I'm sure we all have an interesting story. When I have time, I'll add mine.

I started as a Baptist and was forced to go to Bible School for three years in a row. After that and all of the torture that ensewed from my being over weight and the bullets not going off after pulling the trigger I realized that if there was a god then he must be torturing me. I have been told that he has something planned for me but with this body i doubt that plan has anything to do with the near future. So i then switched to being an Aethiest and then got interested in Wicca when my brother converted. Then later i got into Satanism and stuck with that for a while. Then switched to necromancy untill i was found out and forced to switch to something else. That was when i got into a little bit of voodoo which ended up like the Necromancy and now im just a Wandering Aethiest studying the religions that Christianity and others like it would call evil and the spawn of satan. As for the inner workings of my mind those just came from a mix of other belief systems that sounded the closest to what might be the truth.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:53, Mon 16 Aug 2004.

I started out as a Roman Catholic. From between grades 6-7, I was very into it. I believed I was a good little Christian girl.

I started not caring so much when I realised some of the things Christians did. Good CHristians. They burned "witches" they murdered thousands in crusades...is this what I was doomed to be?

I fell away from it.

In my search through the furry fandom and teh gothic subculture, I realised that I was something quite different. I wasn't just a simple human girl of the roman catholic faith.

The next stage in my religious life is cloudy. I did a lot of searching. I finally landed on what I call myself today, a believer of many things but I only follow a few.

Antoher reason I didn't want to be a raoman catholic, or any chrstian, anymore was that (I believe) God hates me for what and not who I am. That is to say, he believes I should be condemmed due to my bisexuality.

Those who are Christian I often find have zero tolerance for other religions. My family is very intolerant of anyone not like them. I do not want to be doomed to live and grow up just like them.


So I settled upon views that bring out who I am and allow me to be me.

*Just filled his description yesterday, woot*

Well let's see.

I was born and raised Roman Catholic, and I was a faithful, if inquisitive kid.  I grew up believing in evolution, geology, astronomy and archeology because I let books and the BBS world raise me.

I never once encountered the Creationist view.  The idea that people even believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible was foreign to me.

So when I finally met a girl who was a Creationist in 11th grade (16 years old), I was awestruck.  There wasn't much I could say.  I held my ground and refuted what I knew, which was no small part - I found out that they were talking about the things I said four years after the fact.

In order to convert me, from Catholicism and my evilutionist beliefs, they invited me to their Bible studies, on their field trips, and so on.  What struck me though, during these trips and my discussions, was their hypocrisy.

Claiming not to be interested in sex (and some of them clearly had... repression issues).
Blaming Satan for twisting the words of the Bible then freely twisting mine.
Lying, and when called on it, admitting it.

One publication which refuted other religions, when it came to Buddhism, used the exact same text to say why Buddhism was wrong that was used to support Christianity against another religion (I think it was Islam).

One of the people in the group tried to do something...  rather terrible to my sister, eventually recanting and claiming his 'faith' in Christianity was all a show.

Of the 50-some people in that youth group, only one, one girl was honest to both herself and others.

----

I did a lot of thinking, for over a year.  Eventually I came to the conclusion that I should take a step aside from Christianity and try to read the Bible as someone foreign to the faith would.

I would either re-affirm my faith, or lose it, but I could not live a lie and claim to be a Christian when I could not on my own accept it.

So I did...  And I came to my conclusion.

The hardest decision I ever made was to tell my mother about leaving.  Most people who learned made a token effort at best to try to bring me back, if that.  My sister was furious, but she eventually left Christianity as well, for many of the same reasons I did.

For the next year I really was rather awash, how I came to believe what I believe now is another story.

Some interesting and heart-felt stories here.

Myself, I was raised in a traditional conservative Baptist church.  When I was little (and unsaved) I hated having to be forced to sit in a pew being bored to death by preaching and singing century old hymns.  Eventually though my big sister desided to accept Jesus as her saviour and got Baptised.  I wanted to as well but my father wouldn't let me (I always wanted to be like my sisters, I even talked my mom to get me a cabbage patch doll when I was little, I promptly covered him with tattoos.)  which I was greatful for because I didn't really understand the gospel and just wanted to be like my big sister.

Eventually though my parents went though a very nasty devorce in which mother stole us all and fled the state and got a nasty lawyer to make my father seem really bad.  So I spent most of my childhood very bitter and was one of the most selfish annoying little kids out there.

When I was 12, there was a big storm and lots and lots of snow.  I had started walking home but trudging through the snow I was wondering if I was going to die out in the cold it was really only a couple miles but the reality of my mortality weighed heavy on me.  I had been in church more or less my whole life and had heard the message of redemption and God's gift of giving his beloved Jesus as a sacrafice to pay for the whole worlds' sin.  Sunday school teachers had us memorize some of the more fundamental salvation verses (John 3:16, romans 3:23 , romans 6:23, and romans 10:9-10, and 13) come to mind.  Eyes watered I knew that if I was to die right then and there I was going to Hell forever and it was something that I didn't want.  I looked to the heavens and spoke into the white flakes of snow comming down upon my face that if what he says in these verses are true then I'm going to take his word for it, that I believe it and want it for myself.

I count that as my moment of spirtual birth but I eventually backslid as no one around me went to church or even considered spirtual manners.  And besides, 12 year olds generally are not the most mature people.  As I got into my teenage years I became increasingly bitter and cruel espically to my mother, many many times I brought her to tears with my bitter accusations when she confronted me with my own problems.  There was some truth to it, when she got devorced, she just abandoned us into anti-depressants and other things but still, no excuse is good enough justify cruelty for cruelty's sake espically against family.  I would always feel conficted when I was with my father and at church again but being out of that culture.  Well people just can't be solo christians, it's only a matter of time before they blow it.  My sophmore year I got really heavily involved in drugs sometimes there were months at a time where I was never sober.

I guess I can say back then my god was my friends.  I looked to them and put all my hopes and dreams in them adults were somehow against us all and our generation had to be free of them and not be tainted by them hense my loyality to them.  But when I was tripping and got mugged by homeless kids that little house of cards came crashing down, no teenagers can do bad things too.

Feeling empty, I desided that it was time for a change. I told my mom that I wanted to move in with my dad because he had really been denied of fathering his children and because I needed a new start.  I went to camp and when they were 'selling' their bible college, I was pissed.  I thought it a bunch of propaganda and dishonest to do such things.  I got into a couple yelling matches with the administration.

Two years later I ended up going to that very bible college.

After discovering that there is more to christianity then the meteocraty that 80% of christians settle for, I went back to oregon to become one of the adult leaders in the club to make up for some of damage I did in the years I did there.  I've been doing that for 4 years now, though I work in the electronics field I am convinced that ministry for the christian is not optional.

I Was raised in a family that took the protestant reformation a step to far. My Family beleived that no one and nothing was needed to guide your path or your relationship with God. Needles to say I did not have very much faith to begin with, and then I was exposed to a congregation (Denomination left intentionaly out as not to offend the Good people of that denomination) that was full of Bigots, backstabbers, weekend christians and politicos. That turned me off from Christianity, seeing all these very unchristian behaviors by people claiming to be the pinacle of christian behavior. This was age eight.

At that point in my life I had to start taking care of myself at home because of various and sundry reasons. Being a genius and knowing it at an early age, I decided to take up the study of Comparative religions as a hobby. I Read everything I could get my hands on and took every opportunity to learn anything that could be used to disprove or debunk the Bible. Over my pre-teen and teen years I did a little dabbling in the Dark arts and Blood magic, and soon got tired of of the wannabe demonolgists who couldn't find a Diabolico if one was standing infront of them, or Dark arts practitioners that new too much and was willing to kill people for power they might or might not receive. About age 14 I was stricken with a neurological cronic pain condition that was misdiagnossed as S.L.E. To help deal with the pain I turned to Taoism and Zen control of my body. It Did a lot for my physical being but I could never find Harmony with my Mind, Body And Spirit at the same Time, and was left pretty much in the Gnostic category since I started to see an order in Nature that I couldn't debunk mathmatically as a scientist.

This Brought me to a particularly interesting Individual who brought me into the  pagan fold as a Gaian. I received a bit of tutalage from a High priestess and learned a number of things that were very usefull to me over the years, and what I could do as a practicer of the way of the Goddess and the God. For eleven years I was a practicing Pagan and helped bring a number of "Children of the Godess" out of the Broom closet as it were, and either taught them the path or helped them determine their own as best as I could. But despite my abilities and to spite my status in certain circles I never felt TRULY fullfilled.

I have to point out that at this point in my life I had survived over THIRTY near fatal situations including Gunshots, stabwounds, a Fever of 105.6 (Due to a n alergic reaction to an innoc.) three automobile accidents (two of them One year apart on christmas eve, both times I sustained major head trama) A rather interesting Stint in teh Airforce that I can't discuss here and six electical shocks of which the highest voltage was 440 volts at 12 amps on three live wires and three grounds on an Industrial size fence. I had also been through a divorce and one bankruptcy at that point and was Heavily involved in a disfunctional relationship with a woman who bore me a daughter (My Second Child, #1 is with my ex-wife). Well I bought my daughter "The Prince of Egypt" naively not knowing it was the story of Moses. I watched the Movie, and I can tell you the exact moment when I quit trying to ignore God and started to listen to what the Holy spirit had to say...(Through Heavens Eyes btw) and something about THAT song at THAT moment is what I needed to hear. Later I watched the Veggitales with my daughter and as silly as it sounds, that is when I started thinking solidly about the faith. I considered Judaism and Catholocism initially but neither seemed to be right....(The Relationship ended and the Woman took my Daughter and left the state, denying me my paternal rights,) Eventually I resettled in Little Rock AR and found a church home through friends. I took the plunge (figuratively) and became a Christian, and although I went to a Lutheran Church, I always considered myself a christian that happened to go to a Lutheran congregation. I gave everything over to the Lord and relenquished any control that I thought I had over my life to him.

After that my life Changed. I met my Wife to be at an SCA event, and things
just seemed to fly by both Good and Bad. I lost my Job, became Disabled, and filed for bankruptcy a second time, I also Got Married, found out I qualifide for student and vocational grants that I didn't think were possible, and went back to collage. That brings me to now an Age 31, Married, returning Student at a Church of Christ private collage.

Why do I believe in what I believe?
I suppose that we are a sum of our experiences. And we learn from those experiences. For myself, I'll start off by saying my entire family, immediate, uncles, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, etc are athiests. I was raised by a very caring mother and father, and they made mistakes too. But they did the best they could. they did the things they did because they wanted the best for me. They didn't want me to make the same mistakes, or make any mistakes. My dad was a perfectionist, and so am I now as an adult. As a child it meant I had to live up to a standard few could live up to. I couldn't live up to it, no one could. But a perfectionist doesn't allow for mistakes. Odd that i would turn that way myself, but I guess you learn to accept some things until you see it in yourself. My parants were good, but there are always struggles in life. Regardless if your parants are christian, athiest, whatever. That is part of life, and no one is perfect. If your parents try to set rules, it's because they care. I've learned as an adult that is just another process we learn and grow from. (I put that in as a reminder for those who had christian parents and felt they were stifled, that no one is immune from a life of struggles)

Really, my life was good though. Strict, but good. When I was 8, a baptist church came in the neighborhood inviting us to sunday school, where there would be the usual assortment of stories, games, treats and rewards. I found it good overall. Nothing was very in depth. Stories were taken from the bible, and made short and simple, pictures added, you know the sort of thing. I remember some about hell, and how scary those could be. It was a baptist church, and every so often my parents would come to the sunday service. But they really didn't believe in god, or read the bible. Around 10, one of the few services my parents attended, the pastor had a serman about rock and roll being the devils music, (or so they told me), and they didn't let me go to church anymore. I enjoyed it over all, but my parents really didn't approve of church.

After that, I was on my own. Nothing special, no real influences form any religion. (other than athiesm, and evolution) so as a kid, I grew up believing evolution was real, and how the church were manipulators of the world. You know the usual witch burnings, how they edited the bible, and how the church just wants your money. I had one friend who was christian, but I made fun of him everytime he said something about God, so eventually he stopped talking about God, although stayed my friend. I rather enjoyed knocking religion as a teen, and started me on the path to looking for other issues that the bible or religion has wrong. Back then there was no internet, (or at least not available to me), so all my research was done the old fashioned way of going to the library, and reading up on it. I found plenty of information to make christianity look bad. There were boooks that were indeed changed to interpret the bible. There was witch burnings. but in my search, I also found I was wrong on many things. The bible wasn't changed, just the books to interpret them were. So I learned how the bible itself is unchanged, and as complete as is possible, (which is very complete.) That started me questioning what else I was wrong about if I was wrong about that.

It started me questioning about God. Searching for religions, I considered Jehovah Witness, Catholic, Latter Day Saints, and found them lacking. However it was brief that I went to services, or actually had sit down discussions with the groups in question. Still not good enough I researched other religions, muslim, new age, and mysticism, and judiasm. Nothing. I knew why they weren't right, but I had no answer as to what was right.

I continue on, I still had no answers, and pretty much let that quetion slide, as I was switching careers, and pretty decided that religion had no impact on me. For all intents, I suppose that was agnostic. I felt there was more, but no one could answer it.

Really, for all of my life, I had it pretty easy. I am a relaxed easy going guy, not bothered when people try and get in my face. I don't get anger, I just let it roll of my back.

When I was 25 I met this really amazing woman that had me thinking of her a lot. I was visting for a tournament, for the weekend, and although I got her phone number, we both put the wrong foot forward, got our messages crossed, and both thought the other was not really interested. So we never even called each other. But fortunately, tournaments in the area happened 5 to 8 times a year for a weekend each tournament. We had talked at the first tournament and knew the other was coming to the next one, and when I got there, I was told she didn't come. I was so disappointed, that I realized I really thought pretty highly of her after all. But my friend who told me she wasn't going to be there was wrong, and she did show up. We were hanging out all weekend. After that, for the next two years, we really hung out together at every tournament. People actually got out of their seat when I came by if they they were sitting beside her, so I could have that spot.

Now you're asking how did this turn from religion to a dating story, but this heads back to the start of my post about being a sum of our experiences. My wife was a christian. She wasn't a the best example of a christian, she didn't read the bible regularly, she didn't pray regularly, but she was a strong believer. She knew that Jesus died for her on the cross, and trusted in God.

Getting to know her, we still weren't boyfriend girlfriend, even though we hung out for a weekend every month or two. During our second summer, (the 2nd year of tournaments), she came to visit some friends  in my city, and we had talked about that, and I asked if we could get together. She said yes, and we had a lot of fun, but at the end of the night, I went to kiss her goodbye, and she backed off before I could get close. (DENIED, later she told me she thought I was going to, but wasn't ready for that) Long distance and all. I kind of wrote her off over that. I figured, I'm not going to dream about this woman and not even go on a date. I'm writing her off. Yea, well, I decided it couldn't happen, but I still thought about her. No phone calls, nothing. Until one day before a tournament, I get a call call from her out of the blue, (it had been 3 months) and she asks if I was coming to the next tournament(one week away), and we were chit chatting. We start chatting, and I tell her I'll think about it. I wasn't even entered in the tournament, and with a week, there was no way I could even get in that tournament. But all the feelings come back. I decide to go and help our team, and just sit on the sidelines. I hung out with her so much, and I really enjoyed going. But we left with just a hug, and she told me anytime I wanted to come back for a visit I was welcome to. She was being polite, I was forward, and told her, "ok, next month then". she laughed, and said ok.

On the ride back to my city, I was going over in my head how much I was nuts for her, and we had never even been on an official date. The next day I wrote her a letter and sent it to her telling her how much I wanted to go further, and wanted to start a long distance relationship with her. Although we are from different cities, and couldn't readily go back and forth to see each other, we called each other every day. I was on a long distance phone plan that allowed unlimited call time for 20 dollars a month. The phone company sent me a bill saying how that plan saved me 700 dollars in long distance calls that month. I called her every single day,  the shortest call was 1 hour, and that was twice. The longest 6 hours, several times. Phone calls avereaged 3 to 4 hours a day for the next 6 months. I missed only 3 days of calling her. Until we were married. I know it seems fast, and we wanted to wait longer originally, but when we couldn't wait to be married, we kept bumping the date up month by month.

Now why I bring that up, is because my wife was devoted to God, but was still new to faith. I had no interest in God anymore, until my wife told me her interest, and how it would be a central role with God in her life. I accepted her, and therefore God would play a role, despite me thinking her brainwashed. I went to a service with her, because I was curious, and I was hooked. the service was so strong and powerful. I felt I could feel God, something being than me, who was personal.

But still, that was only the beginning. I was not christian. I did not accept Christ, but that was a step to knowing God was real. I went back again with her to that church a month later, and the service was unreal. Everyone must have felt God there. You could feel like you reach out and touch God. The group of people there in the church seemed to be bathed in light. I saw many people dancing in the pews, and aisles, I was dancing.

Asking for a church in my city that was similar to that one, I found a great church, and it is the one I'm in now. I started off with thinking I was a christian now, and soon learned I still had issues to face. I figured all would be well, and my worries gone. Little did I know, I was simply naive about what christian meant. It took 3 more years, before I could truly feel I was christian. For me, I didn't start reading my bible regularly until a couple years ago. That was when things started taking off in my spiritual life.
I started reading about what a christian means, and what they do, and what the battle is truly about. I learned our abttle is not flesh and blood, it's not about surviving this world, but rather standing up, working for God, with God on our side.

Ephesians 6:10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

That's one thing I have had dealt with for a while, and I suppose will always have to. People think this life is it. The real battle is spiritual, and there are demons fighting to influence me, and you. They do not care about you, they just hate God so much they want to take you away from Him. They fooled me for years. I was not possessed. But they try and influence.

Now back to me and my wife. Like I said, my wife was still new to christianity, and a strong believer, but not well read, or sure of everything God wanted from her. That's where I came in. Remember that perfectionist background I grew up with? I took up the slack, and dove in. God used my wife to lead me to Him, and God used me to delve deeper, and bring things to the fore front for my wife. God used each of us, to make the other stronger. Much stronger.

But more so, I learned about tithing. I had always struggled with money. Never having enough.I tithed a pity amount. but then I read about 10% or whatever we can afford and still profit. As a leap of faith my family gave what God gave to us, back to him. And that's when we got out of debt. I still can't explain that. We gave 4 times the amount we usually did, and was broke before, and with giving more, our debt shrank, and our savings grew. We didn't plan that as a test of faith, but in the end, we realized God wouldn't let us down as long as we trust in him.

With each step of faith, Which I have learned is not done, I find more and more that helps us grow in faith. Praise to God for showing the way through the sacrifice of Jesus. Without Him, I would be lost still. I don't know what God has planned for me, but I'm still alive, so I know there's still more to do. Praise God.

So, I should probably expound upon this here.

The endgame for my being a Christian involved my involvement in an Evangelical Youth Group, and another girl who hung on its fringes - though still a very devout Christian.  I'll call her K.

Two other girls are important to this story.  One I lived across the street from, and knew for ten years at the time of me leaving.  Her name is J.  She had a very good friend in the youth group whose name was G.  There were two guys in this group I will mention - A and C.  There is one more girl, H - but she is notable for something I will mention later.  All in all this group had about fifty kids, along with a handful of adult ministers.

I joined with this group because, honestly, I was desperate for friends and it seemed like they would provide a much-needed outlet for me.  In retrospect I was an arrogant, and rather ignorant, bastard, though I was told I had greatly improved from my earlier years, but that is little excuse.

Anyway, after about a year with this group I went on a camping trip with them.  It was during that trip I saw the full scope of their lies and interests - especially C's.  There was only one person there - H, who was truly compassionate.  To give an allegory, she was the candle, everyone else held up a mirror to her light.  Looks the same, but you can tell the real flame by its warmth.

The pain of this revelation litterally brought me to the ground.  I can't really explain it - an emptiness that was so bitingly clear that, I realized I could not even truly count J or G as a friend.

I developed a crush of sorts on J for a time, complaining about what felt like a hollow soul.  She claimed that only God could fill it.  The reality of it was that there was another guy in the group she was interested in.  I saw this, and I got the impression from later discussions with her that she knew I did too...

After that incident I began slowly distancing myself from that group, and hanging out / talking more with K over the course of the next seven months or so.  A part of this involved getting what I needed to fill said hole - friends.

A part of this was a slow realization that God might be a hollow thing.

I did, though, have one major, twelve-hour discussion on J's doorstep, with C and G present as well (and someone else, but he left six hours into it...).  I honestly only remember bits and pieces of it - the most amusing thing being my mom staying up for the discussion despite me being 1: Across the street and 2: Leaving for college in three months.

It's important to note that a lot of people, J and G included, considered me (maybe even still do, I don't know) one of the most intelligent people they ever met.  If not the most.  I drew looks of shock and disbelief when I admitted I did not know something - but anyway.

During this discussion C's lying, hypocrasy, and twisting came out time and time again.  He would lie, or make a twist, and get called on it.  He backtracked immediately as if it were a revalation, and so on.  Much of the discussion focused on Creationism and Catholicism, and their varying degrees, as well as non-Christians and their role in the Universe.

The discussion concluded and we went our seperate ways, I spent about a month going over my faith.  It's hard to explain what my exact conclusion was.  A great deal of it had to do with the volume and frequency of their lies.  Not just to others, but to themselves as well.  I ought to point out that J and others - including my sister - admitted this when I mentioned it.

If they could be so willfully blind, what about those who wrote, and passed on, the Bible?

After a lot of talking - mostly with K, I decided to read the Bible again, taking a step aside of Christianity and free of any preconceptions.  I would approach the Bible as if I were someone looking for religion, not looking for reinforcement.  The latter could well be reinforcing a lie, and I did not want that.  K, naturally, was all for me reading the Bible.

The phrase that turned me was Lot offering his daughters to be raped in order to protect two guests - Genesis 19:8.  Not that the act happenned, of course, but that Lot could be considered rightious when willing to offer up two of his own children for the sanctity of two guests he just met.

A second verse was more stunning - in Numbers.

Num 31:28  And you shall levy a tribute to Jehovah from the men of war who went out to the battle: one body out of five hundred, of men, and of the herd, and of the asses, and of the flock, you shall take from their half, and you shall give to Eleazar the priest as the heave offering of Jehovah.
  And from the sons of Israel's half, you shall take one portion out of fifty, of man, and of the herd, and of the asses, and of the flock, of all the livestock, and you shall give them to the Levites keeping the charge of the tabernacle of Jehovah.
 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as Jehovah had commanded Moses.
 And the prey, the rest of the spoil which the people of the army plundered, was six hundred and seventy five thousand sheep, and seventy two thousand oxen,
 sixty one thousand of the asses;

and of human beings, of the women who had not known a man by lying with a male, the persons were thirty two thousand.

 And the half, the portion of those who went out to the war, the number of the flock was three hundred and thirty seven thousand, five hundred.
 And the tribute to Jehovah of the sheep was six hundred and seventy five,
 and the oxen, thirty six thousand; and their tribute to Jehovah, seventy two;
 and the asses thirty thousand, five hundred; and their tribute to Jehovah, sixty one;

and the human beings sixteen thousand; and their tribute to Jehovah, thirty two persons.

 And Moses gave the tribute, the heave offering of Jehovah, to Eleazar the priest, as Jehovah had commanded Moses.

----

Above and beyond dividing up virgin women by who got to rape them - just like the sheep, asses and cattle were divided - thirty two were 'offered' to Yehovah?

No doubt it really means that the priests just had their way with them instead - but the number is suspiciously low for that.  It was a heave offering - as in, these girls were lifted to the alter.  Since the congregation got quite a share too, there's nothing that states that this was not an actual burnt offering.

Before I came across this passage, I was still willing to be taken back into the fold.  After I read this, I could not accept the Christian god as God.

It would be two weeks before I told my mother, though a few others learned beforehand.  Noone really argued with me about it until I came back from college, oddly.

Bump. I'd encourage anyone who would like to share some background of yourself.

It may help to understand where someone is coming from, and certainly make persepctive come into affect when talking with someone.

Ever forget that the people you argue with are real people with families, dreams, passions, etc.

My story is far from as interesting as the rest of yours, almost to the point where I'm embarassed to post it in the same thread.

I was born Christian in name only, my family on either side is Christian, my mom is agnostic, and I've never learned my dad's beliefs. That last part characterizes how they raised me in so many ways. They've taught me to think for myself, never tried to impress their ideas upon me. If I'm nothing else, I'm an individualist. For most of my early years I went to a Quaker school where I remained agnostic; Quakers do not believe in imposing their beliefs upon others, even in their schools. Entering high school I had become an atheist, more specifically a materialist, by way of cynicism. I decided that all religions were wrong as they tried to scare people into following them with threats of hell and promises of paradise. Discouraged with religion, I decided to become amaterialist, believe in what's in front of me, what's really there. That worked well for me until about 7 months ago when I began practicing Kendo. Now, I was always a weak kid(although much less so now), but when I took my sword into my hand, focused, and swung it I noticed something: I was exerting a strength that plain and simple, didn't exist in my physical body. While searching for an explanation I found Buddhism. Buddhism has three things that appealed to me: First, it makes no threats of hell, nothing that manipulative; second, it expresses mostly values that I already agreed with, so much of it fit what I already believed I was more than willing to take a small hop of faith and accept the rest; lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it has no God and no church/temple, no supernatural being nor religious organization you have to please. Theravada Buddhism (the form I follow) is between you and yourself, truely individual.

