my story is that my parents wern’t really religious an didn’t baptise me cos the figured it was my choice to make. i started doubting the whole god thing bout the same time as santa/tooth fairy/easter bunny and decided i was athiest by ~10 years old
i became fairly aggressively anti-religious in my teens cos it annoyed me that ppl would belive sumthing that was so obviously wrong.
now in my mid-twenties im agnostic, an athiest can annoy me as much as the religious when the say “god is impossible”, im like “prove it mr all-knowing king of the universe”. i had a friend who would afferm that he didnt belive in religion, no matter how many times i tried to tell him that god and religion are not the same thing.
im totally fine with ppl who belive in god, but organised religion bugs me, especially “popular” christianity mostly cos people never stop to think about or question anything they’re told or read. most of them dont even question the simple stuff like how santa or the easter bunny have anything at all to do with jesus. how can you belive sumthing that you dont even understand?
i dont like the idea of hell either; it makes me think that christians dont do good things because there “moral” (a favourite word of thiers), but because they fear eternal torture.
what if god did exist and everything he/she did and said in the bible actually happend but were like “lies to children”. not completly accurate because the listeners wouldnt have be able to comprehend the truth. maybe he/she just told us what we needed to hear.
just a thought
ps. sorry if i hijacked the thread or anything
pps. to pseudotriton ruber ruber: dont you think its a little bit patronising to refere to a divine being as a baby. besides, if he died for our sins then he knows full well what were like and doesnt need protecting.
Can’t possibly be true. There were no photoshopped nude pictures of Miley Cyrus in 1979. (Of course, I don’t know for a fact that there are any such pictures now, but there’s no damn way I’m looking for them.)
Religions are very smart institutions. They get at kids and indoctrinate them. Then schools, churches and politicians wrap you up. It is far bigger than you are when you are young. It overwhelms you.
But slowly little chinks fall off the edifice. It is like erosion. It eats away and finally one day it is gone. No real moment but a process. The moment is when you realize that it is all gone.
This reminds me of a teaching opportunity I had with my son last year or so. We got to his soccer practice early, and there was a family of Killdeer near the field. We went over to look at the adorable chicks, and when we got near, the parents would land a few meters away and pretend to be injured, holding their wing like it was broken, and squawking. It’s pretty cool behavior, and they will do it very consistently.
I explained what they were doing, and my son said that they’re pretty smart. So I explained that they don’t really know why they’re doing it, but they just inherited that behavior from their ancestors. So my son then said the first one to do it must have been smart, and I hope it came across, but I explained that this is the cool thing - the first one wasn’t smart either, but ones who did some similar behavior survived better, and this was gradually improved to the point where it’s the convincing display we see today. Never any intelligence involved.
Anyway, about your comment that religions are smart - it’s not that they’re smart, it’s that they’ve been selected to be effective in replicating themselves.
I call myself Christian because I like what he had to say and I grew up with the stories so it’s convenient. I like the idea that we aren’t fit to judge each other, that we are all one and that looking out for some guy on the street you’re looking out for yourself. I like that “Sermon On The mount” ethic. I try to follow what Christ said so I’m “Christian”
I also believe that there is something that supercedes us. I’ve no meaningful idea of what exactly it may be but I’m pretty certain it doesn’t give a damn about what names we use, foods we eat, hats we wear (I’m looking at you Benedict).
Not sure what exactly that makes me but I tend to go with red-faced Christian.
No, no, that’s not how it works at all. Once you destroy Metropolis and/or Gotham with your electro-ray, the populace trembles without having to be toldto do so.
I’m basically an atheist too. I don’t see anything to convince me of a higher power. I could more easily believe we’re living in a computer simluation than I could believe the Christian mythology.
If other people get comfort from religion, that’s fine, I’m happy for them. I just don’t push my (non)beliefs on them and I don’t expect them to push theirs on me.
An old girlfriend and I debated religion a lot, she believed in god and I didn’t. I really didn’t want to convince her not to believe, so I tried not to debate with her much. I spoke to her recently and she’s started questioning the church. Hope I didn’t do that. :\
Maybe so, maybe not. If she uses the time she previously devoted to religion for something better, then yes. If she uses it to sit around and watch TV, maybe not. :rolleyes:
I’m not convinced that it’s a favor. Questioning one’s faith is frequently unpleasant, and the results are unpredictable. If someone wants to believe, is made happy or comforted by his or her beliefs, and is not oppressing others, who am I to suggest that he or she change positions?