You’re right, amazonian. Christians have a faith based personal relationship with the living Christ. Religion has nothing to do with it. Jesus isn’t religion (which is man’s effort to please God or some deity), he’s a Person.
Lemme get this straight, amazonian: Christianity is not a religion, but evolution is?
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery.
And North Korea is a “Democratic People’s Republic”.
See, you’re wrong: Christianity is a superstition. Evolution is a fact.
(Of course, now, if I wanted to be polite and respectful of the deeply held convictions of others, I’d probably want to come up with some more, I dunno, neutral term for describing a set of beliefs about the right relationship between humans and God–say, oh, just to pull a term out of the hat, I might call such beliefs “religions”.)
But Freedom IS slavery…
Doulos is the Greek word for Slave. It is also the word normally translated as Servent in the New Testament. Christ suggested that we should be as slaves. The freedom comes when we are willing slaves.
You cannot victimize me if I refuse to become a victim. You want to steal my coat from me? Too bad, I’m giving it to you instead, along with my boots! You want to slap my cheek? I offer you the other one as well.
Funny how you chose that example as a way to refute her statements… Teaching that kind of backwards thinking was what Christ was all about.
note I am not refuting YOUR point MEBuckner, I just thought it interesting that you would use that line…
Christianity is a religion, it has a belief system, rituals, rules, and other criteria that the faithful are expected to abide by, that makes it a religion.
I believe in God, because I had a near death experience, I stood in the presence of God, felt His love, saw His light, and learned a great deal in the process.
I belong to no religion, I have no rituals to perform, no beliefs to vow, and this is great. Just try contacting God directly through Love.
Well, I’ve thought before there are some interesting parallels between the Christian God and Orwell’s Big Brother.
Perhaps I should read 1984 then…
Christianity is not superstition, God, or higher intelligence, or whatever word you wish to use, is real to the thousands who have personal experience with it/Him/She whatever.
Evolution is theory, not fact, since there is no personal experience with seeing one “form” of man evolve into another, we can only assume that happens. Not that I am against evolution, but do feel the truth is better than assumptions.
Neither can be proven. God or no God. But there is strong evidence showing NDEs is real.
Love
Near-Death Experiences are real, yes, but so are hallucinations of various types. If remains to be proven (to put it mildly) if NDE’s are objective evidence of an afterlife or a God, or if they are a form of hallucination.
And evolution is both fact and theory. See, for example, Observed Instances of Speciation. We have also observed various populations of bacteria or insects evolving resistance to antiobiotics and insecticides.
We have not witnessed the event of something evolving to humanity or humanity evolving to something else, but we very definitely have witnessed evolution taking place and it is one of the great lies of Creationists that we have not done so.
As to religion vs superstition: Do you have a clear distinction?
Çyrin is clearly playing 1984-style word games in which s/he defines preferred beliefs in ways that are different than the meanings that actually occur in the language so as to profess some odd superiority for his/her own beliefs. The notion that a belief in God that is transferred from one generation to another (whether through Scripture or Tradition or Lightning Bolts) is in some way not “religion” is simply a personal conceit that turns the meanings of words upside down.
One can argue against many specific manifestations of religion. One may also set up a particular discussion in which one proclaims at the beginning that “for the purposes of this discussion we will use word XXX to mean YYY.” However, to simply declare that words do not mean what they mean is to indulge in the rankest form of Humpty Dumptyism.
“There’s glory for you.”
I agree with most of your post. But to define it better: “There is no proof that modern man is the result of evolution.” Evolution is still theory. I don’t doubt that you have witnessed evolution in other forms, but that is not commonly said or taught. Assumptions are made from those others forms to mean everything evolves, and that is not proven truth.
Superstition is an irrational belief. It is not irrational to believe in God. I was an agnostic, almost atheist, for most of my life. Then I had a near death experience. For myself, I know there is a God, or higher intelligence, now. It is not irrational when you see it first hand. I know many have been brain-washed by the sceptical media and writers on this subject to believe NDEs are just brain farts. However, those who take the time to read the material presented by experiencers usually think different. Not to mention the strong evidence pointing to their reality.
As for Cyrin, yes, he has twisted the words around to mean something never intended. But I did learn something from him.
The only way Jesus’ teaching can be understood is to do it. Something lacking today in our society.
Love
Which means, by definition, you have a religion. YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE MEANING OF THE WORD “RELIGION” JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT THAT WORD TO APPLY TO YOU!
To have faith in God, any God, be it Jesus, Yahweh, Shiva or Zeus, is to have a religion. That’s the meaning of the f-ing word. Just live with it.
Kirk
There is overwhelming evidence that modern man is the result of evolution. Whatever you may want to define as “proof,” the only way to deny the evolution of humanity is to invoke the Divine Weasel.
Evolution is a fact. We have witnessed it.
The Theory of Evolution is the best current explanation for how that fact has occurred throughout the history of the world. And as theories go, it is one of the best developed. Expressed originally in 1859, every single challenge to it has been met with more evidence supporting the original expression of it. This despite the fact that Darwin never knew about Mendelian genetics or DNA or the nuclear engine of the sun or any of several hundred other pieces of information that have since come to light, each of them providing more support for Darwin’s conjecture.
Apparently I was twisting some words around… which are these and how can I apologize? No twisting was intended…
Kirk, enough already! We know how you feel, perhaps you could move on and actually contribute to this discussion!
Cyrin, maybe you could actually learn what the word religion is, instead of participating in the kind of linguistic nonsense popularized by Communist regimes and other governments that have been prone to distort the truth to make their regimes seem valid.
Religion means something very specific. You cannot change that just because you don’t like it. Christianity is, in any form, a religion. No one can argue this without being a liar of the first order.
Kirk
Kirk, If I could quote myself…
I am aware that you don’t understand my point. I am aware that you disagree with what you THINK you undestand. I am aware that YOU consider me to be a liar. I am OK with this. You repeatedly pounding this fact home, will NOT make it any more true to me.
If you have something ELSE to contribute, please do so.
Also, if you could be a little more Christ-like in your dealing with people on this board, ESPECIALLY while proclaiming your allegiance to Christs Catholic Church, I am CERTAIN that other Catholics would appreciate it. I know I would!
Not if the American Heritage Dictionary has anything to say about it.
Unless you suddenly stopped believing in and having reverence of some degree for God, His4Ever, you have religion, whether you like it or not. Religion must not necessarily including buildings, rituals, heirarchies, and whatever else it is you want to seperate yourself from, whatever else you think makes your faith less pure. The Straight Dope is intended to fight ignorance, and statements like these do nothing but propogate it.
Regardless, I love ya.
Pax.
I honestly don’t understand the fuss. Could the Christians-but-not-members-of-a-religion explain what exactly is wrong with “religion”?
I believe these are the only mentions of “religion” (when referring to Christianity) in the KJV and it doesn’t seem to be a thing to be ashamed of. I think I understand a bit of what the opposing view is getting at - this avoidance of building up complex structures and just focusing on loving god - but I’d like to know where it came from, and how the word “religion” got associated with something bad in the minds of Christians.
Yes, I’ve read this wacky thread all the way through, but not lately. Sorry if I missed something.
Well, thanks. I’ve had people IRL refer to me as religious before and I usually correct them and tell them I prefer the term Christian because their can be a difference between being religous and being a Christian. The point maybe that I’m trying to make is that a person can be religious, yet not be a Christian. The term “religion” can be rather deceptive. You can’t assume that because someone says their religious, that they know Christ as Savior. Does that make any sense?
Are you being serious?!?
Christianity is your religion. Telling people that you are non-religious is not correcting them, it is decieving them.
End. Of. Story.