Glad to have you here.  When I was reading, I was closing my eyes at parts (well, not literally), since it sounds as though you really were lost, but now you're finding yourself, which is terrific!  Buddhism is a great path, one I've begun flirting with myself.

A few side notes, many Buddhists DO believe in hell.  The Tibetian book of the dead talks about how the soul descends through the different cakras, trying and possibly failing to grasp each.  Should he fail at the wrong point, or get caught up too much in the vice side of a trait, he may spend time in hell before reincarnation.  Also, there are buddhist temples.  I'm visiting one in... two hours for their new years celebration (I love DC!).  But I suppose no Theravada temples.

I'm not trying to correct you, I'm just very proud of what I've been reading, and I'd highly encourage anyone else to at least study Buddhism.  It has excellent values, and, as far as I've seen so far, fully compatible with most other religions, including Christianity, since it doesn't involve actually worshipping Buddha.

Well, I'm a computer shaman...  No, I tease.  I only say that when I'm doing tech support.

Parents are both born and raised Catholic, so, of course, I was too.  Since I moved around pretty regularly (every 4 years), the church became a stabilizing force in my life.  It served the need of shared culture, since the church in Venezuela has the same beliefs and the same support as the one in the US.  I didn't have much trouble accepting stuff as a kid, because kids are innately stupid and naive (not that it's hard to accept Catholicism, mind you.)

I've spent two years in a Catholic high school, two years in a VERY liberal international high school, four and a half in a fairly liberal, 30,000 person university.  My father is now a deacon in the church (although not the kind that gives good answers to ethical questions) and I was an alter boy (no jokes, please).

I never really had a point of sharp rejection of the Church, it's always a spiral.  I question my faith, find answers, come back better.  In a lot of ways, I think I'm moving past the concrete truths and trying to find the deeper, more abstract ones.  Yes, Jesus was a guy who did neat things and died, so what?  What does that mean for me?  That sort of thing.  How did he find Truth and what was it?  Why did he have such a band of dingleberries following him?

I'm married to a 'Christian' (I say Christian because she hates the idea of denominations), who converted herself and led her family.  She has seen a lot more pagan influences then I have (although I've heard Catholicism called the Paganism of Christianity, which I think is neat).  She's a liberal (to my conservative) non-denominational Christian with an appreciation for paganism (to my Catholic), artist (to my computer science) and beautiful (to my... oh never mind.)

I have a little boy.  He currently follows the Big Toe, which he prays to by biting it.  He is baptised Catholic.

We're both very curious spiritually.  Heck, we're visiting a Buddhist temple in... an hour and a half!  For Year of the Cock celebration.

I do a LOT of reading, and the nature of my posts usually follows.  I just finished two books by Joseph Campbell (EXCELLENT author), but I'm moving on to some cheap fiction for a while.  I'll warn people before I get to Nietzsche.  I don't get nice when I read his stuff.  I'm also a programmer, so I consider myself very logical (or at least capable of being very logical).  My wife is studying art and psychology, the latter of which I try to bring in when I know what I'm talking about.

My religious interests include Catholicism, neo-paganism, paganism, the early church, gnosticism, buddhism, taoism and zen.  Hinduism is lingering around in the back.  I didn't have a lot of appreciation for it until I read this last book.

Born and raised in reform Judaism.  I went to Hebrew school every week, I went to synagogue once every couple months.  How much I actually believed in any of this varied a lot, and I don't even know what caused it to change most of the time.  The most important thing that came of it though was that I was strongly encouraged to learn things and have an open mind.  From the little that I've seen, Judaism seems to be the only mainstream religion that actually supports this (minor tangent - I went to an interfaith discussion a couple months ago and everyone who was there to represent a non-mainstream religion had been born Jewish).

The cycle seems to have come to a stop during my late teen years.  After 10th grade I spent a month in Israel with a youth group, had a lot of fun, and came back feeling very, very Jewish.  It didn't last too long, but I find the contrast amusing.  In any case, by the time the school year started, I had already gone back to being minimally to not at all religious.  Sometime in 11th grade, I started looking more into Satanism (I'd been vaguely familiar with it for some time, but had never really done much reading before).  I really liked a lot of the core beliefs, particularly that you are essentially your own god and that it is up to you to determine your fate, and that your time on earth should be spent enjoying this life, not living in fear of the next.  I wound up joining an online Satanist group which a friend of mine introduced me to, but I eventually lost interest when I saw that it was more about people stoking their egos and trying to act scary than about actually trying to have a good life.

Between whenever this was (exact timing is blurry) and the beginning of college, there were a couple more important things that happened.  One was my ancient/medieval history class, which I've mentioned in at least one other thread.  I learned, among other things, about how religion was established as a tool for social control, and how early Judaism and early Christianity borrowed heavily from other cultures around them to look more appealing to potential converts (for example, the great flood of Genesis was taken from the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, and many symbols of Christian holidays were basically just pagan symbols with Jesus' stamp of approval added in somewhere).  The other important thing that happened around this time was my introduction to the delightfully delusional world of Jack Chick.  I realize that this man does not in any way represent the majority of Christians or the true principles of Christianity, but between this and learning about the crimes of the Church during the Middle Ages, it still contributed rather nicely to my beliefs about the fear/love spectrum.

About that...  Has anyone here seen Donnie Darko?  There's a scene where this really terrible, idiotic teacher is lecturing to the class about how all human behavior can be placed on a spectrum between fear and love.  To the extreme that she took it, it's a stupid idea, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to work out pretty well when kept at a reasonable level, at least as far as interpresonal behavior.  And I thought that it applied quite well to religion.  In every theistic belief that I've encountered, you have one of two reasons to comply with their version of God and its teachings - love of God (directly or through others), or fear of God (very often directly, and especially in the form of afterlife).  These two are not mutually exclusive - all mainstream religions claim that they are about peace and love, but they all also have an afterlife of some sort, and the threat of a bad afterlife can be a powerful motivator whether you want it to or not (this is a bit less of an issue in Judaism, where Gehena is always temporary, but God's wrath is still plenty evident in the Old Testament).  And I don't know about the rest of you, but I came to the conclusion a long time ago that any relationship with any divine being should be 100% about love; as soon as coercion enters into it, you can no longer claim sincere belief.

So what it all boils down to is that pretty much since I've been in college, I've been agnostic about the whole god question.  I don't believe that any man-made religion can be completely correct, because it's got human filters on it.  I don't know if there are any divine beings in the universe, and I don't think there is any way to know short of obvious manifestation.  If God does exist though, and did in fact create this world, I think we can reasonably conclude that this deity is a neutral one and we are simply its entertainment.

Well, let's see, where do I begin?

I grew up in a Southern Baptist family -- my dad had grown up in a rural community with only one church, and my mom... ya know, I just realized, I don't know what her beliefs were before she met my dad? Anyway, from the time I was born until I was two, we went to one church, and then changed to another, this one in my dad's hometown (which was only about a 20 minute drive from where we lived).

I always thought I was a good Christian daughter growing up -- I was best friends with a boy from the second church, and my mom and dad always thought that we would grow up together and marry one day. I was excited when I finally asked the pastor to baptize me, although I remember clearly that I did it for the wrong reasons. (I wanted to be a big girl and take bread and grape juice -- I always knew it was grape juice -- when Communion was handed around.) From then on, my dad (a Deacon in the church) let me help him bake the bread and pour the grape juice into the little plastic cups for Communion.

If you couldn't tell from this, I was a daddy's girl when I was a kid... before... well...

When I was nine, my dad was hospitalized until such time that they could get him a new heart. (He and his twin brother had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy -- enlarged heart -- from birth, so we knew it would happen eventually.) When he was in the regular part of the hospital, I was allowed to see him as often as my mom was willing to drive to Louisville (we lived in Elizabethtown, a 45min-hour drive). But then they moved him to Intensive Care at Jewish Hospital, and the nurses would never let me go back to see him, even though I'd been told that there was a good chance he wouldn't get to come back out. (The b-tards wouldn't even let me say goodbye to the man most important in my life... I still don't think I've forgiven them for that.) Anyway, it was late summer, and my mom decided to stay in Louisville. I had to go live with my aunt so that I could start back to school in a couple of weeks. (My aunt is the one who was married to my dad's twin, and my dad's twin had died of the same condition two or three years before.) Her daughters -- my cousins -- and I had never been close, and you would think things would have changed for the better through this situation.

Yeah right.

The oldest sister, four years my senior, was the only one of the three who was nice to me, but she was slightly distant. The middle sister, whose room I shared during my stay and who was two years older, pretended to be nice to me when her mom was around, but one night, I remember distinctly that she said to me, "You know you're going to be staying here until your dad dies, right?" That's just a sample of the attitude I got from that end. The youngest daughter, my age, had more important things to worry about, like friends at school, than a grieving cousin.

And they called themselves Christian. They attended the same church that my parents and I had attended since I was two.

Sure enough, my dad died that September, and I took a few days off from school for his funeral and personal time. When I went back to school, all of the kids acted like I had some sort of contagious disease, and that didn't help my grief much. (I need to mention here that before my dad's death, I had been one of the more popular girls in school, and I had thought that I had a lot of friends. I was open, concerned for others, and helpful, which I think is what endeared to a lot of people.) One kid called me "gravedigger". The teacher of that class was the only one who seemed to be a friend to me, and she did her best to keep some of the crueler kids from me, even going so far as to help me get transferred to another class, where I could get a fresh start with kids who hadn't known me too well before my dad died. And it worked.

A few months after my dad died, my mom and I switched churches again. (We hadn't gone since he died.) I had reservations about going back to church -- after all, if God didn't love me enough to help the doctors find my dad a new heart, or even love me enough to shelter me from the mean kids at school, then what should I do for Him? (Remember, this is the thought process of a now-ten-year-old.) I guess that's where I lost my faith, now that I look back.

Regardless, I tried to keep my mom happy by going to church with her, even though none of the kids at the church we were attending would have anything to do with me. However, to my credit, I did get into the church's broadcasting program when I was thirteen, helping them tape the services and then rebroadcast them on the local access channel. It was one of the funnest things I did, and made me realize what I wanted to do with my life.

High school came, finally. And over the last year or so I had managed to make a small circle of friends at my middle school. We all ended up at the same high school. (Yay!) However, as we grew up, I started having to act as a go-between between two of them, and eventually lost both of their friendships, except as general acquaintances. I got involved with a new bunch of friends in high school, though, including the "band nerd" crowd (another great decision in my life!). High school was also my first exposure to religions other than Christianity. (Don't get me wrong, I'd known about them... but I'd never known anyone of another religion.) Two or three of my good friends were Wiccans, and they were persecuted in the school. (One of them had a bad asthma attack right after the final bell one time, and people wouldn't call an ambulance or anything because they thought he was faking -- I mean, what else do "gays" -- which he was -- and "witches" do except lie and trick? At least I think that was the prevalent mindset.)

Eventually I started reading up on Wicca and Paganism (the only two alternate religions I even considered at the time) and realized that a lot of stuff they said matched my thoughts, especially the part about a pantheon of gods as opposed to monotheism. By this time I was the only one who wanted to go to church, and even that was only to help out with the TV program. My mom went to church once a month, if that, and I usually had to drag her there even then. So anyway, my mom found out what I was doing soon after I started reading up on the subject, and she went off. "We're a good Christian family! This is Devil worship! I will not let you believe that shit! What would your father think?" (Her key phrase whenever I did something that was against her.) We went back and forth for quite a while, never having a civil conversation about my evolving beliefs, and I even accused her of not being a Christian once or twice. That shut her up.

...For a while.

I still had to hide my beliefs from my mom, and do even now, even though I've moved out and live in the other end of Kentucky (Bowling Green). On top of being Celtic Wicca, I've researched several alternate religions, including Shinto (which I think is a really clean-cut, better version of Christianity), Buddhism (my fiance's beliefs -- and if anyone ever tells you that a Wiccan and a Buddhist can't get along, tell 'em to talk to me! ^_^), and several more -- those two were just the ones that made the most impact on my beliefs. I call myself Celtic Wiccan, because I believe in the Green Man and the Goddess, but I also believe that there is a spirit in everything (one of Shinto's key tenets), and I also believe in a world after this one. I mean, if so many religions see it, or center themselves around it, then how could it not be true?

A little background about my parents: my father grew up in rural nebraska, and was raised christian (i don’t know what denomination.)  He, over the course of his life, has examined just about the entire spectrum of religions.  He was living in something akin to a monastery as a disciple of yoghanda immediately before he met my mother.  My mom was not raised in a religious home.  When she met my father, she was living in what i recently found out was a full-blown, straight-from-the-news spaceship cult (called Sunburst, apparently it isn’t completely unkown).  The leader said that he had and did talk to aliens, that he had had visions of jesus, and he got caught embezzling money and molesting young girls.  like i said, ‘twas a classic spaceship cult.  When they got married, my parents moved to salt lake city (and we've moved since), and still have good feelings for the most part about Sunburst.  They separated (effictively divorced, that just took a while) on the first day of first grade.  I live with my mother, and we have constant fights.  I have kept a good relationship with my father my entire life, and he has been a huge influence on me.

as a kid, I was quite unpopular, very nerdy, and I was picked on quite a bit.  When I was growing up, my family went to a church called Living Enrichment Center (this one is truly famous in some circles, it had a weekly congregation of about 8000) that was “new thought christianity”, a blend of everything, focusing on christianity; it was through and through new age stuff.  I have nothing but good feelings for the church, though I do not now agree with what they taught (on a side note, the church recently went bankrupt in the midst of a scandal involving money embezzling on the part of the pastor’s husband.)  There was a fantastic teen group there, and it was in this group that I developed my now ponderous self-confidence.  This is also where I found out what true, compassionate love was.

After a while, i outgrew L.E.C., and moved on.  I made a lot of christian friends, and I have gotten much of my view of christianity from them.  I think I’m still in the stage of my life where I am just trying to get a rise out of people; i do not deny that my greatest pleasure is to tenaciously defend polarizing positions.  I’ve spent a lot of mental resources doing my best to refute christianity, but the more i’ve learned about it, the more i’ve noticed the feel of truth about it.

My father, for much of pre-teen years, was the devotee of an indian (that’s asian indian, not native american) called sai baba (some very interesting stuff, worth googling).  We went to Sai retreats at least once or twice a year, and at the time said that I was a devotee.  After a while, i grew past that, but it has left the stamp of eastern religion on me.  He has constantly changed and added to what he believes.  some things stuck, some didn’t.

My mother is a what i call a pseudo-buddhist.  We have statues of buddha and pictures of the dalai llama around the house.  She does yoga. She has trouble defining what she believes, but it is an amalgation of christianity and eastern religions.

I have had some pretty interesting experiences.  I’ve seen ash, honey, and water manifest out of thin air onto paintings, robes, and pictures (all this is related to sai baba).  I’ve seen UFO’s.  I’ve had experiences that were almost every day events that have just made certain things click inside of me.  These experiences have convinced me without a doubt that god exists and loves me, that I love everyone in the world, and that there is a higher and lower side to me; the higher is where love, compassion, and connection come from, while the lower is basic, reptilian.  It is where violence, coldness, and the part of me that is a predator arises.

I’ve spent considerable time talking to mormon missionaries, christian ministers, and my pagan friends.  Paganism has little appeal to me, i see no reason to revere nature over any other part of the world.  Satanism has no appeal.  It embraces a side of humanity that I think we’re meant to rise above.

I’m striving for something to believe in, but every system i find has something that i reject.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:25, Sun 17 Apr 2005.

Wow, haven't seen this in a while...  Here's a bump for people who asked for it.  I think it may be worthy of some updating.

*whew* Been two years since my post up there.  Makes me kind of embarrassed, but I guess my answer hasn't changed THAT much.

The church was always a stabilizing factor in my young life, which of course, made it very valuable.  At times it offered inspiration and emotional support (I can still remember dealing with my 'youthful depression' stage one night when the radio played 'Amazing Grace'.  I've never heard Amazing Grace on a radio since, excepting worship stations, which is definitely not what I was listening.  Little miracles, huh?)  I was exposed to enough circumstantial evidence to believe in Christianity.

Later in life I began to really study a lot more, reading everything I could get my hands on.  I love Joseph Campbell and Jung, who both have a lot to say on the value of myths.  I've read the Book of Mormon and The Church of Satan (a book on the history and growth of Satanism).  I've read a lot about the Wiccan religions and studied Buddhism fairly intently.  I'm currently learning more about Gnosticism.  There are a couple of conclusions I've come to...

Firstly, I believe *something* is out there.  If I weren't raised Catholic, I'd probably be agnostic.  We can go into why I believe something is out there later, if people are really interested.

I believe having a belief in the spiritual is important for good health.  Jung has restated this many times.  Freud was right that religion can be a crutch, but without crutches, we'd have a lot more people with broken legs crawling from the bedroom to the bathroom.  Sometimes we need crutches, and religion provides a lot more than just support in our times of emotional need.  Again, this is a complex issue that we can go into later, if people want, but I'm fairly comfortable that religion confers certain benefits to my personal health and wellbeing.

Once we've established that, Catholicism is the easy answer for me because my whole family is Catholic, so to do otherwise would be swimming upstream.  However, there are a lot of reasons I'm personally proud to be Catholic.  Catholicism has a very long history.  It does have a few black marks (although if you study them more carefully, you'll see that most of them are very, very seriously exaggerated.  The inquisition, for instance, was far more political than religious, and Galileo got in trouble because he directly insulted the pope and refused to provide sufficient evidence for his new theory.)  On the flip side, it has a lot of things to be proud of, serving as the sole source of political stability and the primary form of scientific progress with the fall of the Roman empire, producing some of the most exciting heroes of Western history and so on.  Catholicism has a LOT of history to draw on.

I'll also say that Catholicism is one of the more logical denominations out there.  There really isn't a reason why a person can't be a Catholic and a good scientist, for instance, and all moral decrees have clearly written logical support (even if you disagree with the reasoning, it is still logical.)  I do have my disagreements with the Catholic faith, but we're learning to live together.

So there you go.  I guess I'm more philosophical than religious, but the more I study, the more comfortable I feel with my faith and with my specific church, and even if I see that the Church went wrong somewhere, I can accept that.  I've been doing a lot of studying of the 700 and 800's as of late, and there's no question, some very high ranking church officials did some very bad things, some perhaps justifiable, some certainly not.  But I don't expect my church to be politically perfect.  It's a human institution and mistakes will be made.  But in the mean time, it's certainly enriching my life, and it simply makes sense to me to keep up the faith.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:42, Thu 17 May 2007.

My turn. And for once, I'll try to avoid slamming someone else's point of view. Be aware, though, that this is an admission of being a very dark soul. Proceed at your own risk, and I'm taking a bit of a personal risk typing this.
  My first memorable experience with the idea of faith occured when I was 4 or 5. At that point I really didn't see what the older people got all worked up over. To me, I had never seen God, and science was a good deal more interesting to me than all this religion stuff. That changed when I was ten. I'm willing to chalk this up as a hallucination, but it would involve telling me that I cannot trust any conculsion I draw. If that is the case, than I am insane, and the person telling me this may be untrustwrothy themselves for all I know. Logic of madness, hard at work.
  In any case, I encountered a spirit of some kind. Its true nature eludes me to this day, but it convinced me that spirit was a very real force that science refused to accept. I'm convinced it's out of fear of the unknown and the implications that would come with accepting that bit of truth, which is kind of ironic to me.
  When I got older I learned of other sides of spirituality than the Christian point of view. My family, and therefore myself, were going through a lot of problems. In the mother of all understatements, my perspectives on life darkened considerably. If I had faith in God, it went out the window. I delved into the study of witchcraft and wizardry, having gotten tired of a disinterested God to come in and help my family out of the hole it was digging itself into. Most of it was hogwash, superstition and other such crap. But I did find a few things in there.
  I am not going into detail on this last. Suffice to say that I take most Biblical passages on familiar spirits and such quite literally, and that whether I even knew it or not, I have dealt with the Devil in a very close way. I know dark spirits exist.
  At some point I started truly losing my sanity, a side effect of my research. I was attempting to embrace viewpoints of ruthlessness that were necessary to obtain my goals in life, in effect, a deliberate attempt to warp my own morality. I had decided that I wanted nothing to do anymore with that conflict between the God and the Devil. As far as I could tell one was an uncaring Creator and the other was an upstart anarchist who thought he deserved to be God because he was more powerful than everyone else. Given the chioce, I'd have perferred the uncaring, but I thought that were both lame choices.
  This has still left its fair share of mental scarring.
  I drifted from church to church in that time, finding fault in all of them. I looked to other faiths in that time, but none of them were proving me wrong in my viewpoints, which was what I was really looking for. I wanted to believe that my perspectives on God were wrong. I didn't find much encouragement in my own family. Faith is a subject my Mom hates discussing with me.
  It took some time, but I found my answer. About five years if I recall. I allowed myself to be baptized after I was convinced that I was in fact saved.
  I realized I've skipped quite a bit, and left out details in a great many areas. I've learned the hard way that if I go into to much detail about my darker points in life, I have tempted weaker and more impulsive souls to pick up where I left off. But the point was why I believe what I do, and I hope I've answered that. If not, I'll answer some questions. PM me.

I hope this doesn't scare anyone too much.

I sort of take the boolean approach:

1) There either is a God or there is not a God.
If there is no God, then there is no harm in choosing a religion you like and living a good life filled with faith and hope.

2) If there is a God, then he either communicates to his creations or he does not.
If he does not, then there is no harm (and actually great psychological benefits) to praying and hoping that he does.

3) If he does communicate to his creations, then he will have provided a concrete way for them to communicate with hiim or he will not have.
If he has not, then there is no harm in finding the best way you think to communicate with Him and using it.

4) If he has provided such a way to communicate, then he will either be consistent in that way or not.
If not, then there is no harm in finding the way that appears most consistent.

5) If he is consistent, then God is unchanging today just as he was unchanging in ancient times, or he changes.
If he changes, then he will either communicate those changes to us or not.
If he does not change, then he will either communicate that fact to us or not.

...you can see where I'm going with this.

So in my search, I look for consistency.  Besides finding answers in a spiritual way, my religion has given me answers in an intellectual way and urges the pursuit of truth, science and fact...since all are God's creations.  I find a stable consistency in my religion with the way things were done in ancient Judaism and early Christianity, since it is based on a belief in Christ as the Savior, but that the churches became more churches of men after Christ died and lost the priesthood power (that consistency to communicate and work through His creations).

And it makes sense in the suffering of the world.  This life is not to be sweet, but a test, a time of separation from God.  And the ideals of freedom, that we can choose good or evil, all these ideas resonate with me.

And the fairness, to those who are dead or who never had the chance to accept Christ's Gospel in its fullness and all the benefits therein, can get that chance.  That there is no burning fiery hell or that people will go somewhere bad based on ignorance alone.  This also resonates with me that God is a good and loving being who, just like parents with children, knows we must strike out on our own to truly learn and progress but can always come back to a loving embrace.

And like Mentat, I know dark spirits exist.  In the full spectrum of creation, there must be ultimate evil as surely as there must be ultimate good.  And evil is just egocentric enough to try to make itself known whenever it can, as I have seen firsthand.

But I have also laid my hands on the heads of people, called upon the priesthood powers which I hold, and healed people through the power of God, and done other things as well.  So I know there is a good side too, where faith exists.

So the question for me is not, "How can I believe?" but instead, "How can I deny?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:15, Fri 18 May 2007.

The reason I believe the things I do is simple. I take a similar approach to Heath, although it leads to a different conclusion.

1) Either God exists or he does not.
2) If there is a God, then either he has a code for us to live by or not.
3) If God does have a code for us to live by, he will make it possible for us to understand it.
4) If he does not have a code for us to live by, there is no divine reason to live by any one code over another.
5) However, some codes are clearly more beneficial to society to live by, so there would be incentive to try to get people to live by them.
6) But if none of them are from God, there is no authority to compel one code over another independent of brute force.
7) Therefore, any moral code must rely on divine reason if it is to have any authority other than brute force.
8) The question now becomes, is there such a divine authority?
9) Nearly 2,000 years ago, a man claimed to be this divine authority. In the English-speaking world, he is known as Jesus.
10) The New Testament records the writings of his followers, and what they taught and believed about Jesus.
11) According to this record, they believed he was God made flesh and that he proved his authority by performing a physical impossibility -- rising from the dead.
12) This record was made during a time when people were still alive who could verify or refute the essential details (such as the rising from the dead part).
13) Even now, 30 years after the fact, we have people who claim that Elvis Presley is alive. These claims are met with the obvious rejoinder, "Here is his tomb, where his body is."
14) So why didn't any of the refutations go to the tomb of Jesus and show people the body? Does this not indicate that it wasn't there?
15) If the body wasn't there, something must have happened to it.
16) The people who knew about the body and cared about it fall into three main categories: Romans, Jews, and followers of Jesus.
17) The Romans have no need to remove the body. They put it there and sealed it so that such tampering could not take place. Even so, they could have ended the furor by producing the body.
18) The Jews would not have taken the body. If they had, they also had the means to end Christianity in its tracks by producing it.
19) The disciples would have wanted to take the body, but if they did, they act in a way that defies all logic, sense, and sanity, for they chose to die defending a claim they knew to be a lie. Dying for something you believe to be true is one thing, but dying for something that you know to be a lie (because you participated in creating the lie) is psychologically impossible.
20) Therefore, the alternatives to a resurrection are less probable than the resurrection itself, establishing the claim.

