Faith Healing

[Justin Z]

Ah okay, gotcha.  What I thought you were trying to say, based on the way you were framing it, is that believers don't generally start with the presumption--inculcated since birth, in most cases--that a god or gods exist, so that's why atheists and theists talk past each other.  It makes me wonder if perhaps you're misunderstanding at least this atheist's position, which is that regardless of what a person is thinking about as relates to their god belief in their adult life, it might be instructive to deconstruct that initial starting point and try to truly determine how much of not only the belief itself, but their entire way of looking at the issue (and many others, incidentally) was necessarily shaped by that infusion of the god idea into their pliable, young minds from the beginning.

[zoltan socrates]

Are you a humanist?

Human...ish

 

According to the BHA im 61% humanist and 'most likely' to be agnostic

[Watt-Zeefuik]

Ah okay, gotcha.  What I thought you were trying to say, based on the way you were framing it, is that believers don't generally start with the presumption--inculcated since birth, in most cases--that a god or gods exist, so that's why atheists and theists talk past each other.  It makes me wonder if perhaps you're misunderstanding at least this atheist's position, which is that regardless of what a person is thinking about as relates to their god belief in their adult life, it might be instructive to deconstruct that initial starting point and try to truly determine how much of not only the belief itself, but their entire way of looking at the issue (and many others, incidentally) was necessarily shaped by that infusion of the god idea into their pliable, young minds from the beginning.

 

Hmm.  I find more to disagree with here, and this gets back to my original point.

 

Most atheists I interact with are very, very concerned with the "God idea."  They see it as self-evidently false, and as undermining everything about religion.  Again, fair enough, but the logic of the religious adherent is not simply the reverse of that.

 

What I'm trying to drive home here is that the "God idea" isn't the *starting point* of religious faith and practice, but more of an *ending point*.  The starting points are hymns, prayer, community worship, scripture reading, giving charity, forgiving others, and examining ones own failings.  The "God idea" is the personification of all that is good and true and eternal in this world. Thus God *becomes* central to religious practice, but isn't the origin of it.  Religious practice helps us better understand the enormous ideas that we personify as the triune God, not vice versa.

[Justin Z]

You've actually just confirmed what I'm getting at--which has nothing to do incidentally with the falsity, self-evident or not, of the existence of one or more deities.  What I'm saying is that based on experience, most believers in a god or gods have never tried to remove the lens they view their "giving charity, forgiving others, and examining [their] own failings" through--their pre-assumed existence of a deity, something they've always taken for granted--which colours all these perceptions to the point that it becomes not just central, but necessary, for their religious practice.

 

This inability to step outside one's own preconditioning belies the notion that all of these things in your list necessitate the existence of a god or gods.  On the contrary, plenty of people lacking such a belief are able to do and express identical or similar things in the same humble, contributory ways, and many replace the other things in your list with similar self-building activities.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

You've actually just confirmed what I'm getting at--which has nothing to do incidentally with the falsity, self-evident or not, of the existence of one or more deities.  What I'm saying is that based on experience, most believers in a god or gods have never tried to remove the lens they view their "giving charity, forgiving others, and examining [their] own failings" through--their pre-assumed existence of a deity, something they've always taken for granted--which colours all these perceptions to the point that it becomes not just central, but necessary, for their religious practice.

 

This inability to step outside one's own preconditioning belies the notion that all of these things in your list necessitate the existence of a god or gods.  On the contrary, plenty of people lacking such a belief are able to do and express identical or similar things in the same humble, contributory ways, and many replace the other things in your list with similar self-building activities.

 

If you got confirmation of that, then I must have been pretty unclear in what I wrote.  I specifically noted that I, along with most adherents that I know, went through some period of questioning, including for me a 10 year period that I would have described myself as an atheist-leaning agnostic.  What has changed since then isn't a major reconsideration of God's existence, but an exploration of a kind of religious practice which goes deeper than that.

 

If we're talking about frames one is unable to step out of, it seems to hurt the heads of a lot of atheists that people could seriously question the existence of God and still decide to be practicing Christians anyway. The primacy of the "God idea" in religion is a framing that a lot of atheists use that they seem to be unable to reconsider.

[redm]

If you got confirmation of that, then I must have been pretty unclear in what I wrote. I specifically noted that I, along with most adherents that I know, went through some period of questioning, including for me a 10 year period that I would have described myself as an atheist-leaning agnostic. What has changed since then isn't a major reconsideration of God's existence, but an exploration of a kind of religious practice which goes deeper than that.

