To be irritated by religious views...

[Frume]

I know I'll get flamed here. Of course it goes without saying that you are entitled to believe whatever you believe. And I understand that sometimes people turn to 'God' because that's their last hope. But..

My example that prompted me to write this...

I was on Instagram and catching up with a poor girl that I follow. She is 19 and has battled cancer 3 times. The page is updated by her mum and she says things like:-

'In Him we trust to heal his child'

'This is all part of His plan'

'He knows what he is doing'

Something good happens & then it's, 'God is good' or 'Thank you to Our Father in Heaven for making our prayers come true and healing his child'

Ok. Sure, that was it.. or probably science

The general 'Thoughts and prayers' when there is any kind of disaster. Because obviously that's all that's needed in a time of crisis.

Religion makes me uncomfortable. I dont begrudge people having their faith but i just cant get my head around a bunch of smart adults believing in a big man that lives in the sky and has power over us all. Wether that's a christain god, Allah, or whomever. Its just there is no physical proof, yet they tend to claim books like the bible are proof but those books were written by fallible men who used it to keep the population under control. The very fact that people "create" religions out of nothing more than a selfish need to have their way like King Henry Viii, or the scientology guy, or those cults that commit mass suicide seems to side with the opinion that religion is just nonsense and a tool to "control the masses"

It makes me very uncomfortable how anyone can logically believe in this stuff.

I agree Arrow that much religion has been used to control, to suppress, to oppress, and that much of it has been formed vaguely over centuries, and some branches developed out of a selfish desire or out of arrogance.

Yet I am a Christian, and I am a Christian precisely because my faith doesn't tally with that description. It rests on events in history, events with good robust claims to evidence when it comes to historical method. It's a faith that sprang up very suddenly, over just months and years after the death and claimed resurrection of Jesus, whereas other religions tend towards a development over centuries. It's a faith which turned a bunch of fearful, despairing people into a group which would change the world, a group who immediately began to exercise the tenets of their faith in practice. They were a group who fed the hungry and cared for the orphans and widows, a group who remained behind in Rome when plague struck to care for victims, a group who saved baby girls from refuse dumps.

It was only later that their faith became a tool of oppression in the hands of the Roman Empire, and through the great civilisations through history, and it was twisted, misrepresented and abused, resulting in war, oppression and hatred. Yet streams of it still captivated people and urged them to the works they were originally called to - to works of liberation for oppressed people, of scientific discovery, of the development of healthcare and education.

I believe because this faith is based in more than vague myth or a nice feeling. It chimes with all I see in the world, from cosomological constants through to art, music, reason and beauty. And it transforms millions of lives, liberates people from so much mess, gives people a hope and a future.

I know it's hard to understand, but I just want to challenge the narrative that people of faith have not thought out why they believe, and just believe out of some sense of fear or some kind of brainwashing. Most Christians I know enjoy delving deep into reasons for faith, deconstructing it and putting it back together, listening to others and using their own reason to come to conclusions. And alongside that is their experience of a God who loves them passionately.

I didn't say Christianity had anything to do with Mithraism.

What I said was that “ I think of the bible as a collection of curated stories cloaked in effective poetry: they are a great jumping off point for discussion of the meaning of life but no more worthy of respect than Greek stoic philosophy or the cult of Mithras (to pick a random legend).” I believe current thought is that Christianity and Mithraism share some common cultural roots, rather than one borrowing off the other, but who knows what went on?!

You are confusing my last paragraph (above) with my 2nd to last paragraph, in which I said I thought of the Jesus narrative as “another version of many similar older stories about death and resurrection, a chosen man who does miracles with disciples etc”.

I was using Mithras only as one example of those old comparisons that are often used, with the many cult stories. So when you said you thought it was simply a version of those stories about resurrection and disciples etc, I wanted to demonstrate that those comparisons have been dismissed by most serious scholars. So it wasn't only Mithras I was picking out, but all of them.

There are no common cultural roots to Mithraism and Christianity.

Sorry, Madhairday,I don't recognise your religion from your description. It's obviously very important to you but to an outsider like me it looks very different.

