May I ask where you live? If it’s the U.S., it’s hard to believe you could feel alone. There are Christian churches in every town, Christian pastors on television, many public gatherings begin with a Christian prayer, and politicians routinely end their speeches with a Christian blessing.
Maybe someday this country will have an openly Christian president, or 44 of them. You are not the neglected, lonely minority.
I hope you like this forum want2befree and have great discussions on it but please remember this is not a forum designed especially for Christian fellowship or discussions. Either way God bless.
Everyone does this. “Why don’t other people think/do/like the same things as me?” is such a common part of human nature, it’s hardly worth commenting on.
I don’t think the aggressive “all believers of any religion are credulous morons” atheists are that big a minority here but they’re certainly a vocal one. I recommend ignoring them. The larger population is of the “believe what you want as long as you don’t try to force others to believe the same thing” variety, which is more benign.
Usually where these things break down is where a new person comes in and assumes that mentioning Jesus and quoting Bible verses constitutes a crushing argument, and then gets upset when people point out that Bible verses only hold weight if you already believe that the Bible is the word of God and for everyone else it’s just a book full of conflicting and inconsistent stories (some true, some half-true, some false) that proves nothing in terms of an objective validation of the Christian faith.
You’ll find that a lot of the non-believers here are fully cognizant of what’s in the Bible and have read it cover-to-cover; indeed, you’ll find some that know it a lot better than you do including the historical contexts and how meanings have changed in different translations. Many of us have also examined our unbelief, sought God in our own ways and have not had the deep personal epiphany that starts so many down the road to faith. So if you start with the understanding that most of us non-believers have read the Bible and have looked into our own hearts and yet have not found this sufficiently compelling to provoke belief, you’ll probably have a much more constructive time here.
Anyway: welcome to the board. Do stay a while, do read a variety of threads and feel free to participate in threads not about religion, do read the Board rules and various forum stickies, and have fun!
I wonder if there are ANY boards out there that aren’t specifically designed around Christian (or diest) dogma, whose Christian members are in the majority?
I believe Cecil- our big guy - addressed this topic quite nicely, and while I would doubtless fail your test I nevertheless wish to welcome you to the community.
But Jews, Muslims, Hindus, even atheists are capable of offering support and advice. So why limit the conversation to those who believe that “Jesus died for their sins”?
The stark beauty of believers and nonbelievers is that regardless of what one believes, their philosophy is absolutely correct. That is because when people in each of the groups die, no one is disappointed with what follows and none return to rejoice or complain.
We do have threads all the time where an OP asks for participation of a certain subset of the SDMB community.
I see current threads designated for Dieters, Car Buffs, Cis-Women, Ladies, Ladies with cup C and up, Male Dopers, Girls, Ballistics type, US citizens, and Americans just on my first page of results in IMHO.
Many of the responses from non-believers on this thread have been respectful but some, IMHO, are not. I’m not sure why a request for response by a religious subset should be treated with scorn as other threads don’t generally result in such response.
As to directly answer the OP, yes there are some believers on this board. I am one among them. As others mentioned, religion tends to bring out some very strong opinions and many such threads can derail into a real mess.
Asking what accounts for the lack of believers here in reality is almost like asking what accounts for the lack of agnostics on a Bible study message board. It’s not really what this board is for … the advertised purpose here being to fight ignorance.
That’s not to suggest, as far as I’m concerned, that belief displays ignorance. What I mean is, if you say," I’m a Xtian and I believe (insert typical Xtian creeds), then you’ve said it all. Discussing Scripture can be interesting, but you don’t need faith to discuss the content of ancient writings. Discussing the existence of a Supreme Being can be interesting, but again, faith is not required to discuss the possible existence of a God
I don’t discuss my personal superstitions on the board because I don’t see any reason to. I do offer hypotheticals, and discuss religion as a subject, but I don’t see any ignorance being fought by simply stating that one has faith. Great, so what else in new?
Actually, if you spend a lot of time considering things religious, want2befree, do you have the ability to tell me exactly why Christ had to die for our sins? I don’t mean repeating that he had to die, or that God required a sacrifice, I mean WHY? Jesus is God and he’s immortal. The death only lasted three days. Hardly as terrifying a prospect as a human dying permanently. He takes human form, finds out what it feels like to be tortured, then dies temporarily, and comes back good as new. Where’s the sacrifice? And how does this exercise make God (the Father, presumably) feel better about our sins? Now, if you could answer that without just repeating Xtian talking points, THAT would be interesting.
Believers sitting around and saying, “I believe, do you believe? I believe. It’s so nice that you believe.” What does that accomplish? Church on Sunday is for fellowship, but what ignorance is fought? If you have startling new insights on the ancient writings or a new twist on the same old story we all already know, let’s hear it.
The part about age reminded me of my dad, who has been convinced since I was a teenager that my lack of faith is some immature phase that I’ll “grow out of”.
“Are there any other dieters out there? I find it amazing that there seem to be so few people who watch there weight in this community full of middle-aged, seemingly intelligent people! Please, only dieters respond to this!”