Isn’t the most robust faith the kind which is honestly questioned?
I don’t think so. A major part of what makes faith robust is a refusal to question.
Sorry wrong forum :smack:
I can only respond to this by saying that mainstream Christian churches do a tremendous amount to further the spiritual growth of their members. In fact, that’s the entire point of the weekly service. And for those seeking spiritual growth, the churches also provide Sunday school, fellowship groups, charities, lay ministries, retreats, etc… And there are countless Christian books, seminars, classes, websites, and much more, some published by the churches and others from other sources. And of course there is no way to quantify the spiritual growth that takes places among individuals and small, unofficial groups. I can barely think of any possible avenue for spiritual growth that mainstream Christian organizations don’t provide. Can you?
Now of course many of the spiritual exercises that take place may not be to your liking, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If I may ask a question as politely as possible, what grounds do you have for making this claim? What experience do you have with mainstream Christianity that makes you an authority figure on it?
Now, isn’t the most robust faith the kind which is honestly questioned? Of course, and that’s why Christianity is and always has been the most robust religion. Consider this question? When a Christian book hits the best-seller list or a Christian movie is released, do atheists line up to see it? Do you folks thirst for such changes to honestly test and question your beliefs?
Before this goes any further, can we agree on a working definition of “robust”, 'cause I get the impression we’re all over the place on this.
I define “robust” in this context as “hardest to overcome”. A faith that you follow to suffering and death, or are willing to ignore the suffering and death of others in the name of, is a robust faith.
I think it’s a case of Men In Black rule #7*:
Any given individual within a congregation may be able to have their beliefs challenged, but the congregation as a whole is percieved as weak and subseptable. This is a direct challenge to both the authority of the spiritual leader and the authority of the particular belief system as a whole.
*The number 7 was chosen arbitrarily, whenever I quote Men In Black it is rule #7, like MIB rule #7 “Don’t start nothin’, won’t be nothin’”
I swear I’ve read something about the Catholic church banning books for centuries, not to mention killing those who questioned in the wrong way. Not all of them were porn. Thanks to the secularism of western governments, this doesn’t happen too much anymore, but Islam hasn’t caught up.
I’m sure you’ve seen the websites where religious Christians tell parents not to let their kids see Jurassic Park because it will make them doubt the Bible?
I’ve read all the Narnia books, and the three others starting with Out of the Silent Planet. Many atheists have read the entire Bible, I have. I’m sure we’ve all had our fill of Christian glurge, and not lining up to see it is more of a quality than a theological issue. More relevantly, I know of no atheist author who has ever discouraged other atheists from attending anything, except perhaps by saying the movie in question was crap. In free societies, who are you more likely to find on the side of limiting access to information - atheists or theists? I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of theists who are all for the free flow of information, just that the other type is over-represented on the side of the censors.
I wonder how many have friends who have become scientists, who keep on digging up evidence in support of their position, while the future pastors go to divinity schools where thousand year old arguments are still taught. It seems to me that crises of faith are worn as badges of honor, but I suspect the religious establishment has developed good ways of dealing with them. Look how many people overcome crises of faith in order to get married - some who probably shouldn’t have.
At first I thought this made sense; The parishoners say “I can withstand 99% of temptations!”; the pastor looks at his 100-man congregation and says “I’m gonna lose somebody.” But I have no idea how this could be extrapolated to be a challenge to the authority of the belief system, if it’s known that’s it’s based entirely in weakness on the part of the parishoners.
Regarding the OP: I think that all faith can be made perfectly robust by simply refusing to think about stuff that might challenge your otherwise fragile beliefs. However, of the set of believers that do deign to listen to and think about challenging concepts, the ones that are still believers at the end will necessarily more “robust”, not becuase the challenges made them more robust, but because the less robust ones fell away and were removed from the sample set.
I’m wondering if the OP really even meant ‘robust’, instead of perhaps virtuous or meritorious, or something.
Personally, I thought it meant “able to withstand or adapt to challenges without losing its basic characteristics” (though I admit to not actually looking the word up) but I get the impression many contributors to this thread have different ideas.
I think it has something to do with a fem-bot’s bosom.
That, or
Thus, a “robust” faith is one which is well able to stand up to challenges, doubts, and questionings, and the varieties of life experiences to which a believer in that faith may be exposed.
The loss of parishoners is exactly what threatens to undermine the belief system, at least the belief system as it relates to that church (note that I am using the term church as it relates to a body of worship, not as it relates to a building). When the masses start questioning the ultimate authority I have seen churches completely change their belief system (or at least their approach to said belief system) based on the popular consensus.