 

If we're talking about frames one is unable to step out of, it seems to hurt the heads of a lot of atheists that people could seriously question the existence of God and still decide to be practicing Christians anyway. The primacy of the "God idea" in religion is a framing that a lot of atheists use that they seem to be unable to reconsider.

I'll happily admit to struggling with that part. If you're not sure, then who are you praying to? What's the point of 'using' the Church as your vehicle for self-improvement if God is at the heart of it all and you're not even really convinced he's legit? I can't get my head around that. To me, someone who is very much on the outside looking in, it just looks...well, almost false, I suppose. For want of a less provocative term... [emoji51]

 

It's obviously not for me to decide what the authentic reasons for worship are and aren't, but if I'm being honest that's how I see it. Why not just do this stuff for yourself? You don't need a guide book. Then again, I also struggle with the whole "thanking God" thing. People work hard to consider and moderate their own behaviour, make good positive relationships with others, find love, build partnerships and marriages, bring up children, be good to their friends and family, study hard and work hard.... then they thank God. They give some other entity the credit for their own hard won endeavours and accomplishments, like they're reliant on divine intervention or something. I find that really difficult to process.

[Fourcandles]

I'm sure he'll deny it vehemently but I'm convinced that the utilitarian aspects of religion/faith are very attractive to many as UA.

From there its a much smaller step to then believing in a Christian God.

 

.

[Fourcandles]

It never ceases to amaze me the shear number of Gods that man has invented.

I think H L Menken lists the most worshipped 300 or so in his portable atheist - though there are of course several thousand.

 

What amazes me that if you lined up a line of 3000 people one representing each one of the aforementioned Gods then everyone of them would say..... ahhhh but mine is the only true one and the other 2999 are all man made.

So you move on to the next person in this longline of people no he says.......well exactly the same.!!!

 

Am i the only one who sees this a bizarre??

 

.

[Ray Gin]

It never ceases to amaze me the shear number of Gods that man has invented.

I think H L Menken lists the most worshipped 300 or so in his portable atheist - though there are of course several thousand.

 

What amazes me that if you lined up a line of 3000 people one representing each one of the aforementioned Gods then everyone of them would say..... ahhhh but mine is the only true one and the other 2999 are all man made.

So you move on to the next person in this longline of people no he says.......well exactly the same.!!!

 

Am i the only one who sees this a bizarre??

 

.

 

No, you are joined by millions of atheists across the globe who find it utterly mental.

[Sidelight]

I'll happily admit to struggling with that part. If you're not sure, then who are you praying to? What's the point of 'using' the Church as your vehicle for self-improvement if God is at the heart of it all and you're not even really convinced he's legit? I can't get my head around that. To me, someone who is very much on the outside looking in, it just looks...well, almost false, I suppose. For want of a less provocative term... [emoji51]

 

It's obviously not for me to decide what the authentic reasons for worship are and aren't, but if I'm being honest that's how I see it. Why not just do this stuff for yourself? You don't need a guide book. Then again, I also struggle with the whole "thanking God" thing. People work hard to consider and moderate their own behaviour, make good positive relationships with others, find love, build partnerships and marriages, bring up children, be good to their friends and family, study hard and work hard.... then they thank God. They give some other entity the credit for their own hard won endeavours and accomplishments, like they're reliant on divine intervention or something. I find that really difficult to process.

 

It?s not my responsibility or remit to coerce you into a belief scenario which you may wilfully deny. But only to try and provide clarity in my limited way.

Nor is my intent to demonstrate contempt towards UA and his Christian scripture and value definitions. Having said that I would warn those who read from the school of liberal theology to be very careful. God?s Word never changes.

I hope to be objective and base my content solely on what Christians believe to be the Word of God. Not on what UA says or what I say but on what God says in His Word.

Firstly, we have no truth that is our own, (not sure what UA was trying to say about that) but there is not many ways to God, only one.

Jesus made it very clear when he said:

?I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me?.

It is also absolute error to call oneself a Christian unless that person has repented from their sins and called on the name of Jesus for salvation.

When there is no faith in Christ it is completely untrue to say that a man can take refuge and comfort in God as his Father.

A Christian is one who is literally owned by Christ, not just a person vaguely interested or influenced by his teaching.