Perhaps they don't - I did say who knows what went on back then? You can't believe anything contemporary writers said, everyone's got a different horse in the race. It's extremely difficult to believe that since the two cults were in existence in many of the same places at the same time that they weren't aware of each other!

The contemporary writers I choose to believe are peer reviewed scholars, both Christian and not. Hence why I choose not to credit the creators of Christ myth theories, who had no credentials of any value.

Awareness or not, there is no way a band of Jews would develop a myth system in the same vein as the mystery cults, because the practices would have been anathema to them.

Sorry you don't recognise my faith. I am too aware of how it has been twisted in certain quarters, and that saddens me.

The idea that god must exist because we haven't shown he doesn't, is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. If you assert something exists then the burden of proof lies with you. Religion is a protected characteristic, but that doesn't preclude criticism of religion, merely that you can't discriminate against religion, though religious groups are, shamefully allowed to discriminate against people of other religions, gays, atheists etc.
As for the divinity of jesus, the gospels are not even reliable eyewitness documents, given that they are anonymous.

and just believe out of some sense of fear or some kind of brainwashing

But that's exactly how it works for those of us brought up in it from birth. I can clearly recall panicking about being sent to hell at what was supposed to be a 'fun' church evening involving a Christian band made up of young church members with an agenda.

I need less than five fingers to count those with a similar background of my very long standing acquaintance who have managed to break free.

Religion and belief is a protected characteristic according to UK law. Would you belittle people on the basis on any other aspect of this identity protected by Equality Law

That simply means that people can't be discriminated against on the basis of their religion or belief. It doesn't mean that their beliefs cannot be challenged. The list of protected characteristics also includes marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity. None of that prevents people criticising the concept of marriage or suggesting that, for instance, someone who's had 20 children maybe shouldn't get pregnant yet again.

Atheists and Christians have a lot in common. They both find it impossible to believe in 10,000 gods. The only difference is atheists don't believe in 1 more god.
It will take a few more years for the penny to drop with Christians but education is helping.

Nothing wrong with saying all workers should have 1 or 2 days a week off work. But randomly picking one job out of thousands and banning them from working on Sundays, whether they want to or not, is just a smoke screen for forcing one particular religion on a whole country. #christianprivilege

As for the divinity of jesus, the gospels are not even reliable eyewitness documents, given that they are anonymous.

The gospels stand up incredibly well to historical scrutiny, especially compared to other manuscripts of antiquity. It wasn't unusual for biographies to be 'formally anonymous' - ie to not include the name specifically in the text - and from very early on we have the gospels both accepted as eyewitness testimony and also names attached which would make no sense if they'd been fabricated (for example it would have made far more sense to call Mark the gospel of Peter, if they were going to try and get something out that would be accepted widely quickly.) There's a massive uniformity between the earliest manuscripts in the names attached and in the acceptance that they are eyewitness testimony; either written by eyewitnesses or by writers close to eyewitnesses (Mark and Luke - Peter and Paul.)

Even without proving eyewitness authorship, the Gospels measure up well to historical standards used in ancient historiography. They are very close to the events that they record - three out of four being dated within one generation and all four within seventy years of Jesus’ life, all during the lives of eyewitnesses.

I can clearly recall panicking about being sent to hell at what was supposed to be a 'fun' church evening involving a Christian band made up of young church members with an agenda.

I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds stressful, badly done and bad theology.
It does make me cross that this stuff gets twisted and used to incite fear. The Bible says that perfect love casts out all fear, so fear tactics seem far from who Jesus was. He was serious about people messing up and harming others, but was always firstly about grace and love. Sorry for your experience

Stephen Roberts 'One less God than yoh' argument is fairly a weak one....

Firstly, a theist is defined by their belief in a god, not their disbelief in many others.

A Christian would argue that other descriptions of God are inferior because they don’t recognise Jesus as the son of God and resurrected (for different reasons that I won't get into now).

However, we don't necessarily dismiss other religious God's either as where others teach the same things about God I believe they too are correct. Just not the whole truth. For my beliefs, Catholicism gives the WHOLE truth while other religions may only give the partial truth. Hence, there may have been partial truths in religions before Christianity as God may have deemed it necessarily to partially reveal Himself.