Once I accepted that, I had to find out where God wanted me. I have been with a church for most of the time since then, but I am not afraid to keep looking.

I grew up as a Christian only in the vaguest of senses. I was baptised, but never regularly went to church. When I was very young, I half believed in God - everyone at my school seemed to be going along with the idea, and how silly would it be if everyone was praying but there was no God? There was no sort of theological debate within me - I simply went along with things because there was no alternative. About the age of 12 I was introduced to the concept of athiesm.

My father was an athiest, but had kept his beliefs fairly closed. My mother was a Christian, but not with any sort of conviction. When I first talked with my father about there being a God, he provided the alternative. I looked at it, thought that it seemed much more sensible than there actually being some kind of invisible all powerful being who could read your mind, and decided that that was enough.

In secondary school I became aware of how many people did believe. In Britain it seems by default people are Christian, but most weren't strong enough believers to get confirmed. There was a group which met with the school Chaplain, however, in preparation for becoming confirmed. I was interested in knowing how so many people could believe, when the facts that I had looked at seemed to be so one sided. I attended the group, and decided that the whole thing was a waste of time. It was obviously not designed for me then, as a skeptic agnostic who wanted to find out more.

Anyway, since then I have tried assuming a completely equal position. Nothing is true unless proven. I've looked for the arguments for Gods existence, and found them to be lacking. At the time of the New Testament, religious prophets were everywhere. The Roman world was in turmoil, the Emperors had taken control and were being worshipped as gods. The concept that one man could be holy was becoming increasingly popular, and as the old Roman religion became gradually less popular people looked for alternatives. There were many many prophets with powers of walking on water, or even through walls, around the time of Jesus. He just came out on top as popular. I cannot accept the Bible as true.

Other religions? I'm interested in finding out more, but I see no need for a God. Science explains the universe, except on the outskirts of our knowledge where more research is being conducted. If we assume that there is no God, there is no inconsistency. Therefore the theory of God is redundant. If we applied the same logic to gravity, or our knowledge of lightning, we see that we need a theory there to explain the phenomena. There is no need for a God.

I have never had a religious/supernatural experience, so I am a materialist. For me, the definition of the 'material' is that it is real. I can see it/hear it/touch it, or failing that I can see its effects upon the world. The supernatural is just that - outside the natural, and therefore unreal. If science has no evidence for it, if it is entirely 'out of this world' it is not real. I'm currently trying to get myself to get past that barrier of understanding to see why other people do believe in the supernatural.

If I may, and it doesn't turn out off subject: I consider "supernatural" and other such terms to be that which has no explaination that most people at present are willing to accept. There is a limit to what other people can be expected to believe, simply because it is outside of their experience and it sounds incredible. When a Roman soldier stumbled across a man drawing strange circles in the sand following the siege of Sycacuse, he killed him. Turns out it was Archimedes drawing a mathmatical equation. But to the soldier's eye, such strange symbols could only be or have been black magic, which was not unheard of at that time.

But in a way, that soldier was right. Archimedes counsel for the defense of Syracuse but the Roman navy against things they had never though they would ever face: Greek fire launched against them, focused light torched their sails, giant cranes lifted their vessels out of the water. To the Romans, this WAS magic. To us, it is everyday science.

Perspective.

There is a discussion about supernatural on the other thread now, but I'd just like to distinguish that I don't think "supernatural" and "magic" are even remotely the same thing.  Magic requires something that defies understanding, supernatural is just foreign to our natural universe.

Well I figure this is the best thread to introduce myself to the board. I come from a very strong evangelical Christian background (Salvation Army, to be precise): mum is an ex-officer (an officer in the Salvation Army is like a priest or vicar in another church, for those who don't know); all four grandparents are retired officers; dad and his wife are current officers; and my aunt is a Church of England vicar. I went to two meetings at the Salvation Army every Sunday, I was a member of the youth band and choir which meant another two nights at the army, and I was a junior soldier (a commitment to the Army that you make at around seven, until you can become a senior soldier at around seventeen/eighteen).

I never really had a choice whether or not to go to the army - it was just a part of my life that had always been there, like going to school - but I never had any problem with it. In fact, I remember at school when I was about 13, saying to a friend that I couldn't wait to die, just so that I could see what heaven was like. She looked at me oddly, and told me awkwardly that she didn't really believe in all that. It was the first time in my life (and 13 is pretty old for this revelation) that I realised not everyone in the world believed in God.

I went through a huge rebellion around the age of 15, but even then I never questioned the existence of God, just why I should obey him. It was a lot like a heightened adolescence, turning away from God like some people turn away from their parents. I stopped going to the Salvation Army and for a while did just about everything that I could that was wrong. But I still believed in God, and from time to time I was overwhelmed with guilt and would pray, feel a little better, and then go right back to what I was doing.

It became clear that my rebellion wasn't satisfying me spiritually or personally, but also that I wasn't going to get saved or suddenly feel full of the holy spirit. I was too cynical by that point. My rebellion fizzled out and I settled into a more normal Christian apathy. When I explain my faith to people I use an illustration: I believe in God, the same way I believe in gravity. Just like as children we're told that gravity exists, so that by the time we grow up it's a fact of life, something most of us are unable to question, I've always been told that God exists and I'm unable to envision a world in which I don't believe that. I do feel that God is there and I pray when I remember to, I'm not unhappy about my faith, I just explain it this way when people ask me for proof.

That's a very long-winded response, but I hope it makes sense to everyone.

If you don't mind my asking, I think most of us are very familiar with the guys ringing bells and taking donations, but how is Salvation Army different from other churches outside of that (excellent) program?

So would you consider yourself now an apathetic and/or inactive Christian?

(Again, don't feel compelled to answer if you're not comfortable with it.  Just curious.)

I was born and raised a Roman Catholic, and took it VERY seriously for a long span of years.  So seriously in fact that I made my parents nervous, especially when I started spending weekends at an Augustinian Monastery and talking about God's Plans and Vocations on a regular basis.  They were down with JC, but only on weekends.

I never had the same issues with Catholicism (Christianity/Monotheism) that most people, faithful and otherwise, did.  I never had a problem with the fact that, depsite God being all-good and all-powerful, bad things happen (Free Will + Divine Plan = see through a glass darkly His winders to perform).  I never had a problem with Christians proclaiming themselves to be moral and upright and being scum in private (that's like saying that cars are an invalid form of transportation because some people drive them drunk - either the Word is true or it is not, those who misuse it cannot alter it).  The revelation of the clergical culture of child-abuse and molestation and the subsequent cover-up likewise did nothing to shake my faith in God and His Church (it shook a lot of things, as close to the Church as I was at that time, but not my faith - humans are imperfect, and the test there was not to reject the Faith, but to make it stronger - and almost all of us failed).

The issues that eventually took me away from the Church were several.  The rote ritual was one.  Some people jive on ritual.  It serves to occupy the logial part of the mind so that the emotional part can contact the Divine.  Even the most mystic of traditions (Zen, Taoism) usually come equipped with mind-numblingly opressive rituals, for that very reason.  For me, however, it was keeping me away from God, rather than closer to Him.

Second, was the view of God as some measure of person, living somewhere, knowing stuff, doing stuff, wanting stuff, making plans and following-through.  I couldn't escape the idea that God is INFINITE.  Infinite is pretty big.  And an infinite being would be, by definition, absolutely and in all ways alien and incomprehensible to any finite being (i.e. us).  And I can quote and cite all the many reason why this need not be the case, and all the ways in God, in His infinte Infinity, makes Himself known to us, but I couldn't shake the idea that it's all just a sop to make us feel better.  The very thing that had lead me through so many diffiucult issues stopped me dead at what should have been the easiest one: having a personal relationship with the Christian God.

So I moved asway from Catholicism with its focus on the external trappings of faith and with its roots in various pagan magical traditions.  I slid down through my share of protestant faiths and churches, trying to find a community that would allow me to focus entirely on my internal relationship with the Divine.

But the Protestants, paradoxically, were even worse.  Even with no Clergy, no Ordination, no Sacraments, no Orders, not even any funny hats, they managed to see God as even more of a Sears Catalogue than the Catholics did.  Ask and ye shall receive! Ask for it in my name and you shall have it!  We UNDERSTAND the mind of God, and it says the WE are Holy and THEY are not.

Yuck.

Not even Thomas Merton and William Inge and the Christian Mystics could help me, because even as they talked about communing directly with the Divine in an indescribable, inarticulate experience, they talked about how much God loved it when we did so and how He wished us to be closer to Him.

Yuck.

Then one day I read the Tao Te Ching.  And it was like BING! My brain opened up and just ACCEPTED it.  The notion that the Divine is an impersonal, amoral, not-quite-thing-not-quite-force that can only be EXPERIENCED, never KNOWN.  It was like coming home.

This is already too long, so I'll wrap up.

Where I stand now is on the fence as to whether or not the Truth is knowable.  If it is not knowable, then it might as well not even exist.  In the absence of a knowable TRUTH, then the only "truth" I can accept is consistency.  If A and B are true, then C MUST be true.  I'm fine passing judgement on C, given A and B, but the ultimate validity of A and B may forever be a mystery.

I've definitely been down that path!  The Catholic Church has a very strong focus on community, on the externalities of religion.  Not so much on the internal, which is very frustrating.  I'm not sure why that part fell off like it did.  The Tao Te Ching was a very good read, and gave me a lot to think about.  I'd love to go to the next step and actually visit a monastery and talk with some people in person, rather than just read stuff online.  The other thing that caught my eye was the Gnostic teachings.  A lot of them seem a bit too...  far astray for me, but some are really neat.  Fortunately, there's nothing that says you can't be Catholic and Taoist.  Like Heath has said, it is (or at least can be) a philosophy, not a religion, and there's nothing about it which is anti-Christian.

I'm afraid I have no true moment of revelation for me, and my story is one that really can't be told in some chornological fashion, but I can help put to perspective how I've come to this point.

My family was Catholic, but in name only. In truth, grandfather, and my aunt's family were the only ones who regularly went to church. my grandpa took me initially, but it awas around age 8 or 9 I just stopped going regularly.

Religion didn't truely enter my life again until much later, but I suppose even where my facination with it could be explained by earlier events. I've always been a person who pondered naby abstract ideas, even outside of religion. Things like "How did we, as a people, come to be?" "Is there some real sense of right and wrong, and what are they?" "If there is a God, why does he allow such suffering?". Above all, though, I was enthralled by the notion of motevation. To this day, I'm utterly facinated with understanding why people do the things they do, think the way they think, why people are upset by the things they are, and behave in the manners they do. This pondering led to me taking psychology courses, even in high school. As I got to college, I immeadiately registered as a psychology major, and continued it, now aided with the notions of philosophy, sociology, ethics, and, naturally, theology.

When pondering human motevation, I was utterly bound to eventually come to religion, or so I thought. I found many of my colleages, even my friends, make regular habit of dismissing belief and religion, and Ii was often put in the odd point of defending it. Now, I'm not what I would considerd a person of faith, but to just dismiss the impact religion has on society, on culture, on politics and certainly, on the individual, is just beyond me. But, then again, I suppose I've always had an open mind towards such things.

I make a point of reading and understanding many forms of theology, typically Catholoicism. I've read much of the bible a few times, though admittedly, I've paid a bit more attention to the New Testament than the Old, being the central doctrine of Christianity. I've dwelved into modestly into Buddism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, but I claim to be no more a scholar than any typical person involving these things.

Even when I was a child, abstract principles have often come well to me. To be honest, specifics was never what I was good at. Name a passage from the bible, and I won't likely remember it off hand. Concept has always been my forte. The larger questions, the ones the attend to the central ideas and conflicts. What is God like? How did the universe start? Is there such a thing a Free Will? Was there a historcal Jesus? What is God? What is life? My devotion to such ideas can be almost fanatical. Even in my high school years, it wasn't too unusual for me to ponder such things for entire nights, doing nothing else but research, reading, and simply working these things out in my head. I would seek out pastors, criminals (within reason, of course), historians, scholars, or jsut other students, not to press their beliefs but just to understand them.

I've always been a bit of an oddball. Never acted my age. I'd either act much younger, or much older. My parents and family see me like some kind of sage. When someone has a problem in their life, they'd often come to me. It started with justa few friends, but soon even my mother and grandmother, my uncle even, were comming to me regularly for advise and guidance. I talked family members out of suicide three times in my life, one of which was my father, this too, when I was simply a highschool kid. I was surprised at the level of calm I had during the whole thing, and I actually wasn't shaken until well after the incident was over. When a fight broke out, my presence was usually the signal for the start of negotiations.

My family had often told me that I had the qualities to become someone of good standing in the church, and for the most part, I would agree with them. The thought of clerical work, of helping people understand their problems and re-examine their life, their faith, help them towards a path of salvation really does appeal to me. But, alas, I've no faith to belong to.

I believe in no denomination I've encountered, and there have been many. It's not that I dislike the idea of church or a congregation. I actually encourage much of what they do, and think it can be a very good presense in one's life. However, I've never seen in any congregation that which could not be explained by a sociology text. And, there's a lot of details that, frankly I simply do not accept, things common in many relgions that I find questionable at best.

For example, treatment of women is less than fair in most religions across the world and the span of time, and even now, where such ideas are publicly discouraged, most denominations I've encountered are less than concerned about fixing such disperities. Even if I were to accept the idea of going into the church or ministry, my very gender which I was born with, which I have no power to choose, would limit me, so it's not like I would have much places to go. The idea of a female preacher might be accepted, and nuns are fairly encouraged, but the idea female bishop or even higher on the scale, is scoffed at and disputed to a heavy degree, much like the idea of a female president, which are both things that nowadays, even the thought that such things would even have to be contested is rather disheartening, yes, even to the point of refraining for any embrace of theology. The Bible itself, much like many religous texts, set two standards for judging men and women as well, often emphisising heavily that women are a) subservient to men, b) are more susceptible to sin than men, and c) make a big damn ruckus about women  committing adultry, where men are given just a passing notion. And, just as bad, hardly any god-fearing or embracing person would admit such a thing. Now, I'm not about to say that my objections to religion are soley based on feminisitic ideals, but it is a good example of common faiths saying one thing and doing or believing another, which, makes it hard for me to want to trust them.

I believe this all, this large rant, has led me to my current position of what could most accurately be called as an agnostic. I tend to believe that the question of God is less impactful than the decisions we come to about him/her/them/it. Thus, any meaning we give to life far suprasses in importance, and our resulting decisions, than anything that either our designer or our genes give us. Other than that, I suppose I reserve the right to suspend judgement, on man or God, til I find the piece of the puzzle that fits.

Of course I don't mind, not many people know much about the SA besides its charity work. but for the people who are regulars it's generally quite a big influence in their lives. I should point out that I'm English, and although the SA is an international organisation, there may be some small differences between the SA in the US and in the UK.

The SA is a Christian church, which means it follows God and the Bible (the basics don't really differ from the standard Christian beliefs). It's also evangelical, which means the focus is on bringing non-believers to Christ. Although that is one of the aims of most churches, it's a focus for the SA (whereas for some churches the focus is more on personal development and prayer).

There are other evangelical churches, though, and what makes the SA unique (in my view) is they way it goes about it, and that comes from its creation. The SA was born in London in the height of Victorian depravity. William Booth wanted a church which would really bring God to the people who otherwise wouldn't bother with religion, so everything was geared towards making a big scene. The SA would march along the streets with a big brass band playing, women playing tambourines, and the whole lot would eventually stop in an open area and read from the Bible, preach a sermon, give testimony (which is a big thing in the SA), and sing rousing songs. These open-air meetings still go on to some extent today, but back then there were stories of miracles happening pretty much every day. Even my grandma talks about her own grandfather, who was a total alcoholic, going down to the mercy seat drunk and coming up sober. In the SA people talk about getting 'saved' rather than converted, which hopefully gives you an idea of the militant basis of the SA.

The charity work and everything else that goes on today is all rooted in that early work, and the SA prides itself on being a very actively welcoming church. There are other differences between the SA and other churches, particularly the ideas of soldiership and abstinence. Of course anyone can go to an SA church (called a Corps) and participate in worship, but there is the opportunity to make a more long-term committment to the SA by becoming a junior/senior soldier. You go to recruitment classes where you discuss your faith in depth, and learn about how the SA itself works. When you are ready, there is a special meeting where you make a promise to the SA and sign something; you're kind of sworn in. After you've made this committment you wear the SA uniform (which people might have seen being worn by charity workers in the SA) to meetings, which demonstrates your acceptance of the faith and your pride in it. This is sort of like being confirmed in an anglican church, but that's not a particularly great comparison.

Included in this promise is a committment to abstain from tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs, which comes again from the birth of the SA, when there were so many working men spending all their money in the pubs and not having anything for their families who were living in poverty.

I'm not sure if I've explained it too well, but the one thing about the SA that really makes it different to other churches is the level at which you can become involved. My family talks about having Salvation Army blood, and I can see what they mean. As I said in my ealier post, when I was a kid I was out three nights a week at various social events or practises, as well as twice on a Sunday. My mum is still out three nights a week (singing, band and the International Staff Songsters) and twice on a Sunday. Of course there are also people who just go once a week on Sundays, but even then the sense of community and shared faith is unbelievably strong. I'm not trying to suggest that this isn't true with other churches as well, or that this is the only way to worship, but I do think it's an overwhelming feature of the SA.

And to answer the second part of your question (I felt the other answer was too long to include this in that post), I suppose if I was being brutally honest with myself, I would say I'm an inactive Christian. I don't consider myself to be apathetic since I still feel very strongly about my faith, and will talk about it proudly. But I am inactive, since I barely read the Bible, only pray when I remember, and hardly ever go to church.

Why do I believe what I believe?

I try to keep my mind open to ultimate possibility to avoid limiting myself.  I am to believe everything all at once - or at least, to avoid disbelieving it.

The human brain is a complex device that is incapable of comprehending all of the data that our senses pass along to it.  There's a filter, and that filter has to pick and choose what to "notice", what to "acknowledge".  It does this the simplest and most efficient way possible - it goes with what we already believe.

We tend to notice the things and trends that confirm what we already believe, and to miss the things that contradict our beliefs.  I hope, by keeping my mind as open as it can be, that I'll have a broader pallet with which to build my mental image of what "reality" is.

*cough* bump

I'm amused that this thread got bumped back to the front page. I read over my entry (#14) from three and a half years ago and realize... not much has changed since then. That's a big difference from when I was younger. Mind you, it's a good thing that I haven't changed that much spiritually. ^_^ I just wish sometimes that I had more opportunity to be more open about it. >.>

On a positive note, I have finally found a small circle of friends who, even if they don't believe exactly as I do, they at least understand and are willing to talk with me and help me grow spiritually. That's so comforting to have that. I mean, my fiance doesn't mind it, and my sister doesn't mind it, but (as is stated in my profile) he's a Buddhist agnostic and she's a hardcore Christian. To be able to talk about aspects of my beliefs with someone who isn't just going to nod and smile is the thing I love most about my new friends.

You're still Celtic Wiccan?

Yes sirree bob... I mean, Heath. ^_^ My beliefs have evolved a little since way back when, but not much considering the drastic changes I used to make.

I think we have a wiccan thread somewhere, if you want to post about it.  If not, I can create one.

Well, born and raised in the Church, in small branches mainly, and never really questioned it.  At least, not until I was getting ready to serve my mission.  Then I had to know, and know fairly quickly.
Started praying more then usual, fasting with greater purpose, and the feeling I got was 'You already know.  Go and serve.'
I'd always heard stories about miracles while growing up, and it was during my mission that I got to see and participate in a few of my own.  Like one of the few times I was sick - I had been throwing up every hour (almost exactly on the hour) for most of the night, and was feeling horrible.  The Zone Leader (missionary in charge of a group of missionaries in an area - usually up to 16 or so) blessed me that I would recover quickly.  And I did.  I threw up once more about an hour and a half later, then I was fine.
I suppose the biggest shock I got was some of the things that people still believe about the Church.  Met one lady who firmly believed that the Church protected child molesters, and practiced it as well.  I was so shocked that she closed the door in my face before I could reply.  As if some 60,000 young men and women from around the world would try to convert people to a church that did something that repulsive for two years, at their own expense.

Kind of vague I know, but feel free to ask questions, and I'll answer (or tell you why not :P )

As if some 60,000 young men and women from around the world would try to convert people to a church that did something that repulsive for two years, at their own expense.

During the last thousand years or so, missionaries have attempt to convert people to a church that practiced widespread murder, torture, conquest, genocide, and repression of educated women. Being a missionary does not imply that your cause or religion is a good or tolerable one.

Hmm, good point.  I'd forgotten that.  Though, in this day of world-wide communications and everything, do you think that a large group of people expressing such views would still be able to safely, and openly operate?

Anyway, the only thing I could do to properly express my views to the lady was write on a post-it notepad and stick it to a piece of her mail.

Falkus, There is a keen difference here.  You are looking at primitive barbaric times (or current brainwashed zealots) and analogizing that to people who have no desire other than to spend their own time and money sharing something which has given them great joy.

In other words, the "join us or else" missionaries are not the same as the "I have something to share that will bring you joy if you would like to accept it" missionaries.

I realize you are hostile to missionaries as a general idea, but here's the gist:  If you had a million dollars and could give everyone in the world a million dollars without losing a dollar yourself, and assuming you are altruistic at heart, wouldn't you want to go around making sure everyone could get that million dollars and improve their lives?  That's exactly what's going on here, except that it's worth far more than a million bucks; it's salvation.

And if people don't want it, that's fine.  But it irks me that some are hostile to this viewpoint just because they don't want to be bothered...assuming that no one's going to have the answers to salvation and come knocking on their door.

Howdy all, this will be my first post and it seems the best one to start off in.

Why do I believe in what I believe?

That can be a hard question, but for myself it isn't.  I believe because I have researched all the others and have found them laking.  I speak of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

Every other religion I read and researched on where religious systems that had rules to infinity.  You can't wear this, you must pray at this time, you must pray this way, but Jehovah has other plans.  He truely has only two commandments and you can pray at anytime and anywhere.  You don't have to follow a path and you don't have to pore yourself into a mold that someone else wants you in.

There is also the proff.  Everything that the Bible says about history has been found to be true, when found by archeologists.  Evolution has so many problems that there is no way a pure thinking person can believe it.

There's also the resurrection.  Can't be explained away no matter how hard some others try.

Well I hope I have done justice to this thread and will be jumping in on interesting topics.

There is also the proff.  Everything that the Bible says about history has been found to be true, when found by archeologists.

Egyptian history directly contradicts Exodus and the Great Flood.

Evolution has so many problems that there is no way a pure thinking person can believe it.

Is it possible that you just simply don't understand evolution?

There's also the resurrection.  Can't be explained away no matter how hard some others try.

All I have to do is operate on the assumption that the bible isn't the truth, and suddenly the resurrection becomes very easy to explain away.

I respectfully beg to differ. Exactly what other religions have you studied? I'm Celtic Pagan, and a solitary practitioner. I observe the Sabbats and Esbats of my religion, but beyond that I do pretty much what I want. Respecting my own body, respecting Mother Earth, and the like all fall within my natural beliefs, and anything else is my choice. I can worship skyclad or not as I choose, I can keep an elaborate altar or a simple one, and I have threads of several other religious branches that mingle with my own beliefs. There isn't a single thing in the pagan religions I've studied that says you must do this at this time, or you can't wear this piece of clothing. If there is, I've not seen it.

With religion, it's all about what moves you to believe in something besides utter emptiness. For you, that may be God, or Jehovah, or whatever name He goes by for you. For me, it's the Goddess Herself, in Her many forms. For a Shinto believer, it may be Amaterasu-sama. For a Hindu person, it may be Shakti; for the Norse, Odin. The list could go on forever, but what matters most is whatever you believe is right.

Edit: Oh, and welcome! ^_^
This message was last edited by the player at 23:03, Thu 09 Oct 2008.

If we can just make things up, and make up beliefs, that doesn't really make sense. We generally are selfish, and don't really have the ability to just say whatever we want is now true, just because we say it is.

Mr or Mrs. Falkus,

Thank you.  Your comments are well appreciated, but I have to point out some flaws in your reasoning.  You are saying that one culture's history out weights another.  Sometimes this would work, but heres the problem.  First the Egyptians would have a HUGE benefit in quelling the fact that they let their whole slave population leave.  No matter how terrible the plagues where, neighboring countries would have seen this as a weekness and would have attempted to take them over.  Remember ancient people may not have had out technologies, but their motivations are all the same.  Second, if the Great Flood happened before the Egyptians were even a nation, how could they know anything of the Great Flood.

So as you can see your agruement is flawd, at least how you presented in here.  Maybe you could elaborate and put in more of what your point is.



No I understand evolution as it is understood today.  Evolution is the thereoy, of how we came to be, which is the same as the Creation thereoy.  Alot of interesting arguements could be brought up, but the web site www.answersingenesis.org has alot of good ones.

I see that there is an evolution thread, do you wish to move this there?



This arguement is being worked on in the Jesus thread, wish to comment there?

Again thank you for your time.

Thank you.  Your comments are well appreciated, but I have to point out some flaws in your reasoning.  You are saying that one culture's history out weights another.  Sometimes this would work, but heres the problem.  First the Egyptians would have a HUGE benefit in quelling the fact that they let their whole slave population leave

The numbers of Exodus indicate that six hundred thousand fighting men, plus two to three million children, wives and elderly and unspecified others. the Egpytian population at that time was just over three million, maxing at six million The loss of that many people would have thrown Egyptian economy into utter chaos, regardless of how much the government wanted to cover it up. It would have been discovered by archeological research into that era. No such evidence has ever been found. No evidence has ever been found of a massive population increase in Canaan either, since the population there, at that era was, at most, a hundred thousand.

