Religion, what's the point?

Mihajlovic said:
I've been through some serious shit in the last few years which made me reconsider... everything.

Long story.

Yes, interestingly in the earliest, Synoptic Gospels, Jesus never claims to be divine, but in the Gospel of John, which was the latest to be written, that's all Jesus talks about...
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Sorry about all you've been through, it must have been tough.

I went through something similar, and went from religious to questioning everything. My observation was that religions are like bubbles, and only make sense when inside this bubble, when viewed through the prism of their own teachings. When observed from the outside, or when scrutinized by any logic or set of values except their own the 'holes in the plot' become too obvious to ignore.

Anyway, I don't want to intrude but I hope you're doing well and have found your peace and equilibrium.
 
Raoul said:
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Moses comes down with stone tablets written by god, with one of them saying "Thou Shall not kill". He managed to uphold that for a few hours before comitting genocide of innocent people for idoltary.
 
Shamana said:
Moses comes down with stone tablets written by god, with one of them saying "Thou Shall not kill". He managed to uphold that for a few hours before comitting genocide of innocent people for idoltary.
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I've never heard this story before.
 
I think it’s thanks to religion for humanity for not tearing itself apart in the beginning, introducing the 8 commandments and sin as such, Even if it’s fake, it’s the sin or guilt that would stop you from killing or robbing a person and so Christ teaches you to love one another etc. But you can easily argue the opposite, that religion is a horrible mindset from many years ago when Christians were killing everyone who wouldn’t bow to Christianity. And the Catholic Church being a bunch of bastards with it’s history.

I’m Not much of a bible thumper but I do believe etc. I really hope there’s an heaven and hell. Otherwise it’s fecking depressing thinking you are never seeing your family members again. In a way, it does help. Even if it might not be real.
 
Raoul said:
No. Never really took religion seriously after becoming an adult.
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Well i'm not a Christian either, but my grandparents were Christian missionaries so obviously there was a influence, but I was agnostic untill I decided on Buddhism in my late teens.
 
fergies coat said:
Do Christians just bury thier heads in the sand when the find dinosaur bones from 65 million years ago? Or the theory of evolution?
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"Evolutionary creationism" - this is the religious belief that evolution is the mechanism by which God brought about life on this planet.

Adherents would argue that there is therefore no incompatibility between the scientific understanding of evolution and the Christian conception of the origins of life.
 
fergies coat said:
Do Christians just bury thier heads in the sand when the find dinosaur bones from 65 million years ago? Or the theory of evolution?
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Christians(and probably religious people in general) fall into 3 categories:

1. The nutcases who believe in every single word in their holy texts.
2. The people who just pick and choose at random what they like from the texts(they believe in the "main story", though).
3. The people who admit that it's all bullshit, but that there is some wisdom and good messages to be found and thus they still define themselves as Christian.

Number 1 can't be reasoned with, but luckily they are rare.
Number 2 is the most common and the most annoying overall. And, in a way, just as stupid number 1.
Number 3 are not really Christians, but they call themselves that for whatever reason(probably social pressure).

Now that I've dropped a bomb: see you later, gonna eat dinner and watch a movie :D
 
OleBoiii said:
Christians(and probably religious people in general) fall into 3 categories:

1. The nutcases who believe in every single word in their holy texts.
2. The people who just pick and choose at random what they like from the texts(they believe in the "main story", though).
3. The people who admit that it's all bullshit, but that there is some wisdom and good messages to be found and thus they still define themselves as Christian.

Number 1 can't be reasoned with, but luckily they are rare.
Number 2 is the most common and the most annoying overall. And, in a way, just as stupid number 1.
Number 3 are not really Christians, but they call themselves that for whatever reason(probably social pressure).

Now that I've dropped a bomb: see you later, gonna eat dinner and watch a movie :D
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:lol: shots fired.
 
fergies coat said:
Do Christians just bury thier heads in the sand when the find dinosaur bones from 65 million years ago? Or the theory of evolution?
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Only the fundamentalists who take everything literally.

If you hold to the idea that it’s divinely inspired, but ultimately still written by bronze age folk, it doesn’t shake you too much to find that it clashes with paleontology.

Anyway, when you consider humans overall it makes sense that facts have little to no bearing on anything. You see it every day, people feel way more than they think, and then they cherry pick their facts to fit their preferred narrative.
 
Infra-red said:
"Evolutionary creationism" - this is the religious belief that evolution is the mechanism by which God brought about life on this planet.

Adherents would argue that there is therefore no incompatibility between the scientific understanding of evolution and the Christian conception of the origins of life.
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I mean you would hope there was something out there wouldn't you. I just don't believe in these man made fictional books that were made when most people didn't know any better.
 
Raoul said:
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This thread isn’t as smart as she seems to think it is.

The idea behind true Christianity isn’t that you can do what you want and have no accountability because your sin has been forgiven.

It is that the joy of forgiveness and the sacrifice of Jesus means that your biggest desire should be to turn away from sin and try and live your life more and more like Jesus every day.

When you sin and fall short, you want to rectify that relationship with God because we all sin. That, in theory, is why we need a saviour to begin with.