Well....Christianity has been around for 2000 years and holds some truly clever and educated people already in its ranks so I don't think I will be having a Sunday lie-in anytime soon.

2000 years is still pretty new in terms of humanity though.

Bible scholars agree that the gospels are anonymous and we have no idea who wrote them (see Richard Carrier for example) and they certainly weren't written within 30 years of the events they describe and are probably based on other lost sources such as the Q source.

It's funny the way all these retail workers who are being oppressed by the restrictions on Sunday trading haven't done much in the way of organising to try and get the laws changed to allow them to work longer hours, isn't it? Can't be because they're in fear of their jobs, since those in charge in the sector would love nothing more. There must be some other reason.

Bible scholars agree that the gospels are anonymous and we have no idea who wrote them (see Richard Carrier for example)

Bible scholars agree that the gospels do not have authors names embedded in the texts. But they certainly don't agree that we do not know who wrote them. Many (both scholars of faith and not) agree that we have firm ground for a accepting the testimony of the early church in names ascribed to them and the eyewitnesses attached to these names, either directly or second hand. There is a wealth of evidence to back this up.

Richard Carrier is a bit of a stand alone among scholars. The overwhelming majority disagree with him on most things - he is a proponent of the Jesus Myth, and his position is very unusual in NT historiology and theology.

they certainly weren't written within 30 years of the events they describe

A good majority of scholars now postulate an early date of AD60 for Mark, Matthew and Luke between A.D. 60-70; John between A.D. 90-100. Scholars have moved on from the form criticism of the early twentieth century, and the existence of Q is even more disputed, although really to me it makes no difference if there was a source document circulating at the time. Each gospel writer had their own unique emphasis and purpose and audience, and wrote to that, and the variance that results gives a much broader scope for trusting the texts in terms of historical method.

I think that the writers of the gospels had to be careful about what they were doing to evade persecution by both Jews and Romans and the texts would have been in danger of being destroyed.

The very fact that people "create" religions out of nothing more than a selfish need to have their way like King Henry Viii

Protestantism is popularly considered to have begun in Germany[c] in 1517 when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church, which purported to offer remission of sin to their purchasers

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism

Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who had some issues with how some things were being done in the Catholic church.

Henry VIII took advantage of this some years later in order to try to divorce his wife.

I couldnt give a toss if you worship the divine asda shopping trolley in the canal if thats what gets you through your day.

But i seriously object to you trying to make rules for me based on the holy trolley scriptures. And religious types can never keep it to themselves

Wow the level of ignorance in this thread is overwhelming.

Those critical of Christianity, have you ever read the Bible or just followed Roman Catholic narratives? Those using science Vs religion, did you know that Darwin even stated that with all his research and discovery and study he concluded that there has to be a God?

I was once an atheist but I was drawn to the bible after reading many other religious scriptures, philosophical writings and all manner of ideologies. My conclusion was I immediately felt something, that book is a book of historical fact that has never been proven otherwise, a book that can be used in studying the human condition and the world as it is today and a book of prophecy. No other book is like it. A book written from Genesis 1500BC to the final book of revelation circa 90AD, all linked up by over 40 writers most of whom had little to do with others.

I've had more than a fair share of experiences that tell me God exists and I would say before you say it's a load of rubbish, may be read the Bible. It's up to you what you believe, but the level of hostility towards Christianity based on basically what others have said I would say may be give the bible a chance to see what it says, for a fair debate.

religious types can never keep it to themselves

It appears some atheists like to make sweeping generalisations about billions of religious people based on their relatively small experience. I won't say all atheists as that would be a generalisation.

You would never know that I'm religious in real life ( I will extremely rarely mention it unless I hear a misconception of Catholic teaching or are directly asked) as I follow St Francis's approach of preaching Jesus, and if necessary use words i.e. I strive to be a witness for Christ everyday.

Yes, JQBased, I have read the bible, and no, it hasn't proved to me that a god exists.

As for "historical fact" - really? Please tell me you don't think Genesis is historical truth. There is so much evidence out there that really does disprove it.