A true Christian understands the all in or all out choice that surrounds them when considering the magnitude of Jesus claims.

The Gospel of Christ which brings freedom and salvation sets an open door before everyman. Its questions asked are simple and clear.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

tl;dr -- it's about community more than the self.  Okay, I warned you, it's long...

 

I'll happily admit to struggling with that part. If you're not sure, then who are you praying to? What's the point of 'using' the Church as your vehicle for self-improvement if God is at the heart of it all and you're not even really convinced he's legit? I can't get my head around that. To me, someone who is very much on the outside looking in, it just looks...well, almost false, I suppose. For want of a less provocative term... [emoji51]

It's obviously not for me to decide what the authentic reasons for worship are and aren't, but if I'm being honest that's how I see it. Why not just do this stuff for yourself? You don't need a guide book.  Then again, I also struggle with the whole "thanking God" thing. People work hard to consider and moderate their own behaviour, make good positive relationships with others, find love, build partnerships and marriages, bring up children, be good to their friends and family, study hard and work hard.... then they thank God. They give some other entity the credit for their own hard won endeavours and accomplishments, like they're reliant on divine intervention or something. I find that really difficult to process.

If someone really wants to understand the motivations of religious adherents, not just a reason to explain why they themselves do not believe, he or she should be prepared for long and complicated answers, and often times very different answers from different people who are purportedly of the same faith.

 

I bolded a few words in your response because I think they illustrate where our thinking may split.  During my time apart from the church, I made several attempts to better myself through various practices or exercise routines, spent a while focusing on developing my own happiness, and generally tried to make myself a "good person."  The end result was a lot of depression, guilt, sense of failure, and ennui.  I still spent long stretches not being happy, my physical exercise regimens produced only the most modest results, and I was still finding myself, despite all my best efforts, hurting other people.  My career was proceeding well and I got into round one of grad school with little issue, but I found myself lonely (despite having a moderately active dating life), unfulfilled, and feeling like a failure.

 

The steps between there and how I ended up, reluctantly, back in church are enough to bore all but the most committed listener, but among the realizations I had were that focusing on my own individual happiness was nonsense and doomed to failure, as happiness wasn't some existential state but rather an ephemeral and fleeting emotion reserved for moments of particular good. (I'm not alone in coming to this conclusion: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Happiness-Melancholy-Eric-Wilson/dp/B004KAB6JA)  Further, any lasting peace of mind was not going to come from promoting myself, who is doomed to live an incredibly short and unimpactful life constrained to a tiny corner of the universe, but rather, as Albert Schweitzer put it, from learning how to serve. I realized that to live in service and for something greater than myself required the messy, frustrating, and at times contradictory practices of living in community, and that one of the few ways remaining to live authentically in community in the US, where the obsession with individualism has torn apart our social fabric, was in the church, the institution that had effectively raised my father and sent my mother to college, and which I had whined my way out of throughout my teenage years.

 

But going to church meant confronting God, and as a trained biologist who saw beauty even in the slow brutality of evolutionary theory, I refused to leave my skepticism at the door.  So I took a deep breath, spent a while thinking about it, and ultimately spoke at length with the pastor of the church I had begun to attend about all of my reservations and skepticisms about various parts of what I thought were immobile Christian dogma. Among my objections were that a humanoid Creator God, male and with hands and a face, made little sense to me.  I saw goodness, truth, beauty, kindness, generosity, and other virtues as somehow connected, so perhaps off in the distance beyond human comprehension was something that tied all of these together.  I considered the thrice personified Godhead as a very human attempt to personify something ineffable and mysterious, which was understandable considering the massive limitations the human intellect faces in trying to comprehend an incomprehensibly complex universe, but wasn't something fundamental.

 

He very patiently heard all of them, and had surprisingly ready and reassuring answers for a lot of them, which was, as I later learned, because he had been through a similar conversation probably a hundred times with others making the same journey.  His advice to me was that I had clearly shown up with a concern for the truth, and that the commitment to the church was about putting Christ at the center of that search (which I didn't mind, as the Jesus of the Gospels is generally pretty easy to like) and to do that search for truth in community instead of by myself.  That I could consent to, and I joined.  

