>Their entire system relies on the belief that people are more, not less, moral than god.

While I lacked the capacity to sum this up so succinctly, this has been a core tenant of mine for some time on why I can’t accept many forms of religion on any level.

Amanda,
I know that people who haven’t really argued with an evangelical christian on this point may find this post hard to swallow. But I’ve had that conversation with people and I know that you have nailed one of the central issues, almost pathologies, about a certain kind of evangelical christian. The desire, the necessity, to believe in a g-d who hates people, a g-d who punishes those we have been told he loves. I had one of the scariest converasations of my life while stuck in a cab with a russian evangelical christian. I asked him whether, as a father to a child, there is anything that child could do that would cause him to kill that child? And he said, absolutely, yes. That it was his duty as a parent to correct and punish his child even unto death just as g-d corrects and punishes us. That not to do so would be a dereliction of duty and morality. So at the point where I was most sure that, as human to human, he might start to query the cruel comandments of his imaginary g-d (that homosexuality was immoral and needed to be punished, that feminists needed to be punished) I realized that there was no place where his model of family and human relations tracked mine at all.

aimai

But I can’t help but thinking that fundamentalists are drawn to this evil, vindictive god myth because they like feeling superior, being able to dismiss the majority of the world as inferior to them.

So let’s cast the shit out of that first stone!

I had the pleasure of listening to this on Saturday; it was so good wasn’t it?!  What you don’t mention in this post is that Pearson’s congregation eventually exploded in number, as those who were once unwelcome (gays and lesbians in particular) began to attend.

It’s been surprising to me, in 12-step programs (Al-Anon, in my case), to see many people who definitely believe in a Higher Power, but not a vindictive or punishing Higher Power. Most of them admit outright that God is a mystery, and that we will never understand why things are exactly why they are; but that trying to understand - the journey - is worthwhile.

These are people who have been raised Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or for that matter atheist or agnostic. For many of them, they first had to unlearn everything they were taught about God as a child, so that they could go on to accept the idea of a truly loving, but not perfectly comprehensible, God who they could turn to for help, but who wasn’t going to do all of the work for them.

The phrase that’s used, of course, is “a Higher Power as we understand him,” with an acceptance that different people will understand the Higher Power in different ways. As a consequnce, there’s very little proselytizing - the vast majority of people don’t push everyone to understand God the way they do.

Of course, nobody’s getting rich or politically powerful off of AA programs, so it’s not a suitable model for our current-day religious leaders.

Their entire system relies on the belief that people are more, not less, moral than god.

You know, if you add the words “By Philip Pullman” to the cover of the Bible, this would totally be the main point of the book.  The message would be that people have the ability to be moral and create a moral world from an arbitrary, cruel, and unfeeling universe.

I think I watched a little bit of a news report or something about this guy a couple of years ago. It’s amazing what kinds of things you learn about your own faith and beliefs once you think about it for a few minutes.

A few months ago, I started thinking more about heaven and hell, and I have concluded that there cannot be a hell for there to be a heaven. I was raised a Catholic, but I became Agnostic about 8 years ago. My grandfather died 5 years ago, and I can only assume that, as a good Catholic man, he went to heaven. Since I’m not Catholic anymore, I just might go to hell, right? What kind of heaven would my grandfather be in if I’m not there when I die? A pretty shitty one. So shitty, in fact, that it might cease to be heaven for my grandfather. So heaven can’t be heaven if there is a hell. At least Catholicism has purgatory, which makes much more sense to me than hell.

There was also this from this weekend’s “protests” over the FFRF’s sign in the stae capitol locally…

http://www.thenewstribune.com/front/topstories/story/561000.html

Marcos Sauri of Seattle said that he doesn’t usually join religious rallies associated with political causes, but he found the atheist sign offensive.

“We all have freedom of speech, but for them to put down religion, isn’t that more than freedom of speech?” Sauri said.

Yes… because you can’t discuss religion in a sane way here in America- nor can you disagree with it. Which makes this brand of Christianity superior to radical Muslims how?

(by the way, the President of the FFRF, Dan Barker, is an ex-evangelical as well)

Unfortunately, Emily, that line of reasoning is lost on certain branches of fundie Christianity. Tim LaHaye (the asshole who co-wrote the “Left Behind” books) says he believes that, as an act of love to the Saved, God will wipe out their memories of any loved one condemned to Hell.
To the best of my knowledge, there’s no Biblical basis for this idea. And I doubt LaHaye would need that Divine Labotomy-he’s probably EAGER to watch people suffering eternal torment.

Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, believed that one of the main glories of the blessed in heaven would be to look down and see the tortures of the damned.

I heard the radio program too, and it was amazing.

Really, the god of the old testament is a genocidal psychotic terrorist.  And that’s in a book that’s supposed to praise the old bugger!  If you look around our universe, you see not only things like genocides in Rwanda, but entire galaxies being sterilized with blasts of radiation.

Basically, if god exists, morality requires that we track him down and kill him.

I saw Rev. Pearson on some program about a year ago.  I liked him so much it almost made me wish I believed in God.

I’d tend to disagree with the idea that the fundies need to feel threatened by hell to show up in church.

From my experience with these yabbos, they have an overwhelming need to feel superior to those who do not belive as they do; in other words they need the threat of hell FOR EVERYBODY ELSE, in order that they can gloat.

Heaven isn’t enough for them, unless the rest of us are consigned to hell.

Literally, I’ve had damned few conversations with fundies, and yet I’ve had to lose my temper at two fundies who smugly insisted that Jews were going to hell.

See, there’s this gotcha clause: they may believe in God, but Jesus is the gotcha.

As I said to both, “I don’t think God is that fucking arbitrary.”

But THEIR God is.

It scarcely need be said that this idea applies equally well to supporters of George W. Bush.

Not to mention Bush himself.  Talk about a psychotic bully who believes in using violence first and foremost to get what you want.

God is dead.  Sic semper tyrannis.

“Really, the god of the old testament is a genocidal psychotic terrorist.”

Nothing says “peace” and “love” like killing the children of Egypt because you are mad at the KING of Egypt.

Many of the religious, yet nice, people I know have come to a different conclusion - most people desrve to go to heaven. Hell is for Hitler, Pol Pot, some child abusers. Maybe a mild hell (Heck?) for the deeply selfish. They look at an atheist like me, and say, what the hey, you never harmed anyone, you get into Heaven. I’ll take it up with God, no problem.

One of them told me, “If you don’t get in, I’m not going”. Nice people.

I don’t think it will sell as theology, though.

I heartily recommend the work of Bart Ehrmann, who is justly famous for his book “Misquoting Jesus” and “Lost Christianities.” he is an example of what happens to a sincere, believing, evangelical when he puts himself out to study the original texts and discovers just how inconsistent they are with what he has been taught, and what he can respect.  Misquoting Jesus is just an amazing book of scholarship in which he traces the scribal history of the texts that eventually were absorbed into the modern bible. And “Lost christianities” is a study of the gnostic and other texts, figures, and teachings that never made it past the council of Nicea.

aimai

The Russian evangelicals are particularly scary because they come unaltered from the “Reconstructionist” school of theology and politics first codified in the late 1960s to early 1970s. They believe that the USA must replace its Constitution with Biblical “Law” (as in Torah). They understand Law as universal, absolute, and literally applied, not as Jews view the Law, as applicable to Jews only, as interpretable according to current conditions (strictness varies), and as susceptible to a variety of interpretations by equally wise rabbis.

Pastors in the branch of non-denominational radical breakaways deriving from the standard Assemblies of God denominational theology also hew to Reconstructionism. Sarah Palin attends one of these Reconstructionist churches and has had contact with some of the important people in the movement. (see www.talk2action.org for details).

Typically the pastors don’t talk about the more controversial portions of Reconstructionism, such as death penalties for disobedient children (the cab-driver’s argument), gays, blasphemers, women caught in adultery, abortion providers (that bit is completely non-Biblical); denial of citizenship to non-Christians.  It is considered indiscreet to talk about the ultimate goal of the movement in locations where non-believers can hear. Only not-too-bright cab-drivers or webmasters clueless about Internet cache sites blab.

As Pearson put it, that means god is worse than Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Hitler put together, just in terms of the amount of suffering and death he inflicts.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Randolph Churchill (son of Winston) once made a bet with Evelyn Waugh that he could read the entire Bible cover-to-cover.  He won, but his reaction after reading the thing was “I never realized God was such a shit.”

My daddy is a kind, generous, loving man and father.  He really is the best dad in the world. 
Yet he has expressed sadness that, when we die, he will be in heaven without me.  I don’t understand how anyone can worship a “god” who’d send the children (s)he loves to eternal damnation, for the simple transgression of not being a Christian.  But there ya have it.

Re: Carlton Pearson - his conversion was prompted when his gay son came out to him. Pearson knew his son to be a good person, and not a heartless libertine user of people, as in the traditional view of gays. Pearson then started examining traditional interpretations of the Seven Texts of Terror condemning “homosexuals” (lit. “men who lie the laying of women with men”) , following with an examination of broader issues.

Ever see that Simpsons’ Halloween where Bart gains super powers and demands that everyone think nothing but happy thoughts, or else he punishes them in various manners?  That’s how the American Christian Right thinks of its God.  Not only demanding obedience of action, but total obedience of thought.  You don’t get to start questioning the fundamentals if you’re terrified to even consider whether it might be okay to masturbate tonight.

On this same line, but a bit more nuanced and philosophical, (no offense intended Amanda, but, time is limited when writing a blog) you might want to read:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/huckfinn.pdf

I’ve found it to be great fun when challenged with the “the morality requires religion argument” as well as the conventional branch of relativists.

It is a beautiful concept. Some untold billions of years ago, two or more multi-dimensional branes touched, and our universe resulted. In the first few hundred milliseconds, all of the laws of physics and the values of all the physical constants were set. After 13 or 14 billion years, it is so large, and so many events have occurred, that even things with probabilities close to zero, like life, have happened a lot. We’re here from purly mechanical workings. No biology is so complicated that after quadrillions of attempts, life happens, evolution happens, the internet happens, blogs happen. Here we are, no need for a god or god concept. It also gets rid of the need for magic, the supernatural, crystals, spells, incantations, superstitions, voodo, mojo, spirituality, higher consciousness, out of body stuff, what have you. All is merely an aspect of higher dimensional mathematics we haven’t discovered yet. A little chaos theory, a little quantum physics, a little molecular biology. You’re here, you live, you die, possibly some element of your energy or matter goes somewhere? Maybe some element of your personality survives? Who knows. Morality is a construct of the people. Does morality have a representation derived from the constants of the universe? Who knows. Does it matter?  Who knows?

As an evangelical that checks out this site daily, I can understand where Pearson is coming from and think that most evan/fundies have faced the same dilemma and would like to have a belief system that mirrored his. The problem I have with Pearson’s theology is an epistemological one. Either God is God and the bible is true in which case all of it should be taken as divinely inspired, or he is not, or it is not, in which case Sartre and Gandhi have as much, or more, truth to teach me.

I can accept the logical consistency of complete belief and complete unbelief, but I cannot come up with an epistemology that says there is a God, but the bible is only partially true and I am the ultimate arbiter of eternal truth. Belief in any other system of faith or atheism makes more sense than that. I have much more respect for atheists and agnostics than people who INTENTIONALLY pick and choose what parts of the bible to believe (I realize all “believers” must do this unintentionally due to interpretive issues, and that some do away with hell through legitimate means of hermeneutics, but this is very different than saying, “I believe that the bible teaches X, but I don’t like X, so I am going to just intentionally ignore that and believe everything else”...if you think it teaches X either believe/do X or abandon the bible altogehter as a source of inspiration.)

“A few months ago, I started thinking more about heaven and hell, and I have concluded that there cannot be a hell for there to be a heaven.”

Excepting the stuff in the Revelation of Dr. Crazypants, I’m almost positive there’s nothing about hell as it’s portrayed now in the Bible itself.  It’s a separation from God, as opposed to heaven, which is being with God.  Of course, “You won’t get to spend eternity with a God you couldn’t tell from Isis three years ago!” isn’t much of a threat, and “You’ll get to hang around with a God you couldn’t tell from Isis three years ago!” isn’t much of a reward.  You had plenty of mystery religions around that time and place promising an eternal paradise for initiates, so it wasn’t a big innovation to dress up heaven a little.  By that same token, scary afterlives that doubled as revenge fantasies for a populace whose masses had little hope of seeing any sort of real justice during their lifetimes weren’t uncommon either, and it does help sustain the movement to have a stick as well as a carrot.

How much either the “glittering paradise where everyone’s rich as Nazis” or the “lake of fire where all the chairs give you splinters” really have to do with the original religion is pretty up for grabs.

Anyone who has read books about child abuse will be very familiar with the god of the old testament and parts of the new.

The thing about hell as a moral outrage is particularly interesting, because that’s pretty much the hallmark of a cultist/abuse victim.The Great Leader (whether familial, political or religious) always depicts the performance/approval of acts that go against one’s sense of decency as carrying out the highest possible morality. What greater sacrifice could there be to the cause than one’s own principles and self-respect? (At the risk of Godwin, there’s a chilling passage Alice Miller quotes in which death-camp guards are warned that they will have to do things against which every fiber of their being rebels, and that there is no nobler task than to conquer their revulsion against torture and murder for the good of the fatherland.) And of course once people have gone through that catharsis, they are forever marked as different from ordinary people (see, e.g., Abraham and Isaac), which is good for the cult because it makes it that much harder to go back.

Sasquatch,

What about believing in god, but understanding that essentially the bible is man-made. Even if you believe some of the writing is inspired, you still can’t get around that it is man selected, translated, edited and interpreted.

I don’t really believe in god myself, but for those who do, I’ve never understood how something that went through such a fallible, arbitrary process as the bible is supposed to just equal god. The bible is for sure all kinds of contradictory and fucked up within itself. So how does one believe in the bible as a whole anyway? How is the bible wholly true if it is not even true within its own pages? How does one believe in the whole bible, anyway?

I can accept the logical consistency of complete belief and complete unbelief, but I cannot come up with an epistemology that says there is a God, but the bible is only partially true and I am the ultimate arbiter of eternal truth.

So I’m guessing you’re not a Quaker, then, with their emphasis on the Inner Light.  Or a Catholic, since the whole Catholic attitude towards the Bible is that it’s true-ish, especially in the Old Testament parts.  There are actually very few denominations that believe that every word of the Bible is literally true and that every story told in there really happened in the way the book says.

It’s the difference between something being literally true—God created the entire world in six 24-hour days 6,000 years ago—and something being a true metaphor—God doesn’t count his “days” as being 24 hours, so for all we know each of his “days” represents 1 billion years.

Well-said, Amanda:

I wonder if Rev. Pearson encountered one of George Carlin’s inspired and wickedly funny rants about the absurdity of the “Loving God” who will fry your ass for eternity if you sin against any of his countless rules.  Clever sadist, that God - his rules make it impossible to be human.  Look at the list;

Screw for the sheer joy of screwing?  Mortal sin.
Pig out for the joy of eating?  Gluttony, you disgusting creature and may a thousand crabs infest your genitals as you descend to the flames below.
A little auto-erotic amusement (manually operated wet dream)?  Look what happened to Onan when he jacked off.

For any readers amused, add to this list of God-proscribed human pastimes and stuff Amanda’s site with reasons why woo-woo Christians should just off themselves and enter the (fraudulently promised) life hereafter.

Context, for what it is worth - I am a 72 yr. old crock who will continue to enjoy offending against silly-assed religious absolutes until I am physically unable to screw, eat, jack off etc. or remember doing so at which point I will no longer give a shit.  And, immoral bastard that I am, I wrote a well-received book entitled MORAL LEADERSHIP - Facing Canada’s Leadership Crisis (McGraw Hill - 1998).  Ten years later I am still getting some royalties and delight in the thought that this pisses off God.

Bob Evans

Lexie,

thanks for your response. I understand your questions about contradictions and cannot completely answer them to myself all the time. But lets say I believe that there is a God and think some of the writing is inspired, but cannot accept all of the contradictions I see. Which parts do I believe in? Since I am a man I can choose only to believe those parts that specifically make women subservient to men, or I could think about how I like my black friends and only believe those passages that say there is neither jew nor gentile, slave nor free, or I could realize that i am wealthy and intentionally choose to ignore all those passages that tell me give away my possessions…In any of these scenarios it is me that is deciding what is true, even though I am saying I think truth comes from divine revelation.

Because of this, I think it makes more sense to say one of the following things (1) there is no God and the only truth comes from what is directly knowable from observable fact in the material world (2) there may be a God, but I have no idea, and I have no idea what is right and wrong, so I am just going to do what feels right (3) I believe in God, and the bible, and even though I am not really sure about some of the contradictions, but I am going to keep thinking about it and believe/do what I am convinced the bible teaches until the contradictions are worked out or eventually abandon the bible altogether if favor of either agnosticism or atheism.

That is just all that makes sense to me

I can accept the logical consistency of complete belief and complete unbelief, but I cannot come up with an epistemology that says there is a God, but the bible is only partially true and I am the ultimate arbiter of eternal truth.

What’s special about the bible?  There are plenty of logically consistent systems, but the problems are (1) connecting them to reality and (2) getting anybody to agree with yours.  It’s sort of like math, except mathematicians are pretty agreeable people..

Mnemosyne,

“Literal” is a loaded term. I guess you could say I literally believe the bible is true, but that just means I believe God created the earth and whether it was 6 days or 6 billion years is an interpretive issue since there is room for metaphor in the bible. What I am protesting is people that believe that the bible is true but intentionally exclude portions they disagree with b/c they find them unpalatable. So I could believe that Jesus came to the earth, lived here for 33 years, died and was resurrected, but completely ignore all of Paul’s letters because I think he was a sexist bigot.

Sasquatch:

I can accept the logical consistency of complete belief and complete unbelief, but I cannot come up with an epistemology that says there is a God, but the bible is only partially true and I am the ultimate arbiter of eternal truth.

That is because your worldview is wedded to the fallacy of the excluded middle. “God is God and the Bible is literally true” and “he is not, and it is not” aren’t even close to being the only two possibilities.

Even the most casual of observations on the most mundane of subjects ought to refute the utility of absolutist binary arguments such as yours. You might as well be arguing that there are no intermediate levels of cooking skill between “five-star chef” and “can’t boil water.”

I think it makes more sense to say one of the following things (1) there is no God and the only truth comes from what is directly knowable from observable fact in the material world (2) there may be a God, but I have no idea, and I have no idea what is right and wrong, so I am just going to do what feels right (3) I believe in God, and the bible, and even though I am not really sure about some of the contradictions, but I am going to keep thinking about it and believe/do what I am convinced the bible teaches

Sasquatch, I completely agree with you on these points. Once people start picking and choosing what morality to accept they have decided that they themselves can and must determine morality for themselves. If the bible says that non-believers burn in hell for eternity, and you say “That is horribly immoral, and I don’t believe it.” you are saying that your morality supersedes the bible. Now, I would take that next step if I were you and explore those contradictions. I’m sure you wouldn’t stone someone for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, and I’m sure if your daughter were raped you would not force her to marry her rapist as the bible commands. You know those things are reprehensible and immoral. Your morality already supersedes the bible’s teachings. You just haven’t admitted yet.

This was an incredible episode (it’s a rerun that I caught a while back), so good in fact that I put it on a CD for my fundie parents to listen to.

What I am protesting is people that believe that the bible is true but intentionally exclude portions they disagree with b/c they find them unpalatable.

And yet people who claim to be “Biblical literalists” do this all of the time.  They spend the money that Jesus said they should spend on the poor to fight gay marriage.  They come up with the “Gospel of Prosperity” because all of that “give everything you have to the poor” thing gets too depressing.  They insist that the Bible is all about “family values” no matter how many times Jesus tells his disciples to cut themselves off from their families.

That’s my point:  everyone excludes portions from the Bible that they don’t like, even the people who claim to be literalists.

Yikes, SarahMC. I don’t know if I’d be able to call my dad the best dad in the world if he thought I was going to hell. (Perhaps he thinks you’re going to hell because them’s the rules, not because he thinks you deserve it?) Then again, I can relate. My biological dad is deeply Christian, so thinks I’m not going to be saved, but I think he genuinely means well and just hopes I’ll be there in heaven with him one day. I still don’t feel obligated to respect that aspect of his worldview, though. (Plus it doesn’t matter what he thinks because there’s no such thing as heaven or hell. Atheism FTW!!!)

Rebecca, I am in the same situation as you.  My dad thinks thems the rules; he and my mom hold out hope that I’ll “come back” to Jesus some day, which is not going to happen.  It’s hard to reconcile my dad the person with my dad the fundie beliefs.  It doesn’t have any impact on our day-to-day relationship but of course it bothers me that he’d worship a god he admits would send me to hell.

Agreed, penn. “Once people start picking and choosing what morality to accept they have decided that they themselves can and must determine morality for themselves.”

Sounds better than having an accident of birth determine your morality, doesn’t it? Or an accident of adoption, even; no way my friend would be Catholic if she hadn’t been adopted into a Catholic family as a baby. Just think, one adoption away from being the *wrong* religion and going to hell forever! Sucks to be the kids that *didn’t* get shipped over, huh? (Of course, plenty of people think *Catholicism* will send you to hell too. So she’s basically s.o.l. I suppose! We can hang out together in hell with Mark Twain. ^^)

Amanda, I think your essay is great but you need to make a distinction between believing in a God and belief in a religion. For the overwhelming cadre of religious thinkers, there is no rational basis for the existence of a God- it is, as Kierkegaard, wrote a ‘leap of faith’ to believe in a God. Reason will bring you the precipice of nothingness and faith takes you beyond.

The belief in a religion is an entirely different matter; which is why I don’t believe an any religion. For most people, they don’t even ‘think’ about it. They get their religion from their family or those around them. When you ask them to think about their religion, most cannot. As an example, how can one explain the dichotomy between the vengeful, scornful God of the Old Testament versus the loving God of the New Testament? It cannot be logically done. Jesus said he came to fulfill the law; not to destroy it and that the two new commandments were love God and love thy neighbor as thyself. His message was that estrangement from God was hell.

The message was an eschatological one in that one never knew the hour of the end- one’s own end and the end of the world. Hence, being good was the only option when confronted with the possibility of the end at any moment. This was an amazing precursor to existentialism’s tenet that the only sure thing in life is death. Of course, existentialists then proceeded to create their own moral guides.

But for Christ, the important thing was to establish a personal connection with God and others- not the creation of a religion. The funny thing is that he spent so much time railing against the adherence to strict religious rules over and above the need to show love. Quite often, he proceeded to show how the same hindered a relationship with God.

To me, the pastor has made a ‘leap’ into the arms of a personal relationship with his God; for that religion has no answers.

Sasquatch, I think if you continue to think about your struggle, you’ll find your way to a clearer position. Regardless of your religion, the only guide you ever really have is your own conscience; that is, your reason and your empathy working together to judge the rightness or wrongness of your actions. 99% of the time, that is how Christians have to operate anyway; there is no Bible verse on whether it’s ok to yell expletives at old ladies who cut you off on the freeway, no? So you use your conscience in that situation.

Extremely authoritarian groups are evil precisely *because* they attempt to numb and uproot your conscience in favor of their edicts—to make you so afraid of making a bad choice that you make no decisions for yourself at all.

Whether religious or not, personal ethical growth *only* takes place when you actually have to ponder, struggle, and make ethical choices. Some of which will likely be wrong, others of which you will never know the outcome. Truth can be contained in the Bible, or a sermon, or a poem or a religious experience, or a scientific discovery; the pursuit of further truth requires individual effort and thought. In a religious tradition, the only way to be sure you aren’t just making shit up is to be humble, to learn from others, and to refuse to accept simple and pat answers. And then to still be humble enough to know that you really don’t know much of anything, but that you want to keep searching for more wisdom.

(yeah, ex-fundie here. Took me a long time to stop being afraid of Hell).

Sasquatch - the official Episcopal position is that the Bible is the recorded stories of man about God, rather than a book written by God himself. As such, some writers were genuinely inspired/recording accurately, some were telling mostly truth to make some or another point, some were telling stories outright, some were self-serving, etc. etc..

One of the first duties of a believer in this instance is to try to ascertain what is what - this is done with reason, tradition, and community. The Bible is taken seriously - i.e. one must take into account what the Bible says and account for it in some fashion - but not literally.

Hence Paul’s tendency to misogyny and strong anti-sexuality attitudes is a ding against him when considering his letters on those subjects, but not reason enough on it’s own to simply discard him as a whole, nor even to discard him entirely on those subjects - one must have specific reasons for those things one chooses to disregard.

In my view, taking the Bible as word-for-word true is actually bibliolatry: one is worshiping the book rather than the God the book is talking about.

They didn’t mention that AT ALL, Nancy.  Very interesting.

That diminishes the story a bit for me, I liked it better when he was moved by the suffering of strangers as opposed to being confronted with his hypocricy by a family member.

Still points for him not pulling a Dick Cheney, who makes the occasional muted statement about how we should be nice to gay people without ever making the broader connection that we should be nice to ever.

That should read “nice to everyone”.

