Taking Sides: Atheism vs. Christianity

Look I can happily trundle out a few thousand words of my own thoughts on aspects of religion. Take the question at hand earlier about evidence for son of God, I dont have blind faith alone, but I marvel at those who do.

Some of my faith will be based on philosophy, especially extrasensory truths or transemperical , you know man is not just an object, but also man in himself(man as a person).
Some on Old testament predictions that have been fufilled, and far too accurate to be be flukes for me.
Some on the amazing historical detail and accuracy of the New Testament, especially Luke. Athethist scholars marvel at the accuracy and detail in his writing. Some on physical historical evidence.
None of which by itself proves anything, but pieced all together gives me a solid base to believe in the word of God.

I have said before I acknowledge mysteries as such, you know full well there are things you cannot explain in life.I believe humans are spiritual and I believe in Christ as an explanation for these mysteries. As stupid as you take me for, and Im pretty thick, I dont think you calling my religion "irredeemably awful" gets us anywhere. So I dont engage you in your assertions, I can see drawn out debates on nature and human instinct and alpha males etc relating to organised religion yet alone Peter getting the keys and the rock and more scripture and papl history... we are so far apart I dont see much hope for understanding.

Im rambling I need to go to sleep. God Bless :)

I love the idea of suzy hacking her way through the rainforest to investigate one more religion before being disappointed for the last time.

there seems a fundamental difference in these 2 formulations for me. i think the latter makes more sense, i mean i don't believe in german speaking pigeons, but i'm not a believer in *No german speaking pigeons* if you see what i mean...

2. whether religion is silly or not doesnt seem hugely relevant. as long as it doesnt impinge on other peoples freedoms then fine.

3. why *vs christianity*?. why not christianity vs islam or hinduism? i had an interesting discussion with a religious (non-organized) person earlier this year. i believed christianity should not be taught in schools, and that people should make their own decision outside of school. they said not teaching them it is as prejudicial to their opinion as teaching it would be. quite a good point, but then, why christianity and not islam? why choose one over another (and then, which branch?) unless you're going to teach them all? but then how many? and they all have claims on the *truth*, whatever that is

I have gone to church for most of my life but I have started to question it. along with everything else. and now I am this cynical wreck you see before you very phoneline.

I'd also say that if followers of a specific religion are rendered misguided, it's because of the falseness of their belief, and doesn't have much to do with ANY form of atheism or agnosticism.

I don't see any particular problem with this. Moreover, in my experience, it is always the 'weak' atheists who suffer from the failings that Dan was so OTM about earlier. Not that all 'weak' athesits do, mind you, but I think those who try to justify their atheism via purely rational means are more susceptible to coming off like know-it-all assholes.

"Organised religion" historically has been awful and useful - in a pre-democratic society the opposition of secular and non-secular authority provided the same kind of braking mechanism party systems do now - the church could serve as an 'opposition' to political leaders and vice versa. In a democratic society I can definitely see a place for "religion" on an individual basis but not the organisations that sprung up around it.

Its not a belief system. Hence, B).

>>3. why *vs christianity*?.<<

Eurocentric question. Really, it should be "Atheism vs. Theism". After all, there are religions in which there is no god (IE, Buddhism).

-
Alan

That's just wrong.

I suppose the word Religion can be a bit loaded in some peoples minds. I'd say that as a social entity it clearly does need other people, but as a spiritual one, it clearly doesn't.

If they had hunted Christians down to one guy hiding in the woods, praying daily and subsiding on roots and berries, would it still be religion? I'd say yes. Maybe not A Religion (checkbox in the census form), though.

http://www.lawrence.edu/fac/boardmaw/god_in_quad_berkeley.html

Prayer would seem to me to be something you can do by yourself, apart from god(s), and is fairly crucial to the whole endeavour. But that's a Catholic perspective. Are there other religions where you can't do something holy by yourself, by scripture rather than practice?

This depends on the strength of the agnosticism. "I don't know if God exists" is just a statement, as undeniable as "The sun is shining". Which is not as undeniable as 2+2=4, but that's another ballgame.

But "there is no way of knowing whether god exists" is like "The sun will come up tomorrow, because science says" or "The sun will come up tomorrow, thanks to Ra". You can build consistent world views around it, but it is clearly just a belief. It's a positive statement, and can't be proved right, just wrong.

Hrm. Guess who just read a book on Wittgenstein vs Popper, and thinks he knows the secrets of the ages?

hurhurhur.

Oh, I picked Atheism vs. Christianity because a few previous threads were discussing it, and Christianity has more cultural significants around here. Also, I was interested in others view of Christianity specifically.
And I totally agree that public schools should have a world religion class. I would have loved to have anything other than American history in high school (I hardly had any social studies in school other than American history, it sucked.)

and as for Tom's explination of his atheism,

"I'm with J. Religion shifts the argument into a non-rational sphere with the introduction of the concept of 'faith' and I'm happy to enter that sphere. I have no faith, indeed I have a felt absence of faith, therefore I am an atheist."

I think that is a great explination. For me, who believes in predestination of man, Tom would be an example of someone who is seemingly not predestined.

All very Judy Blume book, I know, but I drew the inevitable conclusion with half the bizarro Christian sects that if parents had followed any, I'd probably not be alive and writing this.

Good things about religion include great literature produced (where do we get the classic narrative structure of genesis, action, climax denoument anyway, from Greeks or subconscious parallel with How Sex Goes?) and that is why I am able to treat most of it like other, older myths and legends, there to provide object lessons to people who need them and to provide apocryphal plotlines to us what don't.

Maria's question is interesting. First awareness I had of the whole God thing was when I got to primary school and people told me they went to Sunday School, that's how agnostic my folks are. Also when my elder grandfather died, when I was seven, by coincidence there were all these weird Life After Death programmes doing the rounds of the cheapo TV stations and I just sat there watching all these weird talkshow people talking about out of body experiences whilst meeting their pal, The Light, getting told 'it's not your time' by a Marcus Welby type voice and getting sucked back down to the hospital bed. Very 'ooh, freaky, better not tell anyone I'm watching this, they'll freak out because of Grandpa but this is *fascinating*' vibe.

When I'm in joke arguments with my Jewish girlfriend (we're both atheists, though I was baptised a catholic - the arguments are more about the coolness of the respective literary traditions), and she's nagging me about the unoriginality of the Jesus myths, how they're all derivitive, if not rip-offs of Torah stories (yeah, yeah, there's midrash and all that crap, but still you can take it too far...) I love to point out the extent of borrowing in Genesis from other sources. But even then I know I'm wrong, cos while the details are stolen, the simplicity of narrative and overall point is (was) blatantly revolutionary. Once upon a time, the idea of monotheism must have been a big deal.

The Gospels contain the greatest alienation in world history, when Jesus is on the cross: 'Eli, Eli, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?' that is, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'"

Excuse the cut and paste but Chesterton is often OTM...

"But if [Jesus'] divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. . . He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."

I sympathise strongly with that Kiwi. But maybe faith in anything but the most amorphous of gods is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I remember getting in trouble at school for being cheeky when the chaplain told me Jesus died for our sins and I said, yes, but he came back three days later. I was being cheeky but I was also being proto-serious - the happy-ending part of the central story of Christianity diminishes it (and has I think vast and often negative repercussions for Western culture ever since but that's a different thread), which is why I've always had sympathy with radical clergy who've tried to turn the Resurrection into a metaphor rather than literal truth.

Pah, call that radical? Turning it into a roller disco - now that's radical.