 

What followed, which I did not expect at all, was the discovery of a veritable cacophony of Christian writers over two millennia (along with many pre-Christian writers even older) who echoed my concerns.  Psalm 42 spoke beautifully to a despair of the soul.  Ecclesiastes gloomily meditates on our inability to understand God.  Christ himself in the Gospels points out how much, in his human form, he simply cannot know.  Augustin tells an entire parable of the boy on the beach to illustrate how unknowable the mystery of the Trinity is.  Countless scripture passages point to the inability for one single form of laws to encompass all of God's truth.

 

If I was a heretic in my doubts, I had some pretty fantastic company.

 

So I started talking openly about my doubts and struggles in church.  This lead to an even more surprising happenstance -- I got asked to teach Sunday School about it, which then became one of the most heavily attended series of classes of the year.  I've had a handful of people tell me they finally broke down and joined the church after hearing me talk about how much I struggle with the concept of God and what that means, because it made them feel less alone.  When I got ordained as a deacon of the church, we were all asked to tell our faith journeys, and at least 3/4 of them involved an expression of doubt or of concern.

 

I have a lot of atheist friends, many very close friends, so I've heard similar objections as yours before -- aren't I just lying about this, or treating church as a social club?  I have a smaller number of conservative, evangelical, or fundamentalist friends, whose viewpoints look more like alfajambo's -- that I'm somehow embracing a moral relativism and watering down the Word of God.

 

At this point, though, when I feel like I have psalmists, the writer of Ecclesiastes, entire chapters of epistles from Paul, Augustin, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, my own spouse (an ordained Teaching Elder of the Presbyterian church), her parents (also ministers), her aunt (yep her too), my uncle (again), countless pastors, many friends who are either Episcopal or Lutheran priests, a fair few Seminary professors, and a host of deacons, elders, and other congregants telling me my views and doubts and concerns and reasons for being in church are fine and welcome and in keeping with a long line of Christian tradition and that it echoes with their own concerns and thoughts, I'm not terribly worried about what a few atheists or fundamentalists think.

[Justin Z]

If you got confirmation of that, then I must have been pretty unclear in what I wrote.  I specifically noted that I, along with most adherents that I know, went through some period of questioning, including for me a 10 year period that I would have described myself as an atheist-leaning agnostic.  What has changed since then isn't a major reconsideration of God's existence, but an exploration of a kind of religious practice which goes deeper than that.

 

If we're talking about frames one is unable to step out of, it seems to hurt the heads of a lot of atheists that people could seriously question the existence of God and still decide to be practicing Christians anyway. The primacy of the "God idea" in religion is a framing that a lot of atheists use that they seem to be unable to reconsider.

 

I see what you're saying.  It still doesn't change the almost universal experience of believers--that the idea that there's an all-powerful being watching over all of us was injected into their brains at a very tender age, later doubts notwithstanding.

 

As for your second paragraph, I recently posted a link to this article about non-believers in positions of church authority.  I still have no idea where you've gotten this notion about atheists and a fixation on a "God idea"--it in no way applies to me or to any others that I know.

 

Thanks for sharing your faith journey.  I've always been introverted and come from a family of introverts, the kind who always hated that part in the church service where the pastor tells you to greet everyone around you.   As a result, the "community" idea of church didn't play in my mind at all I was going through my transformative time of rationally questioning everything I'd always taken for granted as true.  There were a lot of casualties of this culling, among them a belief in the Abrahamic God and a large number of conservative political principles.

 

No doubt I still fall prey to bias and preconception all the time, but I'm glad I've developed a system to try to make rational enquiries into questions, even though it's painful at times.  It was very difficult to let go and admit to myself that I'll never see my best friend again, who died when we were 16.  But as a well known astronomer said before he left us, "better the hard truth than the comforting fantasy".

[Watt-Zeefuik]

I see what you're saying.  It still doesn't change the almost universal experience of believers--that the idea that there's an all-powerful being watching over all of us was injected into their brains at a very tender age, later doubts notwithstanding.

 

As for your second paragraph, I recently posted a link to this article about non-believers in positions of church authority.  I still have no idea where you've gotten this notion about atheists and a fixation on a "God idea"--it in no way applies to me or to any others that I know.

 

Buddhism is generally classed as a religion, with very good reason.  Taoism too.  Neither one has any kind of supreme being or God at its core.  Taoism, at it developed and became a practiced religion rather than just the works of a few authors, has a number of minor deities but no supreme being.  Hinduism is of course the panoply of deities and hundreds of different worship practices, but the "supreme" notion being Brahman, which is not a personified being. 

