All right, I’m completely ignorant here: what do Christian but non-Catholic masses look like? I mean, in Catholicism, the whole point of the weekly ceremony (as I recall) is about begging for forgiveness before partaking in communion, which is sharing in the body of Jesus, due to the whole transsubstantiation thing. The wine is the same concept but the priest drinks it on behalf of the crowd. I would have thought these fundamental parts would remain through all forms of Protestantism, Baptism, etc. But come to think of it, I have no idea.
For one thing, Catholics are the only ones who call what they do “mass” (as far as I know, though there could be others). Protestants are likely to call their regular weekly gathering a “worship service.” Protestant worship services are usually built around preaching, public prayer, and music (usually including both communal singing by the whole congregation and performances by a choir, soloist, or group). They may or may not include communion/Eucharist, which different denominations celebrate and think of in different ways.
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry to wrongly accuse you of an antonym error somewhere in there.
That changed a long time ago (30-40 years maybe?). Now at most masses, there is a shared chalice (or multiple if it is service with a lot of people) where you can optionally drink the blood of Christ. I’ve been very lapsed since before the pandemic, so I’m uncertain how that is handled now.
Most dioceses have gone back to offering the wine again.
One hates to think of being unjustly accused of an antonym error.
Congratulations. And your list of reasons is one of the best I’ve ever seen, discussing atheism on line since 1975. Especially the one above. I used to write simulations so I built models, and my model of a world with a god does not match the real one, while my model of a world without a god does.
I’ve been an atheist for nearly 55 years, and never looked back. Though I think coming out of Judaism is easier, since my religious education as a kid taught me that the majority religion was bogus. Lacking belief in just one more was easy.
I feel I’ve gained more than this. I can’t conceive of anyone who thinks there is a loving god accepting a world where children die of cancer and babies are drowned in tsunamis. Where the evil prosper and the good die young. A world which doesn’t care about us, where you shouldn’t think you are being rewarded by being lucky in birth or being punished by getting sick is much easier for me to accept.
How would you even do this? For one thing, if you wrote the simulation then your world does automatically have a Creator, i.e. a God of sorts, even if only the hands-off creator God of deism.
But I think a lot of atheists would agree that the universe we live in looks like a world without a god, while many theists believe it looks like a world with one. And in either case, the flaw is that we don’t have anything to compare it to. The world we live in is the only real, genuine one we know about. If God actually exists, we then we know nothing about what a universe without a God would be like, or if it would even be possible; and vice versa if no god exists. It’s not as if we have lots of naturally-occuring examples of universes, some with gods and some without, to compare ours to.
I’m not talking about writing a simulation. I happen to think that simulation theory is bogus, in no small part due to my experience in writing simulators. I’m talking about thinking in terms of models.
There are tons of varieties of gods, not all of whom I rejected due to this. The deistic god fits the universe quite nicely. I don’t believe in it due to Occam’s Razor, but that is a heuristic not a law. There could be a god who told his people how the universe started. But no human gods I know did.
While we don’t yet know why the universe is the way it is, the more we do know the less we need the god hypothesis.
But here’s an example of what I’m talking about. A god of the universe, or even of earth, who cares about all his children, would appear to all of them in much the same way. If gods were invented by humans in small groups, and evolved over time, each region would have a different god or set of gods and the god concept would evolve over time.
Which is closer to reality? Then multiply by a thousand similar examples.
Ordained Episcopal Deacon here. I have been fighting many of the same things that lead others to deconstruction of their religion, loss of faith, and rejection of all things religious. But, I have come to a different place.
In my ministry formation classes, I learned that the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are a theological explanation for historical events. They were not written as historical documents to be read as “X did this in this day and at this time.” Scripture was a way of making sense of the world that slowly gave way as we learned more about the world, and for some Christians, has become a guide to spirituality and moral ethics as technology has removed the mystery of the world. Scripture was written by people for people in a specific time and place, yet it does contain truths that are still relevant to today, but those truths are not the words printed on the page. Scripture was heavily edited, redacted, and rewritten by people with an agenda and story to tell, and must be read with that in mind to find truths beneath the words.
Christians who today look to scripture as an infallible, literally true source for justification, judgement, and condemnation of others are part of a very recent reading of scripture developed 200 years ago or so. More recently, they turn to its “truth” in their grief and anger as they see their God-given beliefs and commandments ignored by recent human history. They lash out with calls for repentance, warnings of Hell, and God’s wrath in their anger because their faith requires that theirs be the only acceptable faith. A number of people are damaged psychologically and spiritually believing that they are going to Hell and/or being punished by God because someone disagrees with their beliefs. This is not a healthy spirituality or a way to live.
So why do I bother with preaching, with daily prayer, and with the Church? Throughout my upbringing in the Episcopal Church, I never once heard a sermon about heaven, hell, purgatory, or God’s wrath, and I intend to keep that tradition going in my sermons. I preach on the implications of loving your neighbor as yourself, of the call to service to the poor, the hungry, the naked found in Matthew 24. I preach on not worrying abut what someone else thinks or believes, but encouraging others to understand for themselves what they see and hear in scripture. I help people find out who they are and not be afraid to be that person. I help them find purpose for their lives based on their experience and understanding of scripture.
