Church

slowbike

Singleton wrote:

Few points from above:

Let's take the gospels as an example - they were written by eye witnesses and have proven to be extremely consistent.

Erm - that's subject to debate ...

metronome

Singleton, today, maybe you willing to elaborate on why you became a Christian, in later life?

ballysmate

It seems to be a day for me to repost stuff. Perhaps because the same topics keep recurring. As Val on Blue Peter was fond of saying, here's one I prepared earlier...

I know there will be people on here that are religious and I wonder if they could shed light on something that baffles me.
If I or anyone else stood up and proclaimed that God had spoken to me, I would no doubt be branded a nutter. Or if I wrote a book saying I'd met someone who God had spoken to, I would be ridiculed. Why then are people so ready to believe the Bible or Koran?
Faith? But faith in what? They are surely putting their faith in the people who wrote such works, faith in the fact that they are not charlatans. The Book of Mormon for instance has been shown to be based on work fabricated by Joseph Smith but it still attracts followers. Why is that?

bianchimoon

Ballysmate wrote:

It seems to be a day for me to repost stuff. Perhaps because the same topics keep recurring. As Val on Blue Peter was fond of saying, here's one I prepared earlier...

I know there will be people on here that are religious and I wonder if they could shed light on something that baffles me.
If I or anyone else stood up and proclaimed that God had spoken to me, I would no doubt be branded a nutter. Or if I wrote a book saying I'd met someone who God had spoken to, I would be ridiculed. Why then are people so ready to believe the Bible or Koran?
Faith? But faith in what? They are surely putting their faith in the people who wrote such works, faith in the fact that they are not charlatans. The Book of Mormon for instance has been shown to be based on work fabricated by Joseph Smith but it still attracts followers. Why is that?

Some people are very "needy" maybe they need to belong to something for comfort and security, a gang by any other name, in my experience they have an inbuilt ability to stop thinking when faced with something they don't want to hear.

singleton

metronome wrote:

Singleton, today, maybe you willing to elaborate on why you became a Christian, in later life?

bianchimoon wrote:

Some people are very "needy" maybe they need to belong to something for comfort and security, a gang by any other name, in my experience they have an inbuilt ability to stop thinking when faced with something they don't want to hear.

It appears that the decision has already been made - apparently it's because I am needy.
Although interestingly it's not me who has a quote about religion in their signature.

bianchimoon

Singleton wrote:

metronome wrote:

Singleton, today, maybe you willing to elaborate on why you became a Christian, in later life?

bianchimoon wrote:

Some people are very "needy" maybe they need to belong to something for comfort and security, a gang by any other name, in my experience they have an inbuilt ability to stop thinking when faced with something they don't want to hear.

It appears that the decision has already been made - apparently it's because I am needy.
Although interestingly it's not me who has a quote about religion in their signature.

HaHa, if you can give a better explanation, we're all ears?

singleton

bianchimoon wrote:

HaHa, if you can give a better explanation, we're all ears?

As I said earlier, I realized that it was true.
I looked into Christianity - properly - and I discovered that it wasn't what I thought it was and that it was true.

All I can advise is that if you want to check it out for yourself, then a cycling forum isn't the right place. If you want to know where you can go to find out more then PM me and I can give you some hints and tips of what to look for locally.

bianchimoon

Singleton wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

HaHa, if you can give a better explanation, we're all ears?

As I said earlier, I realized that it was true.
I looked into Christianity - properly - and I discovered that it wasn't what I thought it was and that it was true.

All I can advise is that if you want to check it out for yourself, then a cycling forum isn't the right place. If you want to know where you can go to find out more then PM me and I can give you some hints and tips of what to look for locally.

Nice try Singleton, wrong person for the same reason the same as I won't be hanging a stocking on the fireplace at Christmas or putting a tooth under my pillow

singleton

bianchimoon wrote:

Nice try Singleton, wrong person for the same reason the same as I won't be hanging a stocking on the fireplace at Christmas or putting a tooth under my pillow

I'm not trying anything - it's you who keeps asking questions about Christianity, either because you are interested or ebcause you are just looking for a chance to mock someone else's views.

I was taking you at face value and trying to get you answers to your questions - my mistake.

orraloon

Which bits of Christianity are 'true'? All of it?

Is the Bible in Old and New Testament 'true'?

Or is it a particular set of Christian values that you hold to be 'true'? And some incarnations of those, not all, I would agree with.