If you want to see the fundie mindset, I recommend FSTDT, a collection of fundie quotes from across the internet. Some of them are just unbelievable…

“Nothing says “peace” and “love” like killing the children of Egypt because you are mad at the KING of Egypt. “
And then making the Pharoah be a dick repeatedly (that “hardened his heart” thing) so you can flex your godly muscles and torture Egyptians for shit they have no control over.

Also that flood thing. Talk about incompetence, if I were omnipotent I could damn well find a way to kill a few people without killing everything else in the process!

What about believing in god, but understanding that essentially the bible is man-made. Even if you believe some of the writing is inspired, you still can’t get around that it is man selected, translated, edited and interpreted.

How could such a person be a Christian? I mean, to be a Christian is to follow Christ, but the only source of the philosophy and teachings of Jesus is the Bible.

But if you believe the Bible to be an essentially unreliable history, what teachings can you possibly follow?

I sort of assume that Sasq was specifically referring to Christianity, since that’s usually what evangelicals mean when they say “believer.” Anyway, I’m with you, Sasquatch - fundamentalism and atheism are the only two consistent responses to the Christian testament.

Also, Sasquatch - do I recognize your screenname from EvC Forum?

@incertus: There’s a bigger reason why the JWs are my fundie group of choice: they believe God doesn’t want them to engage in politics. I wish more Christians paid attention to the bits emphasizing that conversion had to be willing.

his conversion was prompted when his gay son came out to him. Pearson knew his son to be a good person, and not a heartless libertine user of people…

Do you have a link? Considering his son was no more than about eight or nine when he first started raising controversy (or at least when he first started making serious waves), I’m not sure how likely the story is.

I’m not saying no one has ever come out at age eight or nine, but I’m not sure Pearson had to decide whether his fourth grader was a heartless libertine or not.

I spent a huge chunk of my childhood afraid of the torments of hell…being raised Catholic, I truly believed that if I died with a mortal sin on my soul, I would go straight to hell. A “mortal sin”, for you lucky non-Catholics, is breaking one of the 10 commandments—I was OK regarding murder and adultery, but I swore like a motherfucker even as a young child. So if I said “goddammit” on Monday, I was in terror until Saturday, when I could confess and clean my slate. And I knew if I got hit by a bus, it was an eternity of torment for me.

Then I came to realize that my best friend, who was Jewish, was going to spend an eternity being tortured by God deSade, just because his parents were raising him in a different religion. I decided that either a) this shit they were feeding me in catechism just couldn’t be true, or b) it was true, and it meant god was a petty, vindictive asshole. Either way, I stopped playing. And it felt good.

“Without fear, he suggests, the whole system will collapse, and all the people who rely on it for money or power would see that disappear.”

At first I wondered why he was willing to go all the way and give up the idea of hell entirely rather than settle for a watered-down compromise like Purgatory or an exclusive hell where the truly evil are weeded out from the mere unfaithful. But his understanding of how the concept of the vindictive god is all about getting butts in the pews shows that he no longer cares to be a part of the church machinery. As the Catholics and mainline Protestants have toned down the fearmongering, they’ve lost church members in record numbers. Meanwhile, the fundies sign up thousands of new converts every year…

“fundamentalism and atheism are the only two consistent responses to the Christian testament.”

Frankly, that seems a little silly.  The New Testament is a grab bag of gospels and letters that past muster with Eusebius and the fourth century bishops.  Within it you have multiple viewpoints and multiple interpretations of the nature of Jesus.  Even if you accept that it is inspired, you still have to work your way through the thing and fill in the gaps it leaves - big gaps like the nature of the trinity, the process of salvation and the relation of Christians to the law.  So even it you treat the bible as if it fell from the sky in 1611, you bring most of the big ticket items to the table yourself.  And that’s if you declare that the work of the ancient church fathers who selected the cannon was inspired.  If you don’t,  then you’re stuck playing textual archeology. 

The bible is no more than 50% of Christianity.  Actually, when you realize that folks like Eusebius selected gospels based on their agreement with the tradition, it’s probably less than that.  The rest comes from differing streams of tradition, and these are human creations.

Well, you can follow the spirit of what Jesus was trying to say about the day-to-day

Well, what was he trying to say? Absent a reliable Bible what source do you have for Jesus’s words or philosophy?

Buddhism, while not technically a religion

I always laugh at this, because it’s as naive as the people who say “I don’t have a religion; I just have a personal relationship with God.” Buddhism is a religion. It may be a philosophy, as well, but then so is Christianity. Various forms of Buddhism may be more or less supernatural than others, but they’re all supernatural to some degree, and when you combine ethical/moral prescriptions with supernatural entities, religion is the result.

But, that’s an aside. While you may perceive Jesus as having promoted a philosophy that’s Buddhist-like, that perception is the result of reading a Bible we’ve agreed is unreliable. So there’s really no way to know what philosophy Jesus actually promoted, since there’s no other surviving source of his teachings.

Now, you may decide that it doesn’t matter if Jesus actually said it or not; maybe, in your view (as it is in mine) there’s sufficient merit in the Jesus narrative to follow it regardless of who actually came up with it. And that’s fine for me as an atheist. But for someone who claims to be a Christian, how can they take that position without admitting that they follow the philosophy of a fictional character? How can someone who says they’re a Christian come to the conclusion that the Christ they follow may not have existed at all?

Do you see what I’m trying to say? I know you can follow the philosophy of a fictional character; I just don’t understand how that can be your religion.

Even if you accept that it is inspired, you still have to work your way through the thing and fill in the gaps it leaves - big gaps like the nature of the trinity, the process of salvation and the relation of Christians to the law.

Or, like the fundamentalists do, you could just not bother, and accept that the things you don’t understand about the Bible - like the inconsistencies and gaps - are indications you’re just not faithful enough, yet.

But it can’t be a human creation - because it says it can’t. Right in it. If this logic does not sway you, then you’re probably an atheist, already.

How could such a person be a Christian? I mean, to be a Christian is to follow Christ, but the only source of the philosophy and teachings of Jesus is the Bible.

But if you believe the Bible to be an essentially unreliable history, what teachings can you possibly follow?

You could be a gnostic who reads the Gnostic Gospels or other apocryphal gospels.  The early Church fathers excluded whole swaths of Christian writing, including pretty hilarious stories about adolescent Jesus killing other kids and his teachers by zapping them when they piss him off.

Speaking of Rwanda, people who live in countries that have that level of oppression and brutality are often heavily invested in the idea of hell.  They see no justice in this world and they’re desperate to believe in justice in the next.  Not everyone believes in hell to gloat over the fate of others.  Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps people sane in a society rife with torture, rape, and murder.

Amanda,  in addition to

“..... fundamentalists are drawn to this evil, vindictive god myth because they like feeling superior, being able to dismiss the majority of the world as inferior to them.”

It also allows them to be intellectually lazy: “faith” gives their irrational views he same standing (in their mind) as informed/educated/compassionate/moral ones. No need to study or understand anything about science, or history, or politics.

You could be a gnostic who reads the Gnostic Gospels or other apocryphal gospels.

You’re not addressing the reliability problem; you’re only making it worse. How do you know the Gnostic gospels, or any of your apocryphal sources, are any more accurate or historical? Indeed what reason is there to prefer those sources other than they present a picture of Jesus you’re more ideologically inclined to accept?

I don’t see how it makes you any less of a pick-and-choose Christian just because you’re picking and choosing from a somewhat larger menu.

My bad. Pearson’s best friend was gay.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/24/cnr.01.html

I may be confusing Pearson’s story with some other formerly conservative black pastor’s story.

1. What Pearson’s story highlights for me is the fact that fundie XY is born of a complete ignorance of centuries of Christian intellectual tradition. Seriously, all dude needed to do was read some Kant and/or Kierkegaard in his youth, and he could have saved himself a lot of time and angst.

2. Anybody who imagines they’re going to “convert” people to atheism by repeatedly calling them “pick and choose Christians” is likely to be disappointed. Evangelical atheists make the same mistake as evangelical Christians; mistaking belief in G-d for a matter of knowledge, not faith. Sure, you might successfully brow-beat someone in an argument, but you’re not going to change their faith, or lack thereof.

So, “excluded middle” is the meme of the week?  Where do all my memos get routed to?

(Damn, now I’ll have to reject it.  I’ll just think of another term….perhaps “nonbinary categorization”.)

Absent a reliable Bible what source do you have for Jesus’s words or philosophy?

A ‘reliable Bible’ itself is a myth.  It’s an edited artifact.

<block>I can accept the logical consistency of complete belief and complete unbelief, but I cannot come up with an epistemology that says there is a God, but the bible is only partially true and I am the ultimate arbiter of eternal truth.</block>

how about “God, being omniscient, has perfect knowledge of the contents of our hearts and minds, and therefore penned his works with that in mind. in writing something for a target audience that consists of everyone on earth for a period of some 3000 years, there are bound to be vagueries, contradictions, and outright lies, and the order of the day is to read for intent.”

or alternatively “I believe god exists and created the world, but did not write these holy books, which were penned by humans. That said, the humans are right about enough things that we should pay attention to what they wrote and not just discard it.”

these are not difficult ideas to grasp

What’s funny to me is the way that fundamentalists—who don’t actually know much about Christianity or its history—will announce that fundamentalism is the only true Christianity.  Fundamentalism is a 19th century American invention that arrogates to itself the right to white out most of the previous eighteen centuries of Christianity.

Chet, I’m finding your take a very odd one. Why would it be so impossible to believe that Jesus really did exist, and really was God, but that the recorders of his life were human and prone to all the errors humans make?

I’d find it a lot harder to believe that God personally penned the Psalms, which would put him in the category of the rock star with two secretaries, one to answer his fan mail, and the other to write it.

It’s the message that is attributed to him—the “love your neighbor as yourself” sort of thing—that you can embrace, and that I, an avowed atheist, embrace.

As an atheist who also finds much of merit in the message attributed to Christ, I obviously can’t disagree or find fault with your position. It’s the position of the moderate Christian that I was speaking about, but I don’t necessarily expect you to be defending that position. Like me, perhaps you find it indefensible.

Why would it be so impossible to believe that Jesus really did exist, and really was God, but that the recorders of his life were human and prone to all the errors humans make?

I don’t find it impossible to believe. I find it impossible to defend. If the Bible cannot be trusted as an accurate account of the works and sayings of that Divine Christ, then in what sense can you honestly follow him?

If the Bible was written by error-prone men, and you’re attempting to follow Jesus Christ by means of the Bible, how are you not actually following (and idolizing) the error-prone men who wrote the Bible?

There’s nothing “odd” about my take; it’s a very simple question for Christians who do not believe in an inerrant Bible. If there’s no reliable, inerrant source of communication between you and Jesus, how can you follow Jesus? I mean you’re attempting to follow a God who’s left you literally no idea of what to do or how to act.

A ‘reliable Bible’ itself is a myth.  It’s an edited artifact.

Yes, that’s rather the point. What I can’t understand is how you can believe one myth - the life and times of Jesus Christ - without also believing in the other - an inerrant Bible.

If the Bible cannot be trusted as an accurate account of the works and sayings of that Divine Christ, then in what sense can you honestly follow him?

In the sense that you feel a connection to something larger than yourself that, for convenience, you label as “Jesus” because that is the cultural context that you have.

This is the problem we always have once these conversations start—you keep demanding proof for something that by definition cannot be proven because it’s an inner experience. What’s your definitive, scientific proof that your mother loves you?  For all you know, she’s been faking it all these years and lying to you to pretend to an emotion she doesn’t have.

What’s your definitive, scientific proof that your mother loves you?  For all you know, she’s been faking it all these years and lying to you to pretend to an emotion she doesn’t have.

Are you sure you’re not my sister?

Something I’ve been wondering is whether as an atheist I don’t have that same feeling, or whether I feel it but attribute it to something else like “the good of humanity” or “the beauty of the natural world”. I’ve tried to pry a description of it from a Christian, but they were not terrificly expressive.

Again, inner experience and probably different for everyone but ... you know when you’ve been mulling over a problem in the back of your head for so long that you’ve almost forgotten about it, and then suddenly one day you’re doing something completely unrelated and the solution pops into your head and it all makes sense?

It was kind of like that.

Are you sure you’re not my sister?

What can I say?  Mom always liked me best.

The way my husband says it, Christ told parables often. Many of the books of the Old Testament read better that way. (For instance, Job: one of the reasons I rejected the Bible. God and Satan are playing a sort of game with a man’s faith? And kill his family to test him? And give him a frickin’ replacement family, like that will make up for the grief? But if it’s not real, just a story, then the point is that Bad Shit happens to Good People, so when your neighbor’s house caves in and kills his kids, don’t shun him, give him a helping hand. I think it’s not a well-written story, but I can see it’s not an easy lesson to get across to the sheep herders it was written for.)

As for the Gospels, everyone who knows anything knows about the Bible knows they weren’t written down for anything from decades to centuries after the events told of. It’s the biggest game of Telephone we have on record, pretty much, and no one who can tell us what the original whisper was. One Gospel quotes Jesus saying one thing; another contradicts it. When oral history is passed along, faulty memories and editorialization creep in.

Frankly, the only way I can see for someone to believe in the overall story of the Bible (which I don’t, but I can understand my spouse’s viewpoint) is to either parse what a sensible person can believe in and what must be metaphor or error… or to be the fan of the Sky Bully who makes you feel tough by being on his team. I respect the amateur theologians who try to find evidence of an intelligent and loving God written in a series of ancient texts. The people who cheerfully consign me to hell for using the brains we evolved, though, are not people I care to interact with at all. It is a serious friendship-breaker for me.

Gee, Chet, what’s with the excluded middle?  The only two alternatives are an inerrant Bible, or treating all we know or believe about Jesus as if it was completely made up out of whole cloth?  I can understand that attitude from fundamentalists who are trying to justify their own belief in Biblical inerrancy (even though I think they are wrong about both the argument and the inerrancy), but why do you advocate for such a strawman?

Suppose you were trying to follow George Washington as your spiritual/political guide to the world.  You might read all the accounts of his life you can find, and accept that there are aspects of legends that have grown up about him that are extremely unlikely to be true, even though they might be repeated in many of the accounts you read.  It’s unlikely that he ever improperly chopped down a cherry tree, stood up in the boat crossing the Delaware, or threw a silver dollar across the Potomac.  But that doesn’t mean that we have to doubt whether or not he was at Valley Forge.

Now of course the historical record is far better developed for Washington than it is for Jesus.  But the general principle still holds.  One can live with a certain amount of humility and uncertainty, knowing that all human knowledge is imperfect, including one’s own, and still try to ascertain as best one can which parts of the story are likeliest to be true, and which parts are likely to have been added on later.  Just because you can’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all.

Chet, your attitude seems oddly fundamentalist to me. To say that either the Bible is completely inerrant or it is nothing is nonsense. Nothing humans touch is completely inerrant, never has been, never will be. We interpret scripture using tradition and reason (and also community, though that’s not part of the official Episcopal set) - there are a few things on which we’re absolutely clear - Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; Love your neighbor as yourself. Other things are evaluated on principles like - how well do they fit with those things we’re sure of? How often and clearly is the point made (one obscure reference vs. a point that appears clearly in several places written by several different authors)?

To say that without an inerrant Bible we have nothing to give us any notion of what God wants (presuming we believe in the god of the Bible and Christ) is as nonsensical as saying that without God there’s no basis for human morality (after all, it could be anything! There’s no authority!). I’m assuming you find the latter claim spurious.

But I can’t help but thinking that fundamentalists are drawn to this evil, vindictive god myth because they like feeling superior, being able to dismiss the majority of the world as inferior to them. They may resent that god’s a bully at times, especially when he sets up people they like for eternal torture, but they side with the bully because they are in love with his power.  It’s only about love in the sense that you feel affection for the others in your club of bullies, but of course there’s no love for the objects of bullying.

Well, I see that Alice Miller has already been mentioned in this thread, but not in the way I expected… As far as I can see, the typical fundie relationship with God is exactly the same as that between a child and an abusive parent (or a battered spouse and their abuser). Once you’ve learned that love is expressed through beatings and humiliation, it’s very easy to transfer that idea to other areas of your life.

I don’t think the Bible must be either inerrant or worthless, but if you assume it to be the product of divine revelation, it does raise some serious questions as to why the text would be imperfect. If God had a message he wanted to convey to humans, one would think he would want to communicate clearly. The rivers of blood spilled by people fighting over differing interpretations of God show not just that the message is anything but clear, but that being unclear leads to terrible consequences for human beings.

So, did God not want to communicate his message more clearly? Or did he want to, but lacked the ability to do so? Why even write a book - one book, whose origins are in a long-ago time and a far different culture, prone to mistranslation, misinterpretation and deliberate alteration? Why not just speak to all of us directly, impress his message on everyone’s heart? Why grant some people special access to his word, and convey the message in such a flawed and imprecise format? These are questions that the non-fundamentalist theology, for all its virtues, does not have satisfactory answers for.

I heard that one a while back and re-listened because it was so good.

Absent a reliable Bible what source do you have for Jesus’s words or philosophy?

Chet, all of our knowlege of history is created from understanding how to work with sources. Much of detective work and journalism is about working with sources to find out what has happened, or what is going on. Our understanding is never perfect (notice how history changes to fit the zeitgeist?), and becomes less perfect the less understanding a person has of the process of discovery and detection. People in general are good at working with a crowd of unreliable witnesses, because that’s all we have, all the time. Why should religion be the sole human endeavor that becomes invalid if what people tell about god is not 100 per cent true and consistent?

I rather like the image that CS Lewis uses in _The Great Divorce_: that Hell is simply separation from God, that Heaven is the nearness of God, and that there are regular bus trips between the two.

Incertus: If what you’re looking for is a copy of God’s exact words,

Back when I worked hard at being religious, I suspected that it was impossible for humans to copy god’s exact words in any way. Tiny human brains and all that.

Eric: Where do all my memos get routed to?

If you use bayesian spam filtering, look in your spam folder. Everything of a type that got rejected often enough ends up there.

Walt: What’s funny to me is the way that fundamentalists [...] will announce that fundamentalism is the only true Christianity.

They are following a long tradition of declaring one’s newest interpration as the One True whatever. (Do I get a tautology award?)

I like the first bit of this video a lot:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/213-Too-Human

I’ve long held the view that the gods we hear about sound very much like humans with extreme tendencies who have the power to support their extremism.

Oh, but I disagree about why people believe and the notion that it is all about fear or a fondness for power.  In my opinion, it comes down to control issues.  The notion of the world as a rudderless ship without a captain floating in a sea of anarchy is very frightening.  Believing that there is a captain on-board who is actually guiding you to some destination, regardless of the rest of the folderol that surrounds the captain, is comforting.  Prayer makes a good example of this control idea.  People pray in order to gain some measure of control over things that are beyond them.

I heard the show and without documentation I don’t accept that NancyP is correct about Pearson supposedly having a gay son.  There was no mention of it on the show.  Instead Pearson gave a moving account of a moment, prompted by the TV scenes of starving Rwandan refugees,  in which an angel of God spoke to him and told him that there is no hell other than the hell that people make for each other on earth.  I don’t believe that Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, would have omitted to mention Pearson’s “gay son” if any such person existed. 

I’ve done a half hour of internet searching and found no mention of Pearson’s son, except for an equivocal reference on a truly hateful site.

What I did find is that Pearson was featured in a CNN story showing Pearson preaching acceptance of homosexuality in his “church of inclusion.”  The CNN voice-over says that in part his revelation with respect to homosexuality was prompted by his “best friend’s” coming out to him.  http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/23/cnr.06.html  This CNN story, which is about “being gay in America” and not about Pearson in particular, doesn’t contradict his own account of his broader revelation.

It’s possible that NancyP has heard or read a distorted version of the CNN story. 

While I know nothing about Pearson, I do have a fair amount of confidence in Ira Glass.  And for NancyP’s story to be true, Glass would either have to be a liar or an incompetent.  So unless NancyP can come up with a trustworthy source, I’m going to reject her assertion.  I’m not making any judgment about NancyP’s own truthfulness - but I’m going to treat her statement as not existing, since it has no support and to believe it I would have to reject something else that I believe to be to be true, which is that Ira Glass is a careful and credible journalist.

Let’s talk about Rwanda, it’s on the way up, world observers consider it the jewel of Africa and template for the surrounding continent. Religion plays a huge part in the rebuilding, where forgiveness and reconciliation between victims and killers is public policy. Forgiveness is an obligation imposed on the citizenry, unthinkable as what led to it, but they had no other choice. Killers and victims are next door neighbors; the country is too poor to house and over a million convicted killers, and they had to open the prisons to release the men to rebuild the country, which was completely destroyed in ‘94. So today they don’t talk about justice in Rwanda, it’s all about forgiveness, unity,  reconciliation, progress.  It boggles the mind, but they’re doing it and that commands respect. Women and God lead Rwanda today, though benevolent dictator and president Kagame has no official stand on religion besides its usefulness in helping Rwandans cope with their history, he is an advocate of womens power; Rwanda’s legislature is led by women, the first in the world with a female majority.

Sorry if I’m coming across all know-it-all but I swear to heck I think about Rwanda every day of my life because I can’t get over what’s happening there, the mixed-bag crazy good of its unwarranted possibility. Otherworldly as fuck.

Mnem:

In the sense that you feel a connection to something larger than yourself that, for convenience, you label as “Jesus” because that is the cultural context that you have.

So, it doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you can claim others are believing it with you. Check.

Dave:

Gee, Chet, what’s with the excluded middle?

Religion excludes the middle. I’ll get back to that in a sec.

Suppose you were trying to follow George Washington as your spiritual/political guide to the world.

It’s one thing to view a historical figure as a model or even as a hero, and similarly, it’s possible to view Jesus as a “great teacher” who promoted a model of society worth following. Indeed, it’s possible to see a fictional character as such a figure - I somewhat follow Gregory House in that way - and I don’t have a problem with that.

But none of that is religion. If you’re going to get religious and follow a figure not as a guide or model but as your personal savior and moral lodestar, how can you go half-measures with that? How can you simultaneously make Jesus Christ the center of your spiritual universe and participate in church with others doing the same thing, at the same time you’re perfectly happy to recognize that you may, in fact, be completely misinformed as to what precisely Jesus’s moral philosophy actually was?

Inge:

Why should religion be the sole human endeavor that becomes invalid if what people tell about god is not 100 per cent true and consistent?

Because religion claims to be the sole human endeavor that offers perfect certainty. That’s why. The rules are different for religion because it claims to operate under different rules.

Tapetum:

there are a few things on which we’re absolutely clear - Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; Love your neighbor as yourself.

Why are you absolutely sure of those things?

Chet,

Would you be willing to define what, exactly, “religion” means to you?

I ask because I see a lot of “this is religion” and “that isn’t religion” posts from you, and it’d be good to know what definition you are woring from before engaging further. Thanks.

There is a religious position that holds theodicy to be evil because it accepts (like Job’s “friends” do) that moral outrages like genocide must be part of God’s plan somehow, which amounts to complicity.  It becomes one’s obligation to hold God accountable by taking action against the evil he allows or causes, and letting it stand as one’s protest that one can act more compassionately than God.

Not that there’s probably a lot of fundamentalists in this camp, but I found it quite compelling.

Chet, you never answered my question for you:  you rely on proof even for things that are inner experiences.  How can you be certain of anyone’s emotions towards you? 

So, it doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you can claim others are believing it with you. Check.

Uh, no, you have it exactly backwards.  It doesn’t matter what you believe because all religion and spirituality is an inner experience that can never be duplicated.  If you take 10 people from a fundamentalist church and give each of them an anonymous quiz, you will end up with 10 different opinions about what God is and how he operates.  Even with the same guidelines, no two people have the same experience.

Chet - first off, wow, if Gregory House is your moral compass, then you and I aren’t going to see eye to eye on very much at all.

As to the propositions:
1. Love God with all your heart, soul and mind - because if God doesn’t want these things then the whole endeavor is somewhat pointless anyway (if the effort to please God doesn’t please God (and God exists) then we’re up shit creek).

2. Because it’s possibly the most fundamental expression of group morality going, found not just in Christianity (in several places with different wordings), but in most sacred texts from most religions, and found in some form in most secular expressions of morality as well. In short, if this one isn’t true, then the human race as a whole has to go back to the drawing board on this morality thing. I’d readily give up on #1 before I gave up on this one.

I second the request for your opinion on what religion is, because I’m beginning to suspect that the Venn diagram of my definition and your definition wouldn’t necessarily overlap much.

Chet: Because religion claims to be the sole human endeavor that offers perfect certainty.

Well, at least someone reasonably relevant to christianity wrote “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Certainty is created in the mind, not in the data.

preying mantis: “Excepting the stuff in the Revelation of Dr. Crazypants, I’m almost positive there’s nothing about hell as it’s portrayed now in the Bible itself.  It’s a separation from God, as opposed to heaven, which is being with God.”

What counts as “nothing” is of course open to question, and probably in the eye of the beholder.  But the teachings of Jesus in the gospels return constantly to the eternal fiery torment that awaits those who do not believe, or don’t do what Jesus tells them to (like pluck out their eyes to avoid sin), or who piss against a wall, or whatever.  I don’t see how that can be considered “nothing about hell.”