I am also a scientist, as a former Medical Technologist with an MS in Biochemistry, and having spent years in academic research, yet I find no incompatibility between rational thought and my spiritual life and beliefs. There is only a conflict only when they are seen as mutually exclusive or invalid because one can’t explain the other. The questions they answer are why and how vs. what does this mean to me, or what is my reaction to this? My view of myself, God, the world, and others comes from both a spiritual and a rational point of view. I see both simultaneously.
I never believed in such a god at any time, perhaps because I came to Christianity as an adult. What you describe is a child’s storybook version of God. Which, granted, is exactly what millions of adults’ faith is like.
This is theodicy, or the problem of evil in the world, and you have raised exactly the points that others have raised. It speaks to an image of God that is supposed to protect us from harm, and we know from experience that that doesn’t happen. It opposes the idea of fee will, where we experience the results of our decisions. Natural evil, or evil over which we have no control like natural disasters or tragic deaths, is much harder to deal with. We instinctively look for meaning in those events, and find none, thus God must not be present. The hardest thing to accept is that there may not or ever be meaning or an explanation, and we are left without resolution. This is the beginning of grief, and the question for me becomes “How do I respond to this event? What does it mean to me?” God can be independent of tragedy as long as we understand that God does not actively control every aspect of our lives and the world. One theological point is that God understands and empathizes with our suffering because of Jesus’ suffering on the cross. This can bring comfort and be a starting point for working through grief.
It has, though. Some have held on to the gods they created. Others put away childish things when they became adults. Many folks in the church where I grew up would call me an atheist because I see God as the ground of being rather than a man in the sky who rewards the faithful and punishes those who piss him off. I am a theist and Christian because of those who have gone beyond prescientific and ancient view of God. For those who don’t believe, I’ve got no quarrel with you as long as you love your fellow humans and treat them as such.
It must have been (and continue to be) hard to lead Bible studies and handle other overtly religious roles like that as you’ve come to the realization that you don’t believe. It must be hard to know when and how to get yourself out from under that burden. I don’t envy you.
As you approach the situation with your girlfriend, don’t forget to think of yourself as well as her. She may believe this is just a phase, and be willing to be there to help you find your way back to where she thought you always were. And it may be that only time will disabuse her of this notion.
But if you come to a point where you’re feeling ‘unequally yoked’ as the phrase goes, and feel a need to seek out a relationship with someone who’s more on the same page as you are, then respect your own needs. Along the lines of what @Vlad_Igor says @50, you need to find out who you are (which you’re already actively doing!) and be in a position where you’re free to be that person.
Perfect! :chef’s kiss:
If God helps those that help themselves…at what point does God step up to do their part? I’ve had friends, family, neighbors and even total strangers step up to lend a hand, but divine assistance never happened. I asked a Presbyterian minister this once, and answered "Well, who do you think sent those others to help you? "
My reply? “Are you saying that I have free will, but all those other people were compelled against their will to help me?”
No, they have the same free will to respond to that call and to help, and they choose to help. This is a way of looking at how God continues to act in the world - through us. The language used is that people are moved by the Holy Spirit to show compassion, mercy, and empathy, and they choose to act on those feelings. What would divine assistance look like to you?
As you noticed, I particularly chose my examples to not involve free will. Now I, and I’m sure you, couldn’t kill an innocent baby any more than we can flap our wings and fly. Yet our free will (assuming it exists) is not diminished an iota. A loving god would diminish everyone’s free will by the same amount.
Every believer has their own definition of god. You don’t seem to believe in the omnibenevolent god. I assume you believe in an omnipotent one. God could stop a tsunami. God knows it is coming, I’d hope. That he chooses not to means either he doesn’t care or that the death of all those children is for the best in some sick way. Sorry, it is far more comforting for me to think that they died from mindless forces on an earth controlled by geology which cares nothing for us.
If I die from cancer, it is not because I’m bad. If I survive cancer, it is not because I’m good. Again, it is comforting to not have to second guess some god who knows the sparrow falls and seems to care who wins football games. (Or so some of his followers believe.)
I’m sure any reasonable god understood suffering before subjecting himself to much less suffering than his followers subjected my ancestors to.
I meant throughout history. Judaism, being older than Christianity, has god being relevant for those in the tribe, and those outside the tribe do not suffer in any way from not believing. This evolved into the Christian view that God is universal and if you don’t believe you are in big trouble. Which was a great sales strategy, but it caused a lot of suffering.
I’m fine with people believing, so long as they don’t leverage that belief into laws that condemn those who do things their belief looks down on.
Why does God have to be omnibenevolent or omnipotent? What does the first story of Creation tell you about God? We can’t impose our expectations on God and then reject God when those expectations aren’t met. If we don’t have something greater than us in all of our imperfections, then what do we have left?
Faith in people. Not a blind faith, but an easily verifiable faith. Faith that my fellow human beings will, more often than not, come through in a pinch…even without some supernatural nudging.