I envy people who have Faith

[BlueBloodedBlue]

I don't but it must be a real comfort to believe in a higher power and have something that gives a meaning to everything.

That's it really.

Agreed!

She's a fantastic speaker, her Ted Talk is really interesting:

I've just caught up with this thread, it's one of the most interesting I've read on MN, with the majority of posters being intelligent and respectful. (The less said about the others the better imo).

It has strengthened my Atheism if anything, I don't read anything to change my views. I certainly do not have a god shaped hole inside me!

Will humans as a whole , ever achieve enlightenment, that we don't need beliefs in any God's or will religions always be apart of the human psychological make-up ?

I think something like it will, yes. Gods or religion or ritual, certainly, seems to have been a part of humanity for as long as records began and even longer. I find it fascinating .

So I’ll give a description of faith which the person is seeking and it’s unchristian to do so?

So I’ll give a description of faith which the person says she is seeking and it’s unchristian to do so? Other people attack me and I defend the position and that is wrong too? Sorry I have plenty of peace and happiness and just cannot fathom why people get upset by an exchange of ideas but God bless

Go to began his human Project by taking a man and revealing himself to him and then taking a nation and then revealing himself to that nation and then to the world. Of course most people haven’t accepted the revelation as he said but that doesn’t make it any less true

I think it's the fact when a person came on, you just skipped their perspectives and carried on debating your points rather than offering encouragement and positivity for that person. @Malie

I noticed this too. It was extremely notable that @Malie did not reach out to offer support or comfort to a fellow Christian woman in distress. Other Christian’s and Atheists did, but @Malie chose not too.

This is a genuine question. Do you believe that the earth is only around 6,000 years old and that Adam and Eve were really the very first people on earth?

@Malie But, accordingly to your beliefs, God let these misogynistic beliefs develop in the Bedouin ( and other) societies. Trying to tweak it a bit ( whilst still firmly locating women as property of men as the Ten Commandments do) , then tweaking it a bit more 2000 years later hardly makes God a proponent of woman’s rights. He could, after all, have intervened at the start of human society to be clear about women’s equality. Instead of letting untold women and girls suffer.unimaginably for millennia.
And of course, these improvements were only told to one society, even if God saw his ‘improvements’ as a good thing, he sure wasn’t keen to accelerate them around the world.

You are right that I cannot locate in my mind the specific passage against rape you refer too. However all the passages in the OT I have read in relation to men raping women, are firmly viewing women as the property of Fathers and Husbands. The rape is therefore a violation/ damage. of the male’s property, not of the mind and body of the women in question. Rape is not a women’s rights issue to the author of those texts. Indeed, despite the ‘two thousand years of Christian civiliisation’ your refer to, marital rape was legal in nearly all of these ( following the belief of Christian society that the body of the woman is the property of the husband, as reflected in those OT texts). Marital rape was finally made illegal thanks to the feminism based on a secular system of ideas, and the campaigning of those secular feminists. It is not thanks to Christianity than women have the rights they do now, but thanks to secular feminism.

And you have been clear that you think those who disagree with you have not read or studied the Bible, but I have studied the old and New Testament at A/Level and spent three years studying the Old Testament and systematic theology at degree level, as well as continuing to read and learn informally after that.

I really am increasingly astonished by the determined evasion of personal reflection and insight from @Malie.

It's certainly puzzling,

Agreed - when someone comes on in distress, they don't want a lesson in theology, they want words of comfort. @Malie seems unable or unwilling to offer this to a fellow Christian.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 @Malie

I see the Bible as a book written and compiled by human hands, like any other. I think much of it was intended to be symbolic rather literal and it would be a mistake to take the whole thing literally today.

I think the historical Jesus was a revolutionary spiritual teacher, but through so many years and translations and the biases of the powerful over time, it's difficult to perceive his true message.

I've been reading a book that returns to the original Greek and it's interesting how different translations can put a completely different message across - for instance "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand" has been taken as a kind of threatening - change your bad ways, God is coming for you soon. But another reading of the words is more like - "think again, God is right here" - asking people to rethink their assumptions about God, and giving a comforting message that He is not some distant entity, but closer than close, right here right now.

I once knew someone whose faith told him his sexuality was wrong and it led him to attempt suicide. Don't envy him much.

Of COURSE it doesn't mean everyone is miserable. Did you misread my post? At no moment did I say that everyone is miserable. On the contrary. People often find things to fill the 'God shaped hole' in their hearts. But these things don't bring long term satisfaction. Until you have a relationship with God, you will always be lacking something. That something is the relationship with God, which is arguably the most important relationship a human can have.
@DaisyJoy1

There's plenty you're lacking. Humility for one. I am perfectly fulfilled thank you very much, there is a lot that brings me long term satisfaction. Maybe you're life would be shit without your faith but don't be so arrogant to assert that everyone's would be.

hello malie

Weird that you'd need a book to tell you not to do any of these things, as most of us know not to already...we have a moral compass that takes care of that.

Some posters seem to think that just because they need faith do do these things that everyone does. It's scary.

Funny that we need a Highway Code to tell us how to behave on the road. Thought most of us instinctively knew! 😀

No, there are a lot of Highway code rules that you have to learn and that are not instinctive. The rules are also changed and updated, as attitudes or behaviours change, for example the recent changes regarding cyclists on the road.
Another example of updated 'rules' is that women are no longer in British society regarded the property of a man, alongside his other property, such as expressed in the Ten Commandments. (Deuteronomy 5:21)

As for murder, well the God of the Old Testament goes around murdering loads of people, almost the entire population of the world (both animal and human) in Noah's Ark, Lot's wife, loads of collateral damage murders in his gambling game with the Devil over Job's faithfulness and so on. 'Thou shalt not murder' looks a bit Do As I Say, Not Do As I Do.

Oh dear! I suppose from our society and Mr Putin’s war that goodness is instinctive in the human race. Never mind. Just think a bit past the websites you have visited and you will realise that society is actually built on Christianity and it’s values. Human rights today come from that and if you don’t believe me just do some reading of history

You can have faith in anything, doesn't have to be religion