared away.

For right now, I think I am content enough to pulled up a lawn chair between my two pillars and feel the fresh unimpeded breeze. The full strength of the warm sun on my face, with no walls to block it.

In this moment I am here and that is enough.

Peace.