Q and A about what it means to follow Christ
" Sorry but I had to reply to this. Here YOU are jumping to conclusions about other people. I'm atheist, but I ( and other atheists I happen to know) never jumped to the "flat earth" assumptions or such...that has never come out in all the debates that I had over the years with different religious people - mostly christians. There are far greater issue to discuss. "Metas rotate all the time, eventually the developers will buff melee" PoE 2013-2018 Last edited by Wazz72 on Jan 27, 2017, 9:32:34 AM
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"Flat earth" was just a way to say "assume that religious people believe all the nonsense that is written in the book and are generally uneducated, stupid, etc...". In my experience this is what I usually hear from the anti-religious side of opinion.
When night falls
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Q
Why are religious people (of any religion) always so hellbent on shoving their beliefs in everyones face? Is it so hard to just live your life, believe in whatever works for you, without having to impose your view on others? | |
" They need new bodies to join their cult. So anyone who will listen... | |
" No, I still have a draft in progress. You question required more thought than the others. I've spent a couple hours on it, but I haven't gotten it quite right. Something just hasn't felt right about what I wrote, so I want to keep revising it. Stuff like one person saying Christianity is responsible for oppressing the blacks, LBGT community, and such. Hopefully she sees that it isn't God that did that, it is people (who suck pretty bad at times) who do that. Sometimes people say they do that in the name of god, but it is not God. I encouraged her(?) to read the book of Matthew to get an idea of who God is. If she does, she will see that God had no part in that. |
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" Yes, it is written. Humans wrote about a god who is pretty much exactly like humans are. That's what I meant with too convenient. I would assume an omnipotent creature like god would be above petty human characteristics. GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence. Last edited by Xavderion on Jan 27, 2017, 12:37:27 PM
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" I agree with your assessment it's people who do that. However, IMO there's an inherent problem with Christianity which may, in certain circumstances, make it easier for people to accept oppression or actively oppress others, and this is related to my first question. You'll never be able to get the answer to my first question quite right. I appreciate the honesty and the thought you've put into it, but the fact of the matter is this: you can't know. You can't be certain. There is no logical and reasonable way you can arrive at faith. In fact, faith is the opposite of reason. It's the result of emotions, not reason. Religion is a series of declarative statements based on no logic whatsoever. The Bible doesn't argue, it doesn't explain, it speaks with the voice of absolute conviction. This is why it is said, "The Bible is read, not understood." This absolute, unshakable certainty - faith - is seductive. This is what makes religion so successful even today, in the information age, despite the overwhelming evidence the Bible is a highly unreliable source of information. The greatest conmen all know a simple principle: people will easily believe in lies they wish were true. Religion is a psychological coping mechanism. It is the eyes wide shut to avoid staring at the harsh glare of reality. We all have a few deep and powerful instincts, and religion satisfies all of them: - we fear the unknown. The truth is, the universe is vast and unknowable and we can't ever fully grasp even the tiniest grain of sand. Religion is an elegant circumvention of this terrible uncertainty: anything can be explained with God. - we want to love and be loved. Religion answers this need too. It's a form of intellectual masturbation: it tells us there's this being, which is the greatest being in the entire universe, the creator of all, and it loves us, and we should love it back. - we hate to think and try to avoid it at all costs. Thinking is difficult. All animals have an instinct to preserve energy, and our big fucking brains consume about 30% of our energy resources. We naturally tend to avoid straining them. Religion answers this need too. It tells us, "no need to think, this higher authority here will do all the thinking for you, and it's infinitely wise and all-knowing! Just listen to it and all will be well. Who speaks with its voice? Why, the church, of course! Now be a good boy and do as we say." Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Religion can be a balm for the soul, a tool to escape from a terrible reality, or at least to look at it from a more palatable perspective. Also, when the religious authorities act with kindness, they produce friendly, good and generally quite pleasant people (if a bit boring) with a highly developed sense of ethics. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill and so forth - these are fine commandments to live by. And thus we return at the start, and arrive at my first major gripe with organized religion in the model of Islam and Christianity: it brainwashes people. It teaches them not to think. To follow religious authorities blindly. And the problem with brainwashed, unthinking people is, they can easily be whipped into a frenzy - we all know enough of Christianity and Islam's history, no need to explain what I mean. Because these religious authorities are just people, and they can sometimes be pretty fucking evil, or worse - fanatic believers with good intentions who can't admit or see they might be wrong. This is ironic because yesterday Scrotie_McB asked me if I would try to convert a priest to atheism and I said no, and also said I don't identify as an atheist. I suppose it doesn't look that way from the wall of text I just wrote. To clarify, I'm agnostic and I think faith could be great, my problem is with organized religion. I've nothing against God, however we choose to define him, I just dislike the church. p.s. my other major gripe with religion is its viral behavior. It's a goddamned brain-eating virus, it turns people into zombies and it's contagious. It's especially dangerous for children and people with weak psychological immune systems. The Wheel of Nerfs turns, and builds come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the build that gave it birth comes again. Last edited by Bars on Jan 27, 2017, 1:27:17 PM
