Things that should make Christians feel suspicious

Religion is masterful at encouraging doublethink among its followers, so some aspects of my faith really only make sense in hindsight, now that I've left it. Here are some things that, while not proofs against Christianity necessarily, should be given more consideration by church-goers. Some of these things have theological rationalizations or reasons behind them, varying from denomination to denomination and person to person. Some of these may not even apply to a particular denomination, but I'm writing this coming from a Calvinist/Baptist/Assemblies of God perspective according to how I was raised.

If you are a Christian, it should make you feel suspicious that

Religious leaders lie about why people leave Christianity. I can't recall a time when I was given an honest portrayal of an ordinary Christian apostate. Drifters were characterized as bitter against God, cowardly, weak in the flesh/sinful, or insufficiently indoctrinated in apologetics. There was no such thing as a reasonable atheist who had given religion their absolute best try but couldn't hang on due to a simple lack of evidence. Admitting this would humanize non-believers and make the Biblical position seem like it has potential weaknesses, and the believers can't have that. Christians want it both ways: they want people to take them as factually correct, except when evidence fails, in which case they ought to believe by blind faith. Either way atheists and other non-Christians get vilified.

People are constantly making excuses for the failures of an almighty, benevolent God. Beneficial happenstance is attributed to God's mercy. When calamities strike, God's plan becomes "mysterious" or the event is attributed to human fallenness. It seems awfully convenient that you can take half the evidence and say it proves God's goodness but wallpaper over the other half. See also Argument from incomplete devastation, which runs unquestioned in Christian circles.

One of the most important ways Christianity holds onto followers is by assuring them that if they do not believe, they will go to hell. Conveniently, hell is a place you only go after you die, so no one can give an accurate report on whether or not it's a real place. In order to be safe from it, you need to stay a Christian your entire life (and even then you may still be rejected by God, as anyone who has read Jesus's words knows). Of course we're assured it's quite miserable down there. Oh, and if you don't recruit other people to join the faith, they'll go to hell too. Ingenious.

The "unfailing moral standards" of the Bible are continually revised as society evolves. We can see this happening as issues like women's and gay rights are leaving churches with a choice between losing followers or updating their teachings to fit with the national conscience. Even in my fundamentalist Assembly of God church, many verses in the Bible were passed off as "of the times," like the requirement for men to have short hair and women to have long hair and head coverings. I don't know of any church that follows literally every Biblical, or even New Testament, mandate (such a congregation might exist, but please don't tell me about it). It should look suspicious that, while people may say the Bible guides their morals, it doesn't really.

There are no miracles anymore. Sometimes people will point to a marvelous coincidence as proof of a miracle. But walking on water wasn't a coincidence. Feeding a crowd with a loaf of bread and two fishes wasn't a coincidence. Parting the waters of a great sea wasn't a coincidence. Why doesn't God seem to do these kinds of miracles anymore? Other people may say that God cured their sickness, but how do we know it wasn't their body's own immune system? The placebo effect is widely known to science. Even diseases like cancer are known to spontaneously go into remission a fraction of the time, due to natural causes. Why can't God ever seem to regrow an amputated limb? Suspicious.

Christians rely heavily on the indoctrination of children to gain recruits. It's no secret that most people stick with the religion they were brought up in. And it makes sense that children are an easy target, since most of them receive religious instruction before they have well-formed critical thinking abilities, a strong sense of self, or resistance to authority. Shouldn't this trouble you, if you are a Christian? Shouldn't it worry you that the most relied-upon way to gain followers is to groom the same demographic of people who think that there are monsters in their closet?

Like I said, none of these are proofs and I could probably have constructed rationalizations for all of them when I was a Christian. What I'm getting at here is a bigger picture. I should have realized a lot sooner that the emperor has no clothes.