 

What I mean when I say atheists fixate on the "God idea" is that when atheists think about religion, they seem to think it's all about God.  Of course God is a big part of it (or alternately gods), but theism is only one aspect of religion, and varies in its importance between religions from central to utterly absent.

 

Thanks for sharing your faith journey.  I've always been introverted and come from a family of introverts, the kind who always hated that part in the church service where the pastor tells you to greet everyone around you.   As a result, the "community" idea of church didn't play in my mind at all I was going through my transformative time of rationally questioning everything I'd always taken for granted as true.  There were a lot of casualties of this culling, among them a belief in the Abrahamic God and a large number of conservative political principles.

 

No doubt I still fall prey to bias and preconception all the time, but I'm glad I've developed a system to try to make rational enquiries into questions, even though it's painful at times.  It was very difficult to let go and admit to myself that I'll never see my best friend again, who died when we were 16.  But as a well known astronomer said before he left us, "better the hard truth than the comforting fantasy"

In my opinion there is absolutely no reason to separate rational inquiry from religious practice.  Rational inquiry doesn't always sit comfortably there, but if the logos is allowed to coexist in tension with the ethos and pathos, the tension produces a better path to truth.  I would say it is better to be aware of our irrational sides and take steps to develop them and manage them than to pretend they don't exist and allow them to rule us while we believe ourselves utterly rational.

[Jambo 4 Ever]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4135404/Pastor-claims-cured-woman-s-vaginal-warts.html

 

Interesting

[Jambo-Jimbo]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4135404/Pastor-claims-cured-woman-s-vaginal-warts.html

 

Interesting

 

JiH you seriously need help if you think this is interesting or have even given it one nano second of credence.

 

So we only have this woman & her friends word that she had vaginal warts, which were then miraculously cured by the Pastors shoe.

When she collapses she goes down in stages, falls onto her knees then puts her arms and hands out to break her fall, total set up to fool the audience into believing this crap.

[Justin Z]

 

Buddhism is generally classed as a religion, with very good reason.  Taoism too.  Neither one has any kind of supreme being or God at its core.  Taoism, at it developed and became a practiced religion rather than just the works of a few authors, has a number of minor deities but no supreme being.  Hinduism is of course the panoply of deities and hundreds of different worship practices, but the "supreme" notion being Brahman, which is not a personified being. 

 

What I mean when I say atheists fixate on the "God idea" is that when atheists think about religion, they seem to think it's all about God.  Of course God is a big part of it (or alternately gods), but theism is only one aspect of religion, and varies in its importance between religions from central to utterly absent.

 

In my opinion there is absolutely no reason to separate rational inquiry from religious practice.  Rational inquiry doesn't always sit comfortably there, but if the logos is allowed to coexist in tension with the ethos and pathos, the tension produces a better path to truth.  I would say it is better to be aware of our irrational sides and take steps to develop them and manage them than to pretend they don't exist and allow them to rule us while we believe ourselves utterly rational.

 

Oh I see.  Yeah, I think that's probably true of western atheists who are surrounded by monotheistic religions with humanity as the reflection of the supreme being.  When back in the States I find myself annoyed with evangelical Christianity most often because not surprisingly based on population distribution and the red state divide, they're the ones most often violating the first amendment.  I wonder what terms your average Japanese atheist or questioner frames the debate in, and what things grind her gears on a regular basis.

 

Spot on agreement with your final sentence.  Different strokes in approaching that obviously.

[Justin Z]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4135404/Pastor-claims-cured-woman-s-vaginal-warts.html

 

Interesting

 

  And then there's simply allowing ourselves to be utterly irrational . . .

[jambo1961]

Dick Turpin/Faith Healers

 

One wore a mask

[Unknown user]

 

Buddhism is generally classed as a religion, with very good reason. Taoism too. Neither one has any kind of supreme being or God at its core. Taoism, at it developed and became a practiced religion rather than just the works of a few authors, has a number of minor deities but no supreme being. Hinduism is of course the panoply of deities and hundreds of different worship practices, but the "supreme" notion being Brahman, which is not a personified being.

 

What I mean when I say atheists fixate on the "God idea" is that when atheists think about religion, they seem to think it's all about God. Of course God is a big part of it (or alternately gods), but theism is only one aspect of religion, and varies in its importance between religions from central to utterly absent.