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" Through the four books of the Gospel, as well as the book of Acts, we see Christ charge us with spreading the good news. That is, the news of Christ's sacrifice and that we can enter in to relationship with God. When a person encounters something absolutely life changing in a positive way, would that person really not want to share it? For instance, I just cannot keep this little bit of genius to myself:  |
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" One thing that you and Jesus Christ share is your distain for religion. Reading through the books of the Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), one can see Jesus' confrontations with the religious leaders of the day (Pharisees and Sadducees). He called them "sons of hell", a "brood of vipers". They gave lip service to God, meaning none of their words, and lead all who heard them astray. They were supposed to lead people TO God, not away from Him. He even made a whip and drove people out of the temple. Regarding brainwashing and teaching people not to think, I would like to make the case it is not due to religion. One doesn't have to look hard to see Facebook posts that are shared that are absolutely false. Perhaps something about the Endangered Northwest Tree Octopus? Heck, I almost wrote something yesterday that I remembered seeing a few years ago. Luckily before I submitted, I fact-checked myself, and found it was false. People being easily lead astray is a symptom of humanity, not Christianity. If you take a little to peruse my other responses, they loosely address some of your other points. To briefly cover it here: I really had no "need" or "desire" for God when I was growing up. I grew up going to church every week, but that was my only exposure to God because He was not shown by my parents in every day life, so it basically reinforced the idea that God didn't exist. I joined the Marine Corps at 18 to pretend to be a badass for a while, enjoying the prestige of being an Air Traffic Controller in the USMC. Being on the Kuwaiti border when Saddam threw the SCUDs over in March 2003. Spending $150 a night on shots of Patron Silver in Pacific Beach in SoCal when I wasn't deployed. I paid for a SEXY F-150 with flared step-sides with cash. Heck, I even briefly dated a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. My life was "good" by the media's standards--I had no real "need" for God. It wasn't until I had an encounter with God, an "oh crap" sort of moment where he gave me a "peace that surpasses all understanding", that I started to pursue a relationship with God. Every day I continue to pursue a relationship with Him, I see Him work, and I see His power, and I honestly have no desire to try to live without Him again, because looking back that life kind of sucked. In one of my previous posts I was asked to define knowledge and belief. That post kind of addresses your thought about reasoning being the opposite of faith. It comes down to what we accept as true. I mention in that post that I look at all the complexities and intricacies of this world, and the pure perfection required for our lives to exist, and in that I see proof of God. I see it being completely unreasonable to be able to deny that God exists in light of that. We see science (string theory) elude to that the smallest bits of matter we can measure are just bits of vibrating energy, AKA sound. It is written that God spoke the world into existence. We see science (thermodynamics) point to the chances of our world coming in to existence by means not of intelligent design to be wayyyyyyyyy less than statistical zero. I can't remember the exact number, but like 14 orders of magnitude less than statistical zero. I do, however, need to spend some time to find the research to back that up for reference. I have reasoned quite a bit. In that post I mentioned above, I defined knowledge as something like "the collection of beliefs acquired through experience." I have reasoned. I have experienced many different situations. I have experienced God's power, and I have reasoned Him to be true. Bringing things back to the spirit of this thread, I am not really trying to argue apologetics by sharing my experiences or the tidbits of science, but rather trying to show that following Christ is not a brainless thing to do, following the words of our "pastors" without checking them. Doing that is a good way to end up like Westboro Baptist Church--completely devoid of God, slandering His name. God calls us to read His Word, to "meditate on it day and night." If we do that, God will give us grace and enter our lives. PS: I see your wall of text, and raise you one paragraph :) Last edited by Tribulation on Jan 28, 2017, 3:15:24 AM
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All right, we seem to be coming at a sort of understanding and it seems to me we are speaking about the same thing using different terminology. Isn't this so often the case, though :) I've had a feeling for a long time - at some level, all religions are one and the same. It's just semantics, different words people choose to try and express what can't really be expressed with words.
About my disdain for religion, I wasn't saying it's the only culprit. Of course people don't need religion to be nasty to each other. Nowadays it has kinda taken the backseat to the new cult in town: extreme materialism and individualism. A few paragraphs which were interesting to me: " If the entirety of existence is God's word, a divine vibration on the fundamental level of reality, what does it mean to meditate on it day and night? We can't not do it. Wherever you turn, he's there. If you exist, you're it. You don't need to read a dusty old book to meditate on it. You don't really need to do anything. Whatever you're doing, you're meditating on it. " What happened? And, last and third question, how exactly are you following god at the moment? The Wheel of Nerfs turns, and builds come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the build that gave it birth comes again. Last edited by Bars on Jan 28, 2017, 4:12:12 AM
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