Second, if the Great Flood happened before the Egyptians were even a nation, how could they know anything of the Great Flood.

Except that the calculated date of the great flood, according to biblican literialists, is 2345 BCE, right in the middle of the Old Kingdom period of Egyptian history. Egypt didn't suddenly cease to exist when the entire population drowned in a great flood, so we can therefore draw the conclusion that a global flood did not actually happen.

No I understand evolution as it is understood today.  Evolution is the thereoy, of how we came to be, which is the same as the Creation thereoy

...

Okay.

Evolution is a scientific theory. In science, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by rigorous observations in the natural world, or by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections, inclusion in a yet wider theory, or succession.

Creationism, on the other hand, is nothing more than an unfalsifiable hypothesis (meaning you can't disprove it, which makes it worthless in science), since it can't actually be tested, is not the result of scientific observations and doesn't contribute in any meaningful way to the knowledge of humanity.

I see that there is an evolution thread, do you wish to move this there?

Sure.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:46, Fri 10 Oct 2008.

Most of those who believe in the Bible are not literalists, so your logic only applies to the small minority who believe that, not the majority of us who don't.  And those literalists have an even greater problem when they are finally told that "begat" refers to descendants, not father-son, meaning there could be hundreds of years of more between "begets."

So this affects your conclusion that a global flood did not actually happen.  That's premised on your assertion that the timing of the flood was as the literalists predict.  Since you erred in that, your conclusion that there cannot have been a global flood is also a fallacious conclusion (except as applied to the Literalists, who are the minority).
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:43, Fri 10 Oct 2008.

That was just an example, the first and simplest one. Here's a different one: There is no evidence of a global flood in the geological strata of the world. A global flood would leave an even layer of sediment at a specific point in the geological strata over the entire world. There is no such layer present.

I disagree with that Falkus. The amount of strata is evidence of a global Flood.

Have you ever seen oil and vinegar dressing? The little seasoning, vegetables, and chunks make nice little different colored layers of sediment based on weight, size, and density. It does so because of a liquid medium.

If you were to take dirt, rocks, sand and water, shake it up, it will eventually settle into layers too. Imagine water raining, creating waves, and shifting around. It would allow for layers of different densities to form.

What do we see over the entire global earth? Layers of sediment. Now seismic action allows layers to form as well, but a global flood does have some evidence.

Additionally, we know that catastrophic events seem to lead to a good chance of fossilization of creatures. The sudden death, and burying of animals in minerals that lead to fossilization helps in preserving the animal for fossilization.

An animal left to die on the exposed surface gets eaten, spread apart, absorbed, etc.

What do we see all around the world in what can only be considered large and expansive fossil sites? We see fossils. Would a global flood leave lots of fossils? Yes. That too is evidence for a global flood.

Do we see many fossils from modern times? No, not many. Don't we have lots of animals dying? Yes we do. What don't we have happening any more? We don't have any more global floods.

I know that's written pretty silly, but seriously, most fossils can be attributed to the flood.

I disagree with that Falkus. The amount of strata is evidence of a global Flood.

If the geological strata was settled in just a year, it would release 5.6 x 10²⁶ joules of energy from the physical processes involved, more than enough to vaporize all the water on earth, raising the surface temperature of the planet to 1000 degrees Celsius, and boiling most of the atmosphere off into space.

What do we see over the entire global earth? Layers of sediment. Now seismic action allows layers to form as well, but a global flood does have some evidence.

Then why isn't that evidence visible in ice core dating, which gives insight into geological events up to forty thousand years back? How come we still have ice caps, which would have broken up in a global flood, and would take hundreds of thousands of years to grow back? How come there are tree ring records over ten thousand years old with no evidence of a global flood?

I know that's written pretty silly, but seriously, most fossils can be attributed to the flood.

The Karoo formation in Africa contains eight hundred billion vertebrate fossils. A very conservative measure would is that this is one percent of the all fossils in the world. If all these animals were alive at the same time prior to the flood, as your hypothesis suggest, there would be 2100 living animals per acre of the planet, ranging from shrews to elephants. That's not possible.

I don't think that result is from observation, and I see no way to test this. Doesn't science require observation or testability?

Conflict doesn't mean there is no evidence for a Flood. You're talking about two different things. You stated there is no evidence for the flood in the geological strata. I've pointed out there is evidence for it in the strata. Conflict doesn't mean there is no evidence.


I'd like for you to show me the math you use to come to this conclusion.

I'd suggest moving this to another threat, guys.  Perhaps the "errors or accusations of errors thread?"  I think this one is better left as a place to simply state beliefs, and debates about them can go on in other threads.

Here here, there is the Noah thread at the bottom of the thread's list.

Since we have a few new members, I thought I'd bump this thread, in case any wanted to share their views.

Why do I believe in what I believe?

I believe that humankind can be transformed, as an article of faith.  Logically, the religion that transforms the highest percentage of its adherents into saints is the most true.

Christianity started off well.  The true miracle of the New Testament isn't the resurrection of Christ, it was the transformation of Saul on the road to Damascus.  But since then, there have been very few Christians who exemplify this example.  I have met true saints, people who are fonts of the human spirit, and some of them were Christian.  But more were something else.

Never really discussed what I believed.  Simply because I only believe a few things.

1. That the most basic of morality is influenced by experiences of stick and carrot, whether natural or human-applied. To feel aversion from taking an action is to have had a negative experience beforehand with a similar situation.

2. That we are self-conscious is not the most admirable trait; that we are conscious of others as equal to ourselves is.  Without this, we could not be empathic; we would feel no regret, no sympathy, no compassion. We would not feel the pains of others, and would be limited only to our personal stick and carrot.

3. Teaching contrary to Empathy leads to Apathy, and leads to the thinking of others as lesser than ourselves.
-------------------

Why do I believe these things?  Because all hate I have seen has resulted from somebody thinking less of somebody else.

To think of a person or people as less than oneself is to plant the seeds of hatred.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:09, Sat 20 June 2009.

First and foremost, I have a personal, undeniable witness of the Truth*.

Second, as supporting evidence, the more I learn of science, philosophy, etc. The more it all fits together. I should reiterate that I can't base my belief on this fact, because the sciences and human study is imperfect. Thus, there can be mistakes in understanding and in what is presented as truth. But much of it obviously fits, and that body of knowledge serves as good supporting evidence to my belief.

*I capitalize truth here to state my belief that there is an underlying truth of all things and that science, religion, and any other approach to gaining understanding will agree perfectly at this truth.

I guess it comes down to this:  I have tested what I have understood about God and His word and found it to be true.  I have understood enough and tested enough of it to be true that I can accept what I do not understand to be true, as well.  This is because one of the things I have tested and found true is that what is hidden will be revealed in due time.

I think I can add one more statement of belief at this time.

God, Gods, or no Gods; Your God, my God, his God, it's all irrelevant to me. Death doesn't bother me, and neither does the end of Life.  The only thing that is good in life is how you feel, so the only good that an Afterlife could give is to continue to feel.

Some religions have dual Afterlives, one of Feel-Goods and another of Feel-Bads.  It's usually assumed by the people who remind you of their Afterlifes that you would want to go to the Feel-Good place instead of the Feel-Bad place.

If there is an afterlife or afterlives, I don't care whether I end up in a Feel-Bad or a Feel-Good.  I have a Feeling that comes from my memories, and it's a Feeling of Love, Sadness, Despair, and Agony all mixed together to become one; sometimes it's stronger, sometimes I don't feel it at all, but it never goes away. I don't particularly want it to, and I welcome the periods where it's strongest even as I lay on the floor paralyzed by emotion.

No Feel-Good place could take it away, and no Feel-Bad place could conjure a painful enough distraction.

I don't really think there is an afterlife but I sometimes hope there is; I never want to stop feeling this horrible pain, and if this is all there is, it will lose all of its beauty.

With all due respect, that's a load of mumbo jumbo.  You cannot objectively test for proof of god, or any of the other things that we need religion and philosophy for.  Could you publish your findings?  Show me your tests and statistics?  Or are they just what you feel based on experience?

If it's just personal experience, that's fine for you!  You found something that works for you, and that's great!  But don't assume it must also be true for everyone else without numbers to back you up.

In my case, I've known far too many christians who are jerks to believe that being christian transforms you spiritually in any way.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:41, Sun 27 Sept 2009.

Grandmaster, this is "Why do I believe what I believe" not "Why I think you should believe what I believe".

;) that theme is left to the rest of the Community Chat. Of course these are personal and subjective.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:08, Sun 27 Sept 2009.

On further thought, I also think I should mention here that not only do I, as someone who relies on Empirical evidence for whether or not to accept a concept, but I also heavily distrust testimony and eyewitness accounts.

It'd be one thing if we were incapable of fooling ourselves and others, didn't hallucinate, didn't have overactive imaginations, and couldn't lie.  But we are not so fortunate.

This is equal for all things; I give testimony for Jesus performing Miracles or entering hearts as much credence as I might give testimony to weight-loss scams, pyramid schemes, alien abduction survivors, or the people David Blaine does card tricks on.

If somebody in a scientific field was presenting something as a hypothesis because "he just knew it had to be right", I might give him the benefit of the doubt and hear him out.

But if when we came to the point where we needed to test the hypothesis and he instead recounted an eyewitness account of it working, I'd need to have some way to share the eyewitness's perspective (hopefully through Audio-Video).

Even then, I would need to test the hypothesis myself before I accepted it tentatively until new evidence came to be.
--------------------------------------------------------

To summarize,

1) Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evidence.

2) Testimony of any kind carries the least weight of any evidence given the fallibility of mind and our nature to make shit up when we don't know how something happened.

3) If a company has a "Testimonials" on it's website, I tend to take my business elsewhere if I haven't already sampled and liked the product they're offering.

Here is an example scenario of what I'm trying to convey in another thread:

Do you believe in love?
Do you believe in a love that is separate from sexual desire?

Doesn't matter if it's yes or no, more important is the why of the matter. Perhaps even the history of your Why as well, how it's changed.

I'd never felt love until I was around 18, when I met somebody that I really liked, through this site, no less. Before then I didn't really care one way or another about love.  It seemed very unimportant to me, not really worth my time.

Once I had felt it though, I couldn't get my mind off of it, and I could never remember being so happy. Unfortunately, I might have overembellished everything in my mind, as near the end (over the course of about two years) to my utter dismay we had gone from speaking nearly every day to her calling me a stalker.

I was bed-ridden for six months in severe suicidal depression (I think I was still posting on here, although I can't really remember). I still have the occasional breakdown these 3-4 years later, but I'm certainly a lot better than I was. At those points in my life my belief was that true love did exist, and that I had ruined it.


Today, I don't really believe that there is such a thing as true, platonic love, due to further contemplation on the matter and a little public exposure to actual people and relationships. However, this realization does not settle well with me, so you might say that I'm suffering that reboot I was speaking of.

However, I'm not really sure I'd be able to deal with giving up the emotions I felt, which you might say are my "evidence" of a platonic love.  But I'm realistic about the matter; I doubt anybody shares the same feelings as I do, and since I could never settle for a lesser love I've taken personal vows of celibacy.
----------------

When it comes to True Love, I am of the Witness Philosophy.

Hey I have seen David Blaine perform and he really does do those tricks.

Ironically I have also had an abduction experience which i know for a fact didn't actually happen, but it still messes with me in some ways because it feels real even knowing it is not, at least on a physical level, real. On a mystic/psychological level it is apparently all too real.

And that final point is where we woudl begin to get into what I believe and why I believe it, except that i'm not going to actually go there except to say that it is personal and it doesn't share the same level of 'belief' or 'reality' as do scientific principles and testable facts.

And there are some things between A and B as well.

The mouseover text for the original image says, "Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in practice there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox."

I suspect that CsubR is actually much higher and some of the later numbers lower *because* like I said from my own experience, it seems to be  avery real *psychological* experience, and I, like most other 'abductees' appear to be sane in every other way, or at least every other way that relates (I do have attention deficit disorder, but I think the influence of that can be disregarded). From my experience I would guess that alien abduction phenominon is frequently a way that the subconcious mind deal with uncertainty and anxiety when unexplained changes are occuring within the body- puberty and middle age seem to be when most of teh experiences occur and many seem to also center, time wise, on previously undiagnosed illnesses. Combine that with the common experience that teh aliens invade or alter teh persons body and I think what may be manifesting is a sort of 'early warning' of bodily changes that the person is anxious about.

I'm still affraid of needles though.

I think you'd fit in the M_I category.

Well, *I* wouldn't, but yes, other people with that experience would. I at least understand that it is a psychological experience not a physical one.

The reason for belief is more important to me generally than the belief itself.

If someone shares a belief or lack of belief in one thing or another, but held to that opinion due to a sort of reasoning I lack respect for, I'd be just as critical of their beliefs as I would were their opinions in conflict with mine.

EDIT: And I even abhor some of my own reasons for believing in certain things.  I do not like being emotionally compelled to believe in something, yet as I said I am emotionally compelled.  Fortunately, the belief is in an emotion so I think I might be tautologically justified.

But I would have no excuse whatsoever for trying to convince people of what I believe based on recounting what I feel, and I don't think it would satisfy me at all if I actually were to convince somebody in this way.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:11, Wed 07 Apr 2010.

How do you build a body of evidence without recounting experience?

Dicto simpliciter Fallacy I think.  The accounts of personal experiences are what I am describing, while you are zooming out to imply something I never intended.

Non-personal experiences are transferable by consistently reliable tests and possess very few, if any, interchangeable explanations of equal merit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:53, Thu 08 Apr 2010.

I think there is some middle ground as well- for example if you saw Bigfoot yoru experience would be a data point in any research to determine whether bigfoot exists. Relaying teh information you saw for this purpose and going out to try and convince people that bigfoot exists are two different things. On he other hand if you tell people what you saw some will be convinced by it. It's not as though you can tell someone else 'stand there and you too will see bigfoot' to make the experience replicable. Early on in any field teh ammount of non-replicable data will far outweigh the ammount of replicable data as the variables still need to be isolated.

(Hauling this back around to the original topic by its nose ring.)

   I was born to a devout Quaker and an agnostic free mason. My father ditched on us when I was 3 and my mother brought me up in faith based communities my entire childhood.

   When I was 8 CPS took an unhealthy interest in me and my mother because I would not be a good little cookie cutter student shaped robot, and through threats and coercion forced me to attend a horrible boarding school known as Wediko. If I ever had faith the Cristian version of God that place ground it into fine dust.

   From then until I was 15 I was a literal dyslexic agnostic. At that point I moved out of my home town and finally began to search for some structure of religious belief. I passed through three polytheistic phases before I came to the moment when I found the light.

   I had bought a copy of "The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer." and was reading it to get some background for a story I wanted to write. As I thumbed through the section of imperial prayers in the back I suddenly felt I was not alone, and then I heard it. It was a voice that spoke with no words, silent but echoing like thunder. This was the voice of the Immortal Emperor, Shepard of Humanity.

   From that day to this I have been a staunch Imperialist, facing bigotry and persecution from every quarter, even my own family. Though my road is hard I believe with all my soul in the truth of the Emperor's message, there can be no bystanders in the battle for humanities survival.

...

Er...

So you didn't know if Dog existed?

(For anyone else like me who failed to get the reference, it's a fictional book written for Warhammer 40k, pretending to be written... about? the terrans theocratic ruler.)

In reply to katisara (msg #76):

You call it fiction, I call it prophecy. If we do not change what happens now this is the nightmare that will come to pass.

What? That the Eldar will sink into hedonism and depravity, creating the Chaos god Slannesh, forming the Eye of Terror and disrupting the galaxy forever?
This message was last edited by the player at 17:35, Wed 05 Jan 2011.

In reply to Falkus (msg #78):

Are we going into RP mode now?

I'm simply questioning how anyone could treat Warhammer 40,000 as either a source for moral guidance or a prophecy. I love the setting and run several games based in it for my Dark Heresy and Deathwatch groups, but I don't consider something that could happen unless we change our ways.

That's the thing about Faith isn't it?

Hey everyone,

I wasn’t sure where else to put this so I suppose this thread will work. Some of you might remember me from some ramblings either here or elsewhere over the years.

For those wondering if people can change their worldview on things then maybe this can give you some insight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I grew up in a completely non-religious household, but went to camp every summer as a kid to a Christian camp. When I was 7 I made a profession of faith of sorts and from then on I was very clear that I had a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Did not go to church and had no friends who were Christians, but read my Bible daily and prayed.

When I graduated I attended a University where I became very involved in a few Christian Campus Organizations. Become involved in door to door evangelism and campus ministry. Loved the apologetics end of things and debating and was a driving force behind bringing in speakers like William Lane Craig etc to the campus to debate professors.

On graduating from University I got married to a Christian woman and we became like many white suburban families in the church - potlucks, kids stuff, bible studies etc.  I also started becoming more involved in youth ministry as a VERY active (15+ hours per week) volunteer with a Christian youth organization.  After 5 years of that I eventually took a position on paid staff and my family and I packed up and moved to a new city and started working in full time Christian ministry. Great community and good neighbours. Love the city.

A several years I became official clergy and was well established in the city.  And then hit the year from hell.  Within the space of one year a young man I knew VERY well committed suicide, a close friend was killed in a car accident leaving a pregnant widow and 2 other kids - mere hours after we all had breakfast together, a third friend died of an epileptic seisure, leaving a grieving husband with a 3 year old boy, and young lady’s mother, who was well known in the community and to most of the kids I worked with was crushed coming home and killed at an intersection.

My wife and I went through a real period of questioning and had our faith in mostly everything sifted through and yet felt we had come out of the other side with a deeper understanding of what we actually believed. Within 18 months of the end of that year I had resigned in my position in full time ministry, mostly disillusioned in the practices of the church and most of Christianity, but still retaining a core belief in a good and loving God amidst a messed up world.  We stopped attending church as a family (our city only has a few, and they were very old school in their methodology and structures) and gave a go at running our own home church.  It went well, and though small, we enjoyed it for what it was, as did the others in the group.
Throughout it all I was realising my introvert nature and struggling to maintain a balance between friendships and introspection/time alone, and pulled back from leadership in the home church setup, leaving the door open to be an attender down the road should someone else step up to lead it.  No one did.  I began to listen to a lot of podcasts centering on the skeptic community and was thoroughly challenged yet again in much of what I believe, and why I believe it. I’ve always been a critical thinker, and skepticism appealed to me on so many levels, even if some of it (when it came to atheism etc) was against what I inherently believed.

A few months after that I sat down and watched ‘The Last Days’, a documentary that featured the stories of Hungarian Jews as they experienced the Holocaust, and while some further research has me wondering about “some” of the details given in the documentary, the end result was a complete and final shattering of my belief in a good God.

That night, as I was in tears, I laid down and told God that I have a true desire to believe in his existence but that I was at the point where the horrific things that happen in this world without any indication that he is able or willing to do anything about it, have led me to the point where I need something audible/visible etc to convince me of his existence.

It’s several months later and I still wait.

The evil of this world, specifically of the Holocaust, but no less in my own back yard where parents torture their children, adults use little girls/boys as sex slaves, and more, have left me with a gaping silence that I can no longer ignore.

My wife and I sat down and I told her of where I was at and she was very understanding, though I couched my phrases in terms that likely made things easier for her. My kids and my family are of the utmost focus for me at this point as I feel there is very little else of value. While there is a part of me that longs for something that has eternal value and truth, I am at a point where unless there is something utterly tangible that can convince me, I doubt there will come a time where my belief will return.

In his book, The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel shares the end of a conversation with ex-evangelist Charles Templeton, who no longer believes for similar reasons.  In it he said:



This resonates with me in a profound way.

No idea what the future holds, but for those of faith, I long for what you have but no longer feel I can intellectually have in good conscience, and for those with no faith, I now enter your world with a sense of loss and little idea of how to progress with much in the way of purpose except to simply enjoy my time with my children and family for as long as I (and they) have life.

Thank you for sharing. That's a very profound story, and I hope you have some success with finding what you're looking for.

I feel like I've found a similar place, also started by an unexpected death. I feel like it's moved me a lot further from the Church, and from the dominant Greek and Roman influenced Christianity. I was raised with images of God being an old guy with a beard on a cloud, and that just doesn't jive with the idea of God standing back while terrible things happen. My wife is far more pragmatic, and generally just 'gets on with living' (she was also not especially Christian to begin with). I'm more spiritual and have branched out more. I think the thing that changed my view the most was reading the Tao Te Ching, the core book of Taoism, which gives a view of 'God' (or however you want to label it) which makes a lot more sense in a context of suffering. (If you do pursue it, make sure you find a good translation. I can dig up the online version I prefer.)

I've had this discussion with my mom. She recommended the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner, although I've never read it.

I suppose, in the end, my answer is 'I don't know'. I don't know that I honestly believe in an active Jesus in the world. I certainly don't believe in a big guy in the sky with a sense of ego like we concieve of it. I do believe in a God, but ... it's complicated :) I don't feel like I've abandoned Jesus. To the contrary, I feel like Jesus has abandoned me; that if Jesus was a friend, especially an omnipotent friend, that he would give me what I need to feel that relationship, no matter how big or small it is. But I do have faith that, should I die and end up at the pearly gates after all, that Jesus will understand that I tried and I searched, and did my best by what I had available.

I've always thought of myself like Mulder from the X-Files, with his UFO poster in the back and big words:  "I WANT TO BELIEVE."  Believing is life and hope and purpose adn goodness; not believing is emptiness.  So even if believing means believing in something that turns out to be wrong in the end, the critical things is the path it leads you down.

I can no more profess to know the mind of God than anyone else, but I do know this: All the suffering I've been through has made me a stronger person.  And now I have to use that strength to fight.

What do I mean by this?  Well, I was typically an intellectual without any real desire for confrontation, but events led me to become a lawyer, where I deal with confrontation daily.  It's not an ideal job, but it is a great training ground for what life has thrown at me.  My youngest son was born with some profound disabilities, and I have had to fight for services for him every step of the way.  Now, the school is suing me for not allowing them to implement their slapshod, insufficient services, and I am using all the training that I have gained to fight for him and get him proper services.  So far (knock on wood), I have won my motions agaist the school.  (This is one reason I have been so scarce around here lately.)

Every trial in life gives us experience; every experience makes us stronger; our strength makes us better.  Some have said that faith requires that one go through the "refiner's fire" like a piece of metal being shaped into a blade.  I try to look at adversity like that, knowing that the fallibility of mankind to misuse free will is a constant opposition that must be countered, not submitted to.

At this point in my mind there is either no God (the most likely in my mind now), or if there is a God that is defined by love, then he will understand and explain all in the end.  If there is a God that exists that is going to be delivering punishment because I lost faith due to the Holocaust and other such events then I feel that every single one of is eternally screwed in that case anyways, so I might as well enjoy life as it is.

I also want to believe but with all reasons to do so removed from my brain now, I can't justify doing so. I see no reason for self-sacrifice, self-denial, helping others (except those who directly benefit me) etc, because I don't see any value in life outside of some sort of eternal end to it all.  If I (and all human beings) are just to become worm food in the end with nothing beyond then the limited time I have now should be truly and fully used for completely selfish ends.

That gets complicated and messy though both on a small/family scale, and on a worldwide scale.

I can say that I have lost almost all desire to care about the third world, people in other cities etc, and have narrowed the focus of my care and attention to those people that I have direct involvement with.  Without any sort of eternal end in sight, I don't see much of a point in pissing away money to Africa for example.  I make a lousy humanist and an even worse Christian.

What you say regarding struggle was exactly what I was saying during that really hard year in my life.  Now, on the other side of my de-conversion, all of that rhetoric rings hollow. I am truly glad it works for you (and for millions of other people) because the alternative is far less joyful.

Let me say though that I feel a faint glimmer of hope in Open Theism. I'm not really convinced it will ultimately answer my doubts, but it's one of the few areas of thought left that I don't feel have dried up.

This is something you will need to work on still, and is its own issue. I personally am very uncomfortable pinning my 'this is my value as a person' on the hypothesis that there is a God (especially when, if that hypothesis is right, the 'me' I will be after God is done taking out all the bad stuff will not be the 'me' who is sitting here chatting with you).

But that doesn't mean that who we are is limited to our lifetimes. My children will carry on part of who I am, as will everyone I touch. I write, and everyone who reads will carry a little bit of that. I share a common thread with all other people; common traits that make us human. My success and legacy as a person is bound to the success of humans in general. My consciousness may not survive my death, but every day I work towards leaving an imprint on this world that will.

Well, and to be fair, though I say these things, I am nowhere near living in that way.  So how much do I truly believe it?  Tough to say.

I suppose I just have lived so much of my life with others as the focus, because of an eternal end goal, that to remove that end goal is a huge shift for me that I am still dealing with.

Keep in mind that Mother Teresa said she questioned her faith every single day.  There's nothing strange about that.  The question is what you do when you question things.  Do you change your behaviors?  Do you keep the same behaviors with just a different understanding of them?  There's no real need to change behaviors just because of a question of faith.

Faith is sometimes compared to a seed.  It must be planted and then nurtured for it to grow.  If it is abandoned, it will die.