As for “the original religion,” we know almost nothing about it.  One of the most interesting things to me about early Christianity is that it seems to have split up into competing and often mutually hostile groups within a year or two of Jesus’ death.  (You can see some evidence of this in Paul’s letters, which were almost certainly written before the gospels.)  It’s not far off, I think, to say that there is no such thing as original Christianity, only original Christianities.  What Jesus himself taught or did is lost, probably forever.

Who’s the engraving by and what’s it from?

Because religion claims to be the sole human endeavor that offers perfect certainty. That’s why. The rules are different for religion because it claims to operate under different rules.

I’d still like for Chet to answer how he defines religion.

I ask because I *think* that what he means by the term religion translates to what I mean by the term fundamentalist One True Wayism.

I consider myself religious (shout out to the Wiccans on the board), but I in no way claim or believe that my particular religion “offers perfect certainty”. Or any kind of certainty. Or any kind of perfection. I believe that my religion satisfies a specific need I have now and the religion I identify with describes an inner state that I experience currently. In the future, if my needs and inner states change, so may my religion-of-identification.

Apparently, and I’m shaky on this, according to Chet, I don’t have a religion. Or something. And I’d like to get an explanation for that…because I think we’re talking apples and oranges otherwise.

Also, Chet, have you spent much time with self-described “religious” people IRL who weren’t fundie Christians? I ask because, well, it’s usual for people coming out of a fundie atmosphere to eroneously equate all religions to One True Wayism, and that’s just not so - many religions are very accepting of the idea that other religions are qually true/valid/meaningful.

“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!”

—Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger”

All the way back to Socrates people have debated whether all god does is good or if god only does that which is good - and what does it mean for our own human morality.

Bitter Scribe, good pick. I think part of the horror directed at atheists derives from an improper transferral of in idea. See, Christians believe that we were created by an omnibenevolent presence, and that therefore, it’s our duty to respect and emulate that presence, to make ourselves in its image. On the other hand, plenty of atheists believe that we were created by Nature, through a process which ranges from murderously indifferent to actively malevolent, and by analogy, we should be sculpting avatars of Chaos and reaving across the countryside in homage to our creator…

... except that that’s a ridiculous idea, and rejection of Nature’s wasteful, destructive way of doing things has been a mainstay of philosophy for literally centuries. So, here’s J.S. Mill, saying pretty much the same thing Twain was saying above:

In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s every-day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures. [...] Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps the prospect of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. Such are Nature’s dealings with life.

While it would be difficult to say of the entire bible, it is either true or false, one can make that statement about any supposition put forth in the bible.  In Matthew 1:13 the discrete claim that Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud is put forward.  Now either this is true or false, though we are unable to determine which without more data, so we must look to other data to confirm the truth of the statement, unfortunately we have no other data, so we are left without any reason to believe that Zerubbabel begat Abiud, beyond the biblical claim.

Once an individual determines that Matthew 5:18 (biblical inerrancy) is false then other parts can be false as well.  Lacking verifiable evidence for believing any of the individual claims put forth in the bible from the minor (Zerubbabel and his son) to the major (existence of God), and lacking belief in the bible one is left without reason to believe in the suppositions put forth in the bible.

The two central tenets of Christianity are love god and love your fellow man (leaving aside Jesus’ commandments to hate your fellow man in Luke 14:26, Matthew 10:34-39, and Luke 12:51-53). If the biblical (and other holy textual) reasons to believe in god are removed then one of the two most basic pieces of Christianity is removed. 

Thus it seems that without belief in the bible, one cannot be a Christian.

george: All the way back to Socrates people have debated whether all god does is good or if god only does that which is good - and what does it mean for our own human morality.

Yes, I think that’s the “Euthyphro” dilemma. As for what it looks like when someone takes this argument to its logical conclusion, I can do no better than to present the future toddler chopper.

That is a beautiful Twain quote.

Chet, you never answered my question for you:  you rely on proof even for things that are inner experiences.  How can you be certain of anyone’s emotions towards you?

On this point . . .

If you define “God” as an inner experience - a sensation akin to the feeling of profundity or wonder or some kind of meditative calm or sense of connection with the world, then you’re not talking about the same god concept Chet is referring to.  When atheists speak of “God” they’re speaking of a deity with physical and moral agency in the natural world.  It’s not descriptive of a psychological or emotional state of being.  You’ll always talk past each other when one person is discussing God as the kind of goodness you feel when you marvel at the beauty of the sea, and the other person is discussuing God as the Big Sky Fairy who makes volcanoes erupt and appears in the form of a burning bush.

If, for you, “God” isn’t a BSF, but a self-evident emotional awareness and sense of being, then you’re using the term in a historically and biblically inconsistent way.  For the sake of discussion I wish people would find another word or phrase for this.  Chris Hedges and Sam Harris had what should have been an engaging and articulate discussion/debate and ended up talking past each other repeatedly because of this very issue.

Deep6, I think you (and Fatman and Chet) are missing the point.

The assumption here seems to be that a “Christian” is made by sitting down and deciding that the Christian God exists (either through internal feelings or a decision that, hey, the Bible seems pretty inerrant) and then deciding to worship that Christian God. Rinse and repeat for all other religions.

The “inner experience” that the religious people are talking about on the board is a key to why you’re wrong about the Point A to Point B construct that you’re arguing from. For most (not all) religious people, they have an internal experience, feeling, state of mind, what have you, and then they look for a way to describe it. When they find the religion that best identifies this inner experience, that is when the label takes.

So, in other words, saying that “self-evident emotional awareness” is historically inconsistent is, frankly, wrong. There are thousands of “conversion stories” modern and historic alike, where the “convert” to whatever religion we are discussing states that they have felt this inner feeling all their life and only now know what to name it having been exposed to whatever new religion they are “converting” to.

America doesn’t do it this way anymore - at least not usually - because most Americans have heard of Christianity, so you’d have to be pretty damned insular to “suddenly” hear of Christianity and shout, like a Peanuts character, THAT’S IT!!! But I’ve seen this experience play out many times with insulated ex-Christians who have found some minor, less-openly-talked-about-in-our-culture religion. To wit, most of the Wiccans I know didn’t “become” Wiccans because they decided that Gardner had his shit together, most of them “identify” as Wiccans because they realized that the religion most accurately described their inner experiences.

Trying to explain this to an atheist, however, is difficult, because (presumably) they don’t have a “religious inner experience” that causes them to self-identify with a religion. So it’s like trying to explain emotion to a Vulcan. And, of course, it doesn’t help if the Vulcan thinks he’s superior because he doesn’t have those pesky emotions. (Not that I’m saying anyone HERE does that.) (And, yes, I realize Vulcans CONTROL emotions, instead of LACKING them. The analogy is flawed. But it was the best I could do on short notice.)

grendelkhan, nice Mill quote. Among other things, it illustrates something I’ve noticed among contemporary religious people: the tendency to make Mother Nature the “fall gal” for God. IOW, people will say “Mother Nature really hammered us with this” flood, tornado, or whatever; a few weeks later they’ll say, “What a beautiful day God has given us.”

Ellen,

Help me understand: 

What is the difference between the inner experience of a Christian and the inner experience of a Muslim?  Or the inner experience of a Jehovah’s Witness and the inner experience of a Hindu?  What are the inner experiences of a Wiccan?  If you’re religious, what is your inner experience?  What about it allows you to label youself as Christian or whatever?

That was a great little essay, phylosopher@8:07PM.  Thanks for linking to it.

Ellen, you are right.  That is the flaw in my thinking, I was ignoring evidence that I don’t understand.  If there is evidence to believe in god then one could be a Christian without belief in the bible.  That is what that “inner experience”  you mentioned amounts to, evidence for the belief in god. 

For some time I have been trying to understand the difference between people believers and myself.  I think this may be it, they require a different level of verification of evidence than accepting it than i do.  The entirely internal experience, is to me, poor evidence, because with out cross checking the is no way to insure data cleanliness. 

For example, before I get a migraine I see sparkly slivers of light that waiver between silver and a kind of prismatic white.  These could be some form of malevolent fey or demon that attacks me, causing pain, but if that were the case others would see them as well.  My wholly internal experience of the lights does not translate to belief for me because of the verification I require before accepting the evidence. 

I read that last paragraph and it sounded kind of arrogant, and I promise I am not trying to belittle you or other believers, I am just trying to understand the disconnect between myself and the vast majority of humans on the issue of religious phenomena.

I have to go to a meeting, hopefully I can write more later.

And I should add, I’m not trying to be captious or condescending.  I’d really like to know.  I, as an atheist, have experienced moments of profundity and awe, and moments of acute consciousness and moments of deep introspection.  Despite having all these feelings I’ve never once had the need to encapsulate them by self-identifying with a sectarian label that requires the belief in some kind of sentient deity.  The enormity of the human experience for me is far beyond anything that people associate with sectarian superstitions and cultural norms/traditions that we characterize with religious labels.

I’m also confused by the geography of this.  If most people don’t consciously go about their day believing in a god, and they really are able to sense a being in the universe through some kind of emotional sartori, why do millions of people in confined geographic regions all have the same inner experience?  It’s not coincidental that religious groups are largely congregated in the same geographical regions.  It can’t be that overwhelmingly people in the US have inner experiences that identify them as Christian, and that overwhelmingly in Indonesia people have an inner experience that they identiy as Muslim.  Something about the identification has to be cultural and insular, and not at all related to the inner experience - unless people are going around mislabeling themselves, and the diversity of the inner experience isn’t nearly as ubiquitously Christian in the US as Christians would like to believe.

Deep6,

Being a Wiccan is like being love. No one can tell you you’re in love, You just know it, through and through.

And, yeah, it’s sad that I’m resorting to Matrix quotes. But I’m deeply confused that you’re confused by this. Think of your favorite food - let’s say it’s spaghetti. You probably didn’t sit down, figure up the nutritional content of spaghetti, measure the pros and cons of a heavily spaghetti diet, and then decide, on balance, that it would be your favorite food. You probably tasted it one day - either trying it out in a recipe book, or visiting a new restaurant, or having a shared dinner with a friend - and you tasted it and thought, Wow! This is what I’ve been hungry for!

Or think of your spouse (assuming you have one). You probably dated many people before finding him/her. They probably all had some good qualities and bad qualities. Despite the fact that they weren’t “right” for you didn’t make them bad people… and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t “right” for someone else. But something about your spouse, at some point, stirred your soul and made you think This is the one I’ve been waiting for. Sure, you probably made some rational decisions and evaluations getting there, but there was at least some emotion or inner feeling, I would bet, that accompanied that, some inner recognition that this person was right.

Why would religion be any different? Can you describe why, say, “Robin” is your spouse of choice and not any of the other men/women out there? Can you explain why spaghetti is the food that you especially crave? Probably you can give some identifying factors, sure. But, equally probably, there’s an element of “it’s just the right thing for me”.

I don’t understand why relgion is so confusing to an atheist. Do you all have love lives based on perfect logic and infallible partners? Where do you GET these infallible partners? Inquiring minds need to know! o_O

One of the best writings I have ever encountered on this subject is Weston LaBarre’s The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion—particularly the Introduction, where he summarizes the theses that he develops and documents (exhaustively) in the rest of the book. LaBarre was an anthroplogist who studied Native American culture, as well as other “primitive” peoples, and in particular the development of various “cults” such as the Cargo Cult religions of Micronesia. The subject of his study was specifically religion, not “God”. The subject matter of religion, “God”, cannot be “studied” in the usual sense of examining all the contradictory and paradoxical claims regarding the attributes of “God”, and trying to distill some core set of attributes which may be regarded as “known truths”, because in the case of “God”, there are none such. Literally every such attribute either a) contradicts actually known phyisical law, b) rests only on an assertion, typically disguised as “revelation”, or c) relies stictly on the authority of some ancient text of unknown provenance.

I no longer have my copy at hand, so I must rely on my memory of it to recreate his argument, but I was struck by his formulation that, as used in conversational language, “God” is really a pronoun like “you”, “it” or “that”. A pronoun is a reference to another object/noun, and in the case of “God”, the reference is to The Unknown—that of which the speaker has no knowledge or information, by definition. The problem comes from the fact that the “God” pronoun masquerades in normal usage as a noun, which allows people to promiscuously assign to “God” all sorts of attributes (things which only nouns can have) which may freely contradict one another because the fundamental “non-property” of The Unknown is that you do not, and cannot, know which—if any—attributes may legimately be applied to it.

Questions about whether “God exists” devolve into arguments about whether a God with a certain set of claimed attributes exists or could exist: omnipotence (yet so powerless to convice the unfaithful), omniscience (yet so disappointed that we fail to live up to expectations), all-loving (yet so wrathful and vidictive over typically petty shit), etc. The only proper answer to such bushwah is: No, no such God could or does exist, and would be the very definition of abomination, if one such could exist (but thankfully, it can’t).

On the other hand, God as avatar of The Unknown certainly “exists”, if you want to call the absence of any possible knowledge of something “existence”. The progress of science and the scientific method has tended to shrink the domain of The Unknown over time; only a few centuries ago it encompassed nearly everything, and now it is reduced to fighting viciously over the few scraps of things and processes that are either so rare, or so slow, that they are hard to observe (c.f. evolution). The emotional content of religion, the psychological need of human beings for a “loving parent or Father” to watch over us and protect us from Evil, is a different matter, that stems from the neoteny of the human animal, which is what allowed us to acquire our outsized brains. It is an open question whether this psychological flaw in the human emotional makeup will be the “tragic flaw” that leads to the downfall of homo sapiens as an evolutionary experiment.

On good days, one can hope for the emotional maturity of humanity; on bad days, one can only hope that the downfall comes soon enough for our fellow species on this planet.

Fatman,

You have such thoughful responses. I think a great example of a Christian-who-doesn’t-believe-in-the-Bible-or-at-least-not-all-of-it would be the incredibly awesome Robert Price. He’s made a career studying and dissecting the Bible and then writing well-researched books picking apart practically every sentence in, say, the Gospels (for example). Yet he’s still a Christian because just because he doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of biblical writings he believes in the validity of the underlying beliefs that gave rise to the Christian mythos. (He’s also very interested in Buddhism, for the same reasons.)

I agree that it seems odd at first to consider someone like that a “Christian”, until I realized that I was letting fundamentalists set the terms. (For more fun and games, I have recently been labelled “never a Christian” online by people who declared that REAL Christians don’t leave the religion. Imagine my shock that I’d been appaerntly faking my sincere devotion all those years, without realizing it!!)

I actually like atheists a great deal (I’m assuming you are one) and I would never encourage you to muster up a belief that you didn’t feel, especially with regards to the dizzy lights. All the Real Life atheists I know are charming people who love the idea of religious freedom. They generally understand that their deep-seated “belief” (not the right term, but I’m not sure what is) in No-God is not a choice - it is a state of being for them. So they understand that my belief in Wicca is no more a choice for me than their atheism is for them. Real Life atheists don’t proseletize because they know how much they HATE being proseletized to and they do unto others, so to speak.

Or perhaps you’re an agnostic…you mention not believing things without physical proof and that’s sometimes agnostism and sometimes atheism. Either way, thank you for the thoughtful reply.

why do millions of people in confined geographic regions all have the same inner experience?  It’s not coincidental that religious groups are largely congregated in the same geographical regions.

Well, keep in mind that in many regions on earth, it’s simply not safe to identify against the religion that, historically, dominated that area by violence. And even when it is safe, it’s not always politic - I doubt we’ll soon have an openly Muslim, Wiccan, or atheist president of the United States. That doesn’t mean that s/he might not secretly be one of those things, but we would never know.

Also, human tribalism being what it is, it’s not uncommon for parents to want their children to self-identify with the things the parents identify with. My parents still think I’m Christian because it would break their heart to know otherwise. For that matter, if you know me in Real Life, YOU might think I’m a Christian, just because “most” Americans are, right?

Thirdly, although related to points one and two, if you’re not especially religious, it’s easy to identify with the majority and/or parental religion, just because it’s easier to go with the flow if you don’t care. I suspect this is why church attendance falls off so sharply among Americans post-college - they either find it socially safer to identify with their new religion or (in many cases) they no longer feel they have to keep the pretense of ANY religion up. (The political equivalent of being a Republican for the parents but never voting once you move out, I suppose. Are you really a “Republican” if you never, ever vote? And if you don’t give a damn about elections?)

So I don’t think that “atheist” is a small group in America - just that “openly identifies with athesim” IS a small group, currently, because of cultural forces.

*cough*

And I use the term “Real Life” atheist to denote the actual atheists I meet in Real Life who seem like genuinely intellectually honest people.

As opposed to the “Internet Atheists” I meet who bandy around terms like “psychological flaw” and who seem to have more in common with the fundamentalist Christians who think I’m possessed for not believing their exact world-view.

Amocz, maybe you guys (the Internet Atheists and Fundie Christians, I mean) could start a club or something. I’m also deeply suspicious of any book that purports to study American Indian religion and yet uses the Three Omnis - Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omni-Loving, considering that those concepts are far more Christian than American Indian. Not all American Indian beliefs are the same, and maybe there’s a tribe out there with a Three Omni god, but my BS meter is tingling.

Ellen,

With pasta and my girlfriend, I know I am having feelings, however ill defined, about or towards something which verifiably exists. No one, as far as I can tell, is denying that religious people have feelings about religion, but that’s not what atheists on this thread are talking about. The honesty of your vague religious sensations says nothing about the validity of your interpretation.

I have feelings for my girlfriend. I also have lots of corroborating evidence that she is real. I can talk with her, see her, touch her (yay!), etc. Similarly with George Washington. There are lots and lots and lots of different data sources that verify his existence. But with God (the Christian one) or Jesus, the only source of information I have is a book written several thousand years ago. And if I’m going to read that book, and accept that it is right about there being a supreme, supernatural being, why then would I not accept the other things in the book? Why go for the Big supposition, but not the smaller ones? How is that rational?

Ah, you had me at spaghetti.

Okay, I love my boyfriend.  At some point probably around 4-5 months together I realized - problems and all - he was the one for me.  Part of that realization was based on factors I was conscious of, part of it was based on factors I was unconscious of, and part of it was based on the random chance of life (that our paths crossed in the first place, that we were both single when we met, etc.)

But I can see my boyfriend.  I can touch him (good), taste him (better), hear him, smell him (sometimes that’s not a good thing), measure him (height/weight) or observe him in some manner not unique to me, but common to all human beings on the planet. 

Now, people can choose to believe me or insist I’m lying if I say I love him, or they can watch my behavior to deduce what my emotions are toward him - but at no point does anyone question the existence of my boyfriend.  People accept his existence, not because I’ve characterized my emotional state with the term “love”, which implies an object, but because I can introduce them to the guy or put him on the phone, or let them smell him after a 5K.  In some way, every human on the planet can perceive his existence.

God, not so much.  I can’t sense God in any of these basic ways.  For me to have the sort of gotcha! feeling about God that I have already had about the feelings I have for my boyfriend, God would have had to have been there first, in some knowable way.  What I hear when I listen to people with the same kind of explanation for belief that you have, Ellen, when they try to put it into words for stalwarts like myself, would be like me saying I’m in love, and the love itself is evidence of the existence of my boyfriend - that an emotional characterization is evidence that a being with agency exists. 

Feelings aren’t evidence.  If they were, that would mean that anyone who asserts they’ve experienced a Catholic version of God has evidence the Catholic god is real, and that anyone who asserts that they’ve experienced the profundity of Aphrodite has evidence Aphrodite exists.  So assertion becomes reality.  And then anything within the imagination of the human mind, once asserted, is not just possible, but real. 

If I understand correctly, people aren’t saying these gods manifest as feelings, but that people perceive them through feelings, so we have a bunch of moral and worldly agents (the world’s history of gods) all existing in (and I guess outside of, if you follow some trains of religious thought) the universe.  By that logic, I live in a world where Zeus, Thor, Odin, the multiple versions of the Christian god, Allah, Cerridwen and all the other gods function simultaneously.  How can that be true?  And if it is - say all these gods really do exist - where does the creation of being from imagination end?  I’d love it if sexy male vampires were real.  Love it, love it, love it.  When I’m really into one of my paranormal romances, I even imagine it so.  But wishful thinking and a deep emotional attachment to the idea of something doesn’t make it real, even though I probably spend more time thinking about vampires and the paranormal universe and getting funny feelings on moonlit nights than the average Christian spends thinking about Jesus.

That’s pretty much where I am on the subject.  I understand the interest in religion just fine, when religion is defined as an identifiable community, with similar ideology to one’s own, and probably even similar political leanings.  Looking for people like you, and wanting to congregate with them for the purpose of praising life is totally understandable.  I wish there were atheist churches.  It’s the underlying deity part that I think is lacking in evidence.  I don’t work on logic 24/7 and I don’t know any atheist who does.  We’ve just identified a universal standard for determining whether a being exists and work with that evidence, so right off the bat, having an inner experience doesn’t meet that criteria.  If it did, I would be having an inner experience of David Boreanaz right now.

Chet, you never answered my question for you:  you rely on proof even for things that are inner experiences.  How can you be certain of anyone’s emotions towards you?

Why do I have to be certain about them, Mnem? I’m not elevating other people’s emotions towards me to a religious level; I’m not basing moral decisions on them; and I’m not using them to justify the disposition of my immortal soul.

And whether or not my mom loves me is an entirely different kind of question compared to whether or not Jesus actually said the words the Bible puts in his mouth. The reason I didn’t answer your question is because it’s totally irrelevant, and you either know that and are being disingenuous or else you’re actually unable to tell the difference between the kind of evidence required to support different kinds of propositions.

I’d still like for Chet to answer how he defines religion.

C’mon, Ellen. It’s a plain word with a plain English meaning. I’m not going to turn this into a nonsense debate about what words mean.

I believe that my religion satisfies a specific need I have now and the religion I identify with describes an inner state that I experience currently.

So, it’s about wishful thinking? The exact spiritual entities that you needed to believe in to satisfy your needs just happen to exist? What a coincidence! No, I’m pretty sure you have a religion, Ellen; just not a very mature one.

Also, Chet, have you spent much time with self-described “religious” people IRL who weren’t fundie Christians?

Much time, yes. It was immediately obvious from the get-go that they’ve spent a whole lot less time thinking about faith, thinking about their faith, and that the religion they had was approximately as immature as yours appears to be - that it was basically an exercise in self-reinforcing wish fulfillment, and - what a coincidence! - the God or spirituality they believed in didn’t ask anything hard of them, nor did it hold any positions on morality that they didn’t, themselves, also hold.

Fundamentalism may drive its adherents to do absurd things, but at least it drives them to do something. At least they haven’t created a religion around a primary feature of never getting in the way of its adherents’ attempts to live modern lives; at least they haven’t made a religion that gives them everything they want without asking them to do anything hard.

many religions are very accepting of the idea that other religions are qually true/valid/meaningful.

The what on Earth does it mean to believe in them? If everybody is right - including me, the atheist, who asserts that all the religions are wrong - then how can anybody be right? How can I be right that there’s no God, but my mom is right that there is one?

Ellen, I know that there are religions that accept the validity of the others. They’re the immature ones that haven’t really thought it through.

If you define “God” as an inner experience - a sensation akin to the feeling of profundity or wonder or some kind of meditative calm or sense of connection with the world, then you’re not talking about the same god concept Chet is referring to.

I’ll go a step further. If you define God as an inner experience as above, then you’re an atheist, because you do not believe in the existence of God. You’re no more a theist than I am.

You’re just someone who doesn’t know the right words to use for things. Why call the sense of wonder or profundity “God”? Why not just call it “profundity” or “wonder” - the same things I feel - and stop giving cover to murdering loons?

Fatman - that’s Twain’s atheism when he’s really angry.  Here’s when he’s being funny:

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; & anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would. I dunno.
- “Was the World Made for Man?”

I listened to about half of the episode (#304) and was surprised not to hear the term “universalist”, since that’s a widely used term for Christians who believe that no one ends up in Hell. It’s a very old belief—in the doctrine of apocatastasis, it dates back to, at the latest, the second century, having been promoted by church fathers Clement and Origen. And while its opponents eventually pushed its adherents out of the Church, the belief has never been formally anathematized. Pearson, as a sincere student of early Church writings (the article included at least one segment of him discussing the Greek etymology of the word “demon”), almost certainly encountered the idea in its early form.

Ellen and others, just for the books, I’d define religion as any structured way to deal with supernatural powers.[*] Yelling at the battery gremlins when my car is not starting on a cold day is not a religion as it lacks structure. Everyone in the office checking the colour of the boss’s tie to estimate his mood before bringing any issues to him is not a religion as the boss is not supernatural. Casting bones every morning to find out the mood of the battery gremlins is a (primitive) religion. Lacks only some followers and a few year’s time to become a full-fledged one.

Ellen: The “inner experience” that the religious people are talking about on the board is a key to why you’re wrong about the Point A to Point B construct that you’re arguing from. For most (not all) religious people, they have an internal experience, feeling, state of mind, what have you, and then they look for a way to describe it.

I would read it from the other side: A person not inclined to religion will describe feelings of awe, wonder and revelation (to take three possible ones) not in terms of the divine, but of something natural, or spiritual, or psychological, depending on their taste in explanations. It is not that areligious peope do not have revelations, it’s just that they attribute them differently.

Chet: If you define God as an inner experience as above, then you’re an atheist, because you do not believe in the existence of God.

