twitch
That is the theological equivalent of saying the earth is flat.
I weep for humanity.
twitch
That is the theological equivalent of saying the earth is flat.
I weep for humanity.
And maybe you are (camel wishing to go through a needle’s eye and all that) and just would prefer to believe that you can be saved despite your lack of goodness, just by faith and grace.
The fact most of us would be in deep shit in this case doesn’t prove that there isn’t actually such a “goodness” requirment to avoid hell. Even if it’s more mind-easing for you to think otherwise.
I’m an atheist, but if you assume a christian god, you can’t base your precise beliefs on what appear to be the most convenient option for you (keeping your playstation and nevertheless going to heaven).
Then , he’s not a good God, but a needy God. Maybe he should be feared, but I can hardly see any reason to love such a god.
By your own admittance, not good people, but people who, out of luck, picked up the “correct” set of beliefs.
Diogenes, how do you do that thing where your broke my quotes up so you could respond to each one? Because I tried it and when I looked at the preview it didn’t look right.
[/QUOTE]
START, I’m a devout Episcopalian who was never “Born Again” in the sense I suspect you mean it. I never consciously turned to Jesus and accepted Him as my Saviour; instead, He’s been a quiet, conscious part of my life since this Siege was first laid in her cradle. I know Christians and former Christians alike. Some of my favorite people fall into each category as do some I am convinced are working for the Opposition because I’ve seen the damage done by them first hand. I’ve worshipped Jesus in cathedrals in England and America, and on beaches and deep in the woods. I’ve sung “Alleluias” with all my heart, mind and soul as part of choirs and alone in my car, sometimes rejoicing, sometimes weeping, but always praising. I know people who have been driven away from Christianity by the actions of Christians and that awareness never fails to make me angry. How people could use the faith which gives me life, hope, and healing to destroy and drive away appals me worse than any abomination named in Leviticus.
I know people who have wanted to believe and tried to, but have not been able to so far. I’ve been given what I consider solid proof that God exists, but I also know that, for some people, because of who they are and the way their minds work, a six-foot tall, neon sign appearing right in front of them reading “Now, do you believe? – God” wouldn’t work – they’d be checking for wires or wondering what drugs they’d been given. That doesn’t stop them from being good people and I’d rather deal with one person whose honest in his disbelief (nods at Diogenes) than one hundred who only go to church on Sunday because their culture says it’s the right thing for them to do. As my curmudgeonly, agnostic father put it, “If God can’t tell the difference between a man who goes to church every Sunday but does horrible things the other 6 days of the week and a man who does good things every day but never darkens the door of a church, He aint worth worshipping!”
As for God being jealous, of what? If He is truly All Powerful, All Knowing, and All Loving, then what’s He got to worry about? The two men I’ve been seriously involved with in my life have been incapable of jealousy. While both of them are very good men, they’re not on God’s level. If ordinary, mortal men can see no need for jealousy, isn’t it ridiculous to suggest that God can’t?
Getting back to the OP, seven, my belief tells me that you are as God made you, including the things which keep you from being a conventional Christian or any kind of Christian. To me, and this is a highly personal, eccentric view, one of the main points of Christ dying on the cross was to get it through to us stubborn humans that we’re not to worry about what happens to us in the afterlife – He’s got it covered. A lot of what Jesus preached against were legalistic, hair-splitting notions of what constitutes a righteous person. To me, legalistic nit-picking, including whether one was born again when baptized as an infant or as an adult after a conscious choice, and even whether one stayed Christian afterwards is just such legalistic nit-picking. In other words, don’t worry about it, just go about your life as best you can, If you don’t feel up to trusting that invisible pink unicorn, I can spare enough to cover us both for now.
Be well,
CJ
START,
The quote tags work as follows. Just change the parentheses in my example to brackets and it will work.
(quote=Diogenes) Hi, START(/quote) will get you
.
When your breaking up a post into chunks the best way to do it is to hit the quote button at the bottom of the post and then just break it up how you want with responses. You only have to do the poster’s name the first time and after that just bracket the parts you want to quote with (quote)Blah blah blah(/quote).