Mother Teresa was a fascinating individual. I admire her for her ability to truly live out what she believed in a way that defied all odds.  I recently read a couple books about her life.

The flip side is I feel very sad that perhaps she lived a life in suffering for something that may not even be true.  She self-flagellated and denied herself so much and I see WHY she did it, but it makes me truly sad that perhaps she did it for a lie.

As for faith, as I come out the other side of this journey, I see faith as helpful for those who have it, but impossible to use for those who don't.  The entire concept of faith is a useless word to me now.

Wow Doulos, thanks for sharing such a personal story so candidly.  I'm very sorry that you had to endure so many losses in such a short time.

Since you've shared, I'll assume you're open to our thoughts on your situation (if not, my apologies, and just skip what follows), and add my tuppence:

First, any conversion will likely be difficult and confusing, especially one precipitated by such tragic events.  But take heart, as things will get better with time, as you start to figure things out in your new paradigm.  Right now it sounds like you miss believing in God/Jesus, which is probably natural.  One thing it might be worth considering, though, is that the universe hasn't changed at all.  All the change that has occurred is within you.  Whatever you got out of believing in Jesus was something that you created yourself.  And you're still just as capable of providing that benefit to yourself now as you were before.  So don't despair!  You just need to re-learn how to create that sense of (whatever it is that you miss) for yourself again.

Second, it sort of sounds to me (and I may be wrong, and I apologize if so) that you feel some what obligated to adopt a selfish, self-centered view of things now that you no longer believe in God, and that you're not entirely happy with that.  It sounds like before a payoff "at the end" was what motivated you to "do good."  It sounds (again, apologize if I've misinterpreted what you said) that you weren't doing it because it was the right thing to do, but because you thought it would get you a prize in the afterlife.  That, to me at least, sounds like the more selfish position, though I'm sure others will disagree.  As I said, though, it also sort of sounds like you're not entirely happy with your new "look out for number one" worldview.  What I would say, is that if you feel like you're missing something with this new outlook, there's probably a problem with it for you.  Consider doing good things because they're the right thing to do, rather than it will earn you bonus points in heaven.  My guess is that doing so will feel better to you.  At the same time, it's very possible that you were overextending yourself doing "church stuff," and felt a need to focus more on your family, friends, etc.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  Raising your kids is a "good work" too, even if it's not quite as flashy as sending bibles to starving kids in africa. ;)  Most of us can do the most good closer to home, where we have the most influence.  There's a place for charity, certainly, but don't let the opportunity cost lead to more harm being done than good.  It sounds like you've got that part down already, though, so I won't belabor it.  Do keep in mind, though, that it's not an either/or thing.  You can cut back your previous charity work to a more reasonable level instead of going cold turkey, if you feel that would help you do the most good.

Third, while many people find the finite nature of life frightening or depressing, especially those who are used to thinking of the afterlife frequently, it's not something that should really depress you.  I've read that one of the things most strongly linked to being satisfied with your life is thinking regularly about death, and the fact that we only have a limited time here.  It's counter-intuitive to many people, because "thinking of death" tends to be associated with dreary, mopey, depressed folks.  But actually, reminding ourselves that "this life is the only one I've got, and it's not going to last forever, so I'd best not waste it," is actually very good for us.  It's also good to realize that our loved ones won't always be here, and can be gone in the blink of an eye, as you've seen only too much recently.  If we use this to make the most out of the time we do have together, it can actually make our relationships better, as we're less likely to take them for granted.  Finally, thinking about death, and realizing that it is a natural part of life actually makes it less scarey, and easier to deal with when it comes (to us or others).

Fourth, and this goes back to some of my earlier points, you're now free to decide what your purpose is.  Before it sounds like you had set the "goal" as "getting into heaven" or "being the best Christian I can be" or the like.  Those were sort of given to you by others.  You made a choice to accept them as the goal, but others told you they were the goal before hand, I imagine.  Part of what you're missing right now is possibly that lack of a goal or motivation.  But you can still have a goal/purpose without a god.  You just need to come up with it for yourself.  What kind of goal would you like to pursue?  What would you like your purpose to be?  You now have the freedom to choose.  It sounds like you're focusing your family, and enjoying the time you have together, and I think that's a great place to start!

Finally, I read a book recently by Dan Barker, who is a former evangelical minister who became an atheist.  I found it so-so, but I know people often like to hear from others who have gone through similar processes as themselves, so you might want to check him out.  There are probably better atheist writers out there I'd say, but most of them aren't former ministers, so his point of view is somewhat unique in that respect.

Tycho,

Thanks for the thoughtful post, though this is something that has been quite a long process, there have been few people/places where I can really hash it all out.  I'm quite open to feedback and discussion and at this point in my life, won't really be offended by much...hahah.

Let me also state that this process would be much easier in isolation when radical changes in lifestyle may (if needed) be much easier to take on.  However, my wife has a very deep faith and we have two great kids.  She's an amazing woman, so making it all work is first and foremost in this.



I sort of get what you are saying, and yet for me, the very essence of the universe has really changed. From eternal to temporary.  At least insofar as it concerns me.  That's a massive shift in understanding.



While the idea of eternal payoff is an element, it is certainly a small part of the equation. I have always been of the belief (based on the writings of people like NT Wright) that the actions and things that I do today that are of lasting value, will in fact last.  It's been a very long time since I have beieved a "This whole thing is going to burn and blow up" line of thinking.

I have been well away from the more conservative view of heaven for some time, and did believe in a state in which the really beautiful/true/valuable/love-filled things will actually be the things that inhabit and exist within eternity.

So the reason for living a certain way (for me anyways) was more about believing that if eternity will actually consist of these sorts of things, then it's only natural and right that I should start filling my time and attention with the same, in preparation for that eternity.

My reaction of "selfish is the only way to live" is mainly because I can't (yet) see much a point in doing anything other than whatever seems right to me at that time.



I must admit, that the very concept of "right" has lost most of its meaning as I have become much more post-modern in my thinking over time. At this point the only real "rightness" I can grasp on to is what can be proven and claimed through the scientific process. While I feel a very strong inward morality, I also feel very much that it has been programmed by my life ... so how much of it is actually objectively "right"  Tough question that few have good answers for.




Absolutely. At first I left ministry because of a realization that I was burning out, but also because I came to embrace the more inward/introspective/introverted side of me that was more a "real" me then I had been living.

Re: charity/good deeds
It's actualy been very refreshing to simply give to things that we feel as a family would do the most direct good, and not out of any obligation to a church etc.  (I realise that action in itself is contradictory to my previous comments about living selfishly.  This whole thing is a process I am working through!)



Steve Jobs was said to be intensely motivated by his own mortality so I believe you are right.  Wat's very difficult for me is that even if I manage to rule the planet and create world peace, when I am dead - I am dead.  That's it!  Since the reality of that has struck me hard, it's tough to work through finding meaning in much right now. The temporary nature of well ... everything ... is a shocking thing when it hits you. I agree that somehow, finding a way to work through this particular aspect is perhaps the biggest challenge ahead.  You've given me some good things to think on.



Purpose ... no idea. This is a real toughie since it is so entwined with the previous point.  I agree that perhaps the flexibility of finding a new purpose could perhaps be one of the things that could be most freeing in all of this should I finally find a way to work through the whole 'Dead is dead' thing.



I'll see if I can dig up the book, sounds like it might be a great read for me considering where I am at.

I really appreciate your thoughts on this, thanks!
This message was lightly edited by the player at 03:52, Fri 25 Nov 2011.

Don't forget that love is always morally right :) (Not lust, not skirt-chasing, but genuine concern for other people.) It's also one of those things that, even if the effects don't last until the heat death of the universe, it is a valuable moment to experience, and to give.



This is an important factor. Your marriage and the wellbeing of your wife is important. While I'd never recommend you to be dishonest, consider that remaining open to God, attending church and so on may still serve as valuable bonding experiences (worship services really do help with family cohesion). This change has the potential to make you into a much stronger person, but if handled poorly, it can also tear apart your family. As the head of your family, you need to put them first, and give them time to understand your thinking while saving them the shock you went through as much as possible.

My brain says that love is merely some sort of evolutionary aspect that helps me survive longer.  Every other part of me says otherwise!

As for my family, the reason I share this here is because this is en entirely different level then I can truly share with my wife. Not because I want to be secretive, but because I need to hash out how to navigate through all of this in such a way that she will understand.  I've been very clear that I will still attend church with her and the kids, and that I'm very open to having my mind changed on this. I'm married to an amazing woman, so I'm very lucky there.

Yes, it's definitely a massive change in understanding.  I'd suggest, though, that it may be easier to adjust to if you keep in mind that it's you that's changed, not the universe.  When it seems like the world has changed around you, it's easy to feel powerless, and adrift.  But when we own the change, view it as growth in understanding on our part, it can be a bit more empowering.  Or at least less frightening.  :)


It'll probably take some time to come to terms with your change in view on that, but one thing that might help, would be to consider your assumption that eternal is better than temporary.  There's more of it, but is more necessarily better?  Does something being finite make it more precious?

Also, keep in mind that in terms of deciding your own actions, the change from eternal effects and temporary ones isn't all the crucial.  You still need to weigh up the outcome of doing X versus doing Y.  The actual value of each isn't critical, just their relative values.  If X gives a greater benefit than Y, it's still the best thing to do, even if the benefit of X is finite.

Comparing the expected benefit of X now to what you used to think it was is perhaps interesting, but won't make as much difference to your day to day life.  It's a bit like waking up from a dream in which you could fly.  You might miss being able to fly in your dream, but in the waking world you can't do it, so lamenting the fact won't help you much (unless it drives you to invent something that lets you fly, perhaps).  A bit of reasoning I find useful in many, many situations is that unhappiness is usually caused by us wanting things to be different than they are (hat tip to the buddists for that one), and you can change that by either changing the way things are, OR by changing what you want/expect.  If you can't do the former, best to do the latter.  Making yourself miserable over a world that doesn't exist doesn't do you any good, though doing what you can to make the world more like the one you wish existed certainly can.  The trick is to realize what things you can bring about, and what things you just have to accept as "the way things are."


I'm a big fan of science, and worked as a scientist for a while, but I'm not sure it can tell us much about what is right or wrong.  Definitely morality is easier when it's handed to us, and we just have to follow someone else's rules.  But coming up with our own morality is a great opportunity for growth, I'd argue.  It's work, but it's the kind of work that makes us into better people.  I'd suggest worrying less about what is objectively true, and more about figuring out why you feel X or Y is right or wrong.  Examine your own morality, and accept that it is your own, and that it's subjective.  Love is subjective too, but that doesn't mean it's not something good. :)  Reasoning through your own moral system, figuring out what assumptions are needed to justify it, is a great thing for us all to do, I think.  Morality is subjective (in that it only exists in our minds--any given morality can be objective in the sense that what's right for one person is right for anyone else), but that doesn't really change much versus an objective one, except, I suppose, being able to say "I told you so" to people who were objectively wrong in the afterlife. ;)  Even those who believe God's word is the objective determination of what's right and wrong still encounter those who disagree with them, and have to deal with that disagreement.  It perhaps feels good to tell ourselves that we are objectively correct, but it doesn't really buy us much more than that, since everyone else doesn't accept it as true.

As for where to look for ideas on morality, the golden rule is a great place to start, I'd argue.  I also frequently consider the idea (not my own, though I must admit I can't remember who came up with it first) that you should try to bring about the system you would choose to be in if you didn't know before hand which member of the system you would become.  That's usually brought up more in the context of government, but I think it applies to life in general as well.


I'd suggest considering why it feels like a bad thing that when you die "that's it."  Often if you can start one of these question sessions that get you to a deeper understanding of your own assumptions, and get you to a point that maybe you realize one of your assumptions isn't quite as certain as you thought.  So start with "why do I think X is bad?"  And whatever you answer, say "okay, well why do I think that?" and repeat until you get to some point where you just have to say "well, I just do!"  Then consider what happens if you're wrong about that.  Sometimes things that seem/feel obvious, can sort of topple away when you get down to the very root assumption holding them up.  Can't guarantee that it will work for you in this case, but it's something I find useful for this kind of stuff (though I fear it causes others a bit of frustration when I go into repeated question mode in some of the debates here!).


This probably is a very minor point, but it's the kind of thing that grabs my attention, so apologies for a bit of pedantry. ;)  Love isn't something that helps you survive longer, it's something that helps your genes make copies of themselves.  A minor difference, perhaps, but potentially important, since it can drive you to acts of altruism/selflessness/etc.
More importantly, though, I think words like "just", "only", "merely", etc., can be a bit dangerous.  They can really change how we view something, without changing the truth of it at all.  I certainly am guilty of using them too casually at times, so I can't claim to be perfect on this score by a long shot.  But consider the difference between "Love is an amazing thing that came about through evolution, because it increases the odds that my genes will make more copies of themselves" and what you said.  Evolution is a pretty amazing thing, and I don't think we should use the word "merely" to describe it often!  Love is a wonderful thing, regardless of how it came about, in my opinion.  Having a natural cause doesn't/shouldn't devalue it in the slightest.  The grand canyon came about "merely" through millions of years of a river flowing over rocks, and it's absolutely spectacular.  Natural phenomenon can and are beautiful and awe-inspiring, so long as we don't throw "merely" in front of them when we describe them! :)  Remember, love hasn't changed at all.  It's still the same, amazing thing it was before your conversion.  It's just your understanding of it that has altered.




Remaining open-minded is good, as is realizing the value of your wife and kids, and keeping their happiness so much in mind.  I'd strongly caution against keeping them too in the dark, though.  Depending on how old your kids are, all the thinking you'll be doing may be a bit above their head, in which case no need to burden them with it much, but your wife is an adult, and deserves your honesty.  If she's interested in the journey you're taking, I wouldn't try to keep anything from her.  If she's happy for you to figure it out own your own, fair enough.  The danger, I'd say, is that if she doesn't have a good idea of your thoughts on things now, it may lead to more pain later when she does gain a better view of them.  You know your wife and relationship better than anyone, so I certainly don't mean to be telling you how to manage your marriage.  But make sure when you're doing things to make things easier for her or your kids, you're not just putting off difficult discussions for later.  People can sometimes feel hurt that you didn't tell them things earlier, even if you did so out of a desire to protect them.

Well 9 months later and I have basically decided that while I see no tangible reason to believe in God, that the utter emptiness and desolation of a universe without God or purpose is enough to drive me mad.

So the hope is to move forward with some belief in God as a possibility (even though I don't see much evidence for one), and to treat as many people with care and love as possible and hope that there is more than nothing when all is said and done.

The only other alternative is to actually live out the belief of no hope or future and to just live as truly selfishly as possible, and for me I can't bring myself to realistically live that way.  If there is no God then I hope to 'do no harm' if I can in life, and if there is, then the things that I do and carry forward in this life will not be in vain (as per 1 Corinthians 15:58 for example)

Pretty profound. I want you to know I'm praying for you and your family. Right now.

I have this urge to ask. If you were christian, what happened that you now deny God?

I don't deny God, but I don't see any intellectual or logical reason for him to exist.  However, I am truly hoping that he does and am planning on living my life in that direction, since I do hope that God exists.

The only possible God that I CAN believe in is one that is in line with Open Theism - such that he does not know the future since it does not exist yet.  There is a lot of other stuff that goes along with thhat as well that deal well with the problem of evil and suffering.

But to answer your question I watched a documentary on the Holocaust that really did a number on me trying to reconcile that sort of horrific evil, and the more traditional view of God, which I can no longer maintain.

Ok. Bad stuff does happen. But that does have to happen.

Does your faith in God depend on bad things not happening in the world? My first question would be, what makes them bad things? How do you know they are bad?

My second question would be, knowing that these things are bad, do you think God should stop everything bad? Should God stop all sinners?


I just have the urge to say that. No offense meant. I can understand this is difficult, though I accept that things are in a context I probably don't feel as intensely as you might since you're living through it. You don't have to reply, it's kind of a personal reflection I guess. But I just feel there is this huge urge to post this and pray for you. I don't know the whole picture for you right now, but God does know exactly what you are going through, and he knows what you need. You are not alone. God is with you everywhere and at all times.

I have no problem talking about, it's all good.

I recently left full time Christian youth ministry and shortly after went through an entire rethink of everything I believed.

I think that saying 'bad stuff happens' dehumanizes just how horrifically bad things like the holocaust are/were.  But let me address your questions.



No.  However, an understanding of how God can be good, and how God can allow such a high level of pain and suffering was not congruent up until I discovered Open Theism.  I thought I had dealt with it many years ago, but for some reason once I had kids and really had to deal with something like the Holocaust in human terms, did I really find the idea of a God who controls/allows ALL things to simply not be able to fit with something like the Holocaust. To hear devout Jews say 'God was incinerated in the fires of Auschwitz' completely resonated with me.

As far as I am concerned today, the classical and more mainstream view of the God of Calvinism is one of the worst and most evil kinds of creatures that could ever be created.



I suppose it could be evolutionary mechanisms that control whether I think certain things are bad.  Or maybe social/societal norms that control it.  Or maybe God.  I hope for the latter, but I see no reason why it could not also be one of the former.



I am not entirely sure I have an answer to this.  If God is able to stop evil and yet does not then there better be a reason that is far beyond anything I can dream up.  And if the answer is beyond my understanding (or anyone elses I might add) then I am unsure of what value it is to me today as a finite being.  However, Open Theism, and the book 'Is God to Blame' answered some of these questions in suitable, though not perfect, ways.

What is interesting is that none of these concerns even deal with the issue of eternal suffering and/or hell.

TitL, I didn't  understand what you meant by this line.  What does the "have to" mean in an objective sense. Are you saying, that there is not even a theoretically possible universe in which no bad things 'happen'?  Or something else entirely?



Once could very well believe in a wicked g-d  So, no.



Let me also take these in reverse order.

If you're asking by what mechanism can we know that something is "utterly bad" or that it doesn't "lead to some surprise good", the problem with the assertion logically is it's a universal quantifier. Then there is no horror, even one so unspeakable ...well to be unspoken... that we can say is bad. In which case, the whole nothing that "sin" is bad, because rather silly... (not that it isn't even without this problem) but if, sort of as Joseph says, "What you meant for ill g-d meant for good" is a valid proposition, AND FURTHER that g-d cares enough to "find the good" or "bring about the good" then there is no 'bad' ...and that means our suffering is a problem of perspective.  In which case, why not make us without the capacity for it.

If I were created, I didn't have to be created to feel such sadness and grief at the death of my husband...or the death of my Mom's Cat.  Or to have such a vivid memory of terrible things...  And, as the OP points out, these really pale compared to genocide.

For that matter, if g-d exists and is in fact adequately powerful. Then that g-d could create a universe in which there is everything "important" and all without even the distinct possibility of the things happening though the "apparently" bad ones.

I also agree with the original poster that you're not going to "win" any hearts and minds by telling people their pain isn't "a good judge" of reality.




I don't generally accept there being a 1 to 1 correspondence between "bad things that happen" and sin. Further, there are many things that are called or ID as "sin" or some aproximation thereof...that are clearly "irrelevant" and certainly not "bad things happening" events of the like we're talking.

IE Working 7 days a week for a give week (picked that so we know we're hitting a 'sabbath')... That's a capital crime, (and the punishment IS a bad thing) but the working each day of a week FOR a week isn't.

ON the other hand, the most obvious moral matter--slavery--is not one that the bible and/or bible g-d seems to have gotten right.

Having said that, if we change the question to: If there were a g-d, who was adequately powerful, adequately aware, and adequately loving... Then yes, that g-d most certainly should stop ...perhaps even... all bad things.  Or better, set up a system where they never happen in the first place.



Another example of either hir impotence, indifference, or insufficient awareness of the future events which lead him to this point.

WOw, this topic has so much stuff, and so little hard evidence to pin things on ... Just speaking for myself, it's hard to get a handle on it.

Doulos, I'm a little surprised you feel like, without God, you have no reason not to be selfish. While I live in the same world you do, almost everything you bring up as things that make not believing in God painful for you, makes believing in God MORE painful for me.

I believe humans really do have a manifest destiny to make the world better. I feel like my life feeds into that, with or without God. And I feel like doing that is a real goal that I would be willing to live (or die) for. It inspires.

Compare that to reading the bible, where the goal of life is to worship one entity, or worse, to run through some rat race experiment because He said so. The only reading of the bible which I get that can inspire me is the idea of developing a loving relationship. But since God doesn't return calls or letters, that relationship has not been as fulfilling for me as other ones I've been pursuing.

If I don't believe in God, then human horrors are just the acts of a few humans. While terrible, it's ultimately within our power (and our responsibility) to fix that. And every day I believe we get better at that. If I believe in God, then all wickedness is the result of God building it into the system, intentionally (because an omnipotent God does not need to permit suffering in order to have free will. If God is limited by such a choice, God is not omnipotent. God, with foreknowledge and intent, *created* a world with sin and suffering.) If God *designed* suffering into the system, I don't see how we should expect it to end.

There are a few points God wins out over no-God. One is permanence. THe idea of one day everything being wiped away scares me. I think that's part of why transhumanism is so attractive to me.

The other item is recognition that we are indeed limited by our experience. Yes, genocide is terrible. But what if there's something more terrible? We really have no way to judge the terrible-ness of what we're experiencing. It could be that, one day when we're all dead, we can see more of the universe and understand that, while genocide is bad for that little time, it's really just a drop in the bucket compared to all of the stuff God protected us from. It feels terrible suggesting genocide is quaint and minor, but I just don't know. And I guess that isn't a point 'for' God, just recognizing my own limitations in being able to judge.



Where I am now, I've decided the current, western understanding of God is trite. God isn't an old man with a beard on a cloud. At best, I can understand God as a Taoist. God IS the system, the suffering, the joys. God loves us because we are part of God. To experience suffering is to experience an aspect of God, and we should embrace it for that reason. God could eliminate suffering, but firstly that implies a nature of consciousness below what God possesses, and secondly, the suffering is part of the experience of God, the experience that God seeks out for God himself, and us, being organs of God, experience with God.


But this is just what's going on in my mind :) Like I said, I can't really get enough handle on things to say 'this is right!'

I'm glad you've found something that works for you :)

Hey Katisara thanks for your response :)



Without God, and in a Universe that has no eternal purpose, I fail to see any point in any of it.  In the end it will all end up as nothing if the current understanding of the future of the Universe holds merit.  So the only true way to live in that Universe is to conduct oneself in as hedonistic a way as possible.  Rape, torture, and anything else you can think of are all justified as long as it fulfulls the need to increase the pleasure of the individual as long as the entire existence of the Universe is pointless.

I don't see any room for the idea of destiny in a universe that will cease to exist when all is said and done.  Everything is completely pointless from a long term perspective, so in the short term an individual might as well do whatever it takes to squeeze as much pleasure as possible out of the shorttime they have.  Now, granted, maybe serving others could bring about that pleasure, but as far as I can tell that's only because there is some strange belief that human beings have value.  In a universe that is going to whither up and shrivel into nothingness, I fail to see how humans have any more value than any other collection of particles in existence - their sum total of value is 0.



I am coming to view that the concept of worship is completely radically different than I used to believe, and that the care of the planet and of other people is a massive part of that (potentially ... I' far less dogmatic on things like this these days!)  If the actions we carry out are judged as being worthy and that those things that have intrinsic 'goodness' carry forward into some sort of future eternity (as my understanding of the New Testament seems to indicate) then a right view of ecology and people is an incredibly important thing that has ramifications for all of eternity.

The issue of whether the Bible actually says this, and of what other value a flawed document such as the Bible, might have, is an interesting one, but probably not completely good for dealing with in this thread.



If there is no God, then the concept of wickedness is non-existence.  Treating others horrifically does not exist because we are just collections of particles behaving in certain ways due to evolution and time.  So what if we torture, hate, burn, destroy etc.  As long as it furthers my needs of self pleasure, it works.  The idea of morality has no place in a universe without purpose from what I can tell.

I have very different views now on suffering and evil, and while I cannot say I am completely clear on it, I would be more than willing to discuss those views in a more appropriate thread. :)



I am not familiar wth transhumanism, but if everything is gone in the end then everything is pointless as ar as I am concerned.



With no God genocide is not evil at all.  It makes sense and in fact is justified completely as long as someone gains leasure from it in some way.

With God there are all SORTS of questions to be answered that I have had to REALLY wrestle with and still do, but at least have some sort of comfort level with it based on my changed understanding of the nature of God.



Totally agree with your first sentence.  However, I would say the standard view of God in Christendom is not just trite, but horrifically evil.

Not sure I completely understand what you are saying in the rest of the paragraph, but I suspect there are elements in there that I would agree with as well (to a degree)

At first blush, I agree with you, and for a long time this was the major motivator for sticking with God (as I noted myself in my last post!)

However, we're pretty early in the race to postulate that. We have a good idea what will happen to the universe, but we don't know if we're trapped here. There's a very real possibility that we can survive, or at minimum, have an impact on someone outside of our universe. People are already hypothesizing that our universe is a creation from another one, implying both that people could travel here from the parent, and that the parent has an effect on us.

But even within that, I realized that I probably don't need infinity time. I have to imagine that, after a billion years, my feelings on the situation would have changed and that, if I can effect the world for a billion years, I'm really pretty happy with that outcome. I mean, a billion years, is still a hundred million times longer than I can reasonably imagine. That's a LOT of time. I'm okay with 'you have more time than you can rationally understand' (well, not really, but more so).






