A Chinese American's search for truth in a meaningless world. Atheists often say “You were born a Christian, so how can you judge whether it’s true?” But what they do not realize is that they, too, were born into atheism.
Awesome to read your story about leaving the atheist faith. It seems like Chinese people are in a better position to accept Christianity than much of the West is. Chinese people seem to be humble while the west has the issue of “me, me, me” where the individual has become their idol.
Good writing. I resonated with a lot of your own personal story despite coming from a completely different ethnic and socioreligious background. Can't wait for part 2!
I also cannot wait for you to dive more deeply into eastern philosophy and classical works, as I've had my fill of the Western classics.
I feel really fortunate to have stumbled on this substack.
I grew up Catholic, but became a self-proclaimed atheist when I started high school, and went the next decade reading about religion and philosophy without ever consistently practicing anything past a vague Stoicism, constantly oscillating between "there is no God" and "maybe there's something, but it's not the God I grew up with". I'm a catechumen in the Orthodox Church now, and in the midst of the overly aggresive online Orthosphere, it's really a blessing to see thoughtful and nuanced writing like this. Great work, can't wait to read more!
I had a similar intellectual journey to Orthodoxy. You articulate the disillusionment with secular humanism really well. Thanks for this post and that meme that I've been seeing on 4chan for years.
Hallelujah to read your story! I’m a Chinese American Christian college student who was raised Protestant and am now heavily exploring Orthodoxy. God bless you brother!
Thanks for the read! I'm materialist in a way that to me it's obvious that with time, people who enjoy killing and forgetting foreigners will inherit ever more riches, whereas people who enjoy mingling with foreigners will themselves be forgotten. Darwinian racism seems to be fairly objective and natural. Surely, it does not have prescriptions for the individual, and neither does it deny the diversity of human fetishes. But for anyone who'd like stability and history, racist materialism would be the only way. In this context, Christianity is merely treason.
Just to note, Western atheists are hyper-Christian in their axiology. They put the name of atheism to shame with their rabid moralitarianism indistinguishable from the wider Abrahamism. By professing their belief in human rights (including females, femboys and foreigners), they effectively further the ancient Christian dogma about souls, equally created by the god. I wouldn't exactly trust atheists to be different without a bloody revolution such as in Maoist China (granted, China was never Christian to begin with).
> "Reductionist materialism cannot save us because it destroys the source of all knowledge."
I'd go with constructive hedonism as my answer. Sex and murder feel good, and a cursory look at this collective dream's internal history demonstrates them to be beneficial to everyone involved. In fact, bugs are bugging all the time everywhere around you, and we can recognise buggery when faced with it (the unity of life). Not sure if it constitutes "knowing", but it surely makes me... inspired. Ooga booga.
Overall, your denigration of objective reality is in itself thoroughly hyper-Christian, post-modernist. Not sure how that made you choose some irrelevant sand people sect of Christianity from Syria or Ethiopia with a pitiful track record of being overrun a whole millennium prior to Europe's killing itself.
> "These scholars tried to create a world where ethics could exist without the idea of transcendent truth, without God"
MacIntyre? Try Tom Holland who in his Dominion (2017) draws the genealogy of modern wokism all the way from earliest Christianity. The Papal bull Sublimis Dei (1537) already professed miscegenation as desirable.
> "Although atheists harshly criticize Christianity as being a historically-conditioned desert religion, they fail to see that they themselves are the pious worshippers of the Post-Enlightenment Faith, which demands so much out of its believers — immolating the ideas of truth, love, and beauty on the altar of materialism — and is itself the most historically-conditioned of all."
Yes, then why argue with these non-aware atheists? This entire article is an exercise in denigrating yourself to their pitiful level. The very charge against Christianity of being "man-made" or "historically-conditioned" is steeped in Christian presuppositions about the religion being supposedly "divinely ordained" and thus not even atheistic...
> "I didn’t want to believe in any irrational propaganda that only became popular because of arbitrary historical conditions, such as modern atheism."
Oh no, you remained Christian/atheist even after your awakening... What else is there to a philosophy aside from triumph in the world around you? My charge against America is not some idealistic internal monologuing about how I dislike it - my charge is that America is going down, inviting millions of Chinese and Mexicans and being replaced (instead of taking their lands and replacing them). Something highly tangible to my sense data.
Your critique of Christanity/W atheism is deeply Christian/W atheistic itself. Every single time.
> "So I decided to take a leap of faith and fully believe in Love and Truth."
That Christians call it such, it does not become so.
> "Traditional religion became appealing to me because it had the backing of thousands of years of history, culture, and philosophy, lovingly and sincerely passed through many generations from teachers to students, holding itself accountable to daily practices and written standards of orthodoxy."
The issue is that the invention of the steam machine made quite a few of those venerable traditions obsolete. Now, if a deluded Christian universalist uses steam trains to transport Africans to Europe, he will eventually make his position self-contradictory because his own continent will be made extinct, and his idiotic religion rightfully forgotten.
> Materialist atheists would say “we’re all just a bundle of chemicals” and yet continue to love their families in all seriousness and without a hint of irony. They say things like “money is just a social construct” and yet get infuriated when you steal from them.
There's no contradiction tho. You can both love your family and acknowledge the facts of science... Or acknowledge the origin of money and still find the useful and meaningful.
Awesome to read your story about leaving the atheist faith. It seems like Chinese people are in a better position to accept Christianity than much of the West is. Chinese people seem to be humble while the west has the issue of “me, me, me” where the individual has become their idol.
