Could you give us a brief outline of what evidence you found most compelling?
As a strong atheist, for lack of a better label, even operating on the stipulation that the universe must have been created by a Creator … I would still say no religion is the correct one. Just because the universe was created (and again, I play along with the stipulation here) that doesn’t lead toward anything remotely like religion. Religion, or religions, would still have to have been created by man in order to make men feel better about said Creator.
Unless the stipulation also includes burning bushes, or oil lamps, or something like that.
From All In The Family
There’s a common thread running through pretty much all long-standing religions: be and do your moral best. They just differ on the details. Once you’ve twigged that, the rest is gravy.
No gravy on mine, thanks.
This just begging the question. What specific evidence do you think points to Christianity?
The problem with religions is that they all have the exact same amount of evidence.
You might have missed the “accepting Jesus to atone for your sins” part of the one, somewhat minor religion. If religions did accept what you claim they do, there would have been a lot fewer wars and attacks on the infidels of whatever stripe throughout history.
Including wars by people who supposedly did accept Jesus, against other such people. Fact is, for any given religion, there are plenty of people who purport to follow it, but who still manage to ignore some of the fundamental precepts like “be nice to each other”.
No, I hadn’t missed it. That’s one of the details. And you can take that as a metaphor for personal responsibility or even ‘joining the club’ instead of literally.
Er, supposing for a moment that Christianity were true, that wouldn’t be terribly surprising, would it? You’d expect the correct religion to have a lot of adherents.
Well, to be charitable about it, he’s not really begging the question because he isn’t making an argument. He’s briefly describing his own conversion experience. (still, having followed his threads with some interest, I admit that his evidence is sadly unconvincing.)
I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m piling on, but I did much the same thing. I majored in religion at a secular university and we approached the study of each from a mostly academic point of view. I took a particular interest in Buddhism and especially Zen simply because the mindset was so antithetical to Western thought that it basically blew my mind.
But Buddhism had one advantage over the major religions in that it is based on experience and not faith. Yes, there are devotional sects of Buddhism that essentially “worship” various Bodhisattvas, but i’m talking about the kind of Buddhism practiced in monasteries. This is based on individual enlightenment through meditation. And even for the devotional sects, the idea is not salvation, but the chance to be reborn on a plane of existence in which enlightenment can be more easily attained.
It is only when you get into the mystical variants of Western religions that you begin to see anything remotely similar. Mystical traditions also place a heavy emphasis on meditation (i.e., prayer in this case) and personally experiencing the divine. Personal experience can be a solid foundation for faith, but rational argument - not so much.
However I do agree that depending upon how open one is to seeing the hand of god at work in human affairs, you can look at certain events in the judeo-christian tradition and possibly make some sort of probabilistic argument. One example that I’ve always thought was difficult to explain away was how a small group of Jesus’ followers, who must have been scared shitless at seeing their leader crucified somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and were able to unleash the philosophical equivalent of a highly contagious virus upon the Roman empire. Then there are also the stories of martyrs who were torn apart in the Colosseum with a passivity that evokes memories of self-immolations in Vietnam - for those of you who remember such things.
Of course neither these nor any other events I could point to lack any number of alternate explanations and my failure to see the merit in them could well be the result of personal bias so I don’t present them for proof of anything. The point is that maybe there is good evidence for certain beliefs but even if that’s true, you can’t avoid the various criticisms that can be raised and even making such arguments feels very much like preaching to the choir.
Good thread!
The simple answer to your questions is this. There is no answer as there are thousands of religions that have been talked about ever since the recorded history of mankind. They all differ on what is right and wrong and which entity is in charge. It’s all a construct for mankind to do only one thing. Console the human beings mind from the inevitable and that is we are all born to die. Every living being in this universe dies. For some strange reason though human beings, who are aware of this, cannot handle death. So, mankind has developed religions to console and put the mind at rest of this end result to life. In reality it is the human mind that cannot grasp the thought of dying. The human mind cannot understand the end nor can it wrap itself around the fact that it is final.
Example: Try and picture in your mind nothing after you die? Most human minds cannot as the mind cannot distinguish an ending from reality. The mind has to construct a void(black space) or some picture of something afterward, but it cannot just construct nothing. In the end you die and so does your mind.
Your mind just cannot accept that it will die and nothing afterward.
Yes, religion is an invention of man, but it is man’s attempt to reach out to the creator. That is, if we assume that the creator does exist, as stipulated in the OP, then to me, and a lot of other people, it begs the question of why. Why did he create us?
It could be because he wants some type of companionship. It could be much like why parents have children and he just wants us to grow, live, experience, and enjoy our existence. It could be like why an artist creates art, that it’s mere existence is it’s purpose. It could be just because he wanted to prove how awesome he is. There’s a countless number of reasons why he might have created us, and depending on what that reason is, there may be different things we should do.