I'd agree. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts, but this probably isn't the place for it :)



I disagree. God has no bearing on whether Free Will exists or not. Of course, God has an impact on moral arguments. I think though, a major flaw in our thinking is the concept of 'good'. We just put this word out there, like everyone whould understand it, but really, no one seems to agree on what is actually 'good'.

I think there are some things which are desirable, and I can make a case for them. Carrying on the species is desirable. Therefore, increasing our knowledge and our technical capabilities is. I'd say that art also has an intrinsic value. From these things, we can build and build until we have a solid, moral code. I don't think that suffering is morally wrong, but certainly genocide is a suffering beyond the pale, and I don't think even the idea of hedonism justifies it.




Transhumanism is the idea of becoming more than human through self-modification, including cybernetics, genetic manipulation, biological enhancements, etc. In concrete terms, it means extending lives from 70 years to 270 years. Speaking for myself, two hundred years seems like enough time for people to find the next step and extend life by another two hundred years, and so on.

I don't need a final goal yet. We're too early, like I said. But the longer I survive, the longer I have to figure out what that goal is, and to work towards it. So for the near-time, transhumanism seems like the way to go.





One of the most eye-opening books I read on religion was the Tao Te Ching, the main book of Taoism. It's hard to find a good translation. Hunt around on google though. For me, it was a huge eye-opener. I can't recommend it enough.

In reply to Doulos (msg # 97):

Hiya Doulos, sorry to hear that your doubts are causing such despair for you.  In my view, nihilism isn't the only alternative to theism, but I can understand how one can get frustrated and confused when a support they've leaned on for a long time is taken away.

Hopefully this doesn't come off the wrong way (and let me stress that I mean no disrespect by it--growing is a natural part of life, and we all go through it), what you say sort of reminds me of other people's reactions to other change-of-life moments, though yours is perhaps on a deeper scale, since it probably was less expected than some of the others I'm thinking of.  Some young people, once they finish say high school or college or whathaveyou go through a "what am I supposed to do now?" phase, where they have to start making up their own mind, plotting their own course, etc.  All their lives they've had parents, coaches, teachers, pastors, etc., telling them "this is what you need to be doing!  Go to school, practice your piano, hit the gym so you'll be ready for the next season, study hard to get good grades, etc.!"  They get comfortable (even if they don't realize it) in being told what to do.  It saves them from having to decide for themselves what do to, or even what they want to do.  But then they reach some point, say graduation or commencement or the like, and the "grown ups" feel their job is done, and its time for the kid to stand on their own two feet.  They say "you've done great kid!  Congratulations," but the kid feels a bit hollow.  "Now what?" he might wonder.  "Get a job" someone might tell him, but what job?  "I don't know, what are you good at?  What do you want to be?  You've done great!  You can be anything you want!"  But the kid doesn't know what he wants to be.  He's never really had to think about it much.  He feels a bit lost and adrift.  Instead of feeling excited by the freedom and choice, he feels depressed and confused.  "How am I supposed to know what I want to be?" he thinks.  Maybe the kid drifts between a few jobs for a while.  Maybe they take a year or two to travel around the world.  Maybe they get married an have kids and never figure out what it is they really want, but just take the path of least resistance.  Ideally, they'll eventually come around to the idea that they don't need someone telling them what to do.  They can decide for themselves whats important to them, and how best to achieve it.

I feel there's a degree of similarity between that and your situation.  Of course, we can say the kid knew that day would come, so should have been thinking about what he wanted to do before it got to that, whereas you presumably never expected to lose your faith, so no one would have expected you to have given the situation much thought until it arrived.  In both cases, you've lost a support structure that you've depended on your whole life.  You've suddenly been thrust into a position where you can't just depend on someone else to make all the hard decisions and tell you what to do.  You can't just trust someone else to have figured out what matters and what should be the end goal, and just tell you what you need to do to get there.  Not only do you have to blaze your own trail, you have to pick for yourself where it is you want the trail to take you.  It's freedom, but it's also scarey, because you've not had to do that before.  You grew used to doing what was important to someone else (God), so you didn't have to give too much thought to what was important to you.

Some people have similar problems dealing with coming out of the military as well.  They come to retirement after spending years as an enlistee, and suddenly no one's there to tell them what to do every moment of every day.  They don't have the same sense of someone 'higher up' having decided what the goal is, and how to achieve it, and giving them the orders that let them play their part.  They don't have that shared sense of purpose and unity in the civilian world that they felt in the military.  Again, they're more free once they're out of it, but they feel adrift because with that freedom comes the need to think for themselves, not just about what to do, but about what to even want to do.  Again, some deal with it better than others (some have no problem with transition, others struggle), and we can say that it was at least a change they should have seen coming, so they could have prepared for it a bit better, whereas your change was unforeseen.

Again, let me stress that I am not trying to be disrespectful here.  I don't mean to imply immaturity or thoughtlessness by these analogies.  Instead, that you've been thrust into a position that is different from where you were before.  You're no longer able to just accept what others tell you is important, nor do what they tell you is the right thing to do.  You're not in a position where you have to decide those things for yourself, and it's not simple or easy.  It can be frightening.  You've also lost a feeling of purpose and unity that you had with people before.  You've lose some of the camraderie you probably experienced with other believers.  You've also had to deal with the idea that something that you were looking forward to now not seeming likely to happen.

It will take time to adjust, though I'm sure after nine months you're eager for that time to be over!  I would say the important thing is to move forward, just as the kid graduating from school, or the soldier reaching retirement has to.  Unpleasant as it may seem, you now have to stand on your own two feet, and plot your own course.  You not only get to but have to decide what matters to you, and what to do about it.  People will give you all kinds of advice, but at the end of the day you have to make the call.  You could go on saying "but what's the point?  How could I decide what's important?  Who am I to decide that?" and try to avoid the decisions, but I think you'll be pretty miserable if you do.  You could spend all your days worrying about 'what if I make the wrong decision?' and never actually get around to making one, but I'd wager you'll be happier if you just make a decision, and later find out it was wrong, and change your mind.  We all have to bumble our way through this life, learning as we go, making mistakes and living with the consequences, and basically just trying to do the best we can.  It might seem easier if someone told us all the answers and we never had to figure it out ourselves, never had to make the hard decisions, but it'd be far less rewarding in my opinion.


Okay, that's about as close to a pep talk as I can provide for now.  Another thing I wanted to touch on was your view that without God everything is pointless, meaningless, without purpose, etc.  I disagree with this.  Life has the point and purpose that we give it.  Just because someone isn't going to tell you what they've decided the point is (or at least not in a way that you can trust blindly) you shouldn't conclude that there is no point.  Create the point you think there should be!  Create the purpose you want there to be!  Your opinion on the purpose or point or meaning of life is just as valid as anyone else's.  God's purpose for you was just one entity's opinion.  It was just what some deity wanted.  That's all it was.  You can want the world to look like something too.  The point doesn't need to be supplied from outside.  It doesn't need to be handed to you.  You don't need someone else to tell you what the goal is, you can decide for yourself what YOUR goal is.

And very importantly, the choices for the goal are pretty unlimited.  You seem to think the only two options are "do what God says" or "be a complete bastard to everyone else and get some malicious pleasure out of it."  Those are not the only two choices.  There is no rule telling you you have to be a hedonistic, selfish, I-don't-care-about-anyone-else arse if you don't believe in God.  Nothing is forcing you to act that way.  If that sounds like a horrible way to live (and it sure sounds horrible to me) THEN DON'T LIVE LIKE THAT.  It's that simple.  You've made a good start with your 'try to live in a way that at least does no harm' idea.  That shows that you care about something.  That's the start of identifying what's important to you, what you value.  Don't let other people (me included!) tell you that if you don't believe in God then you have to live exactly the way they tell you to, and can't care about anything other than yourself.

Another thing I want to point out is that there's nothing magic about eternity.  Something doesn't have to be eternal to have value.  To a degree, things that are temporary are precious precisely because they're temporary.  You need to appreciate them when the happen, because you won't get the chance later.  The same can be said for life as a whole.  Would it be nicer if we could live forever?  I don't know, maybe.  But we can't, so why not appreciate what we do have?  Thinking it's all worthless because it's not eternal is a bit like thinking every meal is horrible because it's not the absolute best meal anyone's ever eaten, or throwing away every paycheck you get because it's not a billion dollars.  If you focus entirely on what things are not instead of what they are you'll just make yourself miserable.  It's no way to live.  To twist an old cliche a bit, no one ever lies on their death bed thinking "I wish I just moped and complained a bit more about all the things I didn't get instead enjoying what I did have."  ;)  Put another way, what does the fact that some years from now we'll all be dust take away from the beauty that's around you right now?  Why should the far future make the now irrelevant?  Why should we compare everything to something imaginary that has infinite value?  It's arbitrary and silly in my view.  Far better, in my view, to compare it to zero.  It's better than absolutely nothing, which is what we'll have some day, so we'd better enjoy it now.  If you're mathematically inclined, another way to look at it is that zero is a far more natural origin for a coordinate system than infinity.

So buck up, Doulos!  Yes, it's frightening to have your support structure removed, but it's also liberating.  Life is only pointless and meaningless if you fail to give it a point and meaning.  It only lacks a purpose if you choose not to give it one.  Sure, it's easier to let someone else come up with the purpose and meaning, but we don't always get to do things the easy way.  At some point in our lives we have to take the training wheels off the bike and learn to ride without them.  Yes, we will fall down, and it will hurt when we do.  But we'll get back up and try again.  Sitting there saying "but what if I fall!?  Now there's nothing to stop me from hitting the ground!" won't get us anywhere.  We might want a parent to keep holding the seat and never let go, so we don't fall, but we're not really riding the bike until they let go.  So go with it, embrace it, and enjoy it!

Interesting but all in the realm of science fiction.  It could be argued that God is as well, but (for me at least) the historical Jesus at least gives a touch more reality to the possibility of some sort of God.   However, the idea that there still might be some sort of 'eternal' without there being a God is very intriguing and should there be more to this down the road it could change my mind on things.




A billion years or a microsecond.  If it all gets flushed then I fail to see the point.  How others do I will never know, but in some ways I am envious.




Good is completely non-existant without God in my books.  Everything we do is then just a function of time and evolutionary development.  We're fancy robots who have been designed by wonderful and glorious chance but will one day be gone.  I don't see how morality can exist with no God in place.  Perhaps a failing on my part, but I have spent a lot of time thiking on it and have not reasoned a way yet.

Beyond that I will check out the book you suggested.  I am currently working my way through two others, but I love to read!
This message was lightly edited by the player at 03:34, Tue 14 Aug 2012.

Tycho,

I read your post much earlier today and I appreciate the response.

Let me say that when I read all of it I simply could not relate.  I ,honestly, after thinking on this for months and months, cant see any value in life at all outside of having some sort of eternal value.  If it all ends at some point then it's all a waste.

However, I have made a conscious decision to say that I will willingly enter into a relationship with a degree of cognitive dissonance, knowing that while on the one hand all of the proof I see leads me to speculate that there is likely no God, that I also have a complete inability to live a life congruent with that reality.

So I'd rather live a life in line with believing there is some sort of God, and do it in such a way that there is no pressure to perform or behave a certain way any more.  How I treat the world and others around me will now be geared towards being of value for eternity in some way (should it exist).

Someone is gay and the Bible says that is wrong (maybe)?  Well I'd rather be wrong about the Bible and truly treat that individual as the wonderful human being that they are.

If the God that exists is one that will burn you for eternity for not believing all parts of the Bible correctly then we were all screwed anyways!!

I'm going to err on the side of caring for individuals and the planet and let everything else fit into that worldview, as opposed to the opposite.

What's fun about this is I get to call the shots, and yet still take into consideration what a God who is defined by love might want me to do.  Maybe that is selfish and irreverent.  I'm not sure.  However, it's all I have left and I am really actually enjoying the freedom that comes from being at this place.

No need to argue with angry churchgoers and skeptics.  No need to place a holy text above an individual.  No need to ignore science to believe in something else.

I can honestly engage in dialogue about evolution, about the gay community, about other faiths, and about hell.  If I am wrong, well big deal.  If the God of the Universe is an angry Calvinistic psychopath then we are all really screwed no matter what.  If there is no God then at the worst I have done my best to enrich the planet and others in the same way that many others of faith or no faith are trying to do every day.  I stand with those people as I move forward.  If God is more of the type of loving (truly loving, not abusive 'loving') God that I hope he is, the the things I do that really matter will carry forward into eternity and I'll have a great laugh about the things I was completely wrong on - or maybe I simply won't care.

Also what is fun about this is I can really feel comfortable to explore some other sides of Christianity that perhaps I never felt comfortable getting into before - such as Open Theism.  And it's been a wonderful resource to me.

The cold universe doesn't owe you anything.

That it's all a waste is hardly a "reason" to be upset.  And, that you did just fine before this awareness shows that folly of being upset at it.

If your awareness of the absence of god is just so... It was always so, even before you were aware of it.  If you had some fake "purpose" before, you can have just as much joy with another "purpose" you manufacture a second time.

Now you may now always know the purpose is fake, but the brain is particularly good (or bad?) at differentiating between real things and fake things anyway.

That sounds like a good place to be, Doulos. And it sounds like you're open to further inspiration from either side of the question, which puts you in a much more honest position than most.

I hope it works out for you. It's not too different from where I'm at as well :)

In reply to Doulos (msg # 109):

Hey Doulos, that post seemed much more positive than the one a few back, so maybe I read to much into your "nothing has value" ideas before and came off a bit preachy in my last one.  Sounds like you're actually doing better than I thought with it, and realizing the good as well as the less-good.

I was thinking a bit more today about how you're struggling to view anything as having any value if it's not eternal, and I came up with this analogy.  Say you're the CEO of a company, and you've got some ideas for where you'd like to take the company in the coming year, but you want to check the numbers to see how your ideas will work out. So you call in your accountant, and say "Jane, how much money have we got to spend on new product development?" and she says "essentially none, sir."  "What?!  We've had a great year!  How can we have no money?"  you reply.  "Well, sir, you did make some money, it's true, but it was far less than infinity--in fact, infinity less than infinity--so really, what does it matter?"  "It matters 'cause I want to know if I can afford to start producing my new product or not!"  "Oh, well, in that case, it doesn't matter at all.  You won't be able to produce an infinite number of them, so whether you make any or not, you end up with essentially the same thing--less than infinity."  "What kind of answer is that?!  I'm trying to make a business decision here, and you're not giving me the information I need!"  "Well, I can't give you an infinite amount of information, so no matter how much I give you, it won't be enough anyway."

The message being that the whole point of a value system is that it helps you make decisions.  The "anything finite is essentially nothing" value system, regardless of how true it is or isn't, doesn't help you make decisions, because all outcomes are equal under it.  That value system doesn't really have any...er...value, for lack of a better word.  It doesn't tell you if the holocaust is better or worse than world peace.  It says they're basically the same.  That's not a very good value system, in my view.  We need on that can differentiate between outcomes, and say outcome X is better than outcome Y, so take action Z.

From what you've said already, it's clear that you do hold some situations to be better than others, which implies you have a value system already, even if it's not entirely conscious.  The fact that you're making decisions at all implies that at some level you don't really buy the whole "nothing matters at all" idea.  You may not be sure why you care about anything, but it's clear that you do (and that's a good thing!).  I think it's a great thing to think about why we care about things, and to try to understand our reasoning, but it's also important to realize that at some point we end up at axioms/assumptions/premises/whatever that we hold as true without being able to back them up with reason or evidence.  We should search for those axioms, I think, and be willing to question the specific ones we hold, but I don't think we should be overly apologetic for holding axioms in general.  Your value system will rest on axioms, whether its based on God or something else.  Best to accept it and do your best with whatever you've been able to figure out to date (which it sounds like you're doing).  Don't feel you need to rigorously derive some indisputable quantity for 'value' that no one will be able to challenge.  Accept that you do value certain things, ask yourself why, but don't end up convincing yourself that nothing matters simply because you can't prove objectively that it matters.

When I was six years old I was forced to perform unnatural acts with five teenage boys in a gang rape, and I grew up very strangely, missing out on much of my life and still suffer to this day because of what happened. I regret forgiving them, since I realize I didn't have to, but in the end I realized that since I could forgive them in the first place, it could only be possible to do that because of God giving me the power to.

Edit-
I'm a Christian Fundamentalist, and proud of it.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:06, Wed 15 Aug 2012.

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 113):

Child rape and abuse is a challenge from which to recover...  Good on you!  I hope you've found your way to feel safe and have intimacy.

...however, I get this impression that you have some anti-gay animus and language patterns.

Uh, rmail me please and let's discuss that.

Anti-gay animus and mannerisms?

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 115):

Thank you for the invitation and I will!  Appreciate it.

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 113):

Wow, Kuthulos, that's horrible.  I'm really sorry you had to experience that.  Out of curiosity, have been to any sort of therapy or counseling to discuss it?  If not, there are people who specialize in helping people come to grips with horrible experiences like that, and you might find it helpful.  Definitely not trying to tell you what to do, just thought I'd mention it, since you said you still suffer to this day.  Obviously it's not something that one ever just 'gets over,' but there may be ways to help deal with that suffering you still feel.  (Unfortunately I'm not a therapist or a counselor, so can't really tell you what those ways are).

Yeah, i see a therapist.

Cool, cool, good to hear.

So this came up in the Atheism vs. Theism thread, and while I'm very interested in it, fully exploring it is very off-topic for that thread. So I'm transplanting it here:

Actually, Jesus's death and resurrection is predated by quite a number of others, all of whom are the child of God, and also themselves God; Tammuz, Ra, Osiris, Dionysus. All of these predate Christianity, and many of them predate Judaism. Several of these claimants we believe to have been living, historical figures (not in this list, but the full list). In fact, the death and rebirth of the king was a major artifact of several middle-eastern cultures well before the Jews rolled in. The major difference with Christianity is that we know the names of the people who penned the story.



Our imaginary evil god, like our good god, experiences a degree of knowledge and understanding wholly beyond our capabilities. In other words, we don't have the abilities to understand why EvilGod created free will; we can only have faith he has an (evil) plan.

So actually talking about real people here for a moment ...

I was raised Catholic. I was never really given an opportunity to question it until I got into college. I did work with RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), and I am tremendously impressed with these people who, for whatever reason, went against the 'easy' answer to choose what they believe to be the true religion (I believe TitL went through a conversion as well? So super kudos on that; it's something I wish I had.)

Now looking at it, things do seem to lose their luster; Christianity does have a few things other religions lack, but one of the biggest ones is Constantine (who I couldn't put up as a paragon of virtue). I do believe there is a supernatural, but it's bigger than what I've been taught. And looking at our sordid history ... I find it extremely difficult to agree that 'God is good' while also accepting the perfect Word of God documents how God ordered rape and murder.

So why believe in Christianity?

Heath indicates he's personally experienced a miracle. That's awesome! Of course, it's not very share-able. I do also find it ironic that Heath is the one person who keeps assuring people that they need to have faith despite a lack of evidence. I've also had a tremendous experience, but it went the opposite direction. In a capricious universe, it's just one of those tragedies that happen. But in a world ruled by a just God ... well, it's God's choice that it happens that way. And I can't honestly give more weight to God giving a good thing to Heath than a bad thing to me.

So yes, if God truly wants me to be in a relationship with Him, and God has perfect understanding, then God knows what the 'deal-breaker' is. If I was in a relationship with God, then God took the position of the abusive spouse.

Sorry this is a bit more personal and longer than I normally permit myself. But it's a real question that, to this day (10 years later) I can't come to grips with. I'm still open to God. I took Heath's BoM challenge. I've read my catechism. I pray (albeit, infrequently). God is welcome to give me a sign whenever He cares to. But at this point in my life, I'm more inclined to give Tammuz a chance.

Jesus is the only one that is proven. He existed, eye witnesses testified to his life and death and resurrection. He is the only one that did what He did. No one else did what He did.

I understand there are others that make various claims, but they are not supported, nor accurate with facts.

Free will? Free to do what? Have hope in a good God?

Very well put.  Sums up my own feelings well.

Because it's true. It's the only one with prophecy and historical accuracy, with eye witnesses to these events.

There can only be a handful of options with christianity. Jesus was either the Son of God, or crazy or a liar. Now, if a liar, why did the eye witnesses agree to it? If crazy, why did people admit to witness events when it mean their suffering to admit to it?


So what happens after we die?

Oh, please.  Buddhism has a more accurate historical record.  Jesus could also have been a myth, an amalgam of many esoteric Jewish mystics common to that day.  There are no records of Jesus written during his time.

Ok. Why would you feel that buddhism which does not record historical events is more accurate? Are you meaning you think the bible has much of history wrong, and that is what makes buddhism more accurate?

Jesus could have been a mythical figure, but that would be unreasonable considering the evidence.

When it comes to ancient records, Jesus has the most amount of information, within the quickest amount of time. These records are within the timeframe people who witnessed these events were alive, and could have disagreed vocally with the records, since they saw Jesus, and could have read and refuted the records if they were untrue.

Evidence wise, it is the more reasonable position that Jesus existed.

SO firstly, I'm going to infer that your reason for believing is that you understand there to be objective historical evidence in support of Jesus's resurrection, so everything else follows from that. And that's fine -- if you want to bow out, I totally respect that.

The reason I say that is because I am a little concerned that this conversation will get more hot and personal than most, and I really don't want anyone to feel hurt or picked on. Heck, I'll put on my moderator cap ...

Keep it cool, everyone. No one is keeping score, the points don't matter.

Okay, so that's out of the way. Coming back around ...

There are quite a few prophecies in the Bible. For the sake of keeping things simple, I agree it's important to focus on the resurrection of Jesus, since he's pretty much the lynchpoint here.

[skippable]
There was a historical character named Jesus. In fact, there were quite a few of them. Jesus was a popular name at the time. There were also a lot of mystics in the desert. John the Baptist is one you know, but there were PLENTY more. Heath is happy to support this, if you'd like more evidence. As it happens, the vast majority of them have been forgotten, but Jesus's message has pretty clearly stuck. So accepting that there was a historical mystic named Jesus is pretty easy; just like accepting there is current a lawyer named Robert is pretty easy.

However, the important part isn't that there was a guy named Jesus, it was that he did miracles, and died and rose again.
[/end skip]

But here's where it gets hazy ... the only real testimony (that I'm aware of) of these miracles, or of Jesus's resurrection, is the Bible itself. This isn't Jesus's fault; Jesus and almost everyone else of the time was illiterate. But the Romans don't have any records of his miracles. They don't have any records of his resurrection. AFAIK, they don't even have records of his death. If I'm wrong, PLEASE show me, because my discovery of this was pretty shocking for me.

As for the Bible as evidence ... recognize that the Bible was assembled at the council of Nicea, centuries after Jesus's death. A group of bishops picked through all of the stories of Jesus, and chose which ones they believed are fact. There are very many testaments about Jesus which say he died and never came back, or that he never died at all. Why did they choose the gospels where Jesus was resurrected and not the others? There's a lot of reasons for that, but a pretty important point here was that they really wanted the Church to be successful. These were men of faith, who already believed the resurrection was a fact, who wanted other people to believe in Jesus (just like you do), and who had the opportunity to choose which stories they'll laud as historical fact and divine writings to support that, and which stories get tossed into the dustbin of history.



Yes, Evilgod gave us the freedom to hope for a good God. Why would Evilgod give us that apparent blessing? Who knows. It's a divine mystery! (But it's probably terrible, because Evilgod is evil.)

Oh, quick comment I forgot to put in the last comment;

Since historical support and witness testimony is so important to you, why aren't you Mormon? Heath has done an excellent job providing research on the witnesses to Joseph Smith, the prophecies they've had and we've seen achieved, etc. Speaking honestly, I'm a little floored by how well-supported the background is, and if I were to have a conversion moment, I think LDS would have a pretty strong argument. Is there a reason you believe the four witnesses in the bible, but not the 12 in the BoM?



This isn't quite correct. Remember, there's two thousand years between Jesus and you. So the options include (but are not limited to):

1) The witnesses were misquoted/lied
2) The witnesses never existed, and were created/embellished for someone else's purposes
3) Jesus was saying one thing, but the witnesses totally flubbed it (even Jesus basically said 'you guys aren't getting it!' several times in the Bible)

etc.





I believe that Tammuz will embrace my life essence and bring it back to the earth, to be reborn in the eternal cycle of splendor.


More seriously; I really DO want to believe in Christianity. I believe being part of the flock pushes people to be better. I want to be inspired. I want to have certainty of what happens after I die, or after my parents die. I am on your side, and I really WANT YOU to convince me. What I'm writing aren't intended to derail you, it's the issues that have already derailed me, and I'm hoping you have better answers than I do.

You know, I often need reminding how much of my faith used to hinge on a singular source material (the Bible) that basically had almost no other corroborating evidence.  Though I would discuss Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny etc, I really am astonished at how little they add to the historical accounts overall now.

I was also a William Lane Craig follower (for those who knows him), in that I thought he had answered all that there is to answer.  While I still think he's a brilliant 'debator' (his skills as a debator are really amazing even if I don't agree with his end points any longer), time has done a number on many of the more traditional Liar, Lord, Lunatic type cookie cutter responses that used to be my main talking points.

Assembled at the council, yes, but the letters that were assembled were around at that time when the people who saw Jesus live and die, and raise from the dead.

It seems a little funny to say "Well, we have a bunch of reliable letters, historically, and spiritually, so let's put them together." is a reason to not take them seriously, just because others already recognized them as authoritative.