If you don’t learn from your sin and continue to make the same mistakes with no progress, an evangelical church would question your salvation and your relationship with God. Basically, if you don’t change, and there is no transformation, maybe your conversion wasn’t genuine to begin with.
 
Maluco said:
This thread isn’t as smart as she seems to think it is.

The idea behind true Christianity isn’t that you can do what you want and have no accountability because your sin has been forgiven.

It is that the joy of forgiveness and the sacrifice of Jesus means that your biggest desire should be to turn away from sin and try and live your life more and more like Jesus every day.

When you sin and fall short, you want to rectify that relationship with God because we all sin. That, in theory, is why we need a saviour to begin with.

If you don’t learn from your sin and continue to make the same mistakes with no progress, an evangelical church would question your salvation and your relationship with God. Basically, if you don’t change, and there is no transformation, maybe your conversion wasn’t genuine to begin with.
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This seems like a best case scenario rather than how things actually turn out. In reality, people do bad things and seek forgiveness only to continue doing other bad things with the knowledge that JC has their backs.
 
Raoul said:
This seems like a best case scenario rather than how things actually turn out. In reality, people do bad things and seek forgiveness only to continue doing other bad things with the knowledge that JC has their backs.
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It’s like trickle-down econonics. Would be great if it worked that way, but...
 
Raoul said:
This seems like a best case scenario rather than how things actually turn out. In reality, people do bad things and seek forgiveness only to continue doing other bad things with the knowledge that JC has their backs.
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That isn’t the fault of the faith though. That is false teaching and people distorting the Bible’s teachings to believe what they want to, so they aren’t forced to examine themselves. It’s not a problem with Christianity, it’s a problem of sinful people who use it for their own interests.

The biggest enemies of Christianity are often those working within or identifying themselves to the religion.

It wasn’t devil worshipping hell spawn that persecuted Jesus back in the day. It was the teachers of the law, who knew it from memory, that got it all wrong in the end.
 
MrMarcello said:
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Comes off as a typical religious apology. Nor was Jesus a son of a sky god.
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We all have faith in something. I was just pointing out that her thread didn’t make any sense and is full of misinformation.

I grew up in church and I never heard anyone teach that God will save you from the consequences of your sin, for example.

What she said just isn’t true. That’s all I was pointing out.
 
Maluco said:
We all have faith in something. I was just pointing out that her thread didn’t make any sense and is full of misinformation.

I grew up in church and I never heard anyone teach that God will save you from the consequences of your sin, for example.

What she said just isn’t true. That’s all I was pointing out.
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You grew up in a different version of Christianity, or whatever religion, than I in Texas. I grew up bombarded with "you'll go to hell for this/that" and to never question clergy, scripture, etc. I had questions but stuffed it away growing up, often because clergy would ignore or provide a typical apologetic response, or better yet, "we never question the divine word of god" bullshit. Stories always bothered me, like talking snakes and global flooding to kill a god's creation, and of course the incest stuff. I drew parallels to Greek mythology when studying the course in high school but still kept my faith. As I grew older, educated myself in philosophy, science, etc. I broke free of the shackles religion places on the mind.

And why the name God, such a generic name. Why wasn't Yahweh said more often in church? Why just Pharoah and not the actual name?
 
MrMarcello said:
You grew up in a different version of Christianity, or whatever religion, than I in Texas. I grew up bombarded with "you'll go to hell for this/that" and to never question clergy, scripture, etc. I had questions but stuffed it away growing up, often because clergy would ignore or provide a typical apologetic response, or better yet, "we never question the divine word of god" bullshit. Stories always bothered me, like talking snakes and global flooding to kill a god's creation, and of course the incest stuff. And why the name God, such a generic name. Why wasn't Yahweh said more often in church?
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That must have sucked. There were times too, when I had doubts and questions growing up. There were always limits as to who you felt you could speak to, but I felt more freedom to explore them as I got older. It has been healthier for me to move away and “find my own truth”, so to speak. Obviously that’s still a process, but your experience sounds harsh and I can understand the frustration.

Yahweh or YHWH is a written form of God’s name that is rooted in Judaism. The Hebrew language doesn’t have vowels so we actually don’t know how to pronounce it without the context. It is seen as ‘the most holy’ name for God too, so I guess people have a certain reverence for it and don’t use it as randomly.

God has many names in the Bible but I guess we use “God” as a universal marker so it doesn’t get confusing.
 
Maluco said:
That isn’t the fault of the faith though. That is false teaching and people distorting the Bible’s teachings to believe what they want to, so they aren’t forced to examine themselves. It’s not a problem with Christianity, it’s a problem of sinful people who use it for their own interests.

The biggest enemies of Christianity are often those working within or identifying themselves to the religion.

It wasn’t devil worshipping hell spawn that persecuted Jesus back in the day. It was the teachers of the law, who knew it from memory, that got it all wrong in the end.
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I would believe this if not for the fact that everyone who practices a religion interprets it in a certain way, so who is to say one person's interpretation is any more legitimate than another's, especially given that everyone is interpreting stories people made up thousands of years ago, which have probably changed considerably as they were retold over the past two thousand years.
 