Hey, I absolutely belief that my inner experiences exist and can be made visible with the right equipment. If God were my inner experiences, I’d believe in him/her/it.

[*] Wikipedia says, “A religion is a set of conducts resulted from tenets (or a belief system) about the ultimate power. “, which is probably the “clear English definition” that Chet speaks about.

You are right on Chet. Some here seem to be arguing that you can believe anything you want and still be called a Christian. They seem to be saying “god” can mean anything I want - and so can words.

Let’s get right down to the New Testament (we can ignore the Old Testament, nobody here seems to want to defend Angry Murderous Sky-god) - here’s the premise - Sky-god created the world, made humans fallible, then when they failed, said they needed “saving” - the saving they needed was from him, the Sky-god sending them to Hell. Instead of just saying “hey, you’re all saved” he did this really weird thing of having a “son” which was also really himself (or do some branches of Christianity say they were two separate entities, I can’t keep track any more) become semi-human (he could still do magic tricks when he felt like it), get killed and then get resurrected. Only then would humans be saved from the torments of Sky-god.

This is exactly what the New Testament is about. Jesus’ various wise sayings - and surely you all know that The Buddha said “love thy neighbor” before Jesus - are just a literary diversion. The entire purpose of the New Testament is to convey this son of a Sky-god story.

If you are willing to take silliness like that seriously, is there anything so irrational and weird that you WON’T believe it???

Chet, it’s comments like these:

Ellen, I know that there are religions that accept the validity of the others. They’re the immature ones that haven’t really thought it through.

That make me feel, personally, that you do not argue in good faith. I feel that you are hostile to all religion, but especially inclusive religions, because inclusive religions do not allow you to have a sense of moral outrage against them. I feel that you would actually prefer that, say, Buddhism advocate mass homocide because then you would have something to rail against. I find that…distasteful. I direct you to an amusing South Park episode on the topic, and I politely decline to engage you further, simply because it is impossible to have a conversation with someone who refuses to engage in good faith. And, frankly, because I don’t want to get any of your attitude on me. I’m sorry.

...

Deep6 and Mothworm,

You have both noticed that in my attempt to explain how you “know” what your favorite religion / person / food is, I have provided analogies where the object of affection is demonstrably present. Since all analogies are flawed, this is expected, but I apologize. I was attempting to explain how one “knows” they are Wiccan instead of Christian, and failed to explain how one “knows” that there is a god.

I’m going to assume from your statements saying that you don’t believe something without proof / evidence that you are “agnostic” which I will define here, in my Ellen speak, as “someone who by default doesn’t believe in a god without some evidence in that direction.” (This isn’t how all/most people define agnostism, but bear with me, please.) So I’m assuming that if you were given “evidence” of a god, you would believe in that god, as long as you accepted the validity of that evidence.

If that is so, it is a matter of personal preference / conviction what evidence is acceptable and what evidence is not. For some, an internal feeling or conviction is all the evidence they need, but for others, that internal feeling may be just a bit of indigestion. For some, minor miracles or even “real” miracles may tip the scales (an unforseen cancer remission, an against-all-odds bullet wound that missed all major organs, a miracle baby that should not have survived, etc.) but for others, those “miracles” may not be enough evidence since there is still chance involved in life and, hey, everyone gets lucky sometimes.

I say this not to denigrate, but to point out that everyone who believes in god has “evidence” that a god exists, it just may not be evidence that lives up to your personal standards. And that’s ok.

To stretch the original analogy to the breaking point, and to - frankly - get silly (sorry!), if everyone insisted that your boyfriend didn’t exist, that they couldn’t see him or smell him or touch him, would you stop believing in him even if - to you - he was still right in front of you? What if some people could see him but other people couldn’t? What if some people could hear his voice or feel his presence and described that voice exactly the way that it sounds to you? Would you think it was a coincidence? Most likely that decision would vary from person to person - with Person A convinced that it couln’t be a coincidence and that therefore the boyfriend must exist, but just invisible to some who couldn’t for whatever reason sense him, but Person B deciding that the experience was probably a mass delusion and that the sensation of the boyfriend was really just nice memories, crossed neurons, an appreciation of nature, or what have you.

And I’ve abused THAT analogy enough, I think.

As I said earlier, it’s hard to explain something you’ve seen / felt / heard / experienced to someone else who just hasn’t had that experience, for whatever reason. Which is why I don’t subscribe to One True Wayism - I have no way of knowing that MY beliefs are any more true or valid than anyone else’s, so I choose to believe that they are not (more true or valid), I mean. Live and let live, I say.

Ah, another analogy comes, with that platitude - in as much as I didn’t choose to be Wiccan, I do not believe I chose to be the heterosexual/homosexual balance that I am. There’s plenty of holes to poke in that comparison, I’m sure, but there you have it. Thanks for the lovely conversation.

...

Addendum, inge, thank you for the definitions. I like them. I asked Chet for clarification because of his assertions that (a) Buddhism is a religion and (b) religion, by definition, claimed to “perfect certainty”. However, I see that Chet is not willing to engage in an honorable fashion, see above.

Andrew @ 12:14 Said this:

“all What Pearson’s story highlights for me is the fact that fundie XY is born of a complete ignorance of centuries of Christian intellectual tradition. Seriously, all dude needed to do was read some Kant and/or Kierkegaard in his youth, and he could have saved himself a lot of time and angst. “”

This statement contains a tautology.

Nancy,

If you are genuinely interested in understanding why some Christians don’t believe in what you have described, I direct you to Robert Price’s excellent books, or Slactivists superb theological musings. I do not share their particular religion, but I do respect it.

Of course, if you are only interested in insisting that moderate Christians by definition cannot exist, then I suppose it would be the logical response for you to refuse to engage them or any of their beliefs…...

I do so find it odd when people define other people’s religion FOR them, without any research, or communication on the topic. It doesn’t see very…productive.

<blockquote>To stretch the original analogy to the breaking point, and to - frankly - get silly (sorry!), if everyone insisted that your boyfriend didn’t exist, that they couldn’t see him or smell him or touch him, would you stop believing in him even if - to you - he was still right in front of you? What if some people could see him but other people couldn’t? What if some people could hear his voice or feel his presence and described that voice exactly the way that it sounds to you? Would you think it was a coincidence? Most likely that decision would vary from person to person - with Person A convinced that it couln’t be a coincidence and that therefore the boyfriend must exist, but just invisible to some who couldn’t for whatever reason sense him, but Person B deciding that the experience was probably a mass delusion and that the sensation of the boyfriend was really just nice memories, crossed neurons, an appreciation of nature, or what have you.

And I’ve abused THAT analogy enough, I think. <blockquote>

You didn’t abuse the analogy - the analogy itself is abuse of human reason. Your analogy NEVER HAPPENS. There’s NEVER been a human being whom some people could see and others couldn’t.  You seem to believe that since the human imagination can handle the Semi-Invisible Boyfriend, that’s a good enough argument for the existence of God.

Cue the Invisible Pink Unicorn!

I do so find it odd when people define other people’s religion FOR them, without any research, or communication on the topic. It doesn’t see very…productive.

So you are saying that the New Testament is NOT the story of the son of God coming to Earth to save Mankind?

This would come as a big surprise to many Christians.

But OK, what do YOU say the New Testament is about? Since words apparently can mean whatever you want them to mean.

I’m going to assume from your statements saying that you don’t believe something without proof / evidence that you are “agnostic” which I will define here, in my Ellen speak, as “someone who by default doesn’t believe in a god without some evidence in that direction.” (This isn’t how all/most people define agnosticism, but bear with me, please.) So I’m assuming that if you were given “evidence” of a god, you would believe in that god, as long as you accepted the validity of that evidence.

I call myself an atheist. You’re defining agnostic differently than I, or most agnostics I’ve encountered would (usually it equates to “we can’t know”), but for your purposes, I’d say that I agree with your statement that, were there any proof, I’d be inclined to believe in a god.

Sort of. If there’s evidence, it’s no longer a matter of belief, but acknowledgement. And, even if I acknowledged a god’s existence, it still wouldn’t follow that I would worship him, although that’s not really relevant here. The “sort of” comes in because anything that can be proven, or at least have some evidence for it would have to exist in and influence/be influenced by the world in known ways. Any god that can be known this way cannot also be supernatural. Extremely powerful and advanced beyond my current level of understanding, maybe, but still subject to the laws of the universe. So there’s no need to be spiritual about it or worship it.

If that is so, it is a matter of personal preference / conviction what evidence is acceptable and what evidence is not. For some, an internal feeling or conviction is all the evidence they need, but for others, that internal feeling may be just a bit of indigestion. For some, minor miracles or even “real” miracles may tip the scales (an unforeseen cancer remission, an against-all-odds bullet wound that missed all major organs, a miracle baby that should not have survived, etc.) but for others, those “miracles” may not be enough evidence since there is still chance involved in life and, hey, everyone gets lucky sometimes.

I think the same standard of evidence applies to everything we evaluate. Especially if someone is making a really outstanding claim about something as outside the norm as a god. That’s why internal feelings don’t count. They’re unverifiable, unreproducable and can’t be compared to anyone else’s inner feelings. If that’s all the evidence anyone seeds, then what makes your inner feeling different than or superior to the inner feelings of Muslims, Hindus, or atheists?

I know you’re not personally putting up miracles as evidence of a god, but many do, and that opens another problematic can of worms. Why are all supposed miracles so easy to dismiss as hearsay, or chance? Why doesn’t god heal amputees, or do something, anything, so amazing and universal that there could be no doubt of his existence?

if everyone insisted that your boyfriend didn’t exist, that they couldn’t see him or smell him or touch him, would you stop believing in him even if - to you - he was still right in front of you?

I’d definitely check in with the medical professions since I’m aware of numerous brain problems that could be the cause of hallucinations or misperceptions of reality. I don’t know how to address the rest of your analogy (some people perceiving different things about my partner, but not all the same things), since my point about evidence outweighing perception is that the same measuring methods are available to everyone and should produce the same results.

Which is why I don’t subscribe to One True Wayism - I have no way of knowing that MY beliefs are any more true or valid than anyone else’s, so I choose to believe that they are not (more true or valid), I mean. Live and let live, I say.

I guess I’m stuck on that. Why believe anything, then? Why one over the other? I know this goes back to the “just feeling it click” thing, but it doesn’t seem like that is the way that most people (in America, at least not the one’s who call themselves Christian) operate. This sounds more like the “spiritual but not religious” thing. If people honestly believe that all religions are equal, then why have a religion at all? Just join the first one that came up. No need to invent new ones.

I guess I don’t understand the purpose of a religion that doesn’t believe in itself. What answers can it offer?

I understand the idea that some people seem prone to religion, just as others seem prone to atheism. I’m pretty hard line, and I can’t imagine ever believing again, but that’s just because I can’t see all known areas of science, logic and reason being overturned in my lifetime. I, like most atheists, started out as a believer. I didn’t chose not to believe one morning, but I did think my way out of it, so I don’t know if it’s fair to declare the subject beyond reason because it may be inborn. If anything, that would lead me to question religious belief even more. If it’s just a random biological quirk, what makes it different from a (relatively) benign form of schizophrenia?

I’ll go a step further. If you define God as an inner experience as above, then you’re an atheist, because you do not believe in the existence of God. You’re no more a theist than I am.

Wow, do you have reading comprehension problems or what?

I said that the experience of God is an inner experience.  Where did I say I didn’t believe in the existence of God? 

(Actually, I don’t believe in the Christian God and don’t think that any one religion has it right, but that’s not the same thing as thinking there is no God/s at all.)

I said that the experience of God is an inner experience.  Where did I say I didn’t believe in the existence of God?

Nowhere. Not every single post is about you, Mnem. If you believe that you’re experiencing an inner experience related to an exterior God, then sure, you’re a believer. Congrats, I guess.

If you believe that the inner experience is God, as some do, that’s atheism. Sort of tarted-up, wrong-words-for-things atheism, but atheism nonetheless. But a large portion of theism is playing fast and loose with that - calling your feelings “God”, and pretending like that gets you into the Believers Club, so you don’t have to play with the mean atheists who nobody likes.

If God is purely an “inner experience” - and I’m guessing that the term means something like perceived within one individual’s brain, imperceptible, non-existent outside of the inner experience - then your definition of “God” is not the same as the one in my dictionary.

Which dictionary do you use? Or does this “inner experience” mean something other than what I guessed?

so you don’t have to play with the mean atheists who nobody likes

But we like each other, and that’s what’s important!

That make me feel, personally, that you do not argue in good faith.

Oh, I’m sorry, Ellen. It’s just that I’ve had enough so-called “inclusive believers” criticize fundamentalist Christians by calling them “immature” and “weak of faith” that I just kind of assumed those terms were part of the discourse about religion.

But that’s fine. Now that I know that the rule is that only inclusive believers can speak divisively about other people’s religions, like you did, I’m sure we can avoid any more hard feelings. Right?

I feel that you are hostile to all religion, but especially inclusive religions, because inclusive religions do not allow you to have a sense of moral outrage against them.

I’m outraged at moderate religion because it doesn’t allow me to get outraged at it? I’m not quite following.

And it’s not quite true. I’m outraged at moderate religion because moderates want to have it both ways, like Mafia wives - they want the material trappings and temporal benefits of belonging, but they don’t want to be associated with the sleazy parts. I don’t think the Mafia wife mentality is a mature attitude towards organized crime and I don’t think religious moderation is a mature attitude towards belief.

I politely decline to engage you further, simply because it is impossible to have a conversation with someone who refuses to engage in good faith.

Well, go in good health. I’m sure that you’ll feel better about dodging our discussion after you tell yourself that it’s the religious fundamentalists who have a weak faith.

But Ellen CAN’T be a hypocrite - she’s SO POLITE!

Oh, I’m sorry, Ellen. It’s just that I’ve had enough so-called “inclusive believers” criticize fundamentalist Christians by calling them “immature” and “weak of faith” that I just kind of assumed those terms were part of the discourse about religion.

ooh ooh don’t forget morally inconsistent!

And it’s not quite true. I’m outraged at moderate religion because moderates want to have it both ways, like Mafia wives

Isn’t that just like a gal….

If people honestly believe that all religions are equal, then why have a religion at all? Just join the first one that came up. No need to invent new ones.

I guess I don’t understand the purpose of a religion that doesn’t believe in itself. What answers can it offer?

Mothworm, that’s a fair question, and I’ll try to answer it as fairly as I can, while still employing a cliche (apologies in advance).

I’m sure you’ve heard the “elephant in a room full of blind men” analogy? An elephant is in a room, a room full of men who have never encountered an elephant before and who are all blind. The first man touches the elephant’s tail, the second his nose, the third his legs, the fourth his tummy, and so on. Each man describes the elephant in a way that is true, but not complete.

Or, to change the cliche up again, say that one man is blind, the next is deaf, the third has no sense of smell, the fourth has no sense of touch. Each man is going to experience the elephant differently and describe the elephant differently.

For me, and for all Non-One True Wayists, the divine is like an elephant. And we are all imperfectly equipped to perfectly, completely comprehend everything about that elephant. So while I focus on one aspect, others may focus on other aspects. We may both be right. Or, one of us may have a disability and be wrong - for instance, if the man-with-no-sense-of-smell proclaims that the elephant has no scent.

It would be foolish of me, a blind man with no experience of elephants, to assume that I know everything about the elephant. At the same time, if I can feel the elephant with my fingers (or feel god internally), then I can’t just pretend that the sensation I’m feeling doesn’t exist and there is no elephant. Non-One True Wayism is accepting that humans can and are wrong about things every day, and being humble enough to know that just because your religion is right for you doesn’t mean it’s right for (necessarily) anyone else.

More close to home, do you know everything about the people in your life? Chances are that even your spouse, parents, and siblings are able to surprise you after all these years, even though you know them intimately, observe them often, and (in cases of family) share genes with them. If you can’t know your closest genetic relative perfectly, why would I assume that I know god perfectly? And, if someone else hangs out with your Mom and gets a different impression of her than you, would you assume that they are “wrong” or that your Mom is a complex and intricate person?

I hope this has explained, a little bit, why Non-One True Wayism is right for me.

* Disclaimer: The above post was not meant in any way to disparage people who DO believe that their religion is The One True Way, nor to suggest anything bad / mean about them. My post was simply to explain how one can be a member of a Non-One True Way religion. Sorry if it came off otherwise - need sleep.

I wouldn’t call the fundamentalists weak of faith - sadly mistaken about a bunch of stuff, certainly - but not weak of faith.

I’m still a little befuddled by the idea that if you’re not certain you’re right, there’s no point in believing anything. By that reasoning I ought to go out and play in the freeway because I’m at base a complete skeptic - I think therefore I am is really the only preposition I accept as self-evidently true. IOW most of the stuff I treat as true in my life is provisionally true, not absolutely true.

Some of these things are more central than others, certainly, but I’m fully capable of believing that I think something is true even at a very high degree, and still keeping firmly in mind that I am human, fallable, and may be in error. It’s more humility than anything else. Whatever one believes about God and God’s existence, I think we would all agree that I ain’t her, and neither is anyone else on this board. We are all wrong about something. Most likely we are all wrong somewhere about something we believe fundamentally and deeply to be true.

It doesn’t mean you can’t believe you’re right, and it doesn’t ban judgements altogether, but it does mean you need to make them carefully, especially where other people are involved.

It may help if I comment that one of the things I am most certain in condemning is utter certainty in one’s own rectitude or the rectitude of one’s own religion (or lack thereof).

I’m still a little befuddled by the idea that if you’re not certain you’re right, there’s no point in believing anything.

There’s just no point in being religious. If you don’t need absolute certainty and inerrant guidance, if you’re just going to grapple with life’s questions on your own like everybody else, why not stick with rationalism? Why believe things on the basis of no good evidence? Why introduce into your life the idea of a God, and all the bullshit that comes with it?

We are all wrong about something.

Sure. Why tempt wrongness, though, by means of belief on the basis of no good evidence? Your viewpoint makes absolutely no sense to me. We’re all wrong about something, but why go out looking for wrong things to believe in, as you do? Why chase after mythology that you know can’t possibly be correct? Can’t even be close to correct?

Also, what Ellen said.

My husband and I, when describing our eldest child’s personality, differ so strongly that a stranger listening to first one and then the other would assume we were describing two different children. Yet that stranger could also probably figure out which child was ours in a roomful of children using either description. Is one of us wrong? Or are we concentrating on and describing different true aspects of our child?

I don’t tell my husband he’s wrong about our son (unless I have direct strong reason to believe so), even if he’s describing something I’ve never seen -and this is a child I know better than any other human being on the face of the planet. Where would I get off telling somebody else that they’re wrong about a God that is (presuming his existence) certainly not a thousandth as well understood by either of us?

Because that mythology describes true things that aren’t addressed by rationalism. It resonates - so I go hunting for the bits that resonate and attempt to discover why they do so.

It would be foolish of me, a blind man with no experience of elephants, to assume that I know everything about the elephant.

Ellen - you know there’s an elephant. That’s the leap of faith - the arrogant presumption that, in the face of the unknown, you can simply leap to whatever conclusion you like best.

The truth is that it’s much more likely that the blind men perceive a snake, a rope, a tree, and a wall because they’re in a room containing those four items. The part where you reconcile their impressions with the idea that it’s all different parts of the same beast is the unsupportable conclusion, the wishful thinking. And you don’t seem to pay any regard to the last blind man, the one who’s concluded that there is no elephant, because for some reason your sense of inclusion doesn’t stretch so far as to include atheism.

That’s why I find your claims of inclusion so hollow. I don’t perceive myself included by them. From where I stand you’re no less an opponent than the fundamentalists, and the truth is, any time it matters, religious moderates like yourself will stand to protect fundamentalists from people like me.

It resonates - so I go hunting for the bits that resonate and attempt to discover why they do so.

That explains why you’re interested in it. That doesn’t explain why you believe in it. Many mythologies resonate. All the good stories do. I probably can’t even explain how influential Star Wars was on my childhood.

But that would be no excuse for me prancing about in robes and trying to move stuff with my mind. Surely you have the intellectual machinery to, say, extract the truth (about human love) contained in Romeo and Juliet without having to believe it was a documentary, right? Why not apply it to the story of Jesus Christ?

You’ve defended interest. You’ve defended being human. Congrats - except I’m not attacking any of those things. I’m attacking faith - and you’ve given me nothing in defense of it.

Also, if you view rationalism as a position that can’t grapple with the truth found in art, you’ve been woefully misinformed as to what it means to be a rational person.

Ellen, I know that there are religions that accept the validity of the others. They’re the immature ones that haven’t really thought it through.

This is nonsense. There’s nothing intrinsic to the concept religion that requires it to be exclusive. In fact, it’s only Western Abrahamic religions that have rejected the validity of others (really, only Christianity and Islam—Judaism just specifies that Jews can only worship Yahweh, it doesn’t condemn non-Jews who worship other gods). Hinduism explicitly says that there are many paths to god and it doesn’t matter what name you call it, or if you think it’s one or more than one or 1000 gods that exist, because all of those gods are just different facets of the one god. There’s nothing inconsistent about this. It’s a perfectly coherent concept, to say that the same thing can be referred to by different names or thought of in different ways. Buddhism explicitly disavows the whole question of God and is compatible with a variety of religions. Ditto for Jainism. Animistic religions throughout Africa and Asia have always accepted the coexistence of various gods and systems of religious practice. It’s not inconsistent because it’s not a tenet of their religion that there must only be one path to divine revelation. On the contrary, their religions accept that there can be multiple divine revelations. Why shouldn’t there be? It’s a purely Western idea that divine revelation must be a single exclusive thing. There’s nothing inherent to the concept of a divine revelation that it must be the only one or that it must be true for all people everywhere.

If people honestly believe that all religions are equal, then why have a religion at all? Just join the first one that came up. No need to invent new ones.

Because the new one might be more suited to you, *personally*, though not objectively more valid, than the others. Obviously. It’s like saying “if all sexual orientations are equal then why have one at all?” Because some people are personally more suited to identifying as gay and others as straight. Neither is more valid.

Besides, people who believe all religions are equal frequently do join the first religion that comes up, i.e. the religion they’re born into.

And you don’t seem to pay any regard to the last blind man, the one who’s concluded that there is no elephant, because for some reason your sense of inclusion doesn’t stretch so far as to include atheism. That’s why I find your claims of inclusion so hollow. I don’t perceive myself included by them.

Um, why not? Where does Ellen exclude those who think there’s no elephant? She was analyzing the different perceptions among those who do see an elephant in response to a specific question about that subject, not insulting or excluding atheists. She doesn’t mention those who don’t see the elephant, but then there’s no reason for her to because the question was about differences between those who are religious.

From where I stand you’re no less an opponent than the fundamentalists, and the truth is, any time it matters, religious moderates like yourself will stand to protect fundamentalists from people like me.

No evidence for this. I’ve never seen a Wiccan defending a fundamentalist of any stripe. Your statement may apply to moderate conventional Christians who defend fundamentalists, but not “religious moderates” in general.

There’s nothing intrinsic to the concept religion that requires it to be exclusive.

Only logically, where they make mutually exclusive claims. They can’t all be right - they’re too contradictory.

Judaism just specifies that Jews can only worship Yahweh, it doesn’t condemn non-Jews who worship other gods

I think you’ll find that even Jews believe that God is the only god.

Hinduism explicitly says that there are many paths to god and it doesn’t matter what name you call it, or if you think it’s one or more than one or 1000 gods that exist, because all of those gods are just different facets of the one god.

So Hinduism believes that Christianity is wrong, therefore, because Christianity makes the claim that Christianity is the only true path. So, in fact, Hinduism and Christianity are mutually exclusive. I mean how could you simultaneously believe in only one path, and in every path?

There’s nothing inherent to the concept of a divine revelation that it must be the only one or that it must be true for all people everywhere.

If God exists then God exists for everybody, because we share a universe. If God doesn’t exist then he doesn’t exist for anybody. God can’t exist for you and not exist for me.

That’s just sense.

Because some people are personally more suited to identifying as gay and others as straight. Neither is more valid.

Huh? If you see yourself as more suited to religion X than religion Y, that’s a statement about its validity. You see X as more valid than Y. That’s the point - if they’re all the same, if they’re all completely equal paths to divinity, or whatever, why would one path be more personally suitable than another? How about all the dead religions? Isn’t their deadhood, their lack of followers, a statement about their validity?

Where does Ellen exclude those who think there’s no elephant?

The part where she’s concluded there’s an elephant. I mean, how did you miss that?

She’s only inclusive of different views on divinity if your view is that there is such a thing as divinity. If you don’t believe that, apparently you’re just too rude to even talk to.

One path can be more personally suitable than another because not all people are the same. (Duh?) One person may not have an accurate internal moral compass, and may require a religion with precision and rules for guidance of their behavior (or they may feel that need, and hence feel more comfortable in such a religion). Others have a very strong internal moral compass that they trust, and are very comfortable in a more relaxed religion (say strict Catholic vs. Unitarian Universalism). Others feel no need of mysticism in their lives at all, and would chafe at any religion that imposed such - they may end up atheists or some faith that runs to the concrete (there are atheist UU’s and Hindu’s for example).