Just probing whether you are all or nothing, or one can choose which aspects to hold to.

metronome

I think a cycling forum is a great place to discuss religion. Cycling interests people of all ages from all walks of life, so you get a varied demographic and unbiased input. There aren't many places where you find such a wealth of diversity and for this reason it's arguably one of the best places to discuss many topics. Even sheep.

bianchimoon

Singleton wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

Nice try Singleton, wrong person for the same reason the same as I won't be hanging a stocking on the fireplace at Christmas or putting a tooth under my pillow

I'm not trying anything - it's you who keeps asking questions about Christianity, either because you are interested or ebcause you are just looking for a chance to mock someone else's views.

I was taking you at face value and trying to get you answers to your questions - my mistake.

Hey, no worries, don't take it personally, it's only a cake stop conversation, each to their own and all that

ballysmate

Man has been around for 200,000 years and his ancestors even longer. Why did the Christian, Islamic or any other God keep his presence a secret until very recently? He let man believe in Sun Gods, Moon Gods the Norse Gods, Hindu Gods that look like elephants, Roman and Greek Gods etc for millennia.
Why is that?

slowbike

Ultimately the argument for believing in a religion is Faith ...

and that's it - We're told that God will not prove he exists - we have to believe, have faith ...

It's a rather more indepth and complex version of believing in the tooth fairy and father christmas - except those two have rather physical manifestations and God doesnt (he moves in mysterious ways - they said that about Jimmy Saville too! Sorry ..! Does that count as blasphemy? Crap ... I'm going to hell now ... )

I stand by my earlier post ...
there may or may not be higher entities - we don't know, we have not yet found them ... but our Gods are probably not what we say they are (they could be by a chance of fate) and religion was brought into life as a method of controlling the masses - it's slowly evolved over time to become complex and socially encompassing with the true origins lost in time.

That is not to say that the general teachings of religion are all wrong ...
From Ballsymate earlier:

The Book of Mormon for instance has been shown to be based on work fabricated by Joseph Smith but it still attracts followers.

I've not read it, but why does it attract followers? Because the ideals and morals set out in the book appeal to some people.
You can say that about all religious texts - including the extremists - it appeals to them to fight with those who don't agree with their interpretation of the texts - so they're happy to kill and be killed in the name of their peace loving God ...
But when you take away these extreme ideas and look at the core values of religions - it's all about calm, sharing and generally being "nice" to each other ... what better way to motivate people to follow those ideals than promising an eternity in hell if they don't! ...

Alex99

Chris Bass wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

Chris Bass wrote:

I'm not saying the church hasn't been responsible for some terrible things in the past but in it's current form it has little to no influence on society. Does anyone know any children who are religious of their own accord? so if the church didn't exist they would still get the same world view from their parents anyway.

I refer you back to the posts above re: little or no influence on society.

I can't think of anyway the church impacts my daily life. you say you can't go shopping past 5pm on a Sunday. If the church had their way you wouldn't be able to go shopping at all on a Sunday. During the Olympics the Sunday trading laws were relaxed and almost all smaller stores are open until much later. Hardly ruling with an iron fist are they.

I say let people do or say what they think as long as it is not to the detriment of others.

Even the pope has said contraception is ok in places where the Zika virus has sprung up, so even he is relaxing his stance on such things.

How jolly decent of him. Shame the catholic church couldn't see their way to a similar position to control AIDS in Africa.

Alex99

socrates wrote:

Not a church attendee. However if the Church is right with the bible and it's teachings, and we will not know for sure until we die then a lot of people are in deep trouble including all of those above. Just thinking out loud. Not taking sides, well maybe I am hedging my bets.

Which of the hundreds of religions would you hedge your bets with? Surely you'd be better to spend your precious time making the most of the life you know for sure that you do have.

chris_bass

I think Singleton is playing devil's advocate here (for want of a better phrase!) - even most Christians accept that large parts of the bible aren't true and are metaphors. Noah for example, literally can't be true.

The thing I don't get is what has God been up to since bible times, just watching? made a new universe somewhere else? just seems like 2,000 years is quite a long time for nothing 'godly' to have happened when he was pretty active back in the day.

Alex99

City Boy wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

City Boy wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

There is the rub.
Scientists trying to prove how something came from nothing when science says it is impossible.

Not necessarily. Some scientists say it's possible to get something from nothing, although you have to consider what 'nothing' actually is from a cosmological/quantum perspective.

If you're interested, A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Kraus is a fascinating read. Some of the quantum mechanics stuff is way beyond my meagre comprehension but the main thrust of the book kind of makes sense and is, if nothing else, very thought provoking.

Ah, but where did the particle-antiparticle pairs come from?

From 'nowhere', obviously!

It is quite possible that Science won't be able to tell us what happened in the very early universe. This is not suggestive of anything like 'a creator'. Just that we can't study it.

singleton

Chris Bass wrote:

I think Singleton is playing devil's advocate here (for want of a better phrase!) - even most Christians accept that large parts of the bible aren't true and are metaphors. Noah for example, literally can't be true.