Good writing. I resonated with a lot of your own personal story despite coming from a completely different ethnic and socioreligious background. Can't wait for part 2!
I also cannot wait for you to dive more deeply into eastern philosophy and classical works, as I've had my fill of the Western classics.
I feel really fortunate to have stumbled on this substack.
I grew up Catholic, but became a self-proclaimed atheist when I started high school, and went the next decade reading about religion and philosophy without ever consistently practicing anything past a vague Stoicism, constantly oscillating between "there is no God" and "maybe there's something, but it's not the God I grew up with". I'm a catechumen in the Orthodox Church now, and in the midst of the overly aggresive online Orthosphere, it's really a blessing to see thoughtful and nuanced writing like this. Great work, can't wait to read more!
Thank you for writing this! I really enjoyed reading your personal and philosophical journey to the church. Let’s hang in NY soon!
I had a similar intellectual journey to Orthodoxy. You articulate the disillusionment with secular humanism really well. Thanks for this post and that meme that I've been seeing on 4chan for years.
Hallelujah to read your story! I’m a Chinese American Christian college student who was raised Protestant and am now heavily exploring Orthodoxy. God bless you brother!
Thanks for the read! I'm materialist in a way that to me it's obvious that with time, people who enjoy killing and forgetting foreigners will inherit ever more riches, whereas people who enjoy mingling with foreigners will themselves be forgotten. Darwinian racism seems to be fairly objective and natural. Surely, it does not have prescriptions for the individual, and neither does it deny the diversity of human fetishes. But for anyone who'd like stability and history, racist materialism would be the only way. In this context, Christianity is merely treason.
Just to note, Western atheists are hyper-Christian in their axiology. They put the name of atheism to shame with their rabid moralitarianism indistinguishable from the wider Abrahamism. By professing their belief in human rights (including females, femboys and foreigners), they effectively further the ancient Christian dogma about souls, equally created by the god. I wouldn't exactly trust atheists to be different without a bloody revolution such as in Maoist China (granted, China was never Christian to begin with).
> "Reductionist materialism cannot save us because it destroys the source of all knowledge."
I'd go with constructive hedonism as my answer. Sex and murder feel good, and a cursory look at this collective dream's internal history demonstrates them to be beneficial to everyone involved. In fact, bugs are bugging all the time everywhere around you, and we can recognise buggery when faced with it (the unity of life). Not sure if it constitutes "knowing", but it surely makes me... inspired. Ooga booga.
Overall, your denigration of objective reality is in itself thoroughly hyper-Christian, post-modernist. Not sure how that made you choose some irrelevant sand people sect of Christianity from Syria or Ethiopia with a pitiful track record of being overrun a whole millennium prior to Europe's killing itself.
> "These scholars tried to create a world where ethics could exist without the idea of transcendent truth, without God"
MacIntyre? Try Tom Holland who in his Dominion (2017) draws the genealogy of modern wokism all the way from earliest Christianity. The Papal bull Sublimis Dei (1537) already professed miscegenation as desirable.
> "Although atheists harshly criticize Christianity as being a historically-conditioned desert religion, they fail to see that they themselves are the pious worshippers of the Post-Enlightenment Faith, which demands so much out of its believers — immolating the ideas of truth, love, and beauty on the altar of materialism — and is itself the most historically-conditioned of all."
Yes, then why argue with these non-aware atheists? This entire article is an exercise in denigrating yourself to their pitiful level. The very charge against Christianity of being "man-made" or "historically-conditioned" is steeped in Christian presuppositions about the religion being supposedly "divinely ordained" and thus not even atheistic...
> "I didn’t want to believe in any irrational propaganda that only became popular because of arbitrary historical conditions, such as modern atheism."
Oh no, you remained Christian/atheist even after your awakening... What else is there to a philosophy aside from triumph in the world around you? My charge against America is not some idealistic internal monologuing about how I dislike it - my charge is that America is going down, inviting millions of Chinese and Mexicans and being replaced (instead of taking their lands and replacing them). Something highly tangible to my sense data.
Your critique of Christanity/W atheism is deeply Christian/W atheistic itself. Every single time.
> "So I decided to take a leap of faith and fully believe in Love and Truth."
That Christians call it such, it does not become so.
> "Traditional religion became appealing to me because it had the backing of thousands of years of history, culture, and philosophy, lovingly and sincerely passed through many generations from teachers to students, holding itself accountable to daily practices and written standards of orthodoxy."
The issue is that the invention of the steam machine made quite a few of those venerable traditions obsolete. Now, if a deluded Christian universalist uses steam trains to transport Africans to Europe, he will eventually make his position self-contradictory because his own continent will be made extinct, and his idiotic religion rightfully forgotten.
Excellent job!
Believing atheism can be understood as faith proves you have no idea what you're talking about. It's literally the opposite of that.
https://open.substack.com/pub/stevenberger/p/the-end-product?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1nm0v2
yo bro great post since ur not an atheist anymore wht would u respond to this question with:
" can History verify Miracles ? "
yo bro great post since ur not an atheist anymore wht would u respond to this question with:
" can History verify Miracles ? "
> Materialist atheists would say “we’re all just a bundle of chemicals” and yet continue to love their families in all seriousness and without a hint of irony. They say things like “money is just a social construct” and yet get infuriated when you steal from them.
There's no contradiction tho. You can both love your family and acknowledge the facts of science... Or acknowledge the origin of money and still find the useful and meaningful.