How Much Do You Know About Christianity?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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An atheist is defined as someone who does not believe in the existance of deities. I originally started asking this question when I did believe in a mono god, and now I would decribe my spiritual outlook as Taoist. However, because taoism is considered a philosophy dealing with patterns and no god, and because I have yet to see convincing evidence of a soul, I would have to describe my outlook on deities as atheist.

In the Bible there are numerous examples of god destroying many, banishing them to hell, so that one or a few, could live (Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah and the Ark, many of the enemy armies of the Israelites, and in Revelations it goes so far as to say that only 144,000 will be sealed from God’s wrath and be admitted into heaven).

But this actually isn’t my problem with christianity. My problem is that god KNEW the numbers. And if you or I were faced with those same numbers, we would decide not to have all those children. Why would I follow someone who makes more selfish decisions than I do?

[quote]pat wrote:
Oleena wrote:
Pushme and IrishSteel, I am going to give you a chance to convert me back to Christianity right now. I swear to you that I am being serious, and if there is a good answer to this that does not involve the following, I will return to Christianity (when I was a Christian, I loved being a Christian) 1. Saying God is anything less than all knowing, because that’s been clearly stated in the Bible or 2. You cannot hold God to the same standards as men, because in this case the grievance is enormous and I would not want to follow someone who was this petty/selfish/unethical according to the most basic parenting standards. In other words, as a parent, it is your responsibility to look out for the well being of your offspring. Not 1% or less of them, but all of them.

First of all, as I mentioned, it’s stated that God is all knowing (Psalm 139:2-6; Isaiah 40:13-14)

In Revelations it states that most of the earth will be destroyed in the endtime, and only a very small percentage of all of humanity that ever existed will make it into the kingdom of Heaven.

Now I ask you- if you were going to have 10 children, and you knew from far before the moment that you conceived them that 9 of them were going to CHOOSE TO BURN IN HELL, would you have 10 children?

Think carefully on this answer as not to be hypocritical. If you support or use birthcontrol in any manner, you are choosing in the opposite direction that God did.

I cannot ethically follow a God who plays games with his children, the end result of which is far more than 99% burning in hell.

Ahhh, your not atheist at all. You pissed off because of the ‘problem of evil’. You can’t know who is going to hell and who is not, why in the world would you think it is 99%? That’s just silly. I wouldn’t be religious if I thought that either.
You don’t deny God’s existence, you’re just pissed…“How could a loving God allow so much evil.” It is an age old problem, probably the biggest.
You aren’t going to be converted on a forumn, in a coffee shop or anywhere else. Each person’s journey is unique…Hell, I have friend of mine that turned the corner after a profound acid trip. He just saw things differently and it finally made some sense to him.

I can argue for the existence of God and you can argue against, and we can get pretty far into the discussion, but there is a lot we cannot know. WE can argue from the scientific perspective, at the quantum level, from the mathematical perspective, at the physical level, metaphysical level, and on and on.
Why don’t you ask God? You can ask push, and he is strong like bull, but he ain’t God and he cannot communicate to you like the Good Lord Himself.

As far as the bible many people read it and a lot just simply do not understand it. You can mine it and make it sound bad. Hell, I could mine “Chicken Soup for the soul” and make is sound like a tyrannical, murderous, violent composition, that’s the easy part.
[/quote]

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sure you have, pal. Righto. (Gotta tell the folks over at the Objective Thinker of the Year Award to yank Pook’s nomination)[/quote]

So, just how do do you explain personality changes when the brain is chemically messed with, if the person is actually a separate, immaterial soul?

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[quote]Oleena wrote:
Pushme and IrishSteel, I am going to give you a chance to convert me back to Christianity right now. I swear to you that I am being serious, and if there is a good answer to this that does not involve the following, I will return to Christianity (when I was a Christian, I loved being a Christian) 1. Saying God is anything less than all knowing, because that’s been clearly stated in the Bible or 2. You cannot hold God to the same standards as men, because in this case the grievance is enormous and I would not want to follow someone who was this petty/selfish/unethical according to the most basic parenting standards. In other words, as a parent, it is your responsibility to look out for the well being of your offspring. Not 1% or less of them, but all of them.

First of all, as I mentioned, it’s stated that God is all knowing (Psalm 139:2-6; Isaiah 40:13-14)

In Revelations it states that most of the earth will be destroyed in the endtime, and only a very small percentage of all of humanity that ever existed will make it into the kingdom of Heaven.

Now I ask you- if you were going to have 10 children, and you knew from far before the moment that you conceived them that 9 of them were going to CHOOSE TO BURN IN HELL, would you have 10 children?