That wasn't my intention.

If I were to tell my wife one day that I liked what she was wearing and that she looked a million dollars - would she ask me whether I was lying to her because clearly she looked nothing like a million dollars?

More likey, she would understand that my statement was true and heartfelt, but I was using some imagery or metaphor as well to underline my point. There are metaphors in the bible along with poetry, parables and other forms of literature including historical narrative. Some people may be surprised to hear that there are books in the bible that don't even mention God at all.

It's important when reading a passage to understand what you are reading and how it has been written - otherwise it's easy to misunderstand.

Alex99

Ballysmate wrote:

At which point do you draw the line and say that a particular religion is off limits for mockery? Scientology? Jediism? Religion is ripe for parody and mockery.
As regards your conversation with your dad re the Catholic child abuse, there are Catholics who are more offended by the, to my mind, justified attacks on their religion than the abuse condoned by it.

If someone has a belief, and the belief causes no harm at all, then to mock is just pointless and hurtful. The mocker is being a jerk.

If the belief does cause harm, which is usually the case at some stage for organised religions, then mocking and poking is absolutly fair game. A that point, it becomes satire.

slowbike

Singleton wrote:

she would understand that my statement was true and heartfelt

Which bit was true - that you liked what she was wearing ... subjective and cannot be proved eitherway - she has to believe what you're saying.
The bit that says she looks like a million dollars - in what demonination?! Used 50 dollar bills ?!
Yes - it's a metaphor - another way to say you like what she's wearing - it isn't TRUE that she looks like an actual million dollars - in whatever demoniation ... unless she was wearing fancy dress and it was made of dollar bills ... then I think you'd be in the bad books if you suggested it would take a million dollar bills to make her costume!

So the bible isn't "True" in the purest sense of the word - it's all metaphors and stories - so how could you have discovered it was True?

Ok - there was a bloke who lived about 2000 years ago, called Jesus - did he ever actually say that he was the Son of God ? We'll never know ... most likely, he was just a decent bloke who liked to help others and try and steer their morality the way he felt was better - eg no trading in the temple ...
There's lots of people who do that sort of thing even these days ... (try and steer you in the way of their morality - not trading in the temples - although there are those as well!)
He probably did use what "God" wanted as a lever for what he was trying to teach - not unreasonable considering the social situation at the time - he may well have believed in God himself as it gave a good base for moraility and a reason for being.

It doesn't follow that God (or Gods) exist - like I said before - there is no proof - it's just belief - belief based on stories that are thousands of years old when we didn't know a fraction of what we now know ... when people asked the question we couldn't answer ... and still can't answer .... WHY?

singleton

Slowbike wrote:

So the bible isn't "True" in the purest sense of the word - it's all metaphors and stories

Did you read my post and understand the words that I used?

Singleton wrote:

There are metaphors in the bible along with poetry, parables and other forms of literature including historical narrative.

Historical narrative means historical accounts, verified, factual, truth. Lots of the OT would be.
Metaphors are images that help us to understand a point - some of revelation
Poetry is a form of writing that is often full of imagery - mostly the psalms
Parables are stories that are used to give a message - e.g. the good samaritan.

slowbike

Singleton wrote:

Slowbike wrote:

So the bible isn't "True" in the purest sense of the word - it's all metaphors and stories

Did you read my post and understand the words that I used?

Yes - but I don't agree with you.

Singleton wrote:

Singleton wrote:

There are metaphors in the bible along with poetry, parables and other forms of literature including historical narrative.

Historical narrative means historical accounts, verified, factual, truth. Lots of the OT would be.
Metaphors are images that help us to understand a point - some of revelation
Poetry is a form of writing that is often full of imagery - mostly the psalms
Parables are stories that are used to give a message - e.g. the good samaritan.

Verified ... factual ... truth ...

"I'm the son of God" ..

"Prove it .."

"I can't, you have to believe"

"Ah .... "

The NT stories - written 50-70 years after Jesus were born ...

Can I remember what I did last week? Not exactly ...

Can I remember what my wife did last week? Nope ... not exactly ...

How about 10 years ago ... ?

Oh, I can remember key points from our lives - but not all the detail that goes around them - to do that I'd've had to have made a record of the event at the time - so sorry - but I can't accept the NT gospels as "True"

As for the OT being true? Yer ... ok ... not the key "stories" that I can recall ... parting of the red sea, noah and his ark, the whole book of Genesis ...

bompington

'fraid I'm not going to get involved here because, like Singleton has said, this isn't really a great place to try and convince everyone.

I'll just make a couple of observations.