For anecdotal evidence, a church I attended in the early ‘80s had several consecutive services concerning the evils of rock and roll music. Not just the back masking stuff but the subverted content of all of it. I returned to this church about 5 years ago and was suprised to hear the band covering Kiss’ God Gave Rock and Roll To You.
In the church I most recently attended with some regularity, after a successful screening of The Passion, they now have a weekly film night that has featured The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The DaVinci Code and yes, most recently a screening of The Golden Compass has been anounced (probably about the time it goes to second run). I don’t attend these so I am not sure what message goes along with these films and I don’t wish to speculate. (Note, both of these churches were AoG if it makes a difference)
Would these churches be considered more or less robust because they changed with the times as opposed to, say, a southern Babtist church that remains much the same as it did in the early 20th cetury?
Nitpick: The song “God Gave Rock and Roll To You” is originally by Argent. It has been covered both by KISS and by the Christian rock band Petra.
If this ain’t the crux of the definition question, I don’t know what is.
I’d say that the southern baptist church that survived in much the same state it was in in the early 20th century is more robust than the adapting church, by a definition of robustness that strictly considers something’s ability to weather opposition.
Similarly, the adapting church is more robust than any rigid churches that became extinct.
As I understand it, robustness is a measure of survival and continuing to function properly. If the function of the thing has to change in substantial and permanent manner to keep functioning, then that could be argued as a failure to function in the manner originally considered correct, and would be less robust than something that survives unchanged, or that changes briefly during periods of hardship but reverts back once the storm is over.
“Robust” I intended as meaning a serious, honest no holds barred reappraisal.
As for ITR Champion’s post, I’ll say that when I was in the Catholic Church, there were no seminars, Sunday school was an opportunity for indoctrination and not open discussion, etc. That was 30 years ago, and perhaps in your corner of the world the congregations you frequent are more enlightened than the admittedly blanket example I was using (else my OP would have gone on for 2,000 more words as I added qualification upon qualification covering every possible shade of faith). I don’t see that kind of thing at either the parochial school down the street from me (based on some comments from the many students I work with who go there), nor at my sister’s church.
Now if such things are intended as sincere, then that’s great; more often, what I gather is that they may cover controversial topics, like evolution or something like the Golden Compass, but not for the purpose of honest re-examination of either their faith or the topic in question, but to explain away anything in the subject which conflicts with the official creed (the web site on the GC linked above appears to not be like that exactly, but it is very short on actual details in the novels/film and doesn’t go into much depth discussing their themes). As I’ve already said what I am shooting for is something a bit more radical than that. I do dislike the casual term “you folks” being tossed my way, as I am not an atheist. Let’s keep the “us vs. them” BS out of this thread, m’kay?
I’m not sure if I buy the above: Buddhism has typically (tho not always) been about demolishing faith and building something better upon the ruins. I don’t think very many Christian sects operate in that way. [I’m not really a Buddhist either tho I share some views with them]
Get in line behind Judaism, bub. It’s got a 1300-year head start. And it robustly managed to survive despite various Christians taking a rather non-cheek-turning hostility toward us.
Not that it’s a competition or anything.
Yeah, I’m an intellectual coward because I refuse to read the *Left Behind * series. :rolleyes:
Actually, I’ve read more theistic apologetics than 99% of Christians. If you start asking how open-minded atheists are, you might not get the answer you want. Just compare the recent theistic vs. atheistic conversion threads.
From my point of view, I’m going to have to agree with the definition of robustness that implies both survival and minimal changes to the core structure. From that point of view, the most robust faiths are those which have questioning and rebuilding based on evidence, like some of the flavors of Buddhism. In particular, Zen Buddhist stories and texts tend to be bizarrely inaccessible to laypersons, because no two Zen Masters seem to have the same teaching style or concept of what it is–but since the whole purpose of the religion is using the meditative tools it gives you to form your own relationship and understanding of the universe…
But yes, I’d agree with the basic premise in the OP–the more a faith practices examination and debate of its precepts and conclusions, the more robust it has the potential to be. For example, Catholicism has a long-standing if inconsistently applied precept that scientific observations must be accepted by the church (the original doctrine as I was taught it paraphrases to “we can’t be obviously wrong about observable phenomena, or the pagans will laugh at us instead of converting”), and therefore it’d be significantly harder to deconvert a Catholic by providing incontrovertible evidence of evolution–their faith has, officially, already accepted that scientific observations are truth, and that the church’s place is what lies outside the observable universe. This is also why you don’t see many practicing Catholics on the Intelligent Design bandwagon.
I don’t think many atheists avoid or boycott movies for their religious themes. I’m certainly capable of watching and enjoying something like “City of Angels” - I just see it as a fantasy film. And yes, I think most atheists do thirst to honestly test and question their beliefs - for many of them, that’s how they became atheists in the first place.