Think carefully on this answer as not to be hypocritical. If you support or use birthcontrol in any manner, you are choosing in the opposite direction that God did.

I cannot ethically follow a God who plays games with his children, the end result of which is far more than 99% burning in hell.[/quote]

For starters, that question has NO base, simply because God doesn’t offer a statistical number almost as if HE’s running out of tickets to heaven. It’s stated in the Bible that’s what’s going to happen due to the majority of humanity’s pride and disbelief. For a moment though, let’s speculate on your question:

Let’s say that you have 10 kids, in a world of BILLIONS, what makes you believe that God is putting a “YES PASS” or a “NO PASS” from birth to each one of them and there’s nothing we can do about it? What’s NOT telling you that, with your guidance and love, ALL your 10 kids get to go to Heaven through Jesus Christ? Once again, final judgement will come as part of a different set of “factors”, but not a percentage of capacity. One of the gifts that we received from God, is our will and ability to make our own choices and THAT’S what opens the entrance to Heaven, wether it’s one, three or hopefully the 10 kids.

Then to answer this:

[quote]I used to really love being a Christian. It took me 8 years of not getting answers from the people I’d viewed as religious authorities to even say that I didn’t believe in it anymore. I wanted it to be true in the way that you want your favorite fairy tale to come to life and suck you up and take you away from the cruel world.

I still secretly wish I could find someone to answer the question I posted above in a way that is neither contradictory to the written word, nor a slap-stick “God knows best”. [/quote]

I think that even though you’ve spent so much time surrounded by religious people, you are looking for answers in the wrong place. You need to ask GOD and pursue a personal and spiritual relationship with him, at the end, Priests, Scholars, Theologist, whatever, are just people like you and me, looking for answers and meaning in life. That’s my quest, I grew as a Catholic, but I have come to learn and realize that RELIGIONS do much more harm than good, and that if in your heart you feel the existence of a living God, you should try to search for a personal UNDERSTANDING and RELATIONSHIP with HIM.

People that try to put down the Christian faith though, always resort to old testament verses, that apply much more to Jewish people than to Christians, Jesus Christ was the one that created the New Covenant and the direct “bridge” to God. Once again though, the Bible is a very complex book that unfortunately gets utilized in confusing ways. Now for people to say “well, why God didn’t just do this or that”, is to put Him at the same level as ours, it makes NO sense whatsoever. There is an order of things in life that we obviously don’t understand and a lot of it, we can not experiment with or visualize, that’s why it’s called “FAITH”.

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When I was two I apparently threw down and had a fit in the church hallway because we got there too early due to daylight savings and were going to have to leave for a little while. I didn’t want to go.

Yep, at least 14 years. I didn’t change faith entirely until I was a little over 19. At 14 I was questioning, expecting some amazing answer. At 19 I finally accepted the difference between trying to prove a fact religiously, and trying to prove a fact scientifically.

The difference is that when scientists have an idea, all of the other scientists try to prove them wrong. If it’s impossible to prove them wrong after countless experiments, and many experiments also point to them being right, the idea is then held as a belief.

Give me a god-fearing person who tries to prove their religion wrong every day and I will give you an eventual agnotistic or atheist.

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Oleena wrote:
I did it because I spent 14 years ascribing to that religion…

Silliness. Your post at 3:11 MDT suggests you were 14 when you started in another direction. So the 14 years you mention above ^^ would be the first 14 years of your life. So at six months, two years, five years, etc. you were busy “ascribing to that religion”?

I’ve been around a lot of young kids say oh…11 months old, and I never seen any ascribing going on.[/quote]

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[quote]pookie wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Right. So according to you, the soul doesn’t exist because we cannot scientifically prove how it interacts with the body. Are you now going to argue that sentience (and it’s various interpretations) doesn’t exist because we cannot describe how that phenomena interacts with matter/brain?

No, what I actually said was that if souls exist and that they interact with the body, as was claimed in some of the first messages, then that interaction is physically testable. We should be able to examine the brain, and eventually, find an effect for which we can’t see a physical, natural cause. That cause would thus have to be outside of the natural world (ie, supernatural) and you can bet your bottom dollar that religious leaders across the world would go fucking bonkers over that news.

I haven’t even mentioned sentience. Why do you keep bringing it up?
[/quote]

Because you no doubt believe in sentience; and yet, you cannot describe how it interacts with the body, and have about as much evidence for it as anyone else does for soul. Funny how, to atheists, when the word “soul” or “God” comes about suddenly only what is “scientifically testable” is believable - and yet, those same people believe all sorts of other things without such evidence. Isn’t it?