 

 

In my opinion there is absolutely no reason to separate rational inquiry from religious practice. Rational inquiry doesn't always sit comfortably there, but if the logos is allowed to coexist in tension with the ethos and pathos, the tension produces a better path to truth. I would say it is better to be aware of our irrational sides and take steps to develop them and manage them than to pretend they don't exist and allow them to rule us while we believe ourselves utterly rational.

Buddhism and Taoism are essentially foreign to our western culture, so it's not surprising that our religious views centre around the existence of god(s) and that atheists view god(s) as the central point of it all.

 

After all, Google the definition of religion, this is the first definition;

 

"the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."

 

The very core of western religion is the existence of a deity, I don't see how a Christian can say "it's not all about God"

 

It is, 100% it is

[Watt-Zeefuik]

Oh I see.  Yeah, I think that's probably true of western atheists who are surrounded by monotheistic religions with humanity as the reflection of the supreme being.  When back in the States I find myself annoyed with evangelical Christianity most often because not surprisingly based on population distribution and the red state divide, they're the ones most often violating the first amendment.  I wonder what terms your average Japanese atheist or questioner frames the debate in, and what things grind her gears on a regular basis.

 

Spot on agreement with your final sentence.  Different strokes in approaching that obviously.

 

Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize winning economist, calls himself a Hindu atheist and his explanation is really interesting (more than I can recount here).

 

 

Buddhism and Taoism are essentially foreign to our western culture, so it's not surprising that our religious views centre around the existence of god(s) and that atheists view god(s) as the central point of it all.

 

After all, Google the definition of religion, this is the first definition;

 

"the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."

 

The very core of western religion is the existence of a deity, I don't see how a Christian can say "it's not all about God"

 

It is, 100% it is

 

I mean, sure, you're right to an extent.  Christianity is all about Christ, particularly Christ as part of the triune godhead.  You can't have Christianity without Christ and hence without God. 

 

To try to take a perhaps ill-advised metaphor, the UK has a great many fans of the monarchy.  Do all those who love the monarchy fixate entirely on the exact personhood of the Queen, or is it the Queen and all the trappings that surround it?  Sure, you can't have the monarchy without the monarch, but don't fans of the monarchy similarly love the crown itself, the palaces, the titles and stylings, the history behind it, and so forth?

 

Again, perhaps not a a good metaphor.

[Unknown user]

Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize winning economist, calls himself a Hindu atheist and his explanation is really interesting (more than I can recount here).

 

 

 

I mean, sure, you're right to an extent. Christianity is all about Christ, particularly Christ as part of the triune godhead. You can't have Christianity without Christ and hence without God.

 

To try to take a perhaps ill-advised metaphor, the UK has a great many fans of the monarchy. Do all those who love the monarchy fixate entirely on the exact personhood of the Queen, or is it the Queen and all the trappings that surround it? Sure, you can't have the monarchy without the monarch, but don't fans of the monarchy similarly love the crown itself, the palaces, the titles and stylings, the history behind it, and so forth?

 

Again, perhaps not a a good metaphor.

No I think you got it over, but you said it yourself - all the trappings that surround it.

 

Surely religion is just the trappings surrounding a belief in God, not the main event. If God dies, is seen to die and is known and understood by everyone to have died (for argument's sake), would Christianity be able carry on?

[Watt-Zeefuik]

No I think you got it over, but you said it yourself - all the trappings that surround it.

 

Surely religion is just the trappings surrounding a belief in God, not the main event. If God dies, is seen to die and is known and understood by everyone to have died (for argument's sake), would Christianity be able carry on?

 

There are pretty clearly plenty of people who disagree with me pretty strongly about this, enough to call me a heretic or a fake Christian or whatever, but to me, God is the unknowable mystery at the center.  Ask 30 Christians who attend the same church to describe what God is, and unless they are just quoting some catechism, you'll get 30 different answers.  Jesus will almost certainly feature largely into most of the answers, but if you ask them to explain what it means for Jesus to be fully human and fully divine, you'll also get 30 different answers.  (Aside from, perhaps, some variation on, "it's a mystery.")

 

God is the unseen endpoint of the journey of religion, IMO unreachable because of humanities limitations. As to what it would mean in terms of "God dying," one of the central -- well, not just beliefs or tenets, but general concepts -- of Christianity is that whoever or whatever God is, God dying is nothing to be afraid of at all.  God has died before.  God is risen.  God will come again.  For me, God being permanently dead would be the literal equivalent of the end of hope in the world and the possibility that one day things might not be quite as f---ed up as they are now.