Look at the letter of Acts. It mentions the history of the early church, including the deaths of some worshipers, but not some important events, such as the death of Peter, or Paul, or the destruction of the temple. So clearly, since the book of Acts is meant to detail the early church, and yet not contain important events, then the book was written before those events took place.

This should mean that the book of Acts was written before 62AD.

Now, the book of Acts is just a continuation of the book of Luke. Which means if the book of acts is written before 62 AD, then Luke is written even sooner.

And since the book of Luke is written sooner, we're likely talking in the 50's AD at the minimum.

More so, it is believed that Luke and Mark go their sources from an earlier document, called the Q document.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...ry/hypothetical.html

Now this Q document, if earlier than Acts and Luke, this is placing details or events in a very early timeframe within Jesus' death.

Everyone knows what can happens after hundreds of years of an event being recorded. We hear about various religions where there have a good that can dance on a head of a pin, or lift planets on their back of their shell.

But the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are written about very quickly.

Let me give you an example of what can happen to a myth after 20 years.

Do you remember back in the 90's when Nelson Mandela broke out of the prison he was housed in?

And Loreena Bobbit cut off her husband's foot while he slept. The doctors sewed it back on though.

Or how about When Princess Diana died in the plane crash? There were numerous sighting of Princess Diana at the Royal Castle, and that she healed the lame and sick after her death.

Did any of that fool you Kat? You were alive for all of those events, and have read accounts of them decades after the real events. You didn't get fooled, why is it reasonable to assume that the evidence is unreliable in a similar scenario? An important person, influential, and memorable in a event that is memorable.

People were still alive who saw the events, and could read the accounts after. There were people alive who could have said otherwise if it did not happen.


Historical accuracy says the ones that are in the bible have been verified, and are accurate.

The way the books of the bible are written are not of fairy tales, they include details that would make the writers look weak, such as showing their failures, details about names, locations, events as they happened.

Look at the book of Acts. In chapters 1-15, Luke uses the context about them, and he when referring to Paul, but in 16 and on, Luke uses us, and him. Identifying exactly when he traveled with Paul, just as the events occur.

They did not write the events as myth.

Clearly you would agree with me that something that is true, cannot be untrue at the same time. So we have to start tossing some stuff out where there's a clear disagreement. Example, either there is only one God, or there isn't. Those other testaments we can go over one by one, but from my own experience and research, I have never seen a single article that stood the test outside of the bible.

So if you are looking at the Word of God, some things that would make sense to look for is accuracy. Having clear errors should discount a testament as being from God.

Example, the apocrypha has lots of errors, locations that are wrong, events that are not true, so should not be part of the bible. They can be useful, but not from God.

Except they referred to the four gospels pretty early, far earlier than the bible existed. The people recognized the four gospels before any councils were involved.

I have looked into the LDS, and quite frankly, the LDS is untrue, and I can show some obvious inconsistencies. The historical track record of the LDS isn't so good either.


I am fine in going over details if you like.

But there's isn't two thousand years between Jesus and the witness reports. Twenty to thirty years apart from multiple sources.

It's pretty hard to mix this up, Jesus performed miracles in front of many people. Jesus was crucified in a public place. Jesus was seen after his death. His disciples performed miracles.

If they lied, then they died for a lie. Kat, would you be willing to be tortured to prevent from a lie being found out? So assuming you might not even be willing to die to tell a truth, why assume someone else would die for a lie?

So 1 is out of there. It's not even reasonable. You wouldn't do it, so why assume anyone would?

If the witnesses never existed, why mention the names of people who did exist during those events specifying locations, and events that could have been denied if untrue?

So 2 is not a very solid stance. When lying, you do not give out things that would show you are lying.

And last, if the writers made a mistake, and only though Jesus was walking around after His death, then all of the writers are deluded, and the crowds that followed Jesus only pretended to be healed, and only pretended to see Him perform miracles.

That doesn't seem reasonable to have everyone have the same mass hallucination at the same time.

So 3 seems a bit far fetched.

I'd have to say that it is more reasonable to assume that Jesus is God, or crazy or liar than to have multiple writers mistaken, or crowds of people seeing the same hallucination at the same time.

All right, we're discussing the historical accuracy of the gospels and acts, yes?  They aren't even internally consistent.  Jesus has two wildly-diverging geneaologies, for example.  If they can't even get their stories straight (especially on verifiable history, like a genealogy) what makes you think they got the rest right?

Jesus had two genealogies because one tracked it through both the line of Joseph and the line of Mary. Since Mary and Joseph are not brother and sister, there should be two genealogies. Having two different writers coming from different perspectives is evidence that did not work together to come up with a story, but rather evidence they wrote as they observed the events.one writer did the cultural line, while the other wrote of the blood line.

Which is what makes it unique in that regard. When they failed, they included that because that is what happened.

I started writing a nice, long reply, then read the rest of your post and realized you addressed most of my points :P READ FIRST, WRITE SECOND! I'll try again.

I'm glad I took a break anyway; I started responding in the form of 'why TitL is wrong', which is goofy. It doesn't help me to convince TitL is wrong; what helps me is to share the things which are killing me, and let him share his view on why I'm wrong (if I am). So thank goodness for little miracles ;)

But I do want to address a few quick points before continuing on.

edit: The points are not quick, sorry. There's a TL;DR summary at the bottom.



I am not very familiar with the historicity of Acts, so thank you for bringing that up. However, Acts of course does not document the life of Jesus so much as the events after.

I'll accept that Acts was written in 62AD (more or less), and that Luke was written prior, because I just don't have any evidence to suggest otherwise. However, I don't buy that Luke was written in 50AD. It certainly didn't take 12 years to write Luke. And doing some research on my own, most biblical scholars don't think that either. So I'm content leaving the authorship of Luke at around 60-62AD (more or less).

Which is still quite a number of years.

I'm also familiar with the concept of the Q document. But this is where things begin to get scary.

If the author of Luke (let's call him "Luke" for simplicity's sake, although his identity isn't clearly proven), as well as "Matthew" and "Mark" (same caveat) got their information from Q ... that means none of it is primary source material. *MAYBE* Q is the primary source, but we have no idea. We don't know who Q is, or where he (she?) got his information from. So my three points earlier apply at this lynchpoint. The authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts were excellent Christians around the date 62AD (more or less), but they weren't the actual apostles alive with Jesus (if they were, they'd all be around 80, more or less, and still hangin' around and writing books. Pretty unique for 'peasant, 62AD, busy wandering disease-ridden communities talking to strangers who largely hate you'.)

So we have a good chunk of the Gospels are, at best, secondhand by people who were never there.

John is the anomaly of course, but we don't know anything about who the author is. That it was John the Apostle would be awesome, but there's no concrete evidence to support that. We do know the gospel was written about that same period (62-100AD).

Whether you accept John is a first-hand account or not depends a lot on whether you already accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. If you're questioning one, you question the other, so you can see what a pickle I'm in.



Going back to Q though, since you didn't even bring up John :)

So this is at least a second-hand source. So I'll ask you about what can happen to a myth ... has anyone ever told you about something that happened, but when you actually look it up, it turns out totally differently? I've got some far-removed uncles living in Germany. I wonder what their view of the events of 1950-1980 is like (30-60 years ago).




When you show that 30AD had CNN and news archives, I'll accept your examples :)

But you bring up a great point, and here's one of the questions that really bugs me.

Jesus doing miracles was BIG NEWS. And he touched some pretty influential people. People who were wealthy and literate. Yet outside of the few (four?) sources you've quoted, plus a handful of others, there really isn't much documenting it. There's no Roman government document saying 'so-and-so has rejected worship of Jupiter, as his daughter was risen from the dead by some Galilean'.

Nor is there a record of Herod killing all of the male babies in Bethelehem. Or of the departure of three great kings or wise men from their homes following an astrological portent.

I know that period is a big grey blotch when it comes to news; something I myself have been arguing. But it would seem to me like the Romans, who loved them some records, would have *something* on the point.



The other point I need to bring up is the Gnostics. They have a history much like the Christian Church we all know and love; existed in the same period, had gospels from around 62AD (Gospel of Thomas), claimed direct inspiration from God was guiding them. But they got curb-stomped following Nicea. I've read the Gospel of Thomas. I really like it. So why was Thomas not included, but these other ones were? It's not based on historicity. If you accept the historical evidence for Luke, you have to accept it for Thomas. You can't just say "FIRST! LUKE IS IN FIRST OUT WITH THOMAS!" And since Thomas doesn't disagree factually with the other Gospels, but rather in philosophy, it looks like there were theological, not historical scholarship reasons for its exclusion.


What I come away with is, there's a big period with not enough records. These guys say they knew a guy who knew a guy who did some major miracles. But these guys over here ALSO knew a totally different guy who did miracles (there were a lot of mystics at the time, many of whom had lots of followers). And the government officials over here don't know anything. If you already accept that that third guy really did do miracles, everything is peachy. But if you don't make that assumption, it gets tough to separate one account from the other.






I'm not quite sure where you're going with this. You're saying if I put a date on something I write, it can't be a myth, it must be a historical record?





You're speaking to a Trinitarian. That's a pretty terrible example.




So can we discount books which have factual errors? (I'm looking at you, locusts with four legs.)



*whew* That went on a little longer than I intended, but the TL;DR point is this:

The period in time is full of mystics with "witnesses" who claimed they did miracles. If witness testimony is all you have to build on, we're in trouble.

The period is also pretty scarce on supporting written records. There are a handful, mostly in the Bible. Four witnesses agree on something, twenty disagree, and limited corroborating evidence? We're in trouble. (BTW, I don't consider references to other events as 'corroborating evidence'. Saying "I was at Obama's inauguration, when I magically raised the dead" doesn't make my story true.)

The records we do have we don't know much about. All of them are at LEAST 30 years after the fact - a full human generation, and the Synoptics are at LEAST second-hand. We can't positively identify any of the authors of the Gospels. Q could be anybody; we have no idea. We're in trouble.


Then we have the elephant in the room; the OT. The OT has plenty of innacuracies, and copies plenty from earlier myths in the same area. Plus the OT is full of God being a total sociopath on people. Had Jesus said "the Jews are wrong, I'm starting fresh", my position on Christianity would be very different. But the fact that we don't just accept the life of a brilliant, compassionate, amazing man, but a historical records of four thousand years of genocide, massacre, slavery, and abuse makes Christianity a bitter pill.


Oh, yes, I would love to hear your issues on LDS, but in the LDS thread (and perhaps you'd prefer this thread slow down first.

Hey guys!  Sorry to not have replied sooner, but this part of the week I have a bit less time to post.

Anyway, very interesting stuff you've brought up, Katisara.  I have to admit, the idea of "wanting to believe" isn't something I can directly identify with.  I can relate to wanting something to be true (when you currently don't think it is), but the phrasing "I want to believe" seems to imply its at least somewhat different than just that.  but both you and Dolous have made similar comments about that, so perhaps it just seems strange to me, and not to anyone else?  I was thinking about this idea earlier today, and trying to remember ever "wanting to believe" something, but the closest I could come up with was having wanted to like something that I didn't actually care for.  So anyway, one thing that I would ask, is there a difference between "wanting to believe" and "wanting something to be true" for you, or do you mean basically the same thing?

Next issue:  I think TitL is right in that the reason one should believe in christianity would need to be "that it's true."  But it doesn't sound like you think it's true (and I would agree).  So for as far as that goes, it seem like we'd all agree that you currently shouldn't believe, but TitL will try to convince you that it's true and if he's successful we'll all agree that you should believe.  That much is probably obvious, but sometimes stating the obvious can be useful.  Anyway, I think most/all the stuff TitL is bringing up is stuff that you've given some thought to, and I think that the line of argument he's making isn't likely to convince you (though it's always possible he's got some piece of evidence we haven't heard of), and it sort of sounds to me like you're more looking for a justification of some of the less savory stuff in the OT as much as for historical evidence at the moment.  Sort of a "I like what Jesus says, and I want what he's saying to be true, but I just can't square it with all the crazy stuff God is said to have done in the OT" kind of thing.  Is that a fair observation on my part, would you say?  If so, it might be worth moving the discussion of historical evidence for/against the bible to one of the other threads, and focussing on the other issues here?

The next thing I've been noodling on the last few days since I read your first post, was that you said something along the lines of "I believe in the supernatural but..." or something like that.  What, in particular, do you believe in that regard?  That might be a better place to start.  Rather that focus on what you don't believe (and why you're dissatisified with not believing it), start with what you do believe, and build up from there?

Which brings up the next point, which is what about having a religion attracts you?  It's clear you'd like to be part of one, but there are many different aspects of religions that people can be attracted to.  Is it the social aspect?  Is it the sense of purpose religions can give?  Is it the comfort in times of trouble aspect?  Is it a sense of awe at something bigger than yourself?  What is it that you feel like you're missing out on by not believing?  Knowing that might help you figure out what you should do about it, whether that be finding another religion, or finding non-religious sources of the things you're wanting.

Sort of related to that, and to my first point, and sort of just a complete tangent is something that I picked up from Buddhism several years back.  I liked I lot of what I learned about Buddhism, but I felt it fell flat when it came to the mystical stuff like karma and reincarnation, etc.  But one thing that I found really profound (and very useful for me) was the idea that suffering comes from inside us, and basically boils down to us wanting the world to be different than it is.  Sometimes there are things we can change, and the suffering gives us a reason to do something about it, but other times the world simply is the way it is, and our suffering is purely self-inflicted and unhelpful.  I would put wanting there to be a God when there really is none in that category.  It might make sense to wish things were different, but all the wishing in the world won't actually change it, nor will anything you'll ever do, so beating yourself up about it isn't helpful at all.  And realizing that it's not the world making you suffer, but rather you making yourself suffer by wanting the world to be different, can be somewhat liberating, because it really makes you think "hey, why am I making myself miserable over this?"  Or, at least I found it to help in such cases, and maybe you will too.

The tl;dr version is:  Perhaps stop focussing on the fact that christianity isn't looking the way you want it to, and instead consider what it is you want, and figure out what can be done to get it?

Speaking for myself, I used the term 'wanting to believe' but meant 'wanted it to be true'.  They are distinct I suppose, but I certainly meant the truth portion, as the belief aspect is just a byproduct of it being true (for me).

It's okay. I can't speak for TitL, but I'm normally okay with limiting my posting to 1 hour ;P

(This week is very quiet though.)

As a head's up, because I expect TitL does keep pretty busy, I'll note that there's nothing here I'm expecting him to respond. So if he wants to skip, that's fine.




Firstly, I'm going to assume when you say true you mean 'factually true' (or if you prefer, objectively true :P ). When we're talking about philosophy and religion, there are truths which aren't based on physical things you can touch.

So yes, it would be nice if it were factually true. If Jesus et al. are factually true, it makes it much easier to believe.

But no, I don't require factual truth. Spiritualism, a belief in something greater, have a lot of benefits for people. Religion is also very good at exploring the human condition; something science has not done a very effective job of explaining yet. There's a degree of self-knowledge that comes with studying religion that I haven't found anywhere else.

But then that's the clincher. Firstly, most churches are basically social clubs. The average church-going Christian does not seem to be especially more charitable, smarter, or saner than anyone else. Plus, there's the list of God's actions which seem to go the other direction from moral behavior. So even if true, I'm not getting the benefits from Christianity one might expect given what's written on the tin.



Ironically, if TitL did prove that God is true (and is responsible for all of the acts in the OT), it might be grounds for me intentionally going the other way. However, should Christianity be false, it's not the responsibility of some sentient entity still hanging around; just business as usual among the tribes of 4000 BC.

(So yes, thank you for stating the obvious. I don't know how I managed to disagree with all of it.)



TitL is bringing up some minor points I wasn't aware of (or had forgotten), so I do appreciate his sharing. But yes, even if he proved God were true, it brings a whole load of other issues based on God's reported behavior.



I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell and Jung. I recognize that religions and myths have a lot of metaphor which, regardless of their factual truth, provide a tremendous amount of knowledge and tools in understanding ourselves, our place in the world, etc.

Plus, the supernatural is just cooler. I'm not going to avoid the 13th floor, but if I'm repainting the patio anyway, I'll paint the ceiling blue.

The social aspect is also pretty major. My family is very Catholic. Obviously, being Catholic has some tangible benefits to me.

I have done some reading on Buddhism. I feel like I've never had too much trouble with suffering. Being part of that 1% in the richest period in the history of Earth is probably part of that :) But Taoism struck some major chords with me. As it stands, I read everything, try to soak up everything, but I don't especially "believe" anything.

I think Christianity could hit a chord like that, but in the practice I've seen, it doesn't. I'm *extremely* excited about Pope Francis, because he seems to be reversing that trend. If that trickles down, maybe I'll feel some of that draw again.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:34, Thu 16 Jan 2014.

Only problem was that the gospel of Thomas is not written by the the disciple Thomas who was with Jesus. The gospel of Thomas references many of the books of the new testament that was already accepted. It could only reference them if they were already well established. Additionally, there's strong evidence it was written after a specific church in Syria had made changes for their own version of the bible, which is suggestive the Gospel of Thomas was not written to record the events of Jesus, but rather to record their view of the 2nd century Syrian church.

Here's a video by Lee Strobel who's done a lot of research on this particular issue. It's 7 minutes, and rather interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...ed&v=hDwy2Xp0eQ0




I think it's reasonable that with the details included in the bible that they were eyewitnesses, or talked with eyewitnesses.

And if they did witness these events, why lie and remain in that lie where they suffered through jail, and torture, and death?

If a robber held me at gun point, and told me to say I hate my wife or die, I'd likely lie and say I hate her. I wouldn't be willing to die some something note true, so why do you think it's reasonable that someone would be willing to be tortured for a lie?






No, I'm saying they are written as events witnessed, and include details to show accuracy of the events. The way they are written do not look as if meant as myth.

In that culture, they counted legs differently. The locust had four legs for walking, and two more for jumping.

The jews would have not had the same classification we use today. (Which makes sense, don't you agree?)

Leviticus 11: 21 Yet these you may eat of every flying insect that creeps on all fours: those which have jointed legs above their feet with which to leap on the earth.

The locust had four legs for creeping or walking, and jointed legs about their other four feet, which are for leaping.

Looking at words in verse 22, the other insects it mentions are all jumping insects.

You're kidding, right?  Both genealogies clearly say Joseph, not Mary.  Which means tbhey cannot both be literally true.

Sorry, but the bible as history doesn't work.

People all sorts of faiths die for what they believe.  Obviously some of them are wrong.  Sorry, but this is completely faulty logic.

no, not kidding. I understand what you are trying to say. It does mention Joseph in both genelogies. But look at Luke once again. It mentions only the male names all the way from Joseph to Adam. It does not mention the mother of any of them. All of them are sons of the father in that lineage.

But as we know, they all had mothers and they are still of the lineage. Women get much more respect in today's culture, which does mean that when women aren't afforded equal credit as they do today, we need to consider the context.

Which is exactly why drawing the lineage to Mary is doubly ridiculous.  In that time, Mary's value would have been considered much less.

Really, the genealogies are just propaganda, designed to show that Jesus had a lineage from David, allowing him to be a messiah.  That's the real reason why Mary wasn't included, she couldn't prove inheritance of royalty.

Actually if women have less value then men during that time frame and yet they write events where some take important roles, such as seeing Jesus first after his resurrection, that shows a greater reason that they wrote the events as they occurred.

If they wanted to make it more believable they could have done things like say men were the witnesses in that culture, since women taking on important roles such as being witnesses, they would have been discounted just by being women.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:03, Fri 17 Jan 2014.

GMC, I think you're off base. I mean, it seems reasonable that the lineage is propaganda added after the fact to justify the prophecy, but that assumes the Bible is specifically wrong. It's no more valid a view that TitL assuming the Bible is true. And since Joseph was one of the most common names of that period, we really can't use that as proof that the lineages are contradictory.




Absolutely. But nor is Luke likely written by the Apostle Luke, or Matthew by Matthew, etc.



Or was part of that early Church community. I'm a bit surprised you'll point out Matthew references parts of Luke, but that's gospel, however if Thomas references parts of Luke, clearly Thomas is wrong.

The Wikipedia article on this does have a nice overview of the historicity. There's quite the debate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

Most people seem to agree that parts of it are dated as early as 30-40 AD, with more bits getting added later, much like John.

Strobel seems to come up with a few arguments:
1) Thomas quotes other books in the Bible. He doesn't list what are quotes, but he implies they're one-line quotes (as opposed to Matthew, which lifts entire sections from Luke).

I don't see how this is damning. Just like Matthew and Luke got information from the same source, so is Thomas getting information from the same source. There is evidence that Thomas was added on to over time (again, like John), but there is plenty of evidence that the core gospel was written earlier. I'd be happy to go into this if you'd like, but the quickest way is to go back to the people smarter than both of us in that Wikipedia article.

2) Thomas seems to be more closely related to the Syrian translation than the Hebrew, and it reads better in Syrian because of memory catches.

I'm a little bothered you're tossing this as evidence. I have BOOKS of stuff showing how X, Y, and Z from the Bible is clearly very similar to, so copied from A, B, C earlier source. But I know if I put it down, you'd dismiss it as firstly, not being concrete, and secondly, being coincidental or part of God's plan, or whatnot (depending on the particular situation). It's a case of, if you already believe X, this supports you, and if you don't believe X, it's irrelevant.

So no, the fact that it looks a lot like another later translation? Turn that around and imagine if I said that about Exodus (because I can) and tell me that you would accept that as evidence. It's circumstantial at best.


Regardless, what I come back to is, experts, who are paid to figure this out, including ones who have nothing to gain by proving it one way or the other (note that if Strobel admitted Thomas was written 40 AD, that would be truly destructive for the Church, or at least his book sales. If Professor Smith of Northwest University admits it, it's no big deal) agree it's in that 40-140 range (I'm sorry, I can't accept Strobel's second claim any more than you could accept that on Exodus). That puts it right in line with the other Gospels.

As a note for future reference, if you want to post a convincing authority, please post ones who don't have obvious bias. I don't believe Philips-Morris doctors when they talk about the health benefits of smoking. I'm going to have a lot of trouble accepting a published, Christian author and pastor (not professor) facing limited or no peer-review on the authenticity of items in the bible.




It's perfectly reasonable. But it's not proven as concrete, and there are competing stories and theories. Hence, the historical view, for me, just isn't enough.



Like Duolos pointed out, a lot of people have died for their faith. Should I follow the faith with the most martyrs? I'm not convinced Christianity would win in that race.




That's interesting, because I would, if I thought it served a greater purpose.





This isn't a position I'd considered before. I'm not really convinced by it. Firstly, it assumes Matthew was written by Matthew, etc., which I don't believe to be true. Your specific example focuses on Acts, which isn't in dispute. And I'm pretty sure I can find known myths which go between real places and events, and feature weaknesses in the narrator. But that's all knee-jerk response. Like I said, I hadn't really looked for that before (especially the second and third point). As I study, I'll need to watch for that more carefully.




I'm going to avoid going into this, because it will absolutely dominate the thread. I believe we do have a thread about how factual the Bible is, which I followed, and I remain unconvinced. There are factual errors in the Bible, and there are books and books written about them all.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:05, Fri 17 Jan 2014.

This one is a quick response.

To be clear, we have evidence that the gospel of Thomas was not from Thomas, but you're just saying that Luke, Matthew or Mark may not be from the disciples.

That is not equal in validity. That suggests that the 4 gospels are still written closer to the time of Jesus' actual death than the gospel of Thomas, and therefore, that is a valid reason why they were included in the bible, while gospel of Thomas was not.

Not necessarily.  It could be an extended metaphor for Jesus's ties to royalty.  Nevertheless, the fact that the lineages are contradictory is proof that they're contradictory.  They completely diverge after David, IIRC.

It doesn't affect the metaphorical truths of Jesus's teaching, but it does kill any attempt at biblical literalness.  It's proof that the bible was selected for philosophical messages, and not historical accuracy.

I find this post humorous. Extremely so. If use of culture, and history is not a strong enough counterpoint to this discussion, that really only leaves it coming down to..

did not

did too

did not

did too

This is the equivalent of sticking fingers into your ears, and saying, 'I'm not listening!'

So my response is that is pretty humorous.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:02, Sun 19 Jan 2014.

In reply to Trust in the Lord (msg # 149):

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Okay, that's very interesting to know.  It sort of sounds like you're more asking for "what benefit does this religion provide to my life" rather than "is it factually accurate."  (Note to TitL:  that seems to indicate that a change to approach might help your case here.  For you and I the big issue is whether it's true, but it sounds like for Katisara the big issue is whether it provides good moral guidance, and exploration of the human condition, etc.)
Out of curiosity, would you say you're more interested in guidance on what is and isn't good, or is it more that you're after advice on how to actually get yourself to do more of the stuff you view as good?


Cool, that's a good list of things to look for.  For the last of those, it seems like just "doing the Catholic thing" provides the social benefits you're after, even if you don't believe it, so you can just keep doing that.  But to get your other boxes ticked, it sounds like you'll need to look beyond that (and it sounds like you do so already).


Ah, yeah, I've always interpretted "suffering" in the broadest sense when Buddhism is talking about.  So anytime you're unhappy about something, you're "suffering."  Even if you know there's plenty of people who have much more to be unhappy about.  The key bit of insight for me wasn't about the magnitude of suffering, but rather the source.  So if you're unhappy because your cornflakes went all mushy in the milk, it's not the cornflakes that are actually making you unhappy, it's the fact that you want them to be not mushy.


