An Atheist's Take on Christian Prayer.

Very nicely put.

 

I like that I feel that god is with me I don't like pray n stuff or go to a church but I feel that there is some kind of energy out there and if other people want to worship it or call it Jeasus or yaway or whatever then I guess it's ok but don't push your shit on me cause I want to handle god myself keep you there and I'll keep me here

 

I agree. When I say I'm a Christian, I mean that I've accepted Jesus as my role model, and try to dedicate my life to the principles He stood for, which I consider to be unconditional love for everyone, especially society's outcasts. If people followed the principles in the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, etc., I think the world would be a better place. That's all I mean by Christianity. Just because somebody else, like the KKK, who uses the label thinks it means the reverse of what Jesus stood for doesn't persuade me that I have to reject it and call myself something else. I'm fortunate to have a fellowship group who share my beliefs. They call themselves Progressive Christians and attend mainline Protestant churches. How is this harmful?

 

We do not need characters in an ancient play to tell us what is acceptable in our current culture, in the time of the supposed Jesus many things unheard of in modern western civilization were common place, many of which Jesus by default of his imagined father accepted and attempted to proliferate.

The entire story of Jesus is a plagiarism of dozens of other godly origins, including his super powers to cure some of the sick and multiply grainley food stuffs. If you believe lying about the origins of the Earth and the timeline of humanity is acceptable which you must to believe in the fabrication of another imagined son of a god you are detrimental to the advance of knowledge.

David Koresh had as much right to call himself the son of a god as the christian idol of Jesus Christ dead on the cedar.

 

I find role models and ethical teachings useful. "Necessary" is a matter of opinion. If somebody can find an alternative route to meaning and morality, I'm fine with that.

Most scholars do not believe that "The entire story of Jesus is a plagiarism of dozens of other godly origins..." The available evidence, sparse as it is, points to the existence of an historical Jesus who was crucified by the Romans, and although the Jesus Seminar concludes that He did or said less than 20 percent of the things attributed to Him, those things are still impressive enough to inspire me. As for "plagiarism of dozens of other godly origins", many of the claims of such "plagiarism' have been discredited by J.Z. Smith and M.S. Smith. Often, it was other cults who copied from the Christians. In my judgment, there is evidence that some pagan religions had traditions and rituals that resembled Christian beliefs and practices, and that some of these were taken over by Christians in attributing them to Jesus. More important are the Jewish traditions and stories that were heavily mined by the Gospel writers in establishing roots in prophecy for the Jesus story. Those mythical attributes of Jesus are not part of my faith.

As for the origins of the Earth and the timeline of humanity, I'm not a Biblical literalist, and I emphatically reject the Genesis story and Biblical geneology as factual accounts. I agree with the early Church father Orignen and with Saint Augustine that these accounts do not need to be taken literally. I accept science as the gold standard in understanding astrophysical, geological and biological reality. So do other Progressive Christians. Those who are ignorant of history and accept uncritically anything claimed as fact that fits into their preferred view, whether religious or atheist, are detrimental to the advance of knowledge.

David Koresh had a legal right to call himself anything he wanted, but we have a right to reject that designation for a domineering child molestor. The term "son of God", in Jewish texts, can refer to any person whose piety puts him in a filial relation to God ( Wisdom 2:13, 16, 18; 5:5; ; Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] iv. 10).

 

And he's 100% correct. You have a problem with it because you make Atheism out to be more than it is, you go on to associate it with cults of personality. Atheism is NOT a RELIGION nor is it a CULT or even an ideology. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in God. Any ideology piled on top of Atheism IS NOT Atheism. You must look to the actual cause of any "bad" actions.

Nowhere is it written that if an Atheist steals from someone, that person will be repaid double from the flying spaghetti monster. Atheism has no link to any morality or ideology whatsoever. If you think it does then you don't know what atheism means. If you are a Christian, you can be directly link to text that states that you can be forgiven for murder. If you are a Muslim, you are directly linked to text that says to kill anyone talking bad about Islam. There are many moral discrepancies that religions need to take responsibility for.

To call out atheism as being responsible for immoral actions is extremely misleading. Does a cult of personality do bad things because they don't think there's a god, or is it possibly because they put FAITH in a flawed person? Being atheist doesn't protect you from being stupid. Human beings make stupid decisions. I make stupid decisions on a daily basis, none of them are because I do not think there is a God. To say Atheism was the actual cause of any bad thing a Marxist did, is fucking STUPID!

 

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You do not display such a lack of belief. It is what you believe about god and the followers of god, that causes your attitude about it.

It is written no where except where you have written it.

Is that why you say that religion is the cause of so much that is immoral?

I think atheism means to you, anything that will further the cause of your discussions.

If you are a member of just about any cultural norm, you can find a justification for homicide.

What are our moral responsibilities that we need to account for?

To believe that there is a universal morality is extremely misleading.

You can say the same thing about believing in god. It is not believing in god that is the cause, it is what you believe about god in relation to ones life that is the cause.

 

Knowledge flows freely into an open mind. Many simply do not care for knowledge preferring instead, comfort. Ignorance is evident only when some fact is ignored or replaced by superstition and that fact is in no wise detrimental to the advance of knowledge, it only reinforces the body of ignorance. Ignorance does not make knowledge scarce.

 

Ok.

Morality is subjective.

Actually you are incorrect, and the story of a god impregnating a human woman to give birth to a man god is a story that was told countless times before and after the fable of Jesus the redeemer.

