Does Christianity drives people out of believing in God?

Great Debates
1

I’ve got nothing against Christianity (at least the ones not causing any ‘suffering’), but seeing posts about God and religion here made me wonder if Christianity drove people to be atheist. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have the assumption that most atheist posters here became atheist because they’re disappointed by Christianity.

As for my religious view: I don’t believe that Jesus is divine, but I do believe in God. I’m not into Christianity, but rather develop a moral system based on empathy that I call my own personal religion that doesn’t apply to anyone else but me. What do people call this kinda view?

2

The majority of posters on this board come from areas where the dominant religions are Judaism or Christianity of some nature. So I’m sure there are more ex-Jews and ex-Christians than any other exs. But that (IMHO) is not because Christianity is particularly off-putting. Over the years I’ve been exposed to and had occasion to learn things about a few non-Christian religions, and they all strike me as pretty much as equally non-appealing.

Theism, maybe?

3

Believe it or not, there is a current sociological term for your “beliefs,” such as they are.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20050418/6266.htm

It’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

This is pretty much where most Americans (even those who claim to be devout Christians) tend to stand:

  1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” 3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.” 4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” 5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”
4

This here agnostic has no beef (much) with Christianity.

Now Christians, on the other hand…

5

Moved from IMHO to GD.

6

It depends on your exposure, duration, and a host of personal factors I suppose. When I was younger, I was forced to go every sunday and all the “holier holy days” with my parents. Frankly, I was never given an option to form my own opinion on the subject until I was nearly eighteen. I would say that soured me on it in particular and most largely organized religion in general. There was a LOT of hypocrisy observed in the church members and clergy too.

So Yes, It drove me away from organized worship. Now I practice a very loose form of folk Shintoism, which serves my needs for cultural ritual without being intrusive on my life or time, nor interfering with my scientific views.

7

Interesting. But it doesn’t describe my views accurately. I prefer the term by RJKUgly: Theism. It’s interesting though, how people’s beliefs are being put into genres… like music…

8

I kinda had gone through the same thing. But, does Shintoism based around the idea of one God/truth? Would you call it Theism?

I’m now assuming that atheists became stronger atheists because the religious push them around and forces them to be defensive. Or that most religious views (not just Christianity) are just simply ridiculous.

9

No. In addition, in reference to your other thread, most of the gay posters here did not become gay because they were disappointed or wronged by members of the opposite sex.

10

Well at the very least, this implies you view Christianity as the default or natural state, which isn’t the case.

11

This is a point that I wish more people understood. Christianity (the teachings of Jesus) have no correlation to the many things people don’t like about “Christians.”

It is a dilluted term. It is not uncommon for someone to attribute wars and hate crimes to “Christianity,” despite the fact that those acts are in conflict with the basic rules taught by Jesus.

One of my favorite parts of the Bible is when Jesus is asked to sum up his teachings (by being asked which is the greatest command). He said that the greatest command is to love God and the second is to love everyone else. That is Christianity in a nutshell, but the reputation has been tainted by people violating those rules in the very name of Christianity.

It’s a rather fascinating phenomenon to observe, and I can’t blame people for scoffing at the religion as a result of how people act “in the name of” Christianity. It’s a real shame, though, because Christianity, as the teachings of Jesus, is very similar to the philosophy of Buddha (that of peace, morality, respect, generosity and humility), yet carries the stigma brought forth by the extremists.

It’s very easy to label funeral protestors and gay bashers as “Christians,” but I think those people are in violation of those basic philosophies. I prefer to think of Christ-ianity as “Jesus-ness,” such as giving to strangers or being courteous and generous to someone despite something they have done to you in the past.

I have known a few people who now fall into the category of “Angry Atheists” who are so because they grew up in a very strict, not-very-Jesus-like, “Christian” environment which *enforced * behavior rather than encourage a philosophy of faith, hope and charity.

12

I understand what you’re saying. I just disagree with it.

The problems are this; if I went and asked those funeral protestors and gay bashers, do you think they’d say “You’re right, i’m not really Christian.”? No, they’re going to say “I’m doing what God would want me to do”. They are fulfilling the ideals of Christianity, they just interpret them differently. How do we know those same funeral protestors don’t give to charity? How do we know gay basher’s aren’t decent people if not on the subject of the damn faggots? Sure, the Phelpses of the world are asses, but there’s enough actually reasonable people who do all those things you label as “Jesus-ness”.