If he wants companionship, we ought to see that out too. If he’s a cosmic parent or a cosmic artist, we ought to make as much out of it as we can. If he just did it to prove he’s awesome or “just because”, then maybe there’s no sense of obligation at all.
So my question, and where I think is the most interesting place to begin evaluating certain beliefs is, if God exists to take our best guess at why. Personally, I think that if he does exist, then it’s pretty clear to me that that purpose is along the lines of the cosmic parent and cosmic artist. In fact, much like a child or a temporal form of art, I also think that creation wasn’t a single act that is now over, but rather an ongoing process of becoming. Just like a parent wants their child to succeed and enjoy their life, and just like an artist wants their art to express a beauty that can only be expressed in it’s fullness in that medium, the creator wants us to live our lives in a process of beauty.
I think these sorts of things are a necessary part of the process. Running along with the parent analogy a little longer, as humanity and society grows, it behaves much like a child. In times past, God had to reach down and give us some sets of laws on how to behave and appeal to authority of “because I said so” just how so many parents do, because their children aren’t in a place to understand the reasons why things are wrong. In those times, how did one express that authority but through demonstrations of power, fear of punishment, or whatever.
As time progressed, we were better able to understand why some things are the way they are, and this leads us to today. I think we, as a society, are mature enough to be able to understand and determine for ourselves what is generally the best way in which to act. Most people today don’t need threat of punishment not to steal, rape, murder, or whatever, we simply understand that it is wrong.
I think that Christianity was even perhaps ahead of it’s time in many ways, but even since then, there’s been nearly 2000 years of growth. To take those lessons as utterly immoble is, to me, to think that a parent would talk to a child exactly the same way years later. Just like how the constitution couldn’t have predicted many of the modern issues our government faces, and includes some antiquated parts that were major issues of the day, failing to interpret the teachings of Christianity in the context of the time and culture in which they were given and how they apply to life today is, I think, why these sorts of disconnects exist.
These taboos have always existed in homo sapiens (at least within proscribed communities… they have seldom been universalized). They are evolved aversions wired into our biology as social animals. The impulse to punish those behaviors comes from biology, not from any external authority.
What has changed is that our perception of our in-groups – our “tribes” – has become much broader (though usually still not universalized).
Growing up, I had been taught that Christians prior to modern times had been hysterical and hopelessly superstitious. Then I began reading books by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, and other Christian authors from ancient and medieval times and I found them to be extremely sane, compelling, and illuminating. I had been taught that all of the major churches were always opposed to social progress and greater individual freedom. Then I began reading actual historical documents produced by those churches on issues such as economic policy, law, government, human rights, slavery, and judicial procedure, and learned that this was not the case. I had been taught that Christianity never spread except by force. Then I learned that in countless cases from ancient Rome to 20th-century China and Korea, Christianity has often spread, not only without force, but even in the face of violent persecution. I had been taught that science had explained all religious experience as a manifestation of mental illness. Then I started reading actual research papers and books and learned that there’s no evidence that any religious experiences result from psychotic episodes. I had been taught that miracles never occurred, and that those who claimed any supernatural experiences or abilities were never willing to submit to outside testing or evaluation. Then I started investigating actual cases and learned that they often are. I was taught that the Gospels had been copied from earlier pagan mythology. Then I read some earlier Pagan mythology and learned that they had not been. I was taught that the early church chose the four gospels as canonical and rejected other material about the life of Jesus that would have lead to a radically different view of Jesus and His teachings. Then I studied the early church and learned that this was not true. etc…
Whoa. That is clearly not true. From the very beginning there was something called the “gnostic heresy” which the church actively persecuted. And if you read any of those texts like the Gospel of Thomas, they do present a very different view of Jesus than the canonical gospels. I guess you never read anything fom the Nag Hammadi library.
edit - oh, and none of that leads one to the conclusion that Christianity is the one true religion.
You were taught this by who?
You need to read the right papers then. Religious experiences are, by definition, psychotic episodes.
Name a single example of any actual miracle or supernatural event.
The Gospels are unquetsionably influenced by pagan mythology (though “copied” is not the right word), and there is no question whatever that Pauline Christianity was originally only one of nmany Christian movements (one which was actually at odds with the earliest and most direct movement in Jerusalem) and was merely the gang that won (the closest to the original movement - i.e. from the actual disciples of Jesus - was probably the Ebionites).
Not that it rpresents evidence for Christianity anyway. Can you cite any actual evidence that Jesus was actually a sky god in disguise, that he performed miracles or that he was physically resurrected?
Really? Could it not also be man’s response to the Creator reaching out?
I am constantly surprised how much mental fuzziness there is when people try to justify their beliefs based on evidence.
You don’t need to justify your faith, and you certainly shouldn’t try to pretend it’s logically based on a rational overview of evidence when it’s clearly not.
Either way … it’s man making shit up. There is no way we puny human’s could just randomly stumble upon the “The Reason” that said stipulated Creator designed the universe.