The Romans probably crucified hundreds of men named Jesus, doen't prove he was magical.

I love the approximations christian apologetics pull out of thin air.



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You never specified what it was Christ actually did that was so inspiring, you culled out 80% of the mythology surrounding him but didn't specify what was kept or why.

Wrong, open any book of greek mythology or that of the birth of the Buddha and you will find the same story repeated over and over, a virgin gives birth to a man god. To attempt to refute this is ridicules.

Then you are not a Christian you have simply made up your own religion picking and choosing what to keep and what to throw away as you try to square the circle of your faith.

Again you simply pick and choose.

Last I heard returning from the dead and having a mother who was impregnated by a ghost is far from "gold standard" science.

There is no proof David Koresh was a pedophile, he along with his congregation were murdered.

Ok so now you say the redeemer was just another guy, ok it's your world.

When it comes to christian apologetics picking and choosing what to believe in their religion becomes quite easy, what is more difficult is getting a group of them to agree on an actual story or timeline.

 

I wanted to post kinda the same what Okiefreak said about this:

I recommend not to blatantly think that everyone 'needs' the same as you.

I don't understand why this is so sure to you?

Haha of course, did anybody do so? Naturally it's just as stupid the other way around.

 

I think the problem is sorting out the ideal from the realities. Ideally, Christianity (and Buddhism) are about peace, love and understanding. It's hard to find direct support in the teachings of Jesus or the Buddha for a program of violence. So I have no problem embracing them as justifications for altruism. I know, although I find it hard to understand, that both religions have been perverted to do the opposite of what their founders preached, but I would hardly find in that a reason to blame or reject the original teachings. They both work fine for me. Those are my ideals, which I try to put into practice.

Ideally, atheism is simply a non-belief in God. But it can take a soft form (non-belief) or a hard form (denial of God). I know lots of atheists who are "live and let live" good ol' boys, never causin' no harm. I'd say much of Western Europe is of that mentality, altough the French have gotten sticky on wearing hijabs. On the other hand, I've run into some who see it as their mission in life to attack religion. Some can get pretty evangelical about it. Evangelical Atheist professes the soft form of atheism, but his zeal betrays not only the hard form (There is no God) but a determination to persuade others to accept it. Whatever one's ideals about having no belief in anything in particular, it is contrary to human psychology to say that a person can believe that religion is wrong and harmful, on the one hand, and that that person is not risking intolerance of believers, on the other. Sam Harris, for example, believes that even religious liberals are complicit in terrorism and violence because support of any religion somehow furthers the ends of the fanatics. Why, then, wouldn't it be equally valid to say that laid back atheists who simply don't believe in God, aren't furthering the ends of the Stalinists and Maoists? When atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens start talking about religious teaching being a form of child abuse, I get nervous. So far, they have no real power, except to convert others to atheism. Christianity went through that phase, too. But when Constantine gave them power, the stage was set for some real doctrinal perversion. If religion is child abuse, do we condone such abuse or do we treat it as we do other abuse, with state intervention.

You say that Christians can "directly link a text" authorizing this or that abhorrent practice. Not all of us are Bible thumpers. The ones I hang with don't interpret the Bible literally, and if they found such a text, would question whether or not it was right. The Bible is just a collection of human efforts to understand the unknowable. Luther once compared it to a manger, which contained the baby Jesus but also lots of straw. What enables us to separate the baby from the straw? Judgment and Reason.

 

Ditto for Christianity.

Look at the many many ideologies regarding how Christian communities confront homosexuality. You have wholesale acceptance to Phelps-style anti-homosexual activism. Most Churches and communities lie in between.

 

Atheist or not, you still need to respect others views. I'm atheist but would never bad mouth religion, although I dont agree with it or understand it even, people put their lives in to religion so bad mouthing religion is bad mouthing millions of people, which is wrong.

My view of religion is that the holy books were misinterpreted, the messages Jesus and Mohamed etc were trying to get across were completely missed. I think religion creates unnessicary barriers between people and also causes war in some case's.

 

Same with culture for instance.

 

This affirmation is not helpful. There are in fact extreme views. They are legitimate phenomena.

Bad mouthing is bad mouthing, isn't it?

 

I agree with you entirely. And I think of myself as Christian.

 

I think religion places unnecessary barriers between people and god.

 

I think it can and often does but not by definition.

 

No he is not 100% correct and neither are you.

We’re not making Atheism out to be what it is not, Atheists are. If atheism is as you say; “simply the lack of belief in God”, then why would an Atheist, such as you seem to be, spend so much time preaching his simple belief to others and trying to prove them wrong?

Also you say that “Any ideology piled on top of Atheism IS NOT Atheism” and seem to condemn others for not looking for “the actual cause of any "bad" actions”. Yet many pile ideologies on top of Christianity and call it Christianity and then people like yourself blame Christianity for those ideologies and their bad result without looking for “the actual cause of any "bad" actions”.

It is interesting that you state; “Atheism has no link to any morality or ideology whatsoever”. This means that Atheists cannot be accused of any “moral discrepancies”, because Atheists have no morals.

Thus when Atheists like Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot commit crimes like genocide it’s not immoral, just expedient.

Of course it’s misleading, as you pointed out so well, “Atheism has no link to any morality” and so they cannot be immoral, at least to their way of thinking.

Being atheist doesn't protect you from being stupid? Interestingly, religion often does.

As for Atheism causing a bad thing, what about the violent repression of religion in the Soviet Union because Atheism was the “State Religion”?