 

I've mentioned this before, but I have to say it again, because I think it's key.  From my perspective, the difference between most atheists and me is not somehow that I have this unshakable belief in a man in the sky who controls my life, but rather that it seems that each atheist puts his or her hope in some other thing -- for many, though not all, that's something like the inherent goodness of humanity, human progress, and the human spirit. Based on my life experience and my understanding of history, I find it impossible to put my faith in progress that's somehow born of humanity's genius. 

[Ray Gin]

Human...ish

 

According to the BHA im 61% humanist and 'most likely' to be agnostic

 

I've never really given it much thought but having done their wee test thing on the website I'm apparently 100% humanist.

[Sidelight]

No I think you got it over, but you said it yourself - all the trappings that surround it.

 

Surely religion is just the trappings surrounding a belief in God, not the main event. If God dies, is seen to die and is known and understood by everyone to have died (for argument's sake), would Christianity be able carry on?

 

It is good that you ask a very incisive question from a position of enquiry rather than ridicule.

Is UA using the monarchy metaphor as an example of his own philosophical belief structure, placing heritage and tradition before Christ?

If I could answer your question from a slightly different perspective ? If the crucified Christ from the bible narrative remained dead and that the resurrection is a man made myth then Christianity has no basis in reality and is a false religion. Obviously I don?t subscribe to that view.

Having said that it is clear that some in congregations and some who populate the nations pulpits hold these non biblical views of Christ and creation etc. Week after week, year after year, they attend church, singing songs and reading from scripture. They reject the living Christ and by definition God, but they still somehow define themselves as Christian. But in reality their god is dead. Don?t misunderstand me all people are welcome in the Christ?s church but not all are true Christians, but while we breath there is still hope.

Too often because of the perceived ridicule the Christian community is afraid to answer difficult questions asked regarding biblical miracles, virgin birth, creation, evolution, age of the earth, the list goes on. As a result some attempt to fit the biblical narrative in to the present scientific consensus. The search for pseudo intellectual credibility being the primary motive.

Suggesting that somehow the Genesis account of six day creation relates to the big bang is in reality a non starter but a good example.

[Riddley Walker]

 

It is good that you ask a very incisive question from a position of enquiry rather than ridicule.

Is UA using the monarchy metaphor as an example of his own philosophical belief structure, placing heritage and tradition before Christ?

If I could answer your question from a slightly different perspective ? If the crucified Christ from the bible narrative remained dead and that the resurrection is a man made myth then Christianity has no basis in reality and is a false religion. Obviously I don?t subscribe to that view.

Having said that it is clear that some in congregations and some who populate the nations pulpits hold these non biblical views of Christ and creation etc. Week after week, year after year, they attend church, singing songs and reading from scripture. They reject the living Christ and by definition God, but they still somehow define themselves as Christian. But in reality their god is dead. Don?t misunderstand me all people are welcome in the Christ?s church but not all are true Christians, but while we breath there is still hope.

Too often because of the perceived ridicule the Christian community is afraid to answer difficult questions asked regarding biblical miracles, virgin birth, creation, evolution, age of the earth, the list goes on. As a result some attempt to fit the biblical narrative in to the present scientific consensus. The search for pseudo intellectual credibility being the primary motive.

Suggesting that somehow the Genesis account of six day creation relates to the big bang is in reality a non starter but a good example.

 

 

Surely any objective study of the writing of Mark's gospel, and the last verse, proves the point in bold to be true.

[Unknown user]

 

It is good that you ask a very incisive question from a position of enquiry rather than ridicule.

Is UA using the monarchy metaphor as an example of his own philosophical belief structure, placing heritage and tradition before Christ?

If I could answer your question from a slightly different perspective ? If the crucified Christ from the bible narrative remained dead and that the resurrection is a man made myth then Christianity has no basis in reality and is a false religion. Obviously I don?t subscribe to that view.

Having said that it is clear that some in congregations and some who populate the nations pulpits hold these non biblical views of Christ and creation etc. Week after week, year after year, they attend church, singing songs and reading from scripture. They reject the living Christ and by definition God, but they still somehow define themselves as Christian. But in reality their god is dead. Don?t misunderstand me all people are welcome in the Christ?s church but not all are true Christians, but while we breath there is still hope.