AaronRedDevil said:
I think it’s thanks to religion for humanity for not tearing itself apart in the beginning, introducing the 8 commandments and sin as such, Even if it’s fake, it’s the sin or guilt that would stop you from killing or robbing a person and so Christ teaches you to love one another etc.
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What a load of utter bollocks.

We humans "feel", we have empathy, that's why we can get so upset at another's struggles.
 
Empathy is mostly reserved for people you already agree with. Religion is good at that. You know who's in your group. "Oh you're a Christian, then we can trade and protect each other while killing off those other ***'s who belive in whatever we don't belive in"
 
Shamana said:
Moses comes down with stone tablets written by god, with one of them saying "Thou Shall not kill". He managed to uphold that for a few hours before comitting genocide of innocent people for idoltary.
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Not really innocent when they broke one of the commandments stating:
"You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments".
 
Being a 37 year old man I would get laughed at if I said i still believed in santa, but your a sane person if you believe in immaculate conception, or the feeding of the 5000, or any of the hundreds of impossible things in these various religious books.
 
RedTiger said:
Not really innocent when they broke one of the commandments stating:
"You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments".
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I hope you are joking if you think they are not innocent. Otherwise you are a religious sociopath.
 
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Raoul said:
I would believe this if not for the fact that everyone who practices a religion interprets it in a certain way, so who is to say one person's interpretation is any more legitimate than another's, especially given that everyone is interpreting stories people made up thousands of years ago, which have probably changed considerably as they were retold over the past two thousand years.
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I agree with you totally, but I believe, that the truth is still there. The waters have definitely been muddied, but that doesn’t mean we should through the baby out with the bath water. Just because it is confused, doesn’t mean there isn’t truth.

But I understand your point completely.
 
OleBoiii said:
Christians(and probably religious people in general) fall into 3 categories:

1. The nutcases who believe in every single word in their holy texts.
2. The people who just pick and choose at random what they like from the texts(they believe in the "main story", though).
3. The people who admit that it's all bullshit, but that there is some wisdom and good messages to be found and thus they still define themselves as Christian.

Number 1 can't be reasoned with, but luckily they are rare.
Number 2 is the most common and the most annoying overall. And, in a way, just as stupid number 1.
Number 3 are not really Christians, but they call themselves that for whatever reason(probably social pressure).

Now that I've dropped a bomb: see you later, gonna eat dinner and watch a movie :D
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I suppose I identify with the 2?
the other options are not very flattering.
I don't like being called stupid or to see someone implying that I am stupid, I don't call anyone that.
Surely can be replaced by another adjective without attacking a whole group.
Christianity, Islam, radical Islam / Islam and politics, far right and left, racism. Imagine if everyone takes the liberty of dropping bombs.
To be honest I reported you because your post bothered me, but assuming the "laissez faire" in this kind of threads I thought it was correct to tell you
 
e.cantona said:
My argument is so. You have to do some work to emphasise with someone you don't like
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I think my neighbour is a cnut of the highest order, I fecking detest the arsehole. That said, he's in his late 60's and got baaaad Covid back in May; from my kitchen window I can see his kitchen and could see and hear he was in bad bad way, looked like he was gonna die any second. I felt awful, checked on him, helped him get food, sorted calling the ambulance when it looked like he was gonna go, so I'm calling bs on that.
I'm certainly not that nice, and 2 weeks after he discharged the cnut started screaming at me blaming me for cutting his hedge and telling me to "feck off back to my country", not for the first time.
 
carvajal said:
I suppose I identify with the 2?
the other options are not very flattering.
I don't like being called stupid or to see someone implying that I am stupid, I don't call anyone that.
Surely can be replaced by another adjective without attacking a whole group.
Christianity, Islam, radical Islam / Islam and politics, far right and left, racism. Imagine if everyone takes the liberty of dropping bombs.
To be honest I reported you because your post bothered me, but assuming the "laissez faire" in this kind of threads I thought it was correct to tell you
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Don't even bother mate, Christianity is an easy target on this forum and you would never get sympathy trying to defend your viewpoint. Just take it on the chin and let the pseudo-intellects continue to lick each other's sacks.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
I think my neighbour is a cnut of the highest order, I fecking detest the arsehole. That said, he's in his late 60's and got baaaad Covid back in May; from my kitchen window I can see his kitchen and could see and hear he was in bad bad way, looked like he was gonna die any second. I felt awful, checked on him, helped him get food, sorted calling the ambulance when it looked like he was gonna go, so I'm calling bs on that.
I'm certainly not that nice, and 2 weeks after he discharged the cnut started screaming at me blaming me for cutting his hedge and telling me to "feck off back to my country", not for the first time.
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Good on you. Guess he's got a hard time emphasising with you
 
DoomSlayer said:
Don't even bother mate, Christianity is an easy target on this forum and you would never get sympathy trying to defend your viewpoint. Just take it on the chin and let the pseudo-intellects continue to lick each other's sacks.
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This thread was set up to criticize religion. There’s another one for believers of various religions to discuss their beliefs that may help soothe your anxieties a bit.
 
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