[quote]
Does science completely understand where it comes from? No. Will it ever? Probably. [/quote]

I assume by “it” you mean sentience still - that science will “probably” plumb this mystery someday is an expression of faith. Interesting, no?

Since we hardly know anything about the brain, I’d say that’s quite a claim. You have no idea whether it’s infinitely complex or not. You cannot say either way. The more we discover about it, the more we find that few things in the universe - if anything - rival the complexity and wonder of the human cortex.

There are so many even very basic things that we are still struggling over - I highly doubt that we’ll ever understand how it is that sentience emerges out of matter. It would take a heap of faith to believe otherwise.

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[quote]forlife wrote:

I would be fine with your logic, as long as you apply it consistently. If God was only speaking to the Israelites in the bible, why do Christianists try to quote the bible to condemn gays? I’m not an Israelite, but people are constantly quoting Paul to tell me that I’m going to hell.[/quote]

No, you are going to hell for your avatar.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
pushharder wrote:
Sure you have, pal. Righto. (Gotta tell the folks over at the Objective Thinker of the Year Award to yank Pook’s nomination)

So, just how do do you explain personality changes when the brain is chemically messed with, if the person is actually a separate, immaterial soul?

[/quote]

Sorry for stepping in here - but who’s ever denied there’s an intimate connection between soul and flesh?

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I was not implying that all christians know nothing about their faith. Obviously, from the first paragraph, I have met some that do. I have more respect for those ones.

Religion, like many other social structure, is a product of society that reinforces behavors that at one point and time helped survival. For example, in India cows are considered holy and not killed. Now there are way too many of them. However, when that belief started it was actually more beneficial to the people to keep the cows alive and use their milk than to kill them. Same thing with many of the commands in the old testiment. There was no sanitation back then, and many of the things that are commanded actually made it less likely that people would catch infection or eat something rotten.

There is a flip side. Christianity is a very patriarchal religion, and reinforces over and over again the superiority of men over women, starting with the very first human story in genesis. In the christian religion, the men are the head of the women and if all goes well the man will make loving decisions for his wife.

In old Egyptian marriges, it was reversed. The man was supposed to listen to his wife and let her be his head.

I am not saying one is better than the other. It’s not. But there are so many underlying institutions and beliefs that are supported by religion and are now outdated that it can be harmful to not know everything about your religion.

[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Oleena wrote:
I spent 14 years as a die hard Christian. During that time I studied the Bible with mentors who majored in theology and grew up in Africa as kids of a missionary doctor.

To this day I’m still baffled by how little people understand the religion and the text of the religion that they ascribe to.

Recently I found a test that breaks it down faster than I ever could.

http://www.ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php

My challenge to you: take this test and post your score. If you have a Bible handy, look up the verses to assure yourself that this is for real. If you want to save time- I already did because even as an atheist, I was suprised at a few of these. It’s spot on.

Have fun. Give to friends.

giggle

Yes, how little some people do understand religion. In particular atheists. The assumption is that every Christian is a bible thumping moron and this quiz is made to reinforce that.

How about this: Pretty much nobody follows anything in Deuteronomy or any of the other books as laws (especially the Old Testament in the US). Many people that are Christians that I know (and no I’m not one of them, but unlike most of y’all I am actually pretty tolerant) are pretty level-headed compared to most of their detractors.

Now here is a serious question that comes out of this: you all believe in the separation of Church & State, right? But do any of you really understand the reason for it? It was not because of religion per se, but because of the fact that at the time religion was seen to have pretty much a monopoly on morality. It was trying to ban moralizing from the domain of the State that was the intent. Nothing would be more unsettling than a moralistic state “backed by supernatural terrors” to quote J.S. Mill (a bit later but a great quote). Hayek rightly points out that the most moralistic states in history have all been socialist/communist with impressively high body counts – the most recent tally is 170 million dead in the last century and accounts for about 95% of the people killed by their own government. This includes 45 million Christians directly murdered for their beliefs (e.g 2/3 of the entire Polish clergy in the late 1940’s or the Russian Orthodox from 1918 through the early 1960’.)

So let me state my strong objection to this quiz and the site it comes from: It is every bit and sniffily moralizing as the Christians it tries to criticize and in the process manages to exceed them in its perfidy.

