I'm off to bed too, but if anyone is interested in looking at some atheist responses to the article BurnTheShips posted, here we are-
Christianity in a nutshell
by serotonin_wraith 105 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
nvrgnbk
Saying we'd be nowhere without religion so we should hang on to it is like saying we'd be nowhere without Kindergarten so we shouldn't have advanced to first grade.
-
Gopher
Lilly, I'm con-flustered by this statement:
many people of faith believe both in creation and evolution. How? For us, God is the force that set life in motion (created it) but evolution is the means he used once life began to fill the earth with his creations and bring them up to the point that they now exist.
By "people of faith", do you mean people who believe in the Bible? Because if so, doesn't Genesis assert that "God created each speciesa according to its kind"?
So Genesis said that the Bible God did more than just get the evolution ball rolling, but he actually developed the species.
-
Narkissos
Lol. The atheists want their believers to behave just like they have figured them out.
Where I live the vast majority of Christian believers, Protestants and Catholics alike, shrug at the (American) notion of "(literalistic) creationism". For some reason most people can read the Genesis creation stories as tales, deriving moral or spiritual teachings from them, but realising at the same time that they contain no information at all about the actual (in our modern scientific sense) origins of the world.
This thread started with a caricature and goes on with the caricature... real people and their beliefs don't count.
(And that's the second, and hopefully last post I waste on it... )
-
Carl_Hernz
I am not opposed to atheists, but as a professional writer I must strongly differ with some of the things mentioned.
The Big Bang theory was developed in the 1920s by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre. It was hotly debated by atheistic scientists when it came out because the consequences of its mathematics pointed to a beginning of the universe. Today it is widely accepted, and by atheists who adhere to it as if it were a tenet of theirs, strangely enough.
Only Fundamental “radical” Protestants don’t believe in evolution; mainstream Christianity has not seen a problem with it. It is even discussed as fitting side-by-side with Christian belief in the widely published Catechism of the Catholic Church, and has been a widely published stand of theirs for decades.
Again, only Fundamentalist Christians believe in a literal hell; they are in the minority. The majority of Christians in the world do not have such an official teaching; the largest denomination, Roman Catholicism for example, teaches it is a symbol for eternal separation from God, equal in the eyes of some theologians to non-existence.
And the basic building blocks upon which Christianity is built is not the death or resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, but on his teaching that humans really do matter to their Creator, despite the suffering and hatred on earth, and that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and love. His death and resurrection are seen as evidence that his message was true, but they are not the message that Christian denominations have been built on. Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa of Calcutta claimed to be living examples of Christianity. Neither of them were crucified nor have risen from the dead. That is not what their religion is about.
While not writing to advocate Christianity and dispute the sensibilities of my atheist friends, I do often wonder how what should be basics to those who are talking about religion are unknown, at least the stuff about the Big Bang. Come on, atheists are supposed to be more enlightened than the “silly” religion folks. Don’t want to give the group a bad name!
When I see that people have not taken time to check the facts or are purposefully omitting them, it makes me wonder if the words of G.K. Chesterton are not in fact true: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
-
Homerovah the Almighty
You might say Christianity is a big bang, some people hear it and some don't
I think it's better for humanity to live within reality and deal with those realities as they present themselves, rather than to seek answers from ancient ignorance
I wonder if humanism could be turned into a prominent religion in are modern world .
Isn't modern religion just ancient ignorance after all
-
serotonin_wraith
I don't think it's ever been said that every Christian believes in creationism.
Christians who scoff at the Christians who do have just dishonestly turned their holy book into one big metaphor. At least the creationists are being consistent and honest within their own belief structure.
The first post is supposed to be a caricature, yet no one can point out which parts are wrong. They just want it put across in a more 'mystical' way so that it doesn't look so stupid.
If there is no real hell (how about heaven too if places described in the Bible can be dismissed so easily?), if God/Jesus didn't come to earth to die for our sins, if there was no original sin, if all we can get from the Bible is a few good words (which can be found more frequently and more easily elsewhere) then what is the point of the Christian religion? Why bother following it at all?
If anything can be a metaphor, then 'thou shalt not kill' may aswell be a metaphor. It could mean we shouldn't kill ideas, or don't kill the happiness inside you. No one ever thinks THAT could be a metaphor though. The bits that sound stupid become metaphors. 'Enlightened' Christians may laugh along with the atheists who think a literal reading of the Bible is silly, but the joke is on them for holding on to the Bible so dishonestly. Where in the Genesis account does it say the creation story is a metaphor? It doesn't.
This is like saying 'Well we know the story in Lord of the Rings didn't really happen, but we read it and we get a spiritual message from it, and we still hold the book in high esteem because even though it's just a book of tales that didn't happen, it MUST have something to do with the creator of the universe, it just MUST.'
-
lovelylil
Narkissos,
Thank you very much. You actually answered Gopher's Q to me better than I could have.
Gopher,
The only time there is a problem harmonizing evolution with the creation account is if you read the account in a narrow, literal way. The creation account does not speak about evolution at all. the purpose of it is to tell the story of God and that he essentially created man and everything on earth. But the small details of the story are not to be taken as literal.
I brought this point out on another thread too. The bible uses figurative language, allegories, and other similiar styles of writings that are not to be taken as literal but that convey a literal truth.
Also what the creation account absolutely does not give imformation about is HOW God created everything. Evolution could be the process by which God brought everything in existance. And if so, which I believe to be so, than when the bible says God created each animal according to his kind, this statement would still be absolutely true. Because God set the natural process in motion.