It’s no coincidence that Ann Perry and her partner in murder as a teenager both ended up in religions with strict moral guidelines (LDS and strict Catholic respectively), it’s no coincidence that an intuitive, morally incisive friend left an only moderately strict religion for a very loose one (Lutheran for UU).

My love of teal and purple does not make a statement about their validity over orange, just about how well they suit me.

As for being a friend to fundamentalists - for every discussion I get to on-line with an atheist, I get into at least six with fundamentalists, trying to show them that even if they’re correct about God, the God they worship isn’t worthy of it. I’d wager dollars to donuts I have a better deconversion rate than you do.

LadyVetinari, Jews are indeed exclusive. One of the seven Noachide laws, which are the laws that even non-Jews are subject to, is that non-Jews cannot practice idolatry. They must worship only the one God of the Bible.

Hmm, I guess Ellen actually does agree with my description of the New Testament, since she has offered no alternatives. Presumably none of the other deists here have a problem with it either.

And seriously, Ellen, you and analogies - NOT a good fit.

So yeah, the New Testament - absolute wackiness if you think about it for half a minute. You’re welcome to believe it - and I have a right to say I think it’s wacky - and since you believe in wackiness, I will naturally have doubts about the soundness of your judgment. But surely nobody will have a problem with this, it’s just My Way.

And you don’t seem to pay any regard to the last blind man, the one who’s concluded that there is no elephant, because for some reason your sense of inclusion doesn’t stretch so far as to include atheism.

The elephant analogy only works if you assume that these blind men are unable to communicate with the other blind men in the room, have no deductive powers, and are generally idiotic.

That’s who the deists think we are, Chet -  the idiotic blind men. They’re just too polite to come out and say what they really think.

I have a question for the believers here, and I do not mean to be rude, I am honestly curious.  Why do you think you accept the internal, unverifiable evidence as valid for the formation of beliefs on such major topics as the nature of existence?

I went through a born again ‘phase’ when I was younger and came to many of the same realizations as this gentlemen, although they led me to atheism/agnosticism.
Someone above commented that hell cannot coexist with heaven and this was one of the thoughts that nagged at me and made me realize the insanity of the whole belief system.
In heaven you will supposedly praise god for all things; I’ve asked christians if they believe they’ll be able to praise god for throwing their unbelieving friends and relatives into hell for all eternity since this is what heaven would require. I’ve never gotten a solid answer to that and I suppose it’s never occurred to them.
Once you start unraveling the thread the whole thing comes apart until you’re left with nothing.
I can’t fathom a supposedly loving god who would insist on torturing anyone for an eternity.
I too am part of a 12 step program (as was another commenter above) and I am amazed by the simple and accepting faith shown by many of the people in the program, even though I don’t share it. Through the torture that many of these people have lived they’ve come to a simple and uncritical belief in a god that wants good for people (although admittedly some have some interesting ideas about how this god supposedly forces their personal pain for his benefit).
I guess when you take money out of the equation, belief becomes a bit more pure. Hmmmmm.

I have a question for the believers here, and I do not mean to be rude, I am honestly curious.  Why do you think you accept the internal, unverifiable evidence as valid for the formation of beliefs on such major topics as the nature of existence?

Off to work, but Fatman I’m going to pull out the Matrix again and remind you (tongue in cheek) that ALL the evidence you evaluate on a day-to-day basis is, technically, internally “in your mind” so to speak.

If you are completely insane and hallucinating everything in the room around you right now, that doesn’t make your computer and keyboard and mouse any less real to you. And it doesn’t matter if everyone on earth shows up to insist that, yes, they can see the mouse, too, because they might not be real either.

If I feel god’s existence internally, a materialist tends to dismiss that as inadequate “evidence” because god cannot be seen or touched or poked whereas, say, a pencil can. But if I could open up your brain and stimulate the right sectors, I could make you “see” a pencil that doesn’t exist.

How do you know, 100%, that the pencil is really there and that we aren’t all being manipulated in some way to perceive a non-real pencil? You can’t. For the sake of a simple life, you have to trust that your perceptions can be trusted at face value. Therefore, you see a pencil, you believe the pencil exists. You feel god, you believe that god exists. You DON’T feel god, then you don’t believe that god exists. Either way.

I have to run now, because I “feel” hungry. And even though I might not be hungry, I would like to eat anyway, to satisfy that percevied need.

(And I apologize to Rousseau, for ripping 98% of that analogy from his far-more-superior writings.)

fatman - I can’t speak for the others here, nor do I know if my answer would be satisfactory for you, being as I’m less of a believer and more of a hoper (theistic agnostic, and like Mark Foxwell have been on both sides of that fence in my life).

When you come right down to it, all any of us have is our perceptions - which can lie to us - hallucinations, illusions, and simple misperception. Nonetheless they’re all we have to go on, and internal perceptions are part of that set of things. Both internal and external perceptions can be wrong - I can think I see evidence of something that ain’t so; I can feel some way and be mistaken about it - sometimes even mistaken about the feeling (anger to cover fear, for example).  Nonetheless those perceptions both internal and external are how I know anything at all, and it seems irrational of me to disbelieve them as a default position. So I believe my internal perceptions, while maintaining the basic skepticism I try to bring to all my perceptions -  if they are highly inconsistent with what my other perceptions tell me,  if they contradict things I’m more certain of, then I will be more inclined to disbelieve them, but why would I disbelieve a perception without a concrete reason to? Do I insist on repeatable testing before I believe that falling from a height will kill me? No, I take it at face value for starters, and then start looking for things to bolster, erode, or modify that belief. (Modify in this case, I quite like rollercoasters and drop rides.)

One path can be more personally suitable than another because not all people are the same.

If the paths are all the same, though, it doesn’t matter. If pudding is all that’s on the menu, it doesn’t matter if you’re Bill or Steve - you’re getting the pudding.

Duh.

I’d wager dollars to donuts I have a better deconversion rate than you do.

Oo, a challenge. Gosh, why don’t you tell me how many Internet Martial Arts you know, tough guy?

Off to work, but Fatman I’m going to pull out the Matrix again and remind you (tongue in cheek) that ALL the evidence you evaluate on a day-to-day basis is, technically, internally “in your mind” so to speak.

Ah, yes, it comes out. Scracth a theist and you’ll bleed someone with a deep, deep hostility towards verifiable reality. How rude of the universe not to be swayed by wishful thinking. Well, only one thing to do - pretend it doesn’t exist!

Nonetheless those perceptions both internal and external are how I know anything at all, and it seems irrational of me to disbelieve them as a default position. So I believe my internal perceptions, while maintaining the basic skepticism I try to bring to all my perceptions - if they are highly inconsistent with what my other perceptions tell me, if they contradict things I’m more certain of, then I will be more inclined to disbelieve them, but why would I disbelieve a perception without a concrete reason to?

Tapetum, I wish I had your eloquence.

Fatman, another thing I thought on the way in to work, and now I’m back to the elephant analogy: Since someone asked how an atheist fits into the elephant analogy, let’s broaden the scope slightly. For the sake of argument, let’s say that 10% of the world are atheists/agnostics, 10% are some brand of pagan, 45% are Christian/Muslim/Jewish, 30% are some flavor of Eastern religion, and 5% are “other” (religious but not one of the religions listed here).

Now, you’ve got 100 people in a room. 45 of those people believe that the elephant is like a tree trunk because they’ve felt the legs of the elephant. 30 people believe that the elephant is like a snake because they’ve felt the nose of the elephant. 10 people believe the elephant is like a stringy rope, because they’ve felt the elephant’s tail. 5 people believe the elephant is a wall, because they’ve felt the elephant’s back and stomach.

Another 10 people in the room (the atheists) insist, genuinely and plausibly, that they cannot feel the elephant, and that therefore they refuse to believe in the elephant until they got some evidence that they CAN feel.

Now, I’m not taking as a given that the elephant exists. Those 90 people who believe they feel the elephant may all have some strange neuorsis that causes them to feel, say, a trunk that doesn’t exist. Or perhaps we have a mass delusion, where one man proclaims he feels a trunk and 29 people enthusiastically agree with him. Mass delusions, self-hypnosis, cognitive dissonance, and so forth happen all the time, and it would be foolish for me to discount that. The atheists could very well be right, and the feelings and experiences I have could very easily be anything from wishful thinking to a brain tumor I am unaware of (and the other 9 pagans in the room have similar brain tumors or other such causes that cause them to have similar hallucinations to my own).

That is why I do not subscribe to One True Wayism, because, sure I could be very wrong. However, in light of the evidence that I feel, and the community of belief that I experience (I’m not the only one who thinks the elephant exists…and whose experience of the elephant is very rope-y), I have no reason to doubt my own beliefs as long as they are harmless, and I emphasize that point specifically. Before any other belief, I hold a code of ethics that I should do no harm to my fellow human beings, and beyond that, I may do and believe as I feel suits me and makes me happy. So I will go about my life and live and let live (as you most likely do), but the difference between me and you is that I believe that a “sky fairy” (I like that term, although a Wiccan maybe should say “earth fairy”...hmm) likes me and you don’t. That’s all.

That is why I *will* condemn a religion that says, for instance, that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry, because at that point you have gone from harmless “sky fairy”-ism and are using your beliefs to harm people and I think we can all agree that such behavior is wrong.

(Oh, and someone mentioned the Invisible Pink Unicorn earlier - I’m a fan. And I just love the FSM. Argh! )

I’m still a little befuddled by the idea that if you’re not certain you’re right, there’s no point in believing anything.

I’m saying that there’s no point believeing in anything for which no one, anywhere, has ever had any evidence (and, yes, obviously, I don’t count “a feeling” as evidence. It’s OK to start there, like with a hunch, but that’s the point where you start looking for and evaluating evidence. It’s not evidence in itself.).

Ellen,

Re: the elephant

I understand the analogy, but unless you think atheists lack a heretofore unknown sense organ (I know you don’t. I’m just saying.), I can’t go with it on a realistic level. At least all the blind people could agree they they were touching something, whereas the religious all just have a thousand different and competing, undefined, unknowable “feelings” that they have decided to attribute entity status to.

Mothworm,

It’s a big room. If an atheist wanders the room his entire life and never stumbles into the elephant, is that his fault? Or does it just mean that we live in a big world and god is only a part of that world, not the sum of it?

At least all the blind people could agree they they were touching something,

This difers from religion how? Robert Price and I both believe we are “touching something” that we believe exists. He describes it more like a tree and I describe it more like a rope, but at the end of the day we definitely agree that something is there.

You seem to be hung up on the fact that, for you, a strong feeling is not evidence. That’s perfectly fine - materialism is a common and completely acceptable approach to life (If I can’t see it, smell it, touch it, or measure it, I don’t need to “believe” it exists) and if it makes you happy, I fully endorse that choice. It’s just not the only way to approach life.

From where I stand you’re no less an opponent than the fundamentalists, and the truth is, any time it matters, religious moderates like yourself will stand to protect fundamentalists from people like me.

No evidence for this. I’ve never seen a Wiccan defending a fundamentalist of any stripe. Your statement may apply to moderate conventional Christians who defend fundamentalists, but not “religious moderates” in general.

And yet, this portion of the thread started when someone mentioned the rather valid point that people who identify as Christian really ought to accept everything in the Bible if they’ve accepted the Christ part. Then a bunch of people, none of whom claim to be nominally Christian, or believe in the same god the Chtristians do, came in and said “Nuh-uh. You so can too be a christian and not believe in the Bible.” Which may not be a defense of fundamentalism, “per se”, but provides cover for fundamentalists.

This happens in every thread like this. Atheists aren’t allowed to make any criticisms of the god of the people running this country because god isn’t really a being with knowable or identifiable attributes, he/she/it’s a feeling about which we have feelings. And so we’re left poking at some amorphous blob that I have a hard time believing anybody actually believes in.

mothworm: If people honestly believe that all religions are equal, then why have a religion at all?

I don’t really care what people wear, but I still prefer to wear black.

Chet: If you believe that the inner experience is God, as some do, that’s atheism.

If there is anything that you believe to be god, or the deed of a god, that’s theism: believing in at least one god. If I believed that my letterbox is a god, or my migraine is a sign from god, I might be a crackpot, but a theist crackpot. If I believed that all instances of god that people talk about are the work of aliens from the Andromeda galaxy, I’m an atheist crackpot: believing in zero gods.

religious moderates like yourself will stand to protect fundamentalists from people like me.

Eh, you are the one who demands that anyone who wants to believe any part of the bible for any reason or is in the habit of ascribing some experience they had to divine powers needs to convert to fundamentalism. Took me a few postings to find out that you were not fishing for converts.

Only logically, where they make mutually exclusive claims.

That’s a mix-up of class and instance.

If you see yourself as more suited to religion X than religion Y, that’s a statement about its validity.

Only if you believe that your taste defines value.

Nancy: Deists are the ones who believe that the elephant has left the room, but that there’s something in the corner that looks a lot like elephant turds.

Fatman: I’m not a believer, but as I guess if a person is not comfortable with the question of the “nature of existence” and the like staying unanswered, they find some mental construct that answers them. Personally, I’m quite comfortable with existence being meaningless, but some people aren’t.

Goodness, this is like a Star Wars vs. Star Trek meta debate on USENET with half the participants not being meta.

Now, you’ve got 100 people in a room.

Sure. And the blind atheist goes around, asking the other men what they’ve felt, because he wonders why he’s in the minority.

“I felt rough bark, like a tree. It felt like a tree, but the man in the collar said it was an ‘elephant’, so I guess that’s what it was.”

“I felt a supple tail, like a rope. It felt like a rope but the man in the vestments said it was an ‘elephant’, so I guess that’s what it was. Then he hit me up with the collection plate. said it was to feed the elephant. They have to eat, right?”

“I felt a muscular trunk, like a pipe. It felt just like a pipe, in fact, but the man in the yarmulke said it was an ‘elephant’, so I guess that’s what it was. And then he told me that I had to cut a piece of my dick off, because that’s what the elephant wants. I dunno, made sense to me!”

What the atheist rapidly discovers is that the only reason anybody’s even considering the elephant explanation for a series of experiences that don’t really match up is because a few people told them to do it, and under inspection, those few people seem to have ulterior motives and are themselves well-served by wide belief in the elephant that may or may not be there. In the meantime, the atheist is searching the room for the elephant’s food, the elephant’s restraints, the elephant’s droppings, anything that would physically corroborate the existence of the elephant beyond the “feelings” of blind men.

And not finding anything. In the meantime, all the other blind men think he’s an asshole.

mothworm, Then a bunch of people, none of whom claim to be nominally Christian, or believe in the same god the Chtristians do, came in and said “Nuh-uh. You so can too be a christian and not believe in the Bible.” Which may not be a defense of fundamentalism, “per se”, but provides cover for fundamentalists.

See, I’m culturally Christian. And I’m a little bit miffed if some recovering fundie claims that every one of my ancestors and countrymen in the last 1200 years was an American fundamentalist too confused to admit it. Chet basically claims that the Pope is not Catholic (nor the patriarch of Moscow orthodox, or the Queen of England Anglican) but a lapsed American fundamentalist, and only he is enlightend enough to know that.

This whole “believe in the bible” stuff is so awfully american-modern. The bible is a nice physical object easy to believe in especially if your religious instruction teacher throws it at you for making Jesus jokes in class. But “believe in that damned heavy object that just hit you in the head” is not the same as believing in literal biblical inerrancy, is not the same as beliving in the God described more or less successfully in commonly accepted biblical canon. Claiming otherwise is just historical revisionism.

OK, I said certainty is created in the mind. So he has the right to his certainty. But from where I stand, the data is not on his side.

If there is anything that you believe to be god, or the deed of a god, that’s theism: believing in at least one god.

If the only “god” you believe in is your mailbox, then you believe in zero gods. You’re just an atheist who doesn’t know what words mean.

Words have meaning, Inge. “God” is a word that has a specific meaning. The game you’re playing is Humpty-Dumpty’s game, where words mean no more or less than what he intends them to mean at any moment.

Which is pretty stupid. The only reason someone would take something like their feelings and call them “god” is because they’re an atheist with the intelligence to see through the god delusion, but not enough courage not to be a part of the Theism Club. If you believe in God as a metaphor, you’re an atheist. You’re just too scared to embrace it.

Yes, all of our senses are imperfect, none of us is perceiving the universe as it actually is, but through cross checking via communication we can reach a understanding of existence that is more closely aligned to reality.  My question then is why do the believers accept evidence that has been crosschecked less?  Up thread someone made the point that if you ask 100 different Christians to explain their religion you will get 100 different answers.  Why does this not raise red flags in the minds of those 100 believers?

Don’t let the mere fact that there are considerably more Christians out there that are not bibliolatrists than are discourage you from believing that such people aren’t really Christians.

You can believe Christianity is illogical or immoral or hypocritical and I can understand that, but why would someone who isn’t Christian be using the No True Scotsman? Christianity doesn’t require belief in the Bible as inerrant because the majority of Christians have defined it that way. It’s entirely possible to believe that a book contains many true things and is worth paying attention to without believing that its every word comes directly from God - we do it every day with pretty much every other book on the planet we deem worthy of reading - why must the Bible be different?

chet - who was talking about Internet jiu-jitsu? The JW’s won’t come to my house anymore because I kept having nice theological chats over lemonade and deconverting their proselytizers. And there’s nothing quite like the sight of one Mormon bodily dragging another out the front door while the dragee protests “But the discussion was so interesting…”

Chet basically claims that the Pope is not Catholic (nor the patriarch of Moscow orthodox, or the Queen of England Anglican) but a lapsed American fundamentalist, and only he is enlightend enough to know that.

You don’t think there can be a Catholic fundamentalist? Why on Earth not?

This whole “believe in the bible” stuff is so awfully american-modern.

Yeah, I mean, it’s only been the central textual source for all Christianity since it’s inception, right? What a jackass I must be.

Well, someone who’s holding a rope may be reasonably persuaded that it’s an elephant’s tail instead, but he’s very likely to think the person who insists that he’s not holding anything at all is an asshole.

textual source, yes. That whole oral tradition thing, and the line of priesthood, and all of that is just air, right?

The Catholic Church does not exist because the Bible exists - it’s very much the other way around I’m afraid.

It’s entirely possible to believe that a book contains many true things and is worth paying attention to without believing that its every word comes directly from God - we do it every day with pretty much every other book on the planet we deem worthy of reading - why must the Bible be different?

Because we’re talking about religion. How many times do I have to say that before it sinks in?

How do those discussions with JW’s usually go, about the same way? Where they make their points and then you act like you didn’t hear them?

I think I’m starting to see a pattern here.

“Everybody’s wrong about something.” Therefore, God exists.
“If everything were an illusion, you wouldn’t know it”. Therefore, God exists.
“I experience beauty.” Therefore, God exists.
“Thousands upon thousands of mostly mutually exclusing religions, over thousands of years, have believed that god exists.” Therefore, God exists.

Well, someone who’s holding a rope may be reasonably persuaded that it’s an elephant’s tail instead, but he’s very likely to think the person who insists that he’s not holding anything at all is an asshole.

I never said he was holding nothing, Tapetum, just as I’ve never claimed that you were feeling nothing.

I believe that the room contains not an elephant, but a rope, a tree, a pipe, and a wall; and I believe that the feeling you ascribe to God is similarly misattributed. Sure, you have feelings. That’s proof of your humanity, not of God.

That whole oral tradition thing, and the line of priesthood, and all of that is just air, right?

I’ve been Catholic, Tapetum, how about you? Maybe if you had you’d know that even in the Catholic church, when the priests read, it’s the Bible they read out of.

So why is religion so different from (for instance) philosophy, which also endeavors to explain the nature of the universe and humankind? For that matter, why is the Bible so different from the Upanishad, which is also religious in nature? The Bible itself says that it’s not the Gospel (paraphrasing from Paul) “The gospel is not written on tablets of stone but on the hearts and minds of believers.”

That talking right past thing? You’re not the only one feeling that way, not by a long shot.

So why is religion so different from (for instance) philosophy, which also endeavors to explain the nature of the universe and humankind?

Faith.

The Bible itself says that it’s not the Gospel (paraphrasing from Paul) “The gospel is not written on tablets of stone but on the hearts and minds of believers.”

The Bible says that all Scripture is God-breathed, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

No need to paraphrase, that’s 2 Timothy 3:16 to the letter.

You’re not the only one feeling that way, not by a long shot.

So grapple with my argument, then, instead of misrepresenting it. You have every opportunity here to meet my argument head-on.

mnemosyne:
What’s your definitive, scientific proof that your mother loves you?

There is no proof in science. However if my mother exhibits certain behaviors, these are normally taken to be evidence in favor of her having particular inner mental states. In the absence of any behavioral evidence this hypothesis is immediately suspect.

nancy:
The elephant analogy only works if you assume that these blind men are unable to communicate with the other blind men in the room, have no deductive powers, and are generally idiotic.

Greta Christina makes the same point here:

I have never seen a version of the fable in which the blind men start explaining to one another why they think the elephant is what they think it is. I have never seen a version where the blind men say, “Hey, come over here! Follow my voice, and check this out—this is why I think it’s a snake!” (Or a tree trunk, or a rope, or whatever.)

And yet, that’s exactly how science works.

Yes, of course, if God existed, he would be immense and complex and difficult to perceive and understand.

And what—the physical universe isn’t?

I am not in the least surprised that you were Catholic, I would have guessed either that or Evangelical. Nope, I never have been Catholic. But talking with you is surprisingly like talking to the people at The Gates of Eden about contraception.

If you were Catholic, then you should be pretty familiar with things like the Nicene Council and the creation of the Bible. The Church existed first. Many of the traditions existed first. The line of priesthood existed first. They chose the bits of available scriptures that fit best with their notions.

And to run with your analogy further in the same direction - when there are people around describing ropes, pipes, tree trunks and walls, plus a few talking about the stench, pondering the possible connection between all of these things isn’t inherently demented. You’re claiming they’re all unrelated - which is entirely possible. The fundamentalists are claiming that not only is it an elephant, but that he’s going to squish us all if we don’t pay up to feed him. A lot of us think these things have some sort of connection, but don’t buy the rampaging, hungry elephant story.

Chet: You’re just too scared to embrace it.

For you, I’m an agnostic. On principle. Also, I prefer B5.

What a jackass I must be.

Yepp.

Inge,

I’m not (and I don’t think Chet is) saying that the Pope or pre turn of the century American protestants are or were secret fundamentalists. I’m saying they should be if they’re going to be consistent.

If a holy book consisted entirely of:

“Gonfromal the Fhaz rules the universe. Gonfromal will give a hundred bucks and a reach-around to all who store their pennies Lincoln side up. But Gonfromal will stuff red-hot lugnuts up the butt of anybody who thinks the Dave Matthews Band is kind of for douchebags. Gonfromal the Fhaz tastes like a tasty chicken sandwhich.”

And your thought process is, “Hey, chicken sandwhiches are tasty, so Gonfromal must exist. And is it really so much trouble to store your pennies in a certain, arbitrary way if you get a reach-around out of it? But come on. DMB really is music for douchebags. Everybody knows that. So that part about the lugnuts must not be true”, you’re not really following a consistent pattern of thought. If you’re going to accept one absurd thing, without evidence, because a book tells you to, why not accept all the absurd things the book says?

It’s entirely possible to believe that a book contains many true things and is worth paying attention to without believing that its every word comes directly from God - we do it every day with pretty much every other book on the planet we deem worthy of reading - why must the Bible be different?

What I just said above. The Bible makes two big claims (among others): There is a God, and this is His book. There’s no other source of knowledge for, or reason to assume the existence of, the Christian god. Why accept the first premise, but not the second?

We easily categorize other books as fiction or non-fiction. None of them claim to have been written or “inspired” by God. If you feel that the Bible is not an entirely accurate or reliable source, then why believe in the Christian god in the first place? Why do you think the authors of the Bible got that one bit of information correct, but all the other stuff wrong?

I am not in the least surprised that you were Catholic, I would have guessed either that or Evangelical.

Both, actually, and I’ve been to a bunch of Methodist services, too.

The Church existed first.

No, the writings that would later become the Bible existed first.

They chose the bits of available scriptures that fit best with their notions.

They would not have created the Bible if they hadn’t needed it.

“Everybody’s wrong about something.” Therefore, God exists.
“If everything were an illusion, you wouldn’t know it”. Therefore, God exists.
“I experience beauty.” Therefore, God exists.
“Thousands upon thousands of mostly mutually exclusing religions, over thousands of years, have believed that god exists.” Therefore, God exists.

Mothworm, I sense that you’er getting frustrated, and I’m sorry that I haven’t been expressing myself clearly.

I have tried to get across something very basic about my beliefs, and I see I have failed. My belief is that god exists, yes, but I am also aware that that is simply my belief. In other words, I’m not saying that God exists. I am saying that my interpretation of the world around me leads me to believe in the existence of a God, whose existence I may be completely wrong about.

Therefore, when I invoke the “Other People Believe In God Too” argument, I’m not trying to say or imply that therefore we must all be right. I am merely trying to show that many people have reasons to believe in god and may people have reasons NOT to believe in god and that arguing from the corner with the largest numbers is fallacious. (In other words, if there was only one atheist in the world, the lack of other atheists would not mean he was wrong / psychotic / delusional. It would just mean that everyone else had differing viewpoints. Rinse and repeat for all others.)