Yeah, Francis seems to getting back to Jesus' fundamental messages, which is nice to see.

To a degree, it's sounding less like you're asking "why should I believe christianity" and more that you're asking "how can I get the charge out of it I think others get from it, and that others get from other religions?"  One thing I would ask on that, is to what degree you view these benefits as continual, or something you can sort of "use up"?  Do you expect to keep getting new mind-openning insights forever from a religion, or do you expect there to be some finite amount of mind-expanding one can offer, and that perhaps you get diminishing returns from it over time?  Put another way, you can learn more than the golden rule, but you can only really learn the golden rule once.  Would it perhaps be reasonable to expect that any given religion would offer occasional profound insights, rather than a guaranteed steady stream of them?  Is it possible that your frustrating comes from, in part, having got catholocism down to a large part, and you're not getting much new insight out of it, since you've heard the main points plenty of times by now?

Still have a head cold, but at least I'm starting to feel human again :)



I think everyone looks for a benefit from religion. No one says "if I believe this, I will be a terrible person, everyone will hate me, and I will suffer eternal torment. Sounds like a deal!"

I see religion as offering a few things;

- Spiritual or psychological truth. It has motifs and images that talk to us as humans, and tell us more about ourselves.

- Tools for better living. Buddhism's understanding of suffering, Jewish/Christian rules on good behavior, etc.

- Promise of rewards. Usually it's after you die, as heaven.

- Factual truth. This is a broad lump. How many days it took to make the earth. Whether Jesus was an actual person who did miracles. Etc.


Factual Truth
Factual truth is a pretty compelling argument for belief. If God really is there and that's testable, I think that would convince just about everyone. Some Abrahamic denominations, especially fundamental Christianity and Islam, have really hitched their carts to that. Talking with TitL, it seems pretty clear this is a major component in his faith.

My issue here is that if this is a fundamental cause of your belief, then your belief is only as secure as evidence for its factual truth. Unfortunately, most of the non-biased evidence for Christianity being based on factual truth is, at best, ambiguous, at worst, frequently proven wrong. So it doesn't do much to PROVE Christianity (if anything, the opposite). And since I don't go to religion for advice on scientific matters, offering answers to factual questions that haven't been proven to be in agreement doesn't help much.


Spiritual/Psychological Truth
I love learning things. I think most people here do. This is my major draw to learning about religions. I love hearing people talk about their beliefs, because there's almost always a gem there. I need to draw dybbuk into saying more because his one post here was fascinating.

So this is a major draw for researching religions, pulling them apart, understanding them. Many times these tools, when applied, teach you even more. So of course, still a huge draw.

For them to be effective, they still need to be truth. They just don't need to be factual. Those that have the most, will have the most draw for me.


Better Living

This is a big category, but 90% of this stuff does not require you be especially religious. I can follow the ten commandments without being Jewish, I can practice meditation without being Buddhist, etc.

I think having faith in something bigger than yourself does confer some benefits which I do need; a humility and a strength. They don't need to be religious, necessarily. People have died for freedom, for the well-being of others, etc., but high-level moral concepts like that are a bit harder to tie yourself to than a belief in God and an afterlife.

This also something for my kids. My kids don't have the mental tools for those high-level concepts. I need a way to still to help them develop those tools.



Promises of Rewards
Promising good is just a games theory question. A hundred religions promise good things to adherents. You can't follow them all. If the promises can't be shown to be true (i.e., it only happens when you're dead, or after the end of the world), it's more likely false than true. So I can't go picking based on that.




I don't think it's a question of what is and isn't good so much as the human condition. Absolutely, that has the most draw for me personally. I think I have a pretty strong moral compass, and I do volunteer a fair bit. It's the deeper gnosis I'm always short on.



It's true, although the two hours a week cost doesn't really justify the social rewards (if we're looking only at that metric).




I think that's true. The really inspired believers seem to have a certainty that I'd like to have.

Can they be used up? I have no idea. Every time I crack Jung, I remember something I've forgotten. But a weekly reading would probably eliminate that problem :P But ongoing (or at least frequent) insight would really be ideal.


In the case of Catholicism specifically (and most of Christianity, really), it has too many priests and not enough prophets. I'm a power-gamer and an analyst, I can appreciate having priests who codify the rules and practice them as written. But Catholic inspiration seems to be a very rare nugget.

There is one point that I don't think was made:

Religion involves an exchange of promises.  By joining a religion, you exchange promises to do (or not to do) certain things.  We call these "covenants."  In return, God makes promises to you.  Some of these promises are considered by the religion to be essential to salvation ("saving ordinances").

For example, in Christianity baptism is typically considered a "saving ordinance," meaning it is essential to receive the promises of salvation.  It is an exchange of promises by the baptized person to follow Christ for a promise from God to give you the benefit of Christ's atonement (forgiveness of sins).  Otherwise, the person, no matter how good on earth, will still be stuck in sins (since no one is perfect) and will be subject to the laws of justice, not the laws of mercy and grace provided by Christ.

Katisara, I was right with you for most of your post, thinking all of it seemed very reasonable.  I was about half way through, when I started wondering "okay, all this seems very sound, but what is it he feel's he's missing?  It sounds to me like he is working at the things he wants to work at, and has good ideas about what he cares about in a religion.  So what is it he feels he needs to change?"

Then I got to this bit:



And that sort of answered my question, but not in the best way (in my opinion).  We all want more certainty about things, but I think that desire for certainty is one of the things that leads us to make some of our biggest mistakes.  Doubt is uncomfortable, but like pain, it serves a crucial purpose.  We've all probably wished at one point or another that we could feel no pain.  But a few very unfortunate people have rare diseases that actually make them feel no pain, and their lives are really, really dangerous!  It's really hard for them to react appropriately to injuries, and even to avoid getting injured.  Doubt is sort of similar, I'd argue.  We need it to recover from our mistakes.  Without it, we can't correct ourselves when we've made the wrong call about something.  We get stuck with what we've decided, and nothing can convince us we were wrong, because we're "certain!"  Being certain doesn't mean you're more likely to be right; it just means you're less likely to change your views if you're wrong.

It might be the years I spent in science/academy in my previous career, but these days I tend to have a gut-level reaction to people who display "certainty," which is to instantly distrust them.  In my experience, people who have the deepest understanding of a subject tend to be the ones who are most willing to admit the limits of their knowledge, and are a lot more likely to say things like "as far as we can tell...," or "in other cases we've looked at we've seen...," or "We can say this with 95% confidence...," etc.  On the other hand, people with very shallow understanding usually talk about absolutes and certainties.  They tend to have "no doubt what-so-ever," and the like.

My personal view is that questioning ones beliefs is a crucial part of the human experience.  Realizing that we may be wrong is a big insight that our brains are sort of wired to avoid.  We all know that we have been wrong in the past, but we almost never think its possible that we're currently wrong right now.  All too often the fear of admitting that we're wrong is stronger than desire to correct our views to what is right.  And that's not a good thing!  We're not perfect.  Our views should evolve with time, because we learn more, we gather new evidence.  It's inevitable that we'll uncover things we've been wrong about.  As long as we can adjust and update our views with the new data, we're making progress, and we shouldn't feel bad about changing our minds.  Certainty makes that much more difficult, or even impossible.

So my view is that certainty isn't something to envy in others.  There are people of all religions who are absolutely certain their religion is right and everyone else is wrong.  But they can't all be right.  So quite a few people who feel so certain are actually wrong.  All their certainty actually buys them is that they're less likely to realize that they're wrong.  A bit of doubt isn't only reasonable in almost all cases, it's actually a good thing that lets us correct past mistakes.

Actually, that is not required for salvation according to the bible. Being baptized is an ordinance, as in if a Christian, you should be baptized, but it is not for your salvation.

Jesus dying on the cross is for your salvation.

Heath is right though. I wouldn't just say 'making promises', but make it broader; to it being a relationship.

I think there's a few points where I felt like I had a relationship with God, but on the average, not really, and lately not at all. Which is odd, because I feel more at peace with just about everything else. It's like I'm in sync with the Tao, but not with the God. And given previous behavior on God's part, I may be okay with that.

I think the vast majority of Christians (and certainly Catholics and Mormons) would not agree with you, given that Jesus said baptism was essential, which is why even he needed to be baptized by John the Baptist.  Granted, certain Protestant sects have broken off from that and made a new interpretation that baptism is not necessary, but that's irrelevant to my analogy.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, my statement of one of the reasons a religion might be necessary still stands.  For example, you might say that "faith in Jesus" results in the "exchange of promises," and my point still stands.

----
I don't want to get into a specific debate on this topic, but since you make a claim that baptism is not necessary for salvation according to the bible, here are scriptural references that state otherwise:

"Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38)

The most straightforward is in John: John 3:5 records Jesus saying, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."


Acts 8:15-17:

[15] Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:
[16] (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
[17] Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

Romans 8:6-9 indicates that the Holy Ghost is essential to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Hebrews 6:1-2:
[1] Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
[2] Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

Mark 16:16 reads, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Acts 2:38 reads, "And Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'"

Acts 22:16 reads, "Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name."

Galatians 3:27 reads, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ."

1 Peter 3:21 reads, "Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

I think this is fairly clear.  On the other hand, I'm not aware of a scripture that says clearly "baptism is not required; don't worry about it."
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:50, Fri 24 Jan 2014.

I agree that is also important, but I think that is a separate point.  My point is that there are actual requirements prescribed that must be followed to get the exchange of promises going.  Baptism is one.

The LDS beliefs are probably a little more clear cut on this point, in that there are certain promises for agreeing to enter into certain covenants.  For example, by covenanting to follow Christ and receiving baptism, you accept the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (for resurrection) and the atonement at Gethsemane (for forgiveness of sins).  By entering into an eternal marriage covenant, you receive promises to be able to live with your spouse for eternity, not just "for life."  There is another promise for tithing, another for following other commandments, etc.  The key in the LDS church is that the ordinances must be performed with one who carries the proper priesthood authority, which a person cannot bestow upon himself.  The authority binds the ordinance (covenant, exchange of promises) just as though God were standing there binding it.

Of course, if you break your promise, the deal is off unless you sincerely repent, but that's the basic gist of it.

Interesting that you would think that Heath, as pretty much all of evangelical Christianity would firmly disagree that baptism is essential for salvation.

Again, "Evangelical Christianity" is an offshoot of Protestant religions and is not the majority of Christians in the world.  If anything, that prize belongs to the Catholic Church, which does believe that baptism is an essential 'saving ordinance' and has the longest track record on earth of having that interpretation of the Bible.

The number of people who would associate themselves as evangelical is 250-400 million in the world depending on who you ask.

That's a lot of people that would completely agree with Trust In The Lord.

It's a rather large 'offshoot'.  That doesn't mean it's true or false (baptism needed for salvation) but that the belief (baptism is NOT needed for salvation) is far more than a fringe belief in Christianity - it's a core and central tenant for millions upon millions of followers within the faith.

Compare that with 1.2 BILLION Catholics currently, plus the billions in the past 2 millenia, and they far outnumber the CURRENT Evangelical numbers.  I was only pointing out a "majority," not stating an absolute rule, so our argument is pointless.

In fact, my original point still stands even with Evangelicals, so we are dithering about nothing.

(As an aside, as noted by Paul, the early Christian churches (as well as the LDS church currently) believe that baptism through proxy (baptism for the dead) is the way that all people, even those who have passed, can receive baptism, even if they could not receive it in this lifetime.  The Catholic belief in these issues became somewhat complicated, and orthodox Christianity traditionally believed in the necessity of baptism -- Lutherans, etc.--though some have changed their interpretations over time.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:53, Fri 24 Jan 2014.

I'm merely pointing out that hundreds of millions of Christians would say that you are completely wrong about your blanket statement, that's all.  I was prepared to let is slide, but Trust in the Lord brought it up as well.

Anyways, moving along ;)

Maybe so, but BILLIONS of Christians would agree with me, so my statement about the "majority" of Christians was accurate, I believe.

Interestingly enough vast numbers of those same Evangelicals would not consider the billions of Catholics to even be Christians.  Funny thing I guess ;)

I would see making promises as a means, not an ends. We don't go around collecting promises like pokemon cards, we make promises because it's part of something greater (a promise of a better reward, a requirement put on us by someone we have a relationship with, etc.)

My dad got me baptized because it initializes me into a relationship with God, and washes away original sin.

I agree with that.  It is kind of like a license to practice medicine (or law).  You first have to get the license by taking the test and meeting the prerequisites.  After that, you receive the benefits of having the license so long as you don't abuse your privileged status, in which case you can be disbarred.

Similarly, baptism is making the exchange of promises to meet the prerequisites to come into Christ's fold.  From there, you receive the benefits of Christ's atonment so long as you continue on that path and don't abuse it (by becoming an unrepentent sinner, etc.).

In any case, those kinds of "rites" and "ordinances" that make you part of a group and bestow upon you special privileges are one reason people might join a religion.

I feel like I covered those special privileges. The push is a relationship with God. You'd agree to the covenant even if God didn't promise anything nice if it's founded on a positive relationship.

The pull is those special privileges; the promise of heaven, and perhaps some nice things on Earth.

Is that correct?

I just think relationship with God and exchange of covenants are two completely separate things -- both important, but both separate.

In other words, you can have the greatest relationship with God in the world, but if you don't accept the saving ordinances (baptism or what have you), you still can't be saved (or enjoy the promise/privilege of the covenant exchange).  It's like having a great understanding of money but never investing it.

But again, a relationship is a motivation. A covenant is not a motivation. You don't say "this religion has the most covenants, we should go with it!"

No, that's not really my point.  My point is that if people are trying to decide whether to join a religion or not join it, the fact that it professes to be able to conduct saving ordinances is a motivation to join it (versus not getting the saving ordinances by not joining it).  So the real motivation here is salvation (and the benefits received from God covenanting with you through the ordinances), not necessarily covenants made by individuals.

So for example, if the Catholics teach you that you go to hell if not baptized, that is a motivation to get baptized, regardless of your relationship with God.

That's an interesting perspective Heath.  Can't say that I can relate to that at all, but I do find it interesting that some people would use that as motivation.

I can totally see it, but I think that's partially because of my upbringing.

Jesus said to Peter that he would be rock upon which the Church is built, which is taken as creating the original ordinations. Peter uses this authorization to ordain the other apostles, who ordained their own people and so on, all the way down. So if you're a Catholic, you know your priest has a direct connection all the way back to Jesus. Part of that ordination is conferring the power to represent Jesus and conduct his sacraments on Earth. Just like I'm not authorized to forgive you your sins on behalf of Jesus, you're not going to let any Joe Blow say he's speaking for God and you should listen.

Most branches of Protestantism don't share that line of ordinations (Luther was a priest, but not a bishop, so by the rules, he can't ordain other priests or bishops).

Of course, if you were raised Protestant, you were probably never introduced to this as a major concept, or you were introduced to a contrary argument as to why your church is right. I'm not familiar with any church that says "here's what we believe, and we believe we're probably wrong".

But Heath is totally right. Even Doulos believes it, even if he doesn't think so. If Doulos is looking for a Church to join that will bring him closer to God and otherwise bring him rewards, he's probably going to look for the guy dressed like a priest, in a church building, who comes off as someone as an authority; he's not going to follow the crazy guy preaching on the street corner to anyone who will listen. Why? Because the former gives indications that he is a serious professional who knows what he's doing and can deliver on promises. The latter gives the impression of being a crazy hobo.

The irony being, of course, that Jesus looked much more like the crazy hobo than the serious professional.  People who had the same "trust the guy with the good costume" view back in Jesus' time wouldn't have taken Jesus seriously (or would have, but in the way led to him being crucified).

I have to agree with Tycho here. Choosing a religion because its administrators look professional and respectable doesn't seem a reliable way to get to God. Personality is important, but that should be done by looking at the character of the founder rather than its current representatives.

The examples of people chosen by God (inside and outside of Christianity) are mostly people of humble origins, not established leaders. These people's lives and teachings can be evaluated to see if they are consistent with what our conscience tells us.

And this is why I could never be, for instance, an Anglican.

Perhaps this is the best place for this one, since it's a question of epistemology.

This is something I've run across more in discussions of history than of religion, but it's perhaps even more prevalent in religion. I don't bring this up to say who's "right" and who's "wrong", but so that people can better understand those they disagree with.

I'll define conservatism (small-c intentional) as being cautious with respect to change. We may not understand the reasons behind our current structures, but they may have evolved into these forms because they function, and changing them may break something we don't fully understand.

The opposite of conservatism isn't liberalism, but progressivism. Progessivism believes in the "march of history", the betterment of society. It compares the new to the old on a blank slate and usually finds the old wanting, so discards it.

In history, conservatism is dominant. Established truths have primacy, and new ideas have to demolish old ones before they are accepted. It's even more extreme than Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", because outdated ideas often outlive even the lifetimes of historians who hold them. Some progressives will complain about the unfairness of this, asking that their ideas get a "fair and neutral hearing" against old ideas (i.e. on a progressive blank slate). I personally, progressively lament the fact that the need for a low chronology of the bronze age was demonstrated over twenty years ago, but is still rejected by everyone in the mainstream.

In religious discussions, this usually gets expressed as the "burden of proof", a loaded phrase that I'm sure will harden people's views about what I'm saying here, but I'll use it anyway. I hope people can look outside themselves for a bit to consider both sides. A progressive may want to view any claim, such as "God exists" or "God does not exist" on a blank slate versus the null hypothesis, and place the burden of proof on the person making the claim. (Some go even further and distinguish between these two claims, saying one has a burden of proof and the other does not).

The conservative, on the other hand, places the burden of proof on someone who wants to change what's established, which usually means Christianity in the context of western religious discussions. To such a conservative, atomic beliefs regarding God, Scripture, and Christianity are held until proven false, and replaced with modified beliefs as necessary. (Some go even farther than conservatism, holding beliefs that have been proven false. They're often referred to as reactionaries or denialists, but I want to keep that distinct from conservatives for now.)

I'll end here by saying that neither side is right or wrong. We view things in different ways, and I know that personally I have a conservative epistemology on some things, and a progressive epistemology on others. If you examine your own views, you may find the same.

----

On a side note, I really don't care for it when people try to break a post into single lines and reply to each with a one-line response. Doing so doesn't lead to anyone understanding the responder's viewpoint because it isn't expressed at length, and doesn't lead to comprehensible conversations as people chase each other down a rabbit hole that leads to semantics. I'll ask that people respond at length to this with their own counter-theses, trying to clearly spell out their own views. I tired long ago of responding to posts full of single lines.

I don't know that I agree with that entirely.  Both of your groups want the betterment of society, they just disagree as to how best to go about it.  Progressives see betterment in an imagined future, conservatives want a return to a better imaginary past.  Based on that, both sides makes assumptions on what they believe, and they push the burden of proof onto anyone whose opinion differs.

Personally, I prefer to take the postmodernist approach: every idea needs to go through a cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction.  By examining, challenging, and rebuilding old concepts, they evolve or become stronger.  But, for that to happen, you have to enter the experiment with an open mind, deconstruct ideas honestly, and view them as what they really are-- you need to see the good and bad in every opinion.

Joining the discusion starting at the top of the page, I'd like to make a comment about certainty.  I feel the main thing we need to know about certainty. Is that as members of the Body of Christ, if we or others, ask God for forgiveness of the wrongs done by us unknowing, if we truly mean the request, we will be forgiven. Even though in that case we have no clue what to change.

The certainty of religion is not and never has been the certainty of Truth, because we are imperfect creatures each of us are no more able to look on the face of perfect truth then we are the face of God, but is based on the certainty of Faith.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:44, Wed 15 Apr 2015.

In reply to hakootoko (msg # 177):

I'd tend to agree with what you've said in this post, it seems a fair assessment as far as it goes.

In reply to C-h Freese (msg # 179):

I agree with this somewhat.  There are three basic reasons behind religion:  (1) to provide principles of behavior to lead one to happiness and back to God; (2) to provide links to God (like prayer) and the related rites and rituals established by God to demonstrate one's faith and one's willingness to sacrifice and follow God; and (3) to be separated by God to develop faith and overcome trials.

In reply to Heath (msg # 181):

I would disagree with that. Those may be the three spiritual reasons, but there are a lot of other 'reasons' for religion beyond that; tradition, group cohesion, motivating people towards a particular behavior, and yes, search for 'Truth'. Not saying these are all GOOD reasons, but they are all definitely reasons.

I am not quiet sure that is a disagreement more looking at the same thing on a different level.  A one point it was believed the four elements of Matter were bound together by a fifth that made creation possible, we would translate that to spirit now days.

Plus the idea of the search for Truth, and search for God, being like calculus limits, unreachable in a finite system.  Doesn't mean that attempting it is a waste of time, I personally believe God what ever name we give him, her, or them, is always found beyond the limits of the known.

eerrrrr.. Sorry Heath for editing a post after you replied to it! When I got to this thread the first thing I saw was my post. And realize I hadn't come back to edit after a smartphone post.  I didn't even realize your reply was two me,I hope I didn't change what you took the meaning to be.

In reply to katisara (msg # 182):

I was referring to the three fundamental or basic reasons underlying religion.  As to each person's motivating factor, or other collateral issues like group cohesion, they apply on a case by case basis.

I think you are referring more to organized religion; I am referring to the existence of religion...period.

EDIT: In other words, if you don't have the three factors I mentioned, you won't have "tradition, group cohesion, motivating people towards a particular behavior, and yes, search for 'Truth'."  These all flow out of those three basic reasons.  You don't have "tradition" if you don't first have the religion.  You don't have motivations to join if you don't first have religion.  And the quest for truth is individual motivation that can splinter into various searches depending on the individual, so the search for "religious" truth also builds on those three basic building blocks.  The "search for truth" is a motivating factor for many things (philosophy, science, etc.) that are separate from religion, so the existence of those three basic building blocks are what drive someone seeking truth in the direction of religion (instead of, say, science or philosophy).
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:15, Wed 15 Apr 2015.

What if one of your fundamental beliefs is one of superficiality? You have a core belief of "clothes make the man?" Why would this not be a valid way of addressing what religion to join?

I keep thinking on this. Religion to me is comprised of two elements: spiritual and social. While I would think that most would address the spiritual first, I've known plenty to start attending a church based entirely on their friends or family's presence within that faith and then converted to it. I don't think that either approach is wrong.

I also think Heath's answer pre-supposes we're talking about a religion which he believes to be correct. Heath, do you, for instance, feel that your three rules apply to Satanism? To Voodou? To Hinduism?

Heath's three reasons all presuppose belief in God, because they all provide God as a reference point. So belief is logically prior to all of them. Yet not all religions are monotheistic, or even theistic.

I think people can have "tradition, group cohesion, motivating people towards a particular behavior, and yes, search for 'Truth'" without monotheism, and without religion at all.

But I'm not sure what Heath is saying in his brief posts. Are these three about the origin of religion, or the reasons that an individual finds religion?
This message was last edited by the player at 23:14, Thu 16 Apr 2015.

If I lack certainty of the Truth of God's existence, then I must also lack certainty that I will be forgiven by him. I also can't have certain Faith in a being unless I am certain of his existence.

I think a lack of certainty is an admirable trait. I try to begin with humility. Mankind is the not the greatest thing in the universe. Our ignorance is far larger than our knowledge, and our knowledge will only grow incrementally during my lifetime. Even our knowledge is not Truth, but a weak approximation of it. Faced with an uncertainty that I don't expect to be resolved in my lifetime, such as "Does God exist, or not exist?", I try to understand until I believe ("belief: an emotional commitment to a proposition or its opposite when the evidence for each is inconclusive") one or the other. I recognize that this belief is not Truth, and not even knowledge, but is the best I can do with what I've got. Maintaining this uncertainly, I can change my beliefs over time as more evidence emerges.

Yeah, I'm going to completely disagree.

The basic principle of religion is to help make sense of the universe around us.  You don't need principles of behavior (they're common, but ultimately not required), you don't need rituals (Jesus even disdained many prayer rituals of his day, and instead gave a simpler method) and you certainly don't need a "link to god", especially if you don't believe in a singular deity.

No, all you need for a religion is a need to understand, and a good metaphor to place it in.  That gives you understanding, and comfort, and strength.

You guys are putting words in my mouth.  I presupposed the existence of a supreme being in my statements because we are talking about "religion."  If you want to talk about philosophies, that is something entirely different.  I made general statements which I think are true for most religious thinking.  Are there exceptions?  Maybe.

I'm not sure if you are going out of your way to find an exception to what I said to try to prove me wrong, or if the message of what I am saying is being lost amidst rhetoric.

I could say the sky is blue, and you could prove me wrong on occasion.  It may be reddish at dusk, covered with dark clouds at times, etc.  But that loses the point I'm making and, IMHO, belittles the entire discussion.

I think we're all legitimately confused by what you're saying. I'm going to paraphrase poorly, so apologies.

GMC seems to think you're trying to say "these are the root drives that create religion", or possibly "this is the defining thing that establishes a religion".

hakootoko says explicitly he doesn't know what you're saying, and asked for clarification.

I thought you were putting forward a sociological statement. "People may join a religion for one of these reasons." TheMonk seems to agree.

I think all of us agree you're excluding all polytheistic and nontheistic religions, or possibly all non-Christian religions. But I don't know if that's what you intended.

I guess my point is, some clarification would be appreciated. Between four people, we have at least three interpretations of what you said.