Moses was not a scientist and who knows who passed the creation story onto him. The Genesis account was simply not written to explain complicated scientific theories. Nor does it matter. The simple point of the story the writer was trying to convey was that there is a God, he created everything including man, and he did it because he wanted to.
Peace, Lilly
-
Carl_Hernz
I gather that perhaps the difference between what some are saying about Christianity
(and Judaism for the matter) is that it is based on simplistic mythical stories found
in the Bible.What I find confusing (and alarming) about this comment made by those who criticize
the origins of these religions is that they are not BASED on the Bible. These religions
came first.The Old Testament is a product of Judaism, and the New Testament is a product of
Christianity. These religions didn’t base their faith on these writings, these writings
explained their faith.What is alarming about how the Bible stories get attacked and treated as a poor foundation
for any type of belief is that this harkens to the Jehovah’s Witness view that religion is
supposed to be based on the Bible. I may be mistaken, but I fear that many of us never
unlearn some of these incorrect views of the Witnesses when we leave, and thus we make
choices like rejecting or choosing some sort of ideology based on these views.
With respect to those who take an atheist view after leaving the Watchtower (because in my
opinion it is a brave thing to be able to leave in the first place, not to mention reject
such innate beliefs as contained in a religious system), some of the criticisms made against
religion sound less like logic and more like subconscious adaptation of Witness views. This
is also the same with some that make comments about other faiths or the Witnesses as well.There are some traits to authoritative religions that people have to be careful about
deprogramming from themselves. While this is not meant to suggest that all people who have
made negative criticizing comments on these boards have yet to do such things, I hope that
some who do recognize how deeply the Witnesses may have affected our way of thinking can gain
some help:1. Authoritative religions like the Watchtower foster a sense of superiority in the
individual, allowing them to ethically accept the degrading of others who employ a different
ideology or belief system from ours. While we may strongly disagree with the views of others,
to ridicule their belief system minimalizes the value other people innately possess, judging
their abilities to be lower than ours, and thus imitating the Watchtower which teaches that
those who do not share its view are worthy of rejection.2. Claims that religions are based on the books of worship are often an earmark of
authoritative religions. JWs teach that their books of worship, the Bible, is the touchstone
of doctrinal worthiness. However this view is incompatible with the history of the Bible’s
own development as a documentation of religious experience. Neither the Jews nor the Christians
(nor the Muslims, for that matter) awaited the composition or canonization of the Bible before
developing their worship systems. They came first; their writings reflected their beliefs.
Only later religions, like the JWs, from the Second Great Awakening period in America hold
to the belief that Christianity is based on a book. Those who use this means of measuring
other’s beliefs are reflecting a modern religious take of late developed and promoted by
those like the Witnesses.3. Turning back to judge the Witnesses as evil or demonizing can often be traced back
to emotional responses that are normal after suffering; but a consistent pattern that refuses
to let go of such a view after healing has occurred might reflect less of an educated opinion
and more of a failure to release the belief that individual judgment of others is ethical. This
is often either a learned traits of the Witnesses or one they foster in converts who have yet
to mature from this view themselves. Even many abuse victims often forgive and move on, even
in the midst of pain that never completely erases. Those who labor to continue in a
judgmental state may have yet to deprogram what the Watchtower taught was okay to do.With atheism usually comes an understandable pride that one has been able to relieve themselves
of the shackles of unreasonableness, falsehood, and superstition. This is an achievement in itself.
People are rarely as free as they desire to follow their conscience in matters such as these. Such
freedom to follow one’s conscience in such matters as adoption of ideology and or religion should
be promoted and protected, as well as defended.In light of this, we must also look at our response to those who hold differing views and if it
still mimics a system we have abandoned (or at least claim to). When the behavior has not changed,
only the subject matter has, total detachment from such a system of the Watchtower may have yet
to be achieved. This is not to demean the individual who still mimics, but to highlight the
insidious nature of the JW religion.P.S.: Forgive any misspellings, etc. here. I have multiple sclerosis and am in the middle of
a severe flare up of symptoms, and have to post without final review at the moment. Thanks to
those who have read my severely long pontification—I hope it doesn’t come across as opposition
to the many atheists here, but as a caution to look for more areas where we may not have see
that the Watchtower has robbed us of the ability to act like the respectful people we are. -
serotonin_wraith
If the Bible didn't exist, would we still have Christianity today? I'm going to say no.
It's pretty obvious that people had to think about what they believed before they wrote it down, especially if man made up the religion. So at first it wasn't based on any book.
But doesn't this just show the Bible as uninspired?
How about books like Revelation? It was supposed to be a direct 'revelation' from God- how could John (or whoever wrote it) have known it as a shared religion beforehand? How could people have been following the letters of Paul before he wrote them? In these cases, hasn't the religion been based on the written accounts?
-On the point of respect- is it good to respect the beliefs of extremist muslims who wish to kill us? No, I think a healthy dose of disrespect is needed. Therefore if Christianity brings its own set of dangers, why should it automatically be respected? I don't think it's being superior, spiteful or mean to speak about our concerns. We don't dance around the issue and try to put it across nicely to suicide bombers or plane hijackers- we make it known directly that they should stop, that their beliefs are not worthy of respect and who knows- we may offend those who believe Allah wants them to kill people, but so what? There are more important things to worry about than upsetting some very deluded people.