I am NOT defending One True Wayism or any brand of fundamentalism that seeks to oppress others. My belief that people should belive what they want does not extend to their actions. My point that there are many, many moderate Christians who are not foaming-at-the-mouth oppressors was not an attempt to make a smokescreen for the bad people - it was an attempt to point out that not all Christians / religionists are wrong or evil. If you look at, again, Robert Price, he is a moderate Christian who sytematically points out why “biblical inerrancy” is wrong about homosexuals, women’s rights, and a plethora of other very important issues. He is HUGELY hated in fundamentalist circles because his research and mild manner allow many people to convert to his moderate views, and reveal that there’s no inherent conflict between being a “good Christian” and being a “good person”. The gentlemen who does the wonderful Slactivist Left Behind posts also subscribes to this worldview.

While it might be easier for us if all Christians == Bad, in the sense that we would have an easier time categorizing and stereotyping or opponents, I can see no reason to wish aloud that all those moderate Christians who welcome gays into their church for Unitarian weddings turn overnight into slavering KJV-worshippers just for ease of terminology. Why would you want an ally to turn into an enemy simply because they believe in one more god than you? I’m confused.

Both, actually, and I’ve been to a bunch of Methodist services, too.

Okay, you and I are likely to never say three sentences to each other that we would agree on. Which jives with my memory of the last time we had an internet discussion.

No, the writings that would later become the Bible existed first.

That depends on whether you believe Peter was the first Pope, doesn’t it? Because as far as I’m aware, the oldest of the Gospels was still written a good seventy years after the death of Christ.

Because as far as I’m aware, the oldest of the Gospels was still written a good seventy years after the death of Christ.

Sort of depends on whether you grant the existence of a historical Jesus and assume that the Catholic church has an unbroken lineage to that man’s ministry, doesn’t it?

And why would you think either of those things unless you believed in a historical Bible?

Which brings us back to my point…

Incidentally, and I really hate to keep invoking Robert Price, he is very open to the idea that Jesus never existed, in any historical “real life person” sense.

He is still a Christian.

I direct you to his numerous and wonderful writings for further information, simply because I am not qualified to repeat them (I’m not Christian, I’m Wiccan).

This issue is much more complicated than “The Bible says…”, although the fundamentalists (of all stripes) would like to reduce it to this.

Incidentally, you see this a LOT with Wiccan converts. 98% of them come over absolutely HATING Christians because they’ve seen a lot of bigotry and hatred from a lot of people. They will argue, passionately, that being a moderate Christian MAKES NO SENSE and will get serious angst over the topic. Generally, after several years and a lot of nice Christian encounters (internet, books, Real Life), they tend to settle down and realize that all religions have their share of crazy fundies and that those crazy fundies should not be allowed to hijack the religion and define it for everyone else.

In as much as not all Muslims wanted the World Trade Center bombed, not all Christians want abortion clinics bombed. And so on.

In as much as not all Muslims wanted the World Trade Center bombed, not all Christians want abortion clinics bombed.

Why should the religious moderates get to hijack those religions from the fundamentalists?

I don’t understand this viewpoint that religious moderates somehow automatically “own” their religion in a way fundamentalists don’t, when it’s usually the fundamentalist laity who are far more informed about their own Scriptures and history. I mean, sure, that’s what you’d say if you were trying to disingenuously rehabilitate religion, but just by observation it’s obvious that fundamentalists have a much greater influence on the public “face” of their religion simply because the moderates seem perfectly content to elect them to that place. Rick Warren didn’t appoint himself the public face of American Christianity; he acts in that regard because he’s supported in doing so by American Christians buying his books and sending money to his church. The Left Behind novels have been the top bestsellers among adults for a decade, now. That’s all fundamentalists? Really? Please.

Here’s a neurological analogy for you, Chet. All of the knowledge in the universe is a giant marble quarry. Each person gets a big hunk of marble from it, which is all the knowledge available to them. But we can’t use a giant undifferentiated hunk o’ marble -we have to make it a useable shape. Which we then do, using the tools which are available to us and the descriptions of those around us of the kinds of useful shapes they have made from their hunks.

We have to carve away input available to us, ignore it, or start failing to even see it or we can’t even make sense of the world. People who can’t do it can’t function. What shape we end up with is a function of choice, environment, biology, etc. But what this means is that two people may start with exactly the same kind of lump, and end up with two very different shapes - two very different sets of information they’re seeing about the universe.

You’ve gone and carved yourself a lovely machine. It’s very useful and you think it’s way better than the elephant statues over there because it’s useful and they’re just pretty (or even not very pretty). That’s fine - I don’t actually have an argument with that if utility is what you’re after. What boggles my mind is that you seem to believe that the people over there who have carved giant spikes and want to impale people on them may be wrong, but they’re still way better than our elephants because they’ve carved something with utility -even when they proceed to start trying to impale people.

A lot of us are not trying to provide cover for the hateful sorts. A lot of us are trying very actively to drive the hateful sorts of religion out of business. It’s irritating in the extreme to be alternately lumped in with them as if there were no distinction, and then told that they’re more rationally consistent. What’s your goal here? Are you trying to actually reduce the numbers of intolerant, hateful religious bigots, or just to feel superior to us irrational folk?

Ellen,

No, you’re fine. I understand what you’re saying, I just, well, think you’re wrong. Kind of goes along with being an atheist. Sorry.

Honestly, I don’t get belief, but if moderate believers really are on the same side as me on social issues, then that’s great. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence for that, what with past elections, but that’s what people on the internet keep telling me.

No, I don’t want people to become more fundamentalist, I just think it’s the only consistent way to behave if you’re going to accept the existence of a Christian god. I would hope my silly little examples adequately explain why. Taking the Bible seriously was one of the main things that led me to atheism. Obviously, I think that’s the better position. I’m only asking that Christians take as serious a look at the implications of their faith as I did.

Ellen, do you believe that there are facts, however unknowable?  I mean, do you believe that there is a past and that in that past a certain set of things occurred regardless of any individual’s understanding of those events?  I ask because your line of reasoning about different individuals having different understandings of god seems to be pointing towards a belief that there is a different reality for each individual, and there by suggesting that god could exist for some and not for others.  In short do you, or do you not, believe that if a god exists it exists for all of us regardless of our individual understanding of that god?

I have tried to get across something very basic about my beliefs, and I see I have failed. My belief is that god exists, yes, but I am also aware that that is simply my belief. In other words, I’m not saying that God exists.

I hope you aren’t going for some sort of post-modernist “existence of God is true for me but not for you” thing. Earlier you made the point that our belief that a pencil exists is the same sort of unreliable conclusion, so why aren’t you compelled to hedge your bets about pencils - “It seems to me that there’s a pencil on the table, but I could be wrong, so I’m not saying that the pencil exists” - Huh?

It seems to me that this does not put belief in God is not in a special ontological category, just as the sort of uncertain belief that you are not willing to defend or don’t want to get into an argument about. If I say “I believe that I saw an ivory-billed woodpecker, but I’ll not try to convince you that they exist”, I am still making the IMPLICIT claim that living ivory-billed woodpeckers really exist.

Tapetum, wow, that was awesome. I mean, really, absolutely gorgeous. You should write some of this down in a book or something.

Mothworm, well, technically, thinking that I’m wrong isn’t the de facto viewpoint, many RLA I know just believe that I’ve had an experience they haven’t had and until they have a similar one, they’re going to stick with their (non)belief. But please don’t mistake my quibble for offense.

I can assure that I am most very likely on “your side” of social issues, although I’m assuming that you are pro-gay marriage, pro-legal abortion, and generally a big ol’ lefty like me. I read a quoet somewhere once that said if all gay people turned purple, we’d have to rethink our views of gay people - meaning, that you (well, not YOU, but “you”) probably know a gay person that you just assumed wasn’t. I think the same is true for religionists - if all the left-leaning religionists turned purple, you might be surprised at how many you know. Or maybe not.

I’m not a Christian, and we keep coming back to Christianity, and that’s not my field of belief so I won’t attempt to explain / defend it. I’m given you (and others) some starting points to look - people who are moderate Christians and who have written carefully about their position. If you really want to understand how it is possible, I suggest you look to the source and, you know, read their words and beliefs. Or you (and others) can go through life blithely confused as to how anyone could possibly believe such a thing, but if you’re never willing to consult an actual moderate Christian, I don’t see how your bafflement can be dispelled.

Not trying to be rude - it just strikes me as the Creationist position, who wonders how anyone could possibly believe something as crazy and wrongheaded and silly as evolution…and all the Creationists nod their heads and agree without ever readig a book by an evolutionist or talking to one. Your POV seems to revolve around yuor own god of gaps fallacy, where you have determined that Christianity equals something specific and why acn’t all the other Christians do some soul searching and “take a look at the implications of their faith” and come to the same conclusion that you did…it doesn’t sound like you’ve attempted to actually talk to someone who DID do some soul-searching on the topic and came up with a different answer - the answer that you can’t imagine is logically consistent. Again, I’m not trying to pick on you - just pointing out that there are good moderate Christian authors out there, and if you truly want to understand, then those writings are out there, waiting for you. And if you don’t want to understand, well be honest about that. But don’t act like the moderate Christians don’t exist.

I feel like I’ve been kind of harsh with you in this response and I’m sorry. I just really urge you to exit the echo chamber and actually research something by one of these moderate Christians that baffles you so much. I love Robert Price and I’m still not a Christian, but he opened my eyes to the realization that good people can be Christians, too.

In short do you, or do you not, believe that if a god exists it exists for all of us regardless of our individual understanding of that god?

A fair question.

Yes, I believe that IF a god exists, that god exists. Period. Regardless of belief or understanding or knowledge on my part. (Incidentally, IF aliens exist in the Andromeda galaxy right now, they will continue to exist despite my belief or understanding or knowledge on my part. Or so I believe.)

However, the existence of god and the existence of aliens we will never in our lifetimes meet is laregly irrelevant to my points.

My first point is just that an existing god is a complex one that will not be fully or completely described by any (or all) religions. Furthermore, conflicting descriptions of the same god are not necessarily “wrong” - witness the analogy above where two parents can disagree, strongly, on the defining characteristics of their child.

My second point is that an existing god is unprovable. So whether or not you chose to believe in this god based on feelings, events in your life, or a bias towards materialistic evidence only, it does no good to chose to believe that you are 100% right, knowing that people can and are wrong about things all the time.

My posts in this thread have been, largely, to explain why it is possible to believe in god and not be a fundamentalist One True Way believer. I’m sorry if that explanation led you to believe that I think god only exists for some people but not for others. Obviously, I do believe that god exists and I do believe that my interpretation makes the most sense to me. But I don’t discriminate against or look down on people with a different interpretation or who don’t believe at all because, hey, I could be totally wrong. Why should I assume that I have all the answers?

I, like most atheists I know, grew up believing in god. My entire family still does. I attended Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, and a church that had Baptist in the name but were basically Episcopalians. I’ve known fundamentalists and moderates. I’ve also known a lot of people who would call themselves moderates but were still against abortion, evolution and gay rights. I haven’t heard of Robert Price, but I’ll look him up.

Again, my point is not that moderate christians don’t exist, it’s that their beliefs, or the basis for them, are not consistent. Nobody has yet explained why you would believe a book that says there is a god, but not believe anything the book says about that god. It would be like reading </i>The Hobbit</i> and deciding that Bilbo is real, but all that stuff about elves, dragons and magic is just superstition and myth.

Nobody has yet explained why you would believe a book that says there is a god, but not believe anything the book says about that god.

Well, no one has explained that because I don’t think anyone here still debating is a moderate Christian and I’m a shitty stand-in for one, seeing as how I’m a Wiccan.

I highly recommend The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Also, the Reason</i> Driven Life (not to be confused with Warren’s <b>Purpose Driven Life, which this is a response to.

I think the biggest problem, though, is that you are treating belief in the Bible as binary. Pick a book, any book. No matter how much you agree with the book, there will be something, somewhere in the book that you disagree with. If your evolutionary text has a typo, do you not believe in evolution? Of course not!

As for the next question, Well how do you know what to keep and what to discard, there’s a lot more to textual research than just “I don’t like this passage, so it has to go”. This is where The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man is such a great find. Seriously, I recommend it - read it at Barnes and Noble or the library if you don’t want to spend the money.

It probably won’t convert you - why should it? - but it WILL dispel the notion that moderate Christians just haven’t put enough thought into their beliefs.

Hah. And I fail HTML. Yes. Awesome.

Also, to continue a thought, you have heard of Robert Price if you’ve seen “The God Who Wasn’t There”. Fascinating documentary, and it introduced me to both Price and Richard Carrier. Wonderful authors. (Does it surprise you that I’m a Wiccan who watches atheist documentaries and read Christian treatises? LOL)

It would be like reading </i>The Hobbit</i> and deciding that Bilbo is real, but all that stuff about elves, dragons and magic is just superstition and myth.

I think Price would describe it as reading The Hobbit and deciding that the underlying values, morals, and belief systems are worth modelling your life after. There’s a lot of good stuff in Tolkien, after all. Help folks out, don’t crave unlimited power, cooperate for a better earth, mind your own business when it comes to people’s business, be a little adventurous sometimes…I’m sure you could find a lot more if you tried.

Pick a book, any book

That’s the thing though, to those who profess to have a holy book, said book isn’t just any book.  So treating it as just any book would mean they don’t hold it as a holy book, which is why it would be odd for them to take any portion of it as authoritative on an extraordinary subject simply because it claims to be such an authority.  That is what mothworm is getting at I think.

I think Price would describe it as reading The Hobbit and deciding that the underlying values, morals, and belief systems are worth modelling your life after.

Yes, but many people, atheists included, agree that the Bible, as stories, can convey decent values (personally, I think the Bible has a horrible record when it comes to moral and ethical lessons, and is one of the worst possible books you could look to for examples of how to behave, but atheists and agnostics always seem compelled to throw in a conciliatory “it’s a beautiful book with great lessons” so we won’t seem too mean).

If that’s all Price and moderate christians are saying, I don’t have (much of) a quibble. But I also wouldn’t call those people “believers” since it would appear that they don’t actually believe that the christian god is real.

Also, what D said. Believing christians don’t treat the Bible as “just any book”. They can’t, or they wouldn’t be christians. That’s kind of been my point.

I can compare an evolution textbook to other evolution books, scientific experiments and reality. I can’t do that with the Bible, and where it can be compared to reality, it fails. If a book claims to be the only source of information about an extrordinary claim, it really ought to get its facts straight.

here’s a lot of good stuff in Tolkien, after all. Help folks out, don’t crave unlimited power, cooperate for a better earth, mind your own business when it comes to people’s business, be a little adventurous sometimes…I’m sure you could find a lot more if you tried.

I think the point that the atheists are making here is that, millions of people read the Hobbit, are inspired by it, and manage to pull all sorts of valuable life lessons out of it. Yet none of these people are Tolkienists, or Hobbitists, or whatever a religion based on the Hobbit would be called. OF COURSE people read the Bible for inspiration, and beauty, and comfort, and whatever else. Jews do it, and Muslims do it, and Wiccans do it…so just drawing inspiration from a book should not be enough to make someone be a member of the religion that the book is central to. Otherwise anyone who found the parables of Jesus enlightening would be a Christian. But they’re not. They can be Jews, and Muslims, and Wiccans, and even atheists. To be a Christian, you have to do more than just read and enjoy a book, you have to BELIEVE in it. So, if you’re a person who finds the story of Jesus as recounted in the NT to be valuable to your life, but don’t actually necessarily believe any of what’s said in it, we don’t see why that should make you a Christian, as opposed to someone who just…likes the New Testament. Of course, you’re free to self-identify however you wish, but when Chet gets mad about people using words to mean things that they don’t, this is what he’s talking about. The word Christian can’t mean “someone who finds the NT worthwhile”, because that would redefine tons of people of other religions as Christians.
I’m a little bit more lenient on the meanings of words, but it’s still a valid point; at the very least, a defense of why being vaguely moved by a religious tradition is enough to make one a part of that tradition would be appreciated. (I know I quoted Ellen here to start this, but I think a self-professed Christian would be a better person to answer this).

Other books invite us to question them, the bible does not.  In Matthew 5:18 a claim to a factual bible is made.  When one rejects this claim but accept others in the bible that one must have some criteria for doing so.  I have not heard of a Christian who rejects Matthew 5:43-47 (love your fellow man) yet accepts Ezra 1:9 (29 silver pans were among the donations form Cyrus to build the temple in Jerusalem).

It appears that there is something wholly separate from the bible that leads individuals to accept one thing and not the other, perhaps we should look for that thing, that which makes loving your fellow humans important to so many people and leave the need to attribute this to non human thought on the scrap heap of ideas. 

Because as long as we attribute the love of humanity to a rule from the bible, someone can come along who feels that Exodus 22:18 supersedes the sermon on the mount, and therefore wants to kill Ellen for her beliefs, and with out an external, non biblical, reason for selecting beliefs, that person is just as right as the liberal Universalist Christian.

So, mothworm gets TWO posts up, saying what I wanted to, while I was composing my one.
Dang.

Well, I guess that’s the difference between a real person and a strawman, though.

A lot of Christians don’t believe the Bible to be a holy, infallible book. And the strange arguments here that they SHOULD sound more like fundamentalist arguments than anything (“The Bible is infallible.” “Why?” “Because the Bible says so.”).

Yes, a strawman Christian is going to believe that every single word in the Bible is unquestionable truth in its purest form. And many real Christians do believe that. Many real Christians do not believe it. Just because a sentence in a collection of stories, letters, and gospels claims that “the Bible” is infallible doesn’t make it so, especially when “the Bible” didn’t exist when that sentence was added to Matthew.

These criticisms seem to hang on the fact that a lot of the people arguing here don’t understand the history of the Bible. There is no verse that can accurately state that “the following 52 books are infallible:....” because the Bible is a collection of stories, letters, and opinions that have been heavily edited, added to and subtracted from since the first word was laid down.

Moderate Christians use the Bible as a tool to describe the truth that they feel. Strawmen and fundamentalist insist that a collection of differing pieces of literature with inherent contraditions is 100% truer than the truest thing ever.

It’s always a mistake to pull a No Real Scotsman, but especially when you, yourself, are German…....

These criticisms seem to hang on the fact that a lot of the people arguing here don’t understand the history of the Bible. There is no verse that can accurately state that “the following 52 books are infallible:....” because the Bible is a collection of stories, letters, and opinions that have been heavily edited, added to and subtracted from since the first word was laid down.

This is just rather insulting. Everyone here knows this, what people are asking that given that we know this about the Bible, why accept any parts of it as true teachings about God.

Windy, I don’t mean to be insulting, but when you see:

In Matthew 5:18 a claim to a factual bible is made.

I have to assume that the person doesn’t understand how “the Bible” came about. It is literally impossible for any part of “the Bible” to assert that “the Bible” is factual, because “the Bible” didn’t exist when that claim was written.

Unless you’re going to claim that the various councils, translators, and other people involved over the centuries in the final product we see today were all divinely inspired. And that somehow the Matthew author knew this in advance. Or something.

Again, if you want to know how a moderate Christian thinks, read a moderate Christian. Don’t just ask yourself or a bunch of atheists because that’s not going to be productive.

I understand the difficulty of discussing Christianity with a bunch of atheists and a Wiccan, but that is what we have here. 

If we pick and choose what to believe from the bible why bother with the bible.  When I say this I am not saying that Christians should believe the whole bible, I think that they should ignore it.  If there is something good and useful contained in the bible its goodness and usefulness is independent of its presence in the bible.  This is evidenced by the evil things demanded of adherents to the religions of the book.

My main point is if one takes the good and helpful messages from the bible today because they are in the bible, what is to stop that person from taking the, kill rape victims and witches stuff the tomorrow.  I know that the answer is that loving people is nice and killing is douchy, but why not just say love people because it is nice and not sully the argument with the inconsistent bible?

I guess I am asking a Wiccan why one might choose to be Christian, a pointless exercise if ever there was one.

Sidenote: Did I use its correctly in the first paragraph?  Should it have been it’s?

You did use “its” correctly, but it was your second paragraph.

Ellen, I don’t think you understand the concept of reductio ad absurdum. Carlton Pearson took the teachings of his church and followed them to a logical conclusion - that God would have to be evil if the teachings are true. Would you dismiss his argument by saying that he is just being silly because everyone knows that God is actually good?

Similarly if you start from the premises that there is an all-powerful being who was incarnated as a human and had his most valuable teachings recorded in a book and that we must follow those teachings to be “saved” by this being, assuming just for the sake of the argument that this is true, wouldn’t it seem like the safest course of action would be to follow all the teachings in the book? “Yeah but everyone knows that the book is mostly bullshit anyway!” is not an adequate answer.

When I note the specific passages of the bible it is to reduce confusion.  I don’t believe that the bible is factually accurate, I believe that the bible lays claim to factual accuracy.  I have some grasp of the translation issues in the bible.  By the time of the Alexandrian translation the bible did exist, this translation is what the bibles we are most familiar with are adapted from, thus by the Council of Trent one could certainly say a bible existed and made a self referential claim to truthfulness.  So by Vatican II we can not be in any doubt as to the bible claiming to be true.  I however do not accept this claim, and do not understand why if one can reject this claim that one does not reject others.  I know that there some useful things in the bible but why wade through the begats and apocryphal history, and sift out the violent and evil, if the fact of the inclusion in the bible carries no special weight.

A lot of Christians don’t believe the Bible to be a holy, infallible book.

Our question is, then, in what sense are they really Christians? As opposed to people who just like the Bible a lot. When all is said and done, there are characteristics that DO distinguish true Scotsmen from everyone else. A true Scotsman at the least has to have been born to Scottish parents (or whatever).
I think a perfectly good necessary condition for someone to be a Christian is that they believe that the Bible is at least holy, if not infallible. At the very least, it should mean more to them than it does to non-Christians.
Basically, I want to know what makes someone a “real Christian” if faith in Jesus and belief in the uniqueness of the Bible don’t? Is it just self-identification?

The moderate Christians I am most familiar with (and I’m fairly familiar, having been Episcopal by practice on and off for a while) believe that Jesus Christ was a real, historical person and that his claim to be divine was legitimate. They believe that the Bible (New Testament) was written about Christ by other, quite human, people. They try to piece together as much truth as they can come by about Christ out of the various books of the NT, while being aware of the biases of the various authors (like Paul’s misogyny), in much the same way one would read several different biographies of (for example) Gandhi in an effort to understand the man better, because no single biographer is going to grasp him completely. They take the Bible seriously as the only available source on their Messiah, however flawed it is, but not literally.

Okay, so then the atheist response to that is, if one is aware that these biographies of Jesus are seriously flawed, on what basis does one believe that Jesus’s claim to divinity is legitimate? It’s a pretty extraordinary claim, so presumably the testimony of the gospels, which even the believer is willing to admit aren’t perfectly accurate, cannot be enough.
There is no other way to independently verify any of the gospels’ claims, so on what basis does someone decide which claims are true, and which are not?

The moderate Christians I am most familiar with ...believe that Jesus Christ was a real, historical person and that his claim to be divine was legitimate.

What claim? The claim that’s made… in the Bible?

Again, it’s back to pick-and-choose religion. If the Bible is unreliable, why assume its reliability when it comes to whether or not Jesus claimed to be divine? You make the same mistake CS Lewis does when he set forth his famous trilemma - you’ve overlooked the fourth choice, which is that Jesus never claimed to be divine; that was simply made-up for the Bible.

Why take some of the Bible as a error-prone human creation, and some of the Bible as inerrant, divine truth suitable for correction and reproof? Why accept the Bible’s extraordinary claims of Jesus’s divinity and magic powers when we know we can’t take it at face value for much more prosaic claims?

It’s the incoherence that we continue to object to, and you continue to ignore. You complained about talking past us before, but you continue to be the only one who’s missing the point, here.

Yeah, Chet nails it. The only source for a belief in Jesus’ divinity is the Bible. If we’re not going to trust the NT on when and where Jesus was born, or some minor points about his life, why should we trust it when it makes one of the biggest claims ever made in any document ever?

Mostly you’d have to ask the people who insist on his divinity. The high rate of martyrdom among early Christians tends to get cited quite a bit - why would you let yourself be killed horribly for something you didn’t believe in absolutely? While none of the original apostles wrote a biblical book, Paul certainly existed and wrote his letters, and (if I’m remembering my information correctly, I haven’t done significant Bible study in several years at this point), he met and wrote about several of the apostles. The reality of the apostles would argue for at least the existence of Christ. The devotion of the apostles would argue that they, at least (I.e. those who actually knew him) believed in his divinity.

One of the reasons I don’t insist on Christ’s divinity is the sheer amount of doofusness demonstrated by the apostles in the Bible. If the portrait of them as shown is even remotely accurate, they’re not a bunch of people I would trust on such a claim.