Too often because of the perceived ridicule the Christian community is afraid to answer difficult questions asked regarding biblical miracles, virgin birth, creation, evolution, age of the earth, the list goes on. As a result some attempt to fit the biblical narrative in to the present scientific consensus. The search for pseudo intellectual credibility being the primary motive.

Suggesting that somehow the Genesis account of six day creation relates to the big bang is in reality a non starter but a good example.

I suppose I have a funny view - I'm firmly of the belief that I don't have the mental capacity to even begin to answer a question as big as "is there a God?" so I'm not interested, I don't care.

It's beyond my ken so why worry about it? It seems pretty bloody unlikely to my amateur eyes, but then again, I don't know shit.

 

Religion is different - humans are fascinating and the way different groups see the world and their place in it is a never ending sea of intrigue, so I'm quite interested in religion.

 

The talk of being into Christianity rather than God so much makes me think of another simile- still going along to Gorgie every fortnight, meeting your mates, having a couple of pints, mingling with the crowd on the way, buying a program, talking about who's injured, then not going to the game.

I suppose it's almost what I do from afar in a way, I'm into being a jambo but I haven't actually seen hearts in the flesh for ages.

[Jambo 4 Ever]

http://www.christiandaily.com/article/trump-urged-by-faith-leaders-to-form-commission-for-national-healing/59865.htm

 

Does Trump agree with faith healing I wonder?

 

 

 

 

Also will be getting coverage on the Oz Show in America

https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/03/dr-oz-show-faith-healing/

[Jambo 4 Ever]

http://middlesborodailynews.com/news/16220/healing-by-faith

 

Another story of it working

[The Internet]

Pretty definitive imo. Not sure how you can challenge that. It clearly must work.

[Irufushi]

Why do you keep bumping this shite. Strange behaviour.

[Captain America]

http://middlesborodailynews.com/news/16220/healing-by-faith

 

Another story of it working

If it works as she says it does, why doesn't the husband try it for his back condition? surely if he is in a lot of pain he would give it a go?

 

Unless he can't as he has 

[Ray Gin]

http://middlesborodailynews.com/news/16220/healing-by-faith

 

Another story of it working

 

If God cured her, why does he keep making it come back? 3 times now. He's taking the piss, no?

[The Internet]

If God cured her, why does he keep making it come back? 3 times now. He's taking the piss, no?

He's just testing her. Make sure she comes coming back and spreads the good word.

[Jambo 4 Ever]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-4426038/Pastor-wont-face-trial-girls-faith-healing-death.html

 

A bit surprised with this to be honest... thought he would have been punished for it

[The Internet]

Bit weird that God would ignore these ill kids while curing pensioners of cancer. But who are we to judge.

[Jambo 4 Ever]

Bit weird that God would ignore these ill kids while curing pensioners of cancer. But who are we to judge.

 

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t023.html

[Justin Z]

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t023.html

 

From the link:

 

"Most atheists, therefore, without any objective evidence on which to base their faith in ?no God?, must resort finally to philosophical objections."

 

The default position is a lack of belief in something until shown evidence for its existence--to wit unicorns, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  This early attempt at shifting the burden of proof indicates a lack of intellectual honesty by the author, and was a handy place to stop reading as I knew the remainder would be complete bollocks.

[Jambo-Jimbo]

From the link:

 

"Most atheists, therefore, without any objective evidence on which to base their faith in ?no God?, must resort finally to philosophical objections."

 

The default position is a lack of belief in something until shown evidence for its existence--to wit unicorns, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  This early attempt at shifting the burden of proof indicates a lack of intellectual honesty by the author, and was a handy place to stop reading as I knew the remainder would be complete bollocks.

 

Change the word 'atheists' for Christians and the sentence is equally applicable, apart from the "no God" to "There is a God"

[redm]

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t023.html

 

Hey JiH, what is your own interest in this stuff? It must be a big thing because you read/comment about it so often. What's the personal angle, if you don't mind me asking?

[Jambo 4 Ever]

Hey JiH, what is your own interest in this stuff? It must be a big thing because you read/comment about it so often. What's the personal angle, if you don't mind me asking?

Some people I work with talk about it a believe in it 100%

I don't personally think it works... but it acts as good placebo

 

I don't like seeing it be used on children though in place of medicine etc