And as always, I’m probably just full of shit…

– jj[/quote]

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[quote]Oleena wrote:

Give me a god-fearing person who tries to prove their religion wrong every day and I will give you an eventual agnotistic or atheist.[/quote]

No, you wouldn’t, because a “god-fearing person” who tried to “prove their religion wrong every day” would come to the only conclusion available, assuming intellectual honesty - that there is no proof either way. And a lack of proof either way does not logically conclude at either atheism or agnosticism - both “disbeliefs” are choices made from evaluations via inductive philosophy.

The absence of proof doesn’t command a result of “erego, no God”, even as atheists would love it to be true. It merely demonstrates that we have no proof.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Reciprocity is ok for those who value it. Not so ok for those who could care less. Doesn’t mean either side is right or wrong.

How much less caring are we talking about?

[/quote]

I don’t know. Put how much it’s valued by every individual on a sliding scale from none to max.

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[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Because you no doubt believe in sentience; and yet, you cannot describe how it interacts with the body, and have about as much evidence for it as anyone else does for soul. Funny how, to atheists, when the word “soul” or “God” comes about suddenly only what is “scientifically testable” is believable - and yet, those same people believe all sorts of other things without such evidence. Isn’t it?[/quote]

Actually, it isn’t. No atheist is claiming that sentience is some supernatural property for which we then fail to produce any evidence. Sentience is a function of the material brain. We can’t explain it yet, but not knowing the complete answer now doesn’t mean you get to make one up.

Again no. It’s not faith so much as trust that as science has pierced deep mysteries before, it’ll do so again in the future. All the low hanging fruits have long been picked and we’re getting into the deep stuff now. Conscience, abiogenesis, cosmology, etc. Again, answers that might not be found for hundreds or thousands of years, but making them up or claiming “Goddidit!” gets us nowhere.

Do you know what infinity is? The brain has a finite number of neurons that can interact in a finite number of ways with each other for a finite amount of time. There’s nothing infinite about the brain. Maybe you think your brain is infinite and you’re God; but let me reassure you, it isn’t and you’re not.

I can say the finite way. Doesn’t mean it isn’t complex or wonderful, but there’s nothing magical or infinitely complex about it.

Why not? What makes it so impossible? We can already simulate part of a rat’s brain (Lab comes one step closer to building artificial human brain | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian). Give it another 20-30 years and the corresponding increase in computer power and we might be simulating a human brain.

You erroneously assume that anything we don’t understand now will thus never be understood. If lacking that dumb, smug arrogance is what you call “faith”, then yes, I’m quite faithful.

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[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Oleena wrote:

Give me a god-fearing person who tries to prove their religion wrong every day and I will give you an eventual agnotistic or atheist.

No, you wouldn’t, because a “god-fearing person” who tried to “prove their religion wrong every day” would come to the only conclusion available, assuming intellectual honesty - that there is no proof either way. And a lack of proof either way does not logically conclude at either atheism or agnosticism - both “disbeliefs” are choices made from evaluations via inductive philosophy.

The absence of proof doesn’t command a result of “erego, no God”, even as atheists would love it to be true. It merely demonstrates that we have no proof.[/quote]

We have no proof for a lot of things - fairies, dragons, unicorns, sasquatch - and the default reasonable position for everything else is to not believe without evidence.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
Again, answers that might not be found for hundreds or thousands of years, but making them up or claiming “Goddidit!” gets us nowhere.[/quote]

Lies. Last time the majority held this view, we were graced with the Dark Ages. Ah wondrous times they were.

Right guys?

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[quote]pushharder wrote:
I have some ideas but I’m worried to fuckin death to discuss them because I’m scared half out of my mind you’ll dismiss me as one who lacks scientific standing.[/quote]

If you would put half the fucking effort towards an actual discussion as you do bullshitting, dodging and attempting lame gags that are no doubt highly amusing to you, this thread would be so much more interesting.

What are you afraid of?

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[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Sorry for stepping in here - but who’s ever denied there’s an intimate connection between soul and flesh? [/quote]

Hot tip: reading a thread makes participation easier.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
Sentience is a function of the material brain.
[/quote]

^^ this is your dogma. You BELIEVE it - and you’ll hold onto that belief for dear life. And yet you have no proof for it. And you have no proof, nor reason to believe, that you will ever have proof for it. It is your Orthodoxy. Should anyone questions it, you’ll unleash the “Holy Office of the Secular Inquisition” on the unbeliever.

In-fucking-deed sir.

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[quote]pookie wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Sorry for stepping in here - but who’s ever denied there’s an intimate connection between soul and flesh?

Hot tip: reading a thread makes participation easier.[/quote]

Right, so you must know who’s made that claim.