I was recently watching the news with my wife and it was depressing. The four major stories of the broadcast covered an out of state church shootings, a local stabbings, an overseas terrorist act and gasoline price gouging. If things were not bad enough, earlier that evening I could not find one family friendly television show to watch with my daughter. Recently at work, I saw and my fellow employees doing things they should not be doing such as gossiping and ignoring the needs of others. An honest look into my own life and I am certain that one will find problems. Troubles in my life include turbulent relationships, a hot temper and even discontentment. Life can be and is at times, ugly and messed up. What is the root of all these issues? What is wrong with the human race?  Sin is the root cause of all human problems.

In the Garden, God formed man from the dust and breathed into him the breath of life. Man became a living, rational, thinking human being with a body and soul. Thus, Adam and Eve and were created perfectly in the image of God. They had perfect knowledge of God’s will and the ability to thank him by obeying his rules including do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But, they did not listen and ate from the tree. Because they ate from the tree, they were not perfect anymore, estranged from God and eventually died. What did they do to separate themselves from God?  They sinned. What is sin?  It is evil behavior that the breaks and disobeys God’s law.  What is God’s law?  It is a standard of moral purity. A better definition is that it is the commandments in which God expresses his just and loving expectations for all of us.

Because of sin, man became an enemy of God, without his maker and damned. God knew that man could not by any mean of his own reestablish the relations with him. He also knew that anything that man tried to do in an effort to reestablish things fell short and hence man needed a helper and a Savior. While sin is mainly about doing wrong and not following God’s rules, it is more about fracturing the relationship with God and his people.

Who are God’s people?  All are his, all are sinners and all fall short. Sinners need God’s grace because he demanded punishment for sin and that’s being a just God. It is good I believe to remember that sin is not an excuse but rather it is a reason for mankind’s problems and world turmoil. It can be further explained by looking at what Paul wrote in Romans 7:17-20 which states, “As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” So, all struggle because of which we are by nature, sinners, and who God has made us through faith. It is like living two lives in a sense. Reason for living two lives is there is a battle being waged within us, between the old sinful nature and the new life that God created.

Current US and world conditions such as growing child abuse and neglect, hostility and wars, and inconsistent business ethics, prove overwhelmingly to me that the world and its humans are messed up. What is the root of all that is wrong with the human race, it is sin. What is the solution to sin, mine and yours, seek Jesus Christ and repent.  Believing in Jesus the Savior and his perfect life, innocent death and rising means that forgiveness of sins is assured.

Also, As Christians, we believe that the Bible is both incapable of error (infallible) and free from error (inerrant). Real human beings were given real words from God to write down. As our Lord Jesus Christ was both true God and true man, so the Bible is truly the Word of God and also the writing of human beings. Even as our Lord Jesus took on human flesh free from sin and error, so God used human beings to provide a written revelation of Himself that is free from error.

Because people knew that the Bible was the actual Word of God, it was copied and re-copied with painstaking care and attention to detail,letter by letter,word by word.Though today we no longer
possess the actual,original text of the Bible,we can be certain that the Holy Spirit has preserved the Word of God for us.Careful study of the many thousands of copies of the New Testament reveals that though there are minor differences between the various copies,there is no place where any key teaching of the Bible is contradicted.

Our English Bibles are translations from the original languages.When we use reliable translations,we can be sure that we have the true Word of God.Whatever the Word of God is in Hebrew,Aramaic or Greek, it is also the Word of God in English,or in any other language,as long as the translation is faithful to the original languages. Reliable translations include the King James Version, the New King James Version, the old Revised Standard Version, the New International Version and the New American Standard Bible.

I know you personally aren’t claiming to believe in this, but that martyr argument is terrible. More or less every religion has martyrs, as do all sorts of non-religious movements and belief systems.
Moreover, when we come to Paul’s letters as documentary evidence of the apostles and of Jesus, we face the same problem already discussed: the believer has already admitted these documents are not perfectly reliable. How to know that they’re reliable in this case?
Further, those documents are the only reason to even believe that the specific cause the martyrs gave their life for was Jesus’ divinity, as opposed to, say, Jesus’ message of revolution against the state, or whatever else.
It all comes back to the NT, (which Paul’s letters are a part of) being admittedly unreliable, yet also the foundation for belief in Jesus’ divinity. I’m asking this rhetorically, since I know you don’t personally believe this, but still: how can someone say “I know the NT has a lot of bunk in it, but I still believe Jesus was God, because of all sorts of evidence that I found in the NT”? How did they decide that the bits that are the foundation of their beliefs are not bunk, while the bits about everyone else burning in Hellfire (the apostles presumably believed in that) are? It’s still inconsistent.

Jer:

I believe this with all my heart!

In regard to your question(s) - There were two formations of scripture. The first was the Jewish acceptance of their canon, and the second was the Christian acceptance of their canon. Although scholars will disagree over dates, Jewish tradition is very strong that the entire Old Testament was in its present form at the time of Ezra when he brought the people back from exile in the 4th Century B.C. The last books of the Hebrew Scriptures were Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, all of which were written at this time. The New Testament books were being quoted as authoritative as early as 100 A.D. indicating that a New Testament canon was informally accepted by the new church at an early date.

Although it is impossible to know for sure all the reasons that certain books were included in the canon of scripture, generally we can conclude that there were three main criteria - was it authentic, was it inspired by God, and was it written by someone recognized as spiritually anointed. The Hebrews took this process of canonization so seriously that they only chose the books that “caused one to wash his hands.” By this they meant that the words were so holy that in comparison, human flesh was dirtied by simply touching the scroll to read it!

You might feel like asking, “Why are the Bible books in their present order, and not more of a continuous narrative?” The answer may surprise you. It was even worse before the 3rd Century B.C. It seems that the books were placed generally in the order in which they were written. The Hebrew Scriptures to this day are in more of a hodge-podge order than our Christian Bibles. It was in the 3rd Century B.C. when the Alexandrian Jews decided to place the Old Testament books closer to historical order. One of the reasons the scriptures were never placed in chronological order is that each book was actually a separate scroll. And so it would have been extremely difficult to combine a number of scrolls together to form the correct chronology. It was simply easier to copy one complete scroll and then copy the next scroll. This is why we have two complete, very similar histories of the kings of Israel in 1 and 2 Kings as well as 1 and 2 Chronicles. Chronicles was written much later than Kings.

While that’s all very interesting, it doesn’t explain how we know that those scrolls are to be trusted. How did those ancient Jews know which books were hand-wash-worthy? Why should I trust those Christians who, circa 100 A.D., had decided on the authority of the NT? I’m sure the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, and any other number of holy books have all sorts of wacky and interesting histories, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for you to…actually believe in them. What makes the Bible so different?

Jak, is it then your view that there is no reason to believe in part of the Bible if you do not believe it to be inerrant?

Fatman:

Yes!

Jer:

Good questions.

What makes the Bible different is that it was witnessed by witnesses and it’s historical And geographical accuracy. Down through the ages, many have doubted the historical and geographical accuracy of the Bible. Yet modern archeologists have repeatedly unearthed evidence of the people, places, and cultures described in the Scriptures. Time after time, the descriptions in the biblical record have been shown to be more reliable than the speculations of scholars. The modern visitor to the museums and lands of the Bible cannot help but come away impressed with the real geographical and historical backdrop of the biblical text.

In regard to the Koran or Quran, there is enough evidence to support the claim that it may have been tampered with. Nobody knows where the original Quran is. The Quran that we have in our hands now is called the Uthman’s Quran, which was collected long after Mohammed’s death. Parts of the original Quran must have been lost, after many of the reciters of the Quran died or were killed in battle. Uthman, the third Caliph (successor of Mohammed) gathered what was left of the Quran, arranged it by length of Surahs rather than chronologically, then burned all other existing copies. The Bible, on the other hand, has stood the test of time, with tracable history.

But, more importantly, Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead.  All of world religion leaders bodies are found in their earthly graves. Not Jesus.

Again, hope this helps.

I don’t want to get too sidetracked here, since it’s obvious that you’re a real-live Biblical literalist, and the original discussion was about how people could be NON-literalists, but I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s plenty in the Bible that is not only contradicted by the physical evidence, but also contradicted by other parts in the Bible. Genesis A and B tell two different creation stories, different gospels give different birth years for Jesus, etc. Not to mention the Bible’s account of the creation of the world. That some of the Bible has been corroborated is interesting, certainly, but hardly definitive proof of the Bible’s accuracy. Schleimann (sp?) found Troy, but that doesn’t mean that the Iliad is 100% true.
As for Jesus having raised himself for the dead - what’s the evidence that his body wasn’t moved by others? Or that he was never buried in his grave (is there even a tradition as to where his grave is?) Moses’ grave is unknown, one might just as well claim that he raised himself too. Jews don’t, but there’s no more evidence for or against that than there is for Jesus’ claim.
But, like I say, I don’t really want to argue this. Sorry, it’s nothing personal. I just find the inconsistency (well, what I perceive as inconsistency- I’m open to persuasion people!) of moderate believers more interesting. Appreciate you responding though!

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Jer:
Glad to have responded and again hope what I have writtten may have helped you! It is easy to get sidetracked this thanks for reminding me that this original discussion was about how people could be non-literalists. Would agree, don’t want to argue rather discuss. And, I know that it is nothing personal. However, as a literal Christian, my faith, in Jesus is what I live by and die by. So, for me, my faith applies to all things in my life.

The historical accuracy of the Scriptures is likewise in a class by itself, far superior to the written records of Egypt, Assyria, and other early nations. Archeological confirmations of the Biblical record have been almost innumerable in the last century. Dr. Nelson Glueck, probably the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology, has said:

To further the discusion - the historical accuracy of the Scriptures is likewise in a class by itself, far superior to the written records of Egypt, Assyria, and other early nations. Archeological confirmations of the Biblical record have been almost innumerable in the last century. Dr. Nelson Glueck, one of the well known and respected modern authority’s on Israeli archeology, has said this about the Bible - No archeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.

Also, you are half correct about Moses. He was buried on Mt. Nevo, but the precise location is indeed unknown. However, in the Bible it says Deuteronomy 34:6 And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor.

There is no question that Jesus Christ’s tomb was mysteriously empty. As Paul Althaus has said, the resurrection message could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact…Dr. Craig observed that, Conflicting traditions [to the empty tomb story] nowhere appear, even in Jewish polemic.

At least one skeptic (Dr. John Dominic Crossan) has wrongly asserted that Roman law automatically forbade Jesus’ burial, and that he must therefore have been thrown anonymously into a common pit. This is not sustainable. Raymond Brown has shown that Roman burial policy varied with circumstances and did allow the possibility of personal burial of some of the crucified. This scenario would also contradict the consistent Jewish protests that the body had been removed. Furthermore, the Gospels could not have successfully invented as owner of the tomb one so specific as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43). Had the Gospels been false on this matter they would not have been able to withstand the swift correction and ridicule from the Jews.

How have doubters of Christ’s resurrection responded? Some skeptics have claimed that someone must have stolen Jesus’ body from the tomb, and that this led to the stories of miraculous resurrection. Is this possible?

Neither the Jewish nor the Roman leaders, who guarded the tomb (Matthew 27:62f) would have taken the body. Rather, both had every motive to produce the body publicly in order to humiliate the disciples and nip their movement in the bud. And since the scene in question was right at Jerusalem, it was completely within their power to locate the corpse should it still have existed. Yet to their dismay, no such body was ever produced. If the Jews had the body, they would have wheeled it in at the day of Pentecost when all Jerusalem was in an uproar because of Peter’s sermon on the Resurrection of Christ.

There is no question that Jesus Christ’s tomb was mysteriously empty. As Paul Althaus has said, the resurrection message “could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact… Dr. Craig observed that, “Conflicting traditions [to the empty tomb story] nowhere appear, even in Jewish polemic.”

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At least one skeptic (Dr. John Dominic Crossan) has wrongly asserted that Roman law automatically forbade Jesus’ burial, and that he must therefore have been thrown anonymously into a common pit. This is not sustainable. Raymond Brown has shown that Roman burial policy varied with circumstances and did allow the possibility of personal burial of some of the crucified. This scenario would also contradict the consistent Jewish protests that the body had been removed. Furthermore, the Gospels could not have successfully invented as owner of the tomb one so specific as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43). Had the Gospels been false on this matter they would not have been able to withstand the swift correction and ridicule from the Jews.

How have doubters of Christ’s resurrection responded? Some skeptics have claimed that someone must have stolen Jesus’ body from the tomb, and that this led to the stories of miraculous resurrection. Is this possible? Neither the Jewish nor the Roman leaders, who guarded the tomb (Matthew 27:62f) would have taken the body. Rather, both had every motive to produce the body publicly in order to humiliate the disciples and nip their movement in the bud. And since the scene in question was right at Jerusalem, it was completely within their power to locate the corpse should it still have existed. Yet to their dismay, no such body was ever produced. If the Jews had the body, they would have wheeled it in at the day of Pentecost when all Jerusalem was in an uproar because of Peter’s sermon on the Resurrection of Christ.

Likewise, is highly unlikely that Jesus’ followers could have removed the body with a Roman guard protecting the tomb, plus a large stone door. And it won’t work to charge them with inventing the account of the sleeping guards in Matthew. 28:11f. That story would only have served as apologetic propaganda had the guards stayed awake.

Why would the disciples (or anyone else) want to risk their lives to steal Christ’s body? The biblical record shows the disciples were scared, discouraged and disheartened. Their only motive could have been to deceive. But everything we read about these men indicates they were good and honest. How could they have gone out the rest of their lives and daily preached that Christ had risen from the dead when they knew all along it was a lie? Would they have sacrificed and suffered so greatly for something that they know was an outright deception?

It would have been foolish to hide the corpse and fake a resurrection. The consequences of their loyalty to Jesus included beatings, imprisonments, and even death. No sane person chooses these for what they know is false. Under such pressures, liars confess their deceptions and betray their cohorts.

The explosive growth of the Church is strong evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. Significantly, it wasn’t the powerful, but commoners, burdened with every cultural strike against them (1 Corinthians 1:26f), whose Resurrection message peaceably transformed the Roman Empire. Who would ever have predicted such an “impossible” feat? Yet it actually did happen.

That Christianity originated in Judaism[6] is further evidence for his resurrection. Renowned archaeologist William F. Albright observed, In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and the eighties of the first century A.D. Jewish bias against the Jesus of the New Testament was massive. What else would have led Jews to accept a shamefully hung (Galatians 3:13) “criminal”, as their promised Messiah when they had longed for a military deliverer? And what else would have moved Jews to break their monotheistic convictions to worship Jesus as God the Son (John 1:18), or change their worship day from Saturday to Sunday (Acts 20:7). A

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mere invented myth would have been powerless to overthrow such hopes and traditions.

Jesus was so unlike what all Jews expected the Son of David to be that His own disciples found it almost impossible to connect the idea of the Messiah with Him - Millar Burrows It is, as the New Testament states, Jesus’ resurrection that singly overcame that “impossibility” (Acts 2:24).

In addition, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus points to a momentous miracle. Beginning as a violent enemy of the Church (Acts 8:3; 9:1, Galatians 1:13), he was utterly turned around into becoming Jesus’ servant. Choosing suffering for Christ’s sake (2 Corinthians 11:23f), Paul gave up all he had, endured persecution, and preached the Gospel in city after city all the way to Rome, where he died a martyr’s death. He is credited with having had greater influence over the course of the Roman Empire than any other figure of the First Century apart from Christ. Nothing short of Christ’s resurrection has remotely explained his major transformation.

The other Apostles too, overcame fear to brave suffering, imprisonment, and even death, as they proclaimed the good news of the risen Christ across their world. Is it thinkable that these people would die so willingly for a mere myth? “Each of the disciples, except John, died a martyr’s death… because they tenaciously clung to their beliefs and statements,” observes researcher Josh McDowell.

In contrast to others who have died for an unverifiable hope beyond the grave (e.g., mystics seeking reincarnation or Moslem militants expecting reward from Allah), Jesus’ disciples lived and died for the historically verifiable claim that the grave was empty and that he was seen alive again.

Legal scholar Dr. Simon Greenleaf, founder of the Harvard Law School, notes: propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, [early Christians received] contempt, opposition… and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate, and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only [continued] their work with increased vigor and resolution… The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of like heroic constancy, patience, and unblenching courage. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. From these [considerations] there is no escape but in the perfect conviction and admission that they were good men, testifying to that which they had carefully observed…and well knew to be true.

Dr. Greenleaf is considered by many to have been one of the greatest legal minds we have had in the U.S. He was formerly an outspoken skeptic of Christianity and who set out to disprove the deity of Christ. In the end he concluded that the Resurrection was true “beyond any reasonable doubt.” Greenleaf became a Christian after studying the evidence for himself. Many top legal minds agree with Greenleaf that if the case for Christ’s death and resurrection were taken to a court of law, it would undoubtedly win. The claims are very well established and verified by independent and converging proofs.

why would you let yourself be killed horribly for something you didn’t believe in absolutely?

I’m sure they believed in it. What does that have to do with it being true or not?

Are you even trying, here?

Chet:

Today’s world religions have different ideas of divinity, different answers to the what, why and how’s of existence and salvation. And, as I have discovered through my own, they also encourage people to believe different things. A very popular thought of today is the claim that there are many ways to God. But, even that statement I believe has no meaning if we do not know what we mean by God. A brief look at the world religions of today, which includes mystical philosophies, shows that there exist contradictions on almost every point. Here are several examples of religion disagreement. Eastern religions teach that everything is God and through meditation we can come to realize our divinity. Those in the Judeo Christian traditions believe that the creation is not part of God at all, but that God transcends His creation, as well as being present in it. Per Dr.Gulzar, Islam teaches oneness of God and does not recognize the Trinity. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christianity and the majority of protestant churches acknowledge the doctrine of the trinity. Furthermore, Buddhism teaches that the question of God’s existence is not important but what matter most is the path for living right. It teaches that through earning merit in this life we will reincarnate to a better state and hopefully to a state of nothingness where no more desires exist and thus no more disappointments and suffering. In the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and many other cults, they teach that man must work his way to God’s acceptance, while Christianity teaches that salvation is a gift and can’t be earned by any humans’ means. So, many contradictions exist between different religions on every point. It is true that all religions have some truth. But, to claim that all religions are true leads to contradiction. Many want to believe that all religions are all ultimately ways to God.

As Paul stated in the Bible, “If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless” (1 Cor. 15:14). But, Jesus did do this. He was crucified, died, buried and resurrected three days later. Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is the difference between being God and all other gods. Jesus Christ demonstrated that he has power over life and death, thus he has the ability to give people eternal life. As a Christian, I know that I am called to love those who disagree with me. I am not called to compromise my faith in Jesus Christ, or to deny His claims to be the only way to God. I say based upon my own life experiences but more importantly what the Bible says, Jesus is the only way to God. Jesus himself taught, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

“Each of the disciples, except John, died a martyr’s death… because they tenaciously clung to their beliefs and statements,” observes researcher Josh McDowell.

Jak,

How did the apostles die, and more importantly, how do you know?

Ebonmuse:

Most of our information about the deaths of the apostles is derived from early church traditions. It is has been proven that tradition has seldom contained outright inventions. Eusebius, the most important of the early church historians wrote his history of the early church in A.D. 325. He wrote, “The apostles and disciples of the Savior scattered over the whole world, preached the Gospel everywhere.” The Church historian Schumacher researched the lives of the apostles and recounted the history of their martyrdoms and this was what was found -

Matthew Suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword wound.

Mark Died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the
streets until he was dead.

Luke- was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the
lost.

John Faced martyrdom when he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil
during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered
from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of
Patmos . He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos.
The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as Bishop of Edessa
in modern Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.

Peter was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross. According to church
tradition it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die
in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

James, Just The leader ! of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown over a
hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a fuller’s club.
* This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the
Temptation.

James the Great, son of Zebedee, was a fisherman by trade when Jesus
called him to a lifetime of ministry. As a strong leader of the church,
James was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem. The Roman officer who guarded
James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial.
Later, the officer walked beside James to the place of execution.
Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt
beside James to accept
beheading as a Christian.

Bartholomew also known as Nathaniel Was a missionary to Asia. He
witnessed for our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for
his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed to death by a whip.

Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece! . After
being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross
with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that, when he was
led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: “I have long desired
and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of
Christ hanging on it.” He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days
until he expired.

Thomas Was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary
trips to establish the church in the sub-continent.

Jude, The brother of Jesus Was killed with arrows when he refused to deny
his faith in Christ.

Matthias The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was
stoned and then beheaded.

Barnabas One of the group of seventy disciples, wrote the Epistle of
Barnabas. He preached throughout Italy and Cyprus. Barnabas was stoned to
death at Salonica.

Paul Was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in
A.D. 67. Paul! endured a lengthy imprisonment which allowed him to write his
many epistles to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire.

Again, the details of the martyrdoms of the disciples or apostles are found in traditional early church sourcts. These traditions were recounted in the writings of the church fathers and the first official church history written by the historian Eusebius in A.D. 325. Although we can not at this time verify every detail historically, the universal belief of the early Christian writers was that each of the apostles had faced martyrdom faithfully without denying their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Hope this helps.

It is has been proven that tradition has seldom contained outright inventions.

Except for the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, the existence of Jesus, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, Revelations… you know, basically the whole thing.

Other than the whole thing, though, no “outright inventions” in church tradition. No sir!

Chet:

You seem to me to be an intellent person!  You seem to possess some historical and Biblical knowledge. You also seem to doubt it all. And, that is OK.  I can not make you see fact and truth. You should iknow that I stumbled into this site by accient.  Started reading and then blogging as a way to help. Beleive that help is needed because misinformation and confusion is all over the place.

Side note - Found it interested that some time ago, I told someone that Jesus loves them and they immediately were offended. But, this same person was not offended when another person called them an “m- f -er”. Perhaps, life has been extremely hard and not fair. Or maybe some tragic thing has happened to make some mad and doubt God? Or maybe some are afraid/ But, afraid of waht? I am curious, are you atheiest?  What is it about atheists that would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that they don’t believe even exists? Perhaps, you find challenge in having God believing people prove to you that God exist? And, maybe if they can not prove it, or prove it well, then you can say that - God is not real, be accountable to none and go about you life? Maybe, God is actively pursuing them through this time spent blogging?

Jesus? Look throughout the major world religions and you’ll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did. That is what sets Jesus apart from all the others. He said God exists and you’re looking at him. Though he talked about his Father in heaven, it was not from the position of separation, but of very close union, unique to all humankind. Jesus said that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father, anyone who believed in him, believed in the Father.

He said, “I am the light of the world, he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He claimed attributes belonging only to God: to be able to forgive people of their sin, free them from habits of sin, give people a more abundant life and give them eternal life in heaven. Unlike other teachers who focused people on their words, Jesus pointed people to himself. He did not say, “follow my words and you will find truth.” He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.”

What proof did Jesus give for claiming to be divine? He did what people can’t do. Jesus performed miracles. He healed people…blind, crippled, deaf, even raised a couple of people from the dead. He had power over objects…created food out of thin air, enough to feed crowds of several thousand people. He performed miracles over nature…walked on top of a lake, commanding a raging storm to stop for some friends. People everywhere followed Jesus, because he constantly met their needs, doing the miraculous. He said if you do not want to believe what I’m telling you, you should at least believe in me based on the miracles you’re seeing.10

Jesus Christ showed God to be gentle, loving, aware of our self-centeredness and shortcomings, yet deeply wanting a relationship with us. Jesus revealed that although God views us as sinners, worthy of his punishment, his love for us ruled and God came up with a different plan. God himself took on the form of man and accepted the punishment for our sin on our behalf. Sounds ludicrous? Perhaps, but many loving fathers would gladly trade places with their child in a cancer ward if they could. The Bible says that the reason we would love God is because he first loved us.

Jesus died in our place so we could be forgiven. Of all the religions known to humanity, only through Jesus will you see God reaching toward humanity, providing a way for us to have a relationship with him. Jesus proves a divine heart of love, meeting our needs, drawing us to himself. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, he offers us a new life today. We can be forgiven, fully accepted by God and genuinely loved by God. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” This is God, in action.

Does God exist? If you want to know, investigate Jesus Christ. We’re told that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God does not force us to believe in him, though he could. Instead, he has provided sufficient proof of his existence for us to willingly respond to him. The earth’s perfect distance from the sun, the unique chemical properties of water, the human brain, DNA, the number of people who attest to knowing God, the gnawing in our hearts and minds to determine if God is there, the willingness for God to be known through Jesus Christ. If you need to know more about Jesus and reasons to believe in him.

I am curious, are you atheiest?  What is it about atheists that would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that they don’t believe even exists?

Seriously? Jak, how much energy do you really think it takes to rebut the standard arguments of believers?

Let me tell you - as compelling as you must think the arguments are, it’s not that hard. I do it between class periods as I study biochemistry - just as a diversion. It’s about as hard, and takes about as much energy, as sneezing.

Jacking off takes more energy than it takes to refute the existence of God.

God is not real, be accountable to none and go about you life?

I’m accountable to myself and to my community, just like you; and the evidence is, belief in God doesn’t seem to make you any more accountable for your actions than unbelief. Indeed, it’s pretty easy to find examples of people whose belief in God made them feel accountable to no Earthly authority or principle; Ted Haggard certainly didn’t feel himself accountable to anybody. He still doesn’t.

The truth is that belief in God is far more likely to excuse your actions than restrict them.

Does God exist? If you want to know, investigate Jesus Christ.