IMO, Seven, you are not as resistant to belief as you think. I am willing to bet that, given enough time, effort and denial, you could become a Christian and be saved by Jesus. There’s no doubt in my mind that religious people put a lot of effort into keeping their faith alive. Most of them still have to operate in the “real world”; most do so successfully… without needing antipsychotics. In fact, not only do they live their lives normally, those that are devout are happier than those who are not. On average.
Cite?
Yeah, I also doubt that claim. 93.2399378929352671820% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
heh, I knew that was coming…
Religion, spirituality, and health in medically ill hospitalized older patients
Religiosity and mental health in southern, community-dwelling older adults.
argh… there’s a lot more, but linking them and quoting them is a pain in the ass. The benefit of religion is mainly due to the social network that the religious community offers. A devout Christian is going to get more approval, so in general, they’ll feel better about themselves.
search pubmed with keywords religiosity/religiousness & health.
Seven- I believe there is no salvation without trust in God through Jesus. IF you can trust in God/Jesus in this life & you do not, I can make no guarantees about afterlife opportunities, either way. If you don’t even seem to be able to take that step of Divine trust (technical theological term- “Invincible Ignorance”), then while you may have heard the Call by the Church, you have not yet received the Draw of the Father through the Spirit, so who know when your opportunity will come & how you’ll end up?
BUT let me ask these questions-
What if you wake up tomorrow suddenly finding that you COULD choose to believe
the God of the Bible, revealed by Hebrew Prophets & Christian Apostles and embodied in Jesus Christ, is the one & only true God, and now is your opportunity to realize this & follow Him/Her (because there is a Her-Aspect to the Biblical God), BUT you can also choose not to? What do you think your choice would be? Do you even want such a choice?
Next Q- what is after you take your last breath, you awaken in the Afterlife to discover that the Biblical God/Jesus/Spirit are the Truth & now is you can choose to follow or reject Them- what would your choice likely be?
Finally- if you would choose No in this life, given the opportunity, but think you would choose Yes in the Afterlife, what makes you so sure you’d be different enough to make that Afterlife Affirmation?
(I think there are plenty of non-Ctians in this life who will throw themselves at Jesus in the next, but also may be some who will, in full knowledge, reject Him & be allowed to go on their ‘merry’ way.)
I could buy that. There’s not much inducing a bunch of agnostics with otherwise little in common to get together for bean suppers every weekend. With the God thing moot, chances are we’d find plenty of other things to argue about, not much we all agreed upon, and hence the gatherings would have very little of the glue necessary to keep them going on a weekly basis. Getting by on a relatively small circle of close friends, with the suspicion that we may otherwise be very much alone in this world isn’t exactly a formula for boundless joy.
Cite?
This doesn’t support your claim. Yes we know that religiosity can have a placebo effect on sick people, but what you claimed was that religious people are “happier” than notheistic people. I call bullshit on this because “happiness” cannot be quantified or verified.
They are less likely to be depressed, therefore more likely to experience happiness.
I think adding a bit of historical context to your question would help.
In the year 1100, the last of the Antique pagan temples were destroyed in Europe. Being monotheistic, Christianity insists that its version of deity is the only, correct version and anything else is either just plain wrong or is heresy. Since then, Christianity has dominated the religious and theological debate in Western culture. I’ve never heard of any honest intellectual debate where the Christian position was defended against other forms of theology (polytheism, pantheism, etc). Christianity’s domination of the debate has effectively shut out any other viewpoint, you either follow Christian or you’re wrong and doomed to hell.
To answer your question, yes, according to the Christian god, you’re doomed to hell if you don’t believe in Him. But Christianity has never been called up on to defend its position, it’s just asserted it. There’s never been any actual proof. In fairness to Christianity, no othe religion has ever proven itself, either. But then, most other religions don’t make the claim of being the only One, True religion, either.
So, while Christianity may doom you to hell for not believing, it’s all bluff and bluster, there’s no proof that it’s true.