Firstly: after trawling through the whole thread, I've found a lot of contempt and disdain (verging on outright hatred) from people who say that Christians are a hateful bunch, a lot of outrage at what this God that people don't believe in is like, and a lot of claims that belief in God (or any supernatural beings) is equivalent to the tooth fairy.

What I haven't seen is any concrete evidence for the non-existence of God. Now of course you can turn that round and say that it's up to the religious nutcases to provide concrete evidence of his existence, and you'd have a perfectly valid point: but still, it works both ways.

Personally I am a Christian because I am convinced that there is pretty unarguable historical evidence. Evidence that there was a man called Jesus, that he did indeed claim to be the son of God, that he was crucified and thoroughly dead, and that after a few days no-one could find his body.
Some claimed he was alive again - and in fact, the vast majority of evidence points to that.
So why don't people believe it?
Because it's stupid to believe that people rise from the dead, of course!
Why's it stupid?
Because no-one ever has!
but Jesus did.
No he didn't!
How do you know he didn't?
Because no-one ever has.
But what about Jesus...
... it's basically a circular argument. If you start off from a point of view that God does not exist, then of course you'll wind up proving that he doesn't exist. And it's the same the other way - if you assume that God does exist, then there is absolutely nothing inconsistent or illogical in Christian beliefs.
You can't really argue with someone who's died and come back to life, can you? On the other hand (and it says exactly this in the bible - written by a guy named Paul, who was almost certainly a lot more intelligent than most of us) if he didn't, it's all a load of tripe and Christians are the most laughable bunch on the planet.

In the end (there's a clue in the abuse heaped on the church) I strongly suspect that neither Richard Dawkins, Billy Graham, you or me have made up our minds solely on the evidence. In the end, we go with what we want to believe.

That said, I have to take issue with the tired old trope that's come up a few times about how religion is responsible for all of mankind's ills, and "what have the Christians ever done for us anyway?"

For a start, there is a fair bit of truth in it. The Christian church, like all religions, has attracted a lot of people interested in power over the years: whether the petty power that the local priest can exercise, or the whole political game.
Personally I think it went a bit pear-shaped in about 200AD when it started to transform from an underground movement that utterly reshaped the Roman empire from the ground up to an institution that felt obliged to get involved in politics. It's not far from that to the Inquisition.

But even with that, almost everything in western culture - hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, the enlightenment - is largely down to Christian thinking. The whole concept of charity is a Christian idea.
If you actually stick to what Jesus (and his disciples after him) taught, Christianity is radically unlike any other movement. Which is one place where it differs from, for example, Islam. Islam borrowed some pretty good social stuff from Christianity and Judaism, but you'll not hear Jesus saying anything about slaughtering unbelievers.

Weighed against the achievements of atheism - the Gulags, the gas chambers, not to mention the utterly horrific consequences if we all start living like we mean it when we say that life has no meaning and there is no absolute morality - I'd be happy to stick with the church (I'm in a branch of it that, shall we say, doesn't look much like the Catholic church) even if I didn't believe in God.

I guess that must be the conclusion most Anglicans have come to, anyway.

pblakeney

Isn't it tricky to prove that something doesn't exist?

slowbike

Can't argue with that ..

It is down to faith and belief - there is no proof God does or doesn't exist and apparently he won't prove he does or doesn't.

As you can gather, I don't believe in god - Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Hindu - but that doesn't stop me agreeing with a lot of the values and morals they hold.
I don't think Atheism is immoral or stands for a lawless society - just that there is no afterlife to be affected by the way we live our lives today - of course our lives have meaning - but that meaning is personal.

bianchimoon

Why do religious people take offence when you question their faith? I've never known an atheist get upset when you question his thinking, in fact they positively thrive on it.

metronome

bompington wrote:

What I haven't seen is any concrete evidence for the non-existence of God.

Believing something because you can't disprove it is ridiculous. You can't dispose that I have an invisible pet honey monster called Gandalf who farts out chocolate buttons for cadbury to sell, but you'd be a fool to believe it.

singleton

bianchimoon wrote:

Why do religious people take offence when you question their faith? I've never known an atheist get upset when you question his thinking, in fact they positively thrive on it.

I'd suggest you objectively weigh up the previous 8 pages and then re-evaluate your statement.

singleton

metronome wrote:

bompington wrote:

What I haven't seen is any concrete evidence for the non-existence of God.

Believing something because you can't disprove it is ridiculous. You can't dispose that I have an invisible pet honey monster called Gandalf who farts out chocolate buttons for cadbury to sell, but you'd be a fool to believe it.

there is a fair amount of evidence for the existence of God and none of that can be disproved, although there are theories to explain and account for that evidence in another way.

So it's not quite like your example - although I suspect that you already knew that.