Problem Two; Who defines Christianity? I’m sure they’d say the same about you for not doing what they do. For me as an atheist, I’m happy to say someone who says “fuck Jesus” or the like isn’t a Christian, no matter how much they might try to claim it. But how can I tell when it’s a matter of interpretation? Does him upstairs like gays, or not? What lengths is it appropriate to go to to to support or hinder their cause? A person with both sides can back up their view with Biblical cites, or genuine faith. If Christian faith can include Catholics, Protestants, CofE, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons - all of whom have differences on subjects the others would consider requirements for Christianity, top-level doctrines, and the like - what is it about gay bashers that means they’re automatically, and so apparently clearly, not included?

13

Well, Christianity was enough to keep my mother from admitting she was Christian, because she didn’t want people to be afraid of her.

Hardly. It’s all in how you interpret it. And he didn’t create a religion, but elaborated on an existing one, which drags the Old Testament in, which is even worse than the New. And brutal, ruthless, and aggressive are straightforward logical implications of the Christian cosmology and worldview. “We are right, everyone else is evil; bodies don’t matter but souls do; we have a duty to spread the Truth” and so on practically demand aggressive and ruthless behavior.

And by people obeying those rules. By, say, oppressing, killing and torturing people for their own good, to save souls.

14

Well, the christian viewpoint is that the new testament wins when a conflict exists between the two. I’m not a christian, but I don’t think you can argue that violence and war aren’t in conflict with what Jesus taught. Of course, that doesn’t stop people from justifying horrible things with religion, but that’s hardly confined to christianity.

15

One can easily use quotes like that to support wars and violence in general. And before someone pops up to claim that that isn’t what Jesus meant - well, that brings us right back to interpretation.

And the simple belief in the soul and an afterlife is enough to support wars and violence. Why not mass murder people if you aren’t really hurting them ?

No, but this thread is about Christianity. And Christianity motivates people to do horrible things as well as excuses them.

16

This could explain a lot.

17

Short answer: Yes. Yes it does. Or at least some of the more avid takes on it do.

Better answer: It’s not so much Christianity as it is having an exclusive religion with a high hostility toward heresy, as seen in post-Reformation Western Xtianity (Protestants & Catholics).

Christianity has historically been exclusivist & absolutist about some, well, pretty silly things. A lot of young people in the church quite reasonably doubt the Incarnation, eternal suffering in Hell, absolutely exclusive access to gnosis or salvation on the part of the Church–but to question those, to some Christians, is tantamount to Unitarianism. So many wail that liberal Christians are “picking & choosing” what to believe, & insist that one must take Christianity as a whole package or be damned–without saying, well, you can be a Unitarian or a Jew or a Baha’i & that’s OK.

So a young person may reject “the whole package” & throw out all reverence & all religion, because they just don’t buy the specific claims of Xtianity.

For my part, I finally lost faith in the reliability & credibility of divine revelation in general, while also concluding that the prophetic claims of Jesus were falsifiable & proven false. But I still thought when I was young that man needs a religion. At some point I realized that no religion was going to feel like “home,” & I’d lost faith in home, so I became unaffiliated.

But since my particular form of disbelief is less about the possibility of divine in general than about the unreliability of a given set of prophetic claims, it’s conceivable I could yet become a sort of Hindu or Sufi or something. And though that not happen, I can respect religiosity that I can’t embrace.

For others, they may only know Christianity & rejecting it, reject all religion. Or they may just be unbelievers in the supernatural in general, who resent the Christian culture that raised them (not necessarily the family that reared them, if you take my distinction) for demanding a belief they find daft.

18

The “everyone else is evil” belief is one of the most prominent corruptions of the Christian church. I believe that much of it comes from people interpreting the Bible with an agenda already in place. If people read it with the intent to find “ammunition” against another belief system, they will find it. Then they will defend their findings, often viciously.

I see Jesus as a radical pacifist. That alone doesn’t jive with some of the animal instincts in humans, so it is met with aggression (he was, after all, executed). I think that a lot of churches see their own aggression as a counter-attack, even though they (the church) are the ones initiating the hostility.

It is too bad that the church has infected itself with an urgency to turn all of the “lost souls” into tithing pew-warmers at the expense of the turn-the-other-cheek-ittude in the philosophy of Jesus. I think it’s a great philosophy, even for those who don’t care to see Jesus as anything more than an influential dude. Regardless of what anyone thinks of him, there are several pearls of wisdom in the quotes attributed to him, many of which are conveniently overlooked by hate-preaching churches.

19

Corruption ? It’s always been the Christian norm. It’s the Christians pushing for tolerance who are corrupting Christianity. Corruption towards good, but still corruption.

20

Hats off to whoever snuck that “love your enemy” thing into the Bible. That really threw things off the intended path.