To wonder how anyone can believe in a religion?

I’m not religious but I have moved to a small village with a wonderful community church. So many people are involved in the church here. They don’t seem indoctrinated more it gives them a sense of belonging and community. They also do a lot of good too. I think most people around here believe in a higher power, don’t believe every word the bible says and just want to feel part of something bigger than themselves.

Religious fundamentalists are what you are talking about and they are more rare (albeit, noisy)

Thank you, really interesting post by the way. 😃

Do I? This is a false distinction as far as I'm concerned. You've quoted Matthew above but Matthew wasn't written until after 50 years after Jesus' death most likely- a similar sort of period to Acts. Matthew isn't a verbatim record of what Jesus said or any sort of eye witness account- it's a book with an agenda (as all the books of the NT are) written by someone who had likely never met Jesus or Matthew. So I'm not sure why you would place any more weight on a purported quote in Matthew than on anything else, or why you're happy to rely on some books of the Bible and not others.

(FAOD I'm not arguing that any of it is true in a historical sense. But it's illogical to suggest that some bits are reliable because they begin with the words "Jesus said..." and others are not because they don't, or that some books have an agenda and others don't. They all do.)

I'd say there's a difference between believing in a religion and following it. As people have said, religions are diverse. I think people tend to, understandably, view all religion through a Christian lens and that's a religion that is perhaps very strongly associated with 'faith'.

You can follow a religion without believing in it, or at least some religions. I'm Jewish I attend synagogue fairly regularly, contribute to leading parts of the service and keep a kosher(ish) house but I don't believe in God, or that God gave Moses the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai etc. And that's not all that unusual in our synagogue, I'd say.

I follow Judaism because it's the cultural and spiritual tradition into which I was born, I enjoy the sense of community and continuing an ancient tradition and I find a services a meditative and spiritual experience.

What isn't a deep esoteric idea?

Why don't you say where you are going with this line of questioning?

How the New Testament writings came to exist, and more importantly, how they came to be accepted as such, is a part of that history I suggested you need to read if you want to understand these kinds of theological questions. You can't understand how these were interpreted without understanding why they were chosen (or sometimes, not chosen), by whom, and what is the nature of the authority that they saw the texts having, and the people doing the choosing as having.

The system of councils to decide questions like this were the basis of decision making in the early church, and is much more important than the individual question of who wrote Acts or any other part of the Bible, because they are essentially communal documents.

It's worth remembering that almost everyone has areas even within their own belief system that they don't really understand.

I'm a modern person with a strong interest in the natural sciences, but stopped studying mathematics when I went to university and I certainly don't understand the kinds of mathematics required to understand modern physics. I can't even follow it if it's written out, it's mostly gibberish to me.

I am quite content to leave that to other people, and while I don't believe every hair-brained idea that a theoretical physicists comes up with playing with numbers, I also don't have much basis to argue with them about it. I'd just look silly.

Every area of knowledge is like that and at the very top there are usually only a small number of people who understand the concepts.

So everyone in practice has areas where they just accept that they are not going to understand at a deep level.

I read that book too, and it definitely spoke to me. I was in a very agnostic phase at the time and it helped me think differently about my religious leanings!

I see religion as a framework I hang my spiritual stuff on - knowing I was never going to believe every article of any religion, I decided that rather than seeking a religion that ‘worked for me’ I’d stick more or less with the one I was born in, namely the C of E 😁, although I am drawn to Catholicism (quite possibly because I wasn’t brought up in it). I don’t think Christianity is ‘better’ or more ‘true’ than other religions, it’s just the one I know best and am culturally aligned with and attuned to. I don’t go to church much, and don’t have a community around it, but I do feel vaguely connected to others who’ve prayed and worshipped using the same words and who’ve read or heard the same texts.

I don’t believe in life after death and I think of the Resurrection and Christ’s appearances afterwards as a mystery I don’t need to believe or understand.

I don’t care if atheists think I’m stupid!

Acts was recorded by the early Christians themselves. As was all of the New Testament documents.

Well, look at it this way. How do you know that you can even know anything, for there to be science? How do you know that the world operates on a rational basis? What is the nature of being, or physical reality? What is the basis of morality? Could we just pop in and out of existence, or could we be living in a dream, or giant video game? What is science anyway? Are mathematics real?

None of these are questions that science can give an answer to, and for some of them, the existence of science itself really depends on the answer. If we don't have a stable basis for real knowledge, or observation, what's the point of science?

Religion has very little, almost nothing, to do with telling us how the physical world came to be the way it is, or how it works. It mainly talks about why anything exists at all, what it means that it exists, what it means that we as conscious beings exists, and what we should do about it.

I think one of the main reasons is because people fear what happens to them when they die. They also feel the need to have an internal drive to behave in a certain way.

Not just for money, not just because everyone else is doing it. But a kind of raison d'etre.

Rather than just blindly going through life doing things, you can say, I'm doing this because my religion says do and it will make me a better person. Or make me go to a better place when my life ends.

I guess everyone has a desire to fit in, but also to feel safe and superior. And that the way you live your life is the right way. And religion offers that feeling.

I'm just guessing as I'm not religious and doubt I ever will be.

I have worked with lots of Christians. One of them was the nicest person I have ever met in my life. I just couldn't understand why she believed in god. I just can't respect people who believe in God.. it is like believing in the tooth fairy ... just bizarre!

Usually the religion they were brought up in. My mother was brought up Catholic, as was I. My sister is the only one that still practices though, but if pushed I’d say in Catholic too.

It just is! We're a result of the world's existence and our evolution has led to the development of consciousness 🤷

Why Christians don't follow the Torah in the same way Jews does is random in terms of this thread.

And I'm sorry, your statement says you don't know much about the development of Christianity. The Bible, in Judaism, and in Christianity, is always interpreted by the community. What that means and how it is done is fundamental to understanding both of those religions.

The question of how much of he Torah Christians should observe was first addressed in the First Council of Jerusalem, which is recorded in the book of Acts, but throughout the early church councils were how problems like this were addressed. (Including, what gets included in the scriptural canon, and what doesn't.) In this case the context of the question was whether gentile converts to Christianity needed to be circumcised. The discussion and resolution give the pattern and logic for the general principle that was used subsequently with regard to that kind of question.

Their answer was essentially that they did not need to be circumcised, that circumcision was for Jews only, and that salvation was through Christ not through adherence to the Jewish laws - but they did need to adhere to ethical rules laid out in the Torah.