I can’t remember which Epistle this comes from, but if my memory serves me, Paul is asked about the pagans who die before the eschaton, those who simply never had the opportunity to know Jesus, and Paul’s reply was that provisions would be made for them. It’s important to note that Paul expected the End Times to come either in his lifetime, or soon after, so this was a real concern. I would presume it extends up to the present, though probably relatively few people are left in the world who have had no opportunity consider Christs’ message.
Aren’t we tapdancing around Pascal’s Wager all over again?
Consider Seven (the OP) - doesn’t believe, doesn’t see the need for belief or the benefit of it.
Along comes a happy Christian and tells Seven about Jesus, thus providing Seven with the ‘opportunity’ to believe.
Except… what does Seven do now? How does one start believing? I mean, I can imagine that belief would simply arise if Jesus actually turned up in Seven’s living room, did a bit of the water/wine stuff, and they went out for a stroll across the lake.
But that’s not really what we’re talking about here; we’re talking about a missing piece of the process, i.e.
a: Person X doesn’t believe
b: Person Y shows up and talks about Jesus
c: ???
d: Person X really believes in Jesus
I say ‘really’ believes, because it would be quite easy to choose to pretend to believe, but how does one choose to believe proper.
Now see, here’s the problem. If I decided tomorrow I wanted to be saved and born again (for the record, I’m not) and I started reading the bible, praying, asking Jesus to save me, etc, etc, I STILL wouldn’t believe the reality of a god or Jesus being “the son of god”.
It would be like me asking you to believe my VCR invented Pop Tarts. You can say it all you want, you can tell people my VCR invented a tasty little toaster pastry, but deep down in your heart and mind you’d know it was bullshit. It would take a fair amount of conditioning, brainwashing and “re-education” for you to give in to the fact my VCR crated such a thing.
So, let’s toss God into the loop. Let’s say for a moment there is a god. One of those gods that is very much like Santa Claus. He knows what I’m thinking, knows if I’ve been good or bad. You know, that whole bit.
He would know that I honestly did not believe he was real no matter how hard I tried to convince myself. For me to actually believe in him would require some sort of brainwashing and repeated conditioning. Who knows, that might not even work. I’ve never bought into the afterlife. I could never buy the whole concept of Christianity. It doesn’t make sense to me one bit.
I’m looking at these posts and everyone has a different idea on what their god thinks, what the bible says, what Jesus is about. Some say I’m damned, some not.
I think if I woke up tomorrow and found my entire belief system flipped on it’s axis and I found the concept of a god a possible reality, then I’d ask this thread to be closed. Being “saved” wouldn’t be an issue because I would somehow be able to believe in god.
Do I want the choice? In my mind the option of a choice isn’t even there. I do not and can not buy the story of God and Jesus. I think the idea of heaven is the stuff of fairy stories.
I like many of Dr Suess’ stories, but I believe God is as real as Sam I Am or Star Bellied Sneeches.
This doesn’t make much sense. If I awoke in front of a faceless god in a throne ala Chick Tracts, that would pretty much settle the whole affair. I think very few in that situation would choose to NOT believe. You’re standing face to face (or faceless as it were) with god being asked to confirm if you believe you’re standing face to face with him. Kind of a no brainer. If everyone is given this opportunity I think hell would be a pretty empty place.
I guess I don’t understand this question. My brain doesn’t allow me to believe in god now because it makes no sense to me. The idea god put people on earth for 80 or so years to prove themselves to him so they can spend forever in the afterlife in heaven seems like a silly plan to me. Why would god bother?
But, if I ended up staring this god fellow in the face, then believing really wouldn’t be that hard now would it. Given that, I’m sure I’d have some questions on his reasoning, but believing in him would be simple.
I’m quite happy in the reality that when I die I become worm food and there is nothing after. It would be nice to have my memories live on because I find them quite interesting. But if they don’t, no skin off my back. If I really want my memories to live on I have to get off my ass and write them down for others to read.
I’m quite happy I only live by my own morality and don’t have to follow what someone else thought was the way to be.
I think if I had to follow the idea structures of Chrisitanity (not to mention having to try and believe in it all) I’d be less happy in my life.