Already did, Jak. That’s why I became an atheist when I was a Christian, before. And when you really investigate Jesus Christ - from a factual basis, not from a basis of faith in an inerrant Bible - you’ll become an atheist, too.

Chet:

Why should anyone trust in Christianity over Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, or anything else?  It is because there are absolute truths, because only in Christianity is there accurate fulfilled prophecies of a coming Messiah.  Only in Christianity do we have the extremely accurate transmission of the eyewitness documents (gospels) so we can trust what was originally written.  Only in Christianity do we have the person of Christ who claimed to be God, performed many miracles to prove His claim of divinity, who died and rose from the dead, and who said that He alone was the way the truth and the life (John 14:6).  All this adds to the legitimacy and credibility of Christianity above all other religions—all based on the person of Jesus.  If follows that if it is all true about what Jesus said and did, then all other religions are false because Jesus said that He alone was the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6).  It could not be that Jesus is the only way and truth and other religions also be the truth.

Either Jesus is true and all other religions are false or other religions are true and Jesus is false.  There are no other options.  I choose to follow the risen Lord Jesus.

Again, what proof did Jesus give for claiming to be divine? He did what people can’t do. Jesus performed miracles.

The Christian faith is not a blind faith. It is a logical and defensible faith based upon history and fact.

Good luck with and in life. I’ll pray for you.

It is because there are absolute truths, because only in Christianity is there accurate fulfilled prophecies of a coming Messiah.

If even the ancient Greeks knew that “fulfilled prophecy” was always a scam, Jak, how come that fact escaped you?

The simple fact is that we should not ever be surprised when prophecies at the beginning of a book come true by the end of the book. (Of course what’s surprising about the Bible is the number of prophecies that aren’t ever fulfilled.)

Only in Christianity do we have the extremely accurate transmission of the eyewitness documents (gospels) so we can trust what was originally written.

None of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts. Not a single one of them. They’re not even second-hand reporting of legitimate eyewitness testimony since the witnesses are not named. And I think you’re overlooking texts like the Book of Mormon, which has a far greater claim to being “eyewitness documents” since the document was penned by the same person who claims to have received the revelation. That’s only true of one book in the Bible that I can think of.

Either Jesus is true and all other religions are false or other religions are true and Jesus is false.  There are no other options

No, there’s one you’re missing: all religions are false and so is Jesus. That’s the third option and it’s the eminently reasonable one considering the evidence.

I’ll pray for you.

Feel free to waste your time, but go in good health.

Jak, you’ve adequately summarized the traditional Christian beliefs about how the apostles died. However, you missed my second and more important question: How do you know?

I mention this because most of the stories about how the apostles died are just that - stories, tall tales that arose in medieval times, with no historical provenance or connection to a reliable chain of eyewitnesses or documentation. You mentioned “the Church historian Schumacher”, but how does he know? What contemporary records can he cite?

You also mentioned the early church father Eusebius, and I find that very interesting - because Eusebius directly contradicts some of the accounts you relate, saying that the books they came from were heretical and untrustworthy. For instance, your story about Andrew’s death is derived from the second-century book called Acts of Andrew; the crucifixion of Peter is recorded in Acts of Peter; and the story about Thomas being stabbed with a spear comes from the Acts of Thomas. Eusebius described all three of these books as those “that are cited by the heretics under the name of the apostles,” and says of them: “No one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed [them] worthy of mention in his writings” (source).

So, it would appear that the stories you cite are dismissed even by your own, Christian sources. Do you have any better attestation? How do you know how the apostles died?

Only logically, where they make mutually exclusive claims. They can’t all be right - they’re too contradictory.

Sure, where they make mutually exclusive claims. But they don’t always. There’s nothing mutually exclusive between, say, Buddhism and Jainism.

So Hinduism believes that Christianity is wrong, therefore, because Christianity makes the claim that Christianity is the only true path. So, in fact, Hinduism and Christianity are mutually exclusive. I mean how could you simultaneously believe in only one path, and in every path?

Hinduism believes evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity is wrong. Other forms of Christianity have disagreed with the notion that Christianity is the only true path.

If God exists then God exists for everybody, because we share a universe. If God doesn’t exist then he doesn’t exist for anybody. God can’t exist for you and not exist for me.

If a god exists then it exists for everybody, yes, unless (as many varieties of Hinduism and paganism hold) the “god” is just a metaphor for an aspect of humanity. But if a god exists for everybody, ti still doesn’t necessarily have to be worshiped or followed by everybody.

Huh? If you see yourself as more suited to religion X than religion Y, that’s a statement about its validity. You see X as more valid than Y. That’s the point - if they’re all the same, if they’re all completely equal paths to divinity, or whatever, why would one path be more personally suitable than another?

Because personal suitability obviously depends on a lot besides objective validity. Do all straight people think straightness is more valid than gayness? Do all gay people think gayness is more valid than straightness? If you see yourself as more suited to religion X than religion Y, that’s not necessarily a statement about it’s validity. It could just be a statement about you and your personal needs.

The part where she’s concluded there’s an elephant. I mean, how did you miss that?

But that’s her conclusion; I don’t see it as “excluding” atheists, rather than just disagreeing with them.

Re: Judaism, it’s pretty explicit that it acknowledges other gods (“thou shalt HAVE no other gods before me,” not “there ARE no other gods except for me”) and that the rules of Judaism are only meant to apply to Jews (that’s why you don’t get proselytization). In its inception it was just another desert religion built around their particular god; as it evolved, it became more insistent that others follow its God (if not its rules).

Either Jesus is true and all other religions are false or other religions are true and Jesus is false.  There are no other options.  I choose to follow the risen Lord Jesus.

Yes there are other options - all religions are false. How could you leave that one out?

And you are so obsessed with whether Jesus was resurrected or not - that’s almost besides the point. Even if they did exist and God the Father decided to raise God the Son from the dead (and if you are a god or demi-god in the first place, then death can’t mean the same thing as it does to mortal creatures)  the entire premise of this raising-from-the-dead business is crazy.

As this parody of Chick Tracts has the god-figure say: “why would I need to sacrifice myself to myself to allow me to change a rule I made myself?”

http://www.jhuger.com/tract/dtr/index.php

And if you DON’T accept the idea that God/Jesus sacrificed himself to himself to allow him to change a rule (humans are damned for original sin) he made himself, then you disagree with the entire point of the New Testament. How could you be a Christian in that case?

OK fellow atheists, in case you haven’t seen this before, it’s the video version of Kissing Hank’s Ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDp7pkEcJVQ

Now that’s an analogy.

Obviously, this is a atheist blog website! And, it is obvious that we can agree to disagree!  But, I have asked this before to someone yesterday and I will ask it again. Anyone can answer this. It would help me greatly in understanding your views and position.

Here’s the question - What is it about atheists that would make them spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that they don’t believe even exists?

But that’s her conclusion; I don’t see it as “excluding” atheists, rather than just disagreeing with them.

That’s a distinction without a difference. What does it mean to exclude, in this context, if not to exclude from possibility? I mean even the most exclusive fundie Christians don’t disagree that other religions exist, they just “disagree” with them.

I mean in one fell swoop you’ve made inclusion and exclusion the exact same thing.

Here’s the question - What is it about atheists that would make them spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that they don’t believe even exists?

Asked and answered. It doesn’t take much of any of those, that’s how bad the theist arguments are.

And it’s important in our society. Atheists are the last minority you can discriminate against with no consequence - all because we demand better evidence for extraordinary claims.

Please remember something here that is very important - I have made a choice to believe that there is a God, specifically, Jesus Christ is God.

You have made the choice to believe that there is NOT a God.  Thus, you are an atheist !

This decision to be an atheist is yours, no coercion, by me and or anyone else.

And, I don’t ever recall myself and or anyone else discriminating againist you and or other atheists because you chose not to believe.

Finally, the Bible says that Jesus died for all; therefore, Jesus died for all.  God so loved the world, not just the Christian, that He died for everyone and it is up to the person to accept or reject Jesus.  If he rejects Jesus, then the atonement is not applied to the person and he will go to hell.  But, Jesus’ sacrifice was not only sufficient for all, but intended for all.  This is God’s idea not mine and it is the Christian perspecitive and wholehearted belief.

Well, personally, i never decided to be atheist. I’ve been this way my whole life.  YOU decided to believe in a god, to reject all evidence in front of you and believe whatever crap your told by religious leaders or parents.

thanks for letting us know you’re “loving” god is sending us all to hell though. i’ve been told this my whole life and guess what, i STILL don’t give a fuck. and jesus wasn’t sacrificed at all if he came back to life, was he? and does this mean he NEVER died and is still walking among us?

show yourself, Jesus! You’re followers have run amok!!

What is it about atheists that would make them spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that they don’t believe even exists?

Well if you christians weren’t constantly at my DOORSTEP trying to convince me to believe in your shit, and harassing me in the street , and trying to take away my rights, and telling me i’m going to hell, i wouldn’t have anyone to refute. it’s not atheists wasting time, it’s YOU. look at the length of your posts compared to ours. and it’s all bullshit! at least i can use logic.

for example - i’ve never got in an argument with a jew over god, because they never try to convince me they are all knowing and right, and i’m wrong and going to burn for eternity. are you surprised that the statement “you will go to hell” incites a reaction? seriously? i

Again, I stumbled into this site by accient. Started reading everyone’s posts includuing yours. After reading them, noticed obvious misinformation and confusion.  Starting posting and replying back to people as a way “to inform” and or “explain” and or “claify” the Christiian!

Noticed also out of all of the people that could have responded to my last post and question, you responded, Voluntarily. So, I was not on your doorstep. You chose to read and respond to my email. No one made you.

Noticed, also, that you have now used profanity, which I have not.  I have made my point without doing that. Maybe you should try not to.  Do not apprecite the use of profanity.

In regard to the question - why a loving God would send a non-believer to hell, the main problem with such an approach is that it is overly simplistic and based on emotionalism, not scripture.

First of all, when God made Adam, He made him good.  Adam had the freedom to choose to obey or disobey God.  Adam is the one who rebelled.  God did not make him rebel and God is not responsible for Adam’s rebellion.  It would be like a parent having a child knowing that the child would eventually disobey the parent.  Does this means that the parent is responsible for the child’s rebellion when it occurs because the parent knew it would happen?  Of course not.  Furthermore, if the parent has more children, does he/she not know that some children may very well turn out good and others bad?  Should the parents then not have children because some of them might turn out bad?  The skeptic, if he is consistent, would urge parents not to have any children at all lest some of them turn out bad.

But the skeptic might say, “But God knows for a fact who will be bad and good.  Why allow the people going to hell to be born in the first place?”  But, if this is the case and if God arranged it that no “bad” people were born, then we would all go to hell.  You see, Jesus is the only way to be forgiven of our sins.  His sacrifice on the cross was necessary in order to make it possible for us to be saved because everyone, “good” and “bad” has sinned.  If there were no “bad” people born, then there wouldn’t be any “bad” people around who would have sent Jesus to the cross.  If that never happened, then we wouldn’t be saved from our sins because Jesus would never have been unjustly condemned and His sacrifice would never have happened.

Second, if someone says that it is wrong for God to allow someone to be born who will go to hell, then would he rather have God remove our freedom to rebel against Him so that no one can be blamed for sin?  If the critic says he only want those people born who go to heaven, then how are they truly free and how would that fulfill the ultimate plan of God to sacrifice His Son for the redemption of mankind?

Third, God could have reasons for sending people to hell that we cannot understand.

Fourth, God is just and always does what is right.  Therefore, sending people to hell is the right thing to do, especially when we understand that God is eternally holy and those who sin against God incur an infinite offense because the infinite God is the one who is offended.

Finally, the Bible simply tells us that people will go to hell.  They go there because they are not covered by the sacrifice of Christ.  Whether or not they are created or not does not effect the fact that sinners must be punished; otherwise, the holiness and righteousness of God mean nothing. Again, heaven and hell are God’s ideas not mine nor the Christian Church. So, if you are mad aboput the possibility of going to hell, take it up with God.

What rights have been taken away from you? You should explain.

You have a right to chose what to believe. And, again, I am not trying to make you believe. Instead, it appears that you are trying to “discredit” my belief, in a God.

Finally, again, if you are an atheist, why do you spend your time and efforts refuting and discrediting people of faith? Think about it!  Almost everything that I have posted, you have commented on and tried to decredit it. I bekieve that I have tried to explain, show and ploitely defend my faith in a God, Jesus.

It would be like a parent having a child knowing that the child would eventually disobey the parent.  Does this means that the parent is responsible for the child’s rebellion when it occurs because the parent knew it would happen?

Would a parent send a child to some place where they would be tormented for ETERNITY - for any reason, much less disobedience? Of course not, because that would be insanely evil.

But your god would do just that . Because your god is insanely evil. You worship evil insanity. What does that say about YOU?

If there were no “bad” people born, then there wouldn’t be any “bad” people around who would have sent Jesus to the cross.  If that never happened, then we wouldn’t be saved from our sins because Jesus would never have been unjustly condemned and His sacrifice would never have happened.

Again, what the Chick Tract parody said: “why would I need to sacrifice myself to myself to allow me to change a rule I made myself?”

Nancy:

I think there seems to be some confusion on yur part. So, I offer this as “clarification”. This is the Christian perspective and belief.

What I was talking about with the parent and child relationship is this - human nature as well as choice.

It is the Christian world view gives the most satisfying answer to the question, How do you explain human nature? The Bible teaches that God created us to be His image-bearers, which makes us distinct from the entire rest of creation. But when Adam and Eve chose to rebel in disobedience, their fall into sin distorted and marred the sacred Image. The fact that we are created in God’s image explains the noble, creative, positive things we can do; the fact that we are sinners who love to disobey and rebel against God’s rightful place as King of our lives explains our wicked, destructive, negative behavior.

Christian parents teach this basic explanation and principle to their children. They teach them about God who is real, loves them and has sacrificed Jesus for sins. But, ultimately, the child has to chose to believe or not. If they child embraces the belief, they grow in faith.  If they do not, they have made a conscience choice not to believe and wiith that choice comes consquences. But, by no menas does any Christian parent try to send their child to eternal hell. It’s the child choice. And, again, God does not force us to believe in him. Again, heaven and hell are God’s ideas not mine nor the Christian Church.

Again, it is the Christian belief that we are tainted at birth with sin because of original sin from Adam and Eve.  Sin separates us from God. to beidge that separation - Jesus. Jesus is the “Remedy” to fix. And, thus the need to rescued.

Hope this helps you understand and clarify better.

It is the Christian world view gives the most satisfying answer to the question, How do you explain human nature?

No, it gives one of the LEAST satisfying answers. In fact, it gives INSANE answers, although pretty much all religions do.

Again, it is the Christian belief that we are tainted at birth with sin because of original sin from Adam and Eve.  Sin separates us from God. to beidge that separation - Jesus. Jesus is the “Remedy” to fix. And, thus the need to rescued.

How is that clarification? You just keep repeating the same things over and over again.

Why would “we” be “tainted at birth”? For something that Adam and Eve did? How is that in any way fair? If your great great grandfather robbed a bank, should you have to go to jail for it too? Of course not. Humans wouldn’t be so unfair. But your god is.

And of course your god is also supposed to be omniscient so when he created humans, he knew exactly what was going to happen in the future.

Your god makes no sense at all. But you don’t seem to have the ability to think logically. So don’t presume to clarify anything for those of us who have the ability.

Nancy:

It appears to me that you are just like Chet, debating, belittling and or rebuting every point that I make.

Again, I am offering “explanation” and “clarification” on the Christian perspective and belief.

And, just like Chet, you insult me with the comment that I use no logic. I am using comlete logic and things that are directly taught from the Holy Bible and one of the countries top theology schools.

If you don’t like my comments and or explanations, so be it. But, I am not making these thiings up. Nor, I am God who made things the way things are

“Tainited at birth” comes from the “doctrine of original sin”, which says because a man, one man (Adam) brought sin and death into the world, all the descendants of Adam will inherit it. So, all born after Adam will be sinful.

God made Adam, He made him good.  Adam had the freedom to choose to obey or disobey God.  Again, Adam is the one who rebelled.  God did not make him rebel and God is not responsible for Adam’s rebellion.

While you feel that God is not fair, God is just and always does what is right. Therefore, sending people to hell is the right thing to do, especially when we understand that God is eternally holy and those who sin against God incur an infinite offense because the infinite God is the one who is offended.

This sin separates man from God. What is the solution?  God provided the solution—a way to deliver man from his wretched state. Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15 that God provided another Adam! The Son of God took on a human nature in addition to His full divinity, becoming a perfect God-man—Jesus Christ. In His humanity He was a descendant of Adam (through Noah, Abraham and David)—He thus became our relation! He is called “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), because he took the place of the first Adam. He became the new head and, because he was sinless, He was able to pay the penalty for sin: For since by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).

In other words, because of sin, man became an enemy of God, without his maker and damned. God knew that man could not by any mean of his own reestablish the relations with him. He also knew that anything that man tried to do in an effort to reestablish things fell short and hence man needed a helper and a Savior, Jesus.

I am not claiming to know all.  But, I have learned a lot by reading, researching, studying, and I know that I have a great handle on my Christian faith. It is what I imperfectly live and will die by. And why would I not keep repeating the same things over and over? It because of two things - first, you and others don’t seem to understand basic Christian theology. And, two, As Christians, we believe that the Bible is both incapable of error (infallible) and free from error (inerrant) thus is requires consistency in explaiing.

I have tried to explain things. If you don’t like it and or don’t get it, I can not do anything about it.

jak, it’s not so much that Nancy and Chet don’t get it. It’s that they state, pretty clearly I think, that if you are completely right, and this is how God and the universe operates then as far as they can see, God is both irrational and evil.

God, as the Bible posits him, punishes finite evil with infinite punishment. How is this just? He holds people responsible for evil they themselves never committed. How is this infinitely good?

The one that’s always been a sticker for me is the necessity of horrible death (for Christ). The classical doctrine (though not that of every church), holds that Christ’s death on the cross was utterly necessary. I.e. if the people of ancient Jerusalem had been kinder and gentler and had never gone and tortured him to death, we would all be infinitely worse off. Which makes no sense at all, even by God’s previously expressed standards (think Sodom and Gomorrah).

If people had not been sufficiently wicked on their own, God would have had to provoke them to get the right response in order to be merciful - sort of. Much like that heart-hardening thing with the Pharoah - he couldn’t just let the Hebrews go, God had to harden his heart so Moses could demonstrate God’s power by slaughtering innocent children(!), because it wasn’t in God’s interest that Pharoah be sensible or merciful - can’t have that.

While you feel that God is not fair, God is just and always does what is right. Therefore, sending people to hell is the right thing to do, especially when we understand that God is eternally holy and those who sin against God incur an infinite offense because the infinite God is the one who is offended.

Hell is one of the most mind-bogglingly evil concepts ever invented by human beings. And if you believe that justice includes eternal torment - well, what horrible deeds might you be capable of in the name of “justice”?

The one that’s always been a sticker for me is the necessity of horrible death (for Christ). The classical doctrine (though not that of every church), holds that Christ’s death on the cross was utterly necessary

And again:

“why would I need to sacrifice myself to myself to allow me to change a rule I made myself?”

This is something that jak can never answer because to even think about the fact that this is what the Judeo-Christian sky-god did is to risk unspeakable horrors.

But this is what the sky-god did, according to the Bible - make a rule that says, simply: humans are all damned because of the actions of Adam and the only way that I can forgive them is to send myself/Jesus to earth to be killed and then I/we will go back to heaven in 3 days.

Only a crazy being would come up with such a crazy rule, and only crazy people, on understanding this rule, would continue to believe that a “just” being would come up with such insanity.

Unless of course they’ve been told since they were born that to even QUESTION anything in the Bible, or anything that the minister/priest says means they will be sent to hell to be TORMENTED FOR ETERNITY. To have that pounded into your skull your entire life just might put a damper on any intellectual curiosity you may otherwise have had.

As Christians, we are encouraged to question things. We ask our Ministers questions and we have reserved time at church in which we question and search the Bible for answers.

It says in the Bible, - 1 Thessalonians 5:21 – Test everything. In other words, examine (dokimazo from dokimos = tested, proved or approved, tried as metals by fire and thus purified from dechomai = to accept, receive)  means to assay, to test, to prove, to put to the test, to make a trial of, to verify, to discern to approve. It means to test in order to verify the character of something.

One of the most famous theologian, C H Spurgeon, encouraged his students with cautionto examine everything carefully.

So, as a Christian, I don’t just believe everything told to me, I test and examine it.

God wants us to find Christian answers to our questions in His Word, the Bible. God’s Holy Spirit promises to help us understand His Word. John 16:13 says, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” Romans 15:4 affirms, “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”

In regard to Hell - is this fair?  The teaching that there is an eternal hell in which hordes of mankind will suffer eternal punishment can be a difficult doctrine to accept.  We hear so much about God’s infinite love and how He desires that all men be saved (1 Tim. 2:4).  However, those who develop their theologies based upon the “gentle” side of God do so with an incomplete picture.  Not only is God loving (1 John 4:8-10), gracious (Exo. 33:19; 1 Pet. 2:3), and merciful (Exodus 34:6; Psalm 67:1; James 5:11), but He is also holy (Isaiah 6:3; Rev. 4:8), just ( Neh. 9:32-33; 2 Thess. 1:6), and hates sin (Psalm 5:5-6; Hab. 1:13).  God punishes the sinner (Jer. 50:31; Ez. 44:12; Matt. 25:46; 2 Thess. 1:9; 2 Pet. 2:9; Heb. 10:29).

Can a God of love send anyone to Hell?  You might as well ask some other question to make just as much sense. Does God allow disease in the world? Does God allow jails and prisons for some people? Does God allow the electric chair sometimes? Does God allow sin to break homes and hearts? Does God allow war? All of these things are the consequences of sin entering into the world, and in some cases the direct result of man’s rebellion, and the result of greed and pride and egotism and hunger for power that doesn’t have any use for people—only the desire to get ahead.

This is the incredible fruit of sin. Sin brings suffering into the world. There’s no way of getting around it. And the greatest sin in the world is to reject the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.You jump off a high building, the law of gravity will take care of you. You might say, “God is love,” all the way down, but you’re still going to get splattered when you hit the bottom! You break the law of gravity, and it breaks you! You may love your little child, but if he puts his finger up on that hot burner on the gas stove or the electric stove, he’s going to get burned!

Fire burns. Gravity kills. Water drowns. And you can say, “God is love, God is love, God is love,” until you’re blue in the face. But water will still drown you, fire will burn you, and gravity will kill you, and sin will damn you no matter how much you say about a loving God.

God just set up life that way. He set up the rules. He set up the laws by which we are to live. And if we break those laws, they break us, and we pay the consequences. Nit sure if there is any other way to explain and or clairfy.

jak, first let me explain something important. There is no one here who can be converted to your cult. We are all, without exception, unrepentant heathens happily bound for the pit. Personally, if your version of God is real, then I will take up arms alongside Satan. So to the extent that you are trying to evangelize your religion or your worldview, in the hope of sowing seeds, you are wasting your time and you might as well give up. You are sowing seeds among thorns. I don’t say this to drive you away; it’s no problem if you stay. It just breaks my heart a little to see you pouring your energy into a fruitless endeavor.

As Christians, we are encouraged to question things.

You appear not to understand the concept of questioning. If coming to a particular conclusion means that you will be punished with eternal hellfire, then you aren’t really free to question. That is nothing more than pledging fealty under duress. That’s not freedom. You aren’t allowed to come to the conclusion that “God does not exist” or “God is evil.” Therefore you cannot seriously ask the questions “does God exist” or “is God evil” if the only permissible, acceptable answers are already decided for you.

We ask our Ministers questions and we have reserved time at church in which we question and search the Bible for answers.

If questioning means asking your minister to tell you what to think, or reading one single bronze age book for all the answers to life’s mysteries, then I just hope you enjoy it. Don’t be surprised when those of us outside the cult find your definition of inquiry to be sadly unsatisfying.

So, as a Christian, I don’t just believe everything told to me, I test and examine it.

Prove it. Tell us something you believe which contradicts the Bible. If everything you believe is in accordance with the Bible, then we have no way of verifying that you’ve questioned anything.

Does God allow disease in the world? ... All of these things are the consequences of sin entering into the world

Do you realize that normal people recognize these as the words of an insane person? Disease is the result of bacterial or viral infection, or genetic mutation, generally. For instance, scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the Epstein-Barr virus, and they didn’t find a single sin particle in there.

sin will damn you no matter how much you say about a loving God. God just set up life that way. He set up the rules.

That’s our point. Thank you for making it for us.

(Though your god and sin and hell do not exist, but if they did, then) God didn’t have to set it up so that sin leads to eternal damnation. That was God’s choice, and he is responsible for the consequences of his choice. It is wrong and evil to make an infinite, eternal punishment for an finite, temporal action, or even a billion finite, temporal actions. The consequence is that your god is wrong. Your god does not act like a loving god would act. Your god is evil.

It’s a good thing your god does not exist. But you still believe in and worship an evil idea. And that says something about your character.

Here’s a video that explains the idea of hell, and why we recognize your belief in hell as your personal moral failing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWdhDpW49Iw