Atheists on belief threads. Why?

[DioneTheDiabolist]

While there are sometimes interesting threads where atheists and believers discuss and debate religion, it seems to me that increasingly atheists only come onto threads here to poopoo or disrespect the beliefs of others.

Am I right about this and if not then what is the reasoning behind the posts where atheists call the beliefs of others rubbish etc?

Thistle christianity preaches that humans have morality and a conscience as they were made in the image of god. That is ALL humans though surely.

Do you not think it is a bit ironic that you are defending offence taking by atheists. Why are they allowed to take offense.

walter - another genuine question - how do you deal with the possibility that you might be wrong? That when you meet your maker he might actually turn around and say "Yep, those mid-western evangelicals are right, I really do hate gays. You haven't followed what I have said at all" (to give an extreme example).

Is that a possibility that worries you at all or are you confident that you properly understand him (and the extremists are just wrong).

God doesn't hate anyone. You would need to read The Gospels in order to find out what Christians believe.

ethelb - it is up to each individual how they respond to comments that denigrate their beliefs. I was just pointing out that it is not just the atheists who are guilty of making statements that are capable of giving offence.

Hidden- it is lovely that you believe that the gospels tell you that. That is a 'good' belief to have. However, there are people who profess to share your faith who would disagree with you. They hold their beliefs that god does hate gays with just the same sincerity that you hold your beliefs.

Sorry, that sounded a bit patronising. I just meant that it was a positive thing to believe.

That's a good question! Not one I've thought much about tbh.

I guess it comes down to faith once again. I have faith that God is good. It doesn't make sense to atheists. I don't blame you. I just don't require proof and I just believe.

That belief has gotten me through some terrible times. I prayed. And maybe those prayers did nothing 'scientifically' but for me they did something. They helped.

And I believe God was there and lent me some strength to get through it. And if I got to heaven and God was a raging homophobe I'd like to think I would be brave enough to challenge Him on it!

But, in the same way that atheists can't believe in an all powerful deity, I can't believe in one so cruel as to be homophobic!

If anyone within a church hates anybody - gay people or whomever - they aren't keeping to the two great commandments and they'll be judged just as we all are

You've raised an interesting point there, hidden, I wonder what a religion would look like if it was based only on the four gospels, no more no less...?

So you wouldn't have all the Leviticus stuff about prawns and gays, and you wouldn't have all the St Paul stuff that has shaped current Christianity; you'd just have the parables and the sermon on the mount. And the whole salvation thing of course.

As I say, interesting.

(X-post - was talking about your 21:26 post)

Sometimes I could gladly do without the St Paul stuff I personally think that he's responsible for quite a few of these current arguments

You cannot monitor a thread and decide to censure it. So get over it.

The Jefferson Bible is just the gospels with all the supernatural and miraculous bits taken out. You could have a look at that. It is just the philosophy.

I have a Catholic Bible with extra books in, as if the usual NT doesn't have enough in it It sits and my shelf and dares me to read it

I do get a bit irritated when people want to "free me from my conditioning". I never was conditioned, at all. I am the only religious person in my family.

Not my current family; my DH is quite religious. But my parents have never attended church. I remember being shocked as a child (about 10 or 11) when my father mentioned praying about something. I genuinely did not know he believed. As I've gotten older I've realized from casual remarks that he and my mother both believe in some kind of afterlife. My brother is an atheist and delights in telling me how stupid I am.

But I have always believed, even when I had no name or words for religion. So no, not conditioned.

There is a movement here in the States called "the Red Letter Christians" who base their beliefs only from the recorded words of Jesus. I like them. :)

Agreed. It is very arrogent.

I also think you can condition someone to be an atheist.

"The Jefferson Bible is just the gospels with all the supernatural and miraculous bits taken out. You could have a look at that. It is just the philosophy."

But surely that's only 5 words?

That sounds interesting CheerfulYank. I'll do a search.

Now this is something that puzzles me about some people - Waltermitty, perhaps you can explain? The basics of the Christian belief system are that there is a paternal god whose son was called Jesus and was also a god. There are an awful lot of different interpretations of the rest of it (eg Catholics, Methodists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses etc etc etc as well as all the smaller scale groupings.) If you were brought up in one of these, erm, teams or flavours but have started to disagree with a chunk of that specific version (eg, you were raised Jehovah's Witness but don't have an issue with blood donation, or raised Catholic and don't actually hate women) why don't you just pick another team within the league to sign up to? Or if you have a firm belief that there is some sort of Higher Being out there or a 'need for spirituality' but no time for the particular myth system you grew up with, why opt for another one? I do have a bit of a problem with people defending and sticking with institutions that have proved themselves over and over again to be bigoted, corrupt and unpleasant by saying oh well, I don't support the bad stuff they did, just the good stuff.

Y'see, holding my hands up here, I am an atheist, but I have an interest in the history and evolution of religion. And I like thinking about the what-if's. But I had never heard of the Jefferson bible so ta for that ethelb. Shame it never formed the basis of a religion in its own right, really.

But I don't really see why I can't come on suitable religious style threads and make intelligent [ahem] comments? In a mostly polite way? Just cause I lack the faith?

Is the point not that we are all a product of our 'conditioning' - the things we have read, the things we have heard, the experiences we have had?

No two Christians believe exactly the same - there are as many different versions of Christian belief as there are things that atheists believe. There are just as many versions of what god is and his nature.

Each of our beliefs is wholly our own, and doesn't have any higher authority than the beliefs of anyone else.

But I'm not bothered by people saying it's all nonsense or fairy tales or "if I said I had elves at the bottom of the garden" or flying spaghetti monsters or what have you.

It always reminds me of the quote (it's attributed to Lincoln but may be apocryphal) where he asked someone "if you call a sheep's tail its leg, how many legs does a sheep have?" The person answered "five" and Lincoln responded "No, four. Calling a sheep's tail its leg doesn't make it so."

Someone can call my beliefs nonsense all they want, it doesn't mean they are.

SGB's point is kind of what I was thinking about before: as an outsider, the difference between the various Christian factions doesn't look that big, but people don't move that freely between them, it seems.
So someone will explain their philosophy to you, and say they're a Catholic for example, whereas on paper they'd be liberal CofE; someone will say they're a non-church-going Christian when actually their beliefs are more akin to Buddhism, and so on. We need a religious equivalent of the Political Compass test!

But I guess it's a bigger thing to change religion from your cultural background than it is politics? (unless you happen to be born a Thatcher or a Benn or something)

I think my answer to the questions posed by SGB lies in her phrasing. I don't think of them as myth systems. I think of Christianity as the truth. As I've said before on this board, God is beyond complete human comprehension, but we have glimpses of him in the various religions. I believe that Christianity has more glimpses than other faiths, and more of the truth. But they all know something about what God is.

So it is not simply a case of discarding a myth-system that I happen not to like very much for another one, as I might pick up or discard a magazine or novel. Instead, being part of the church is being part of Christ's body on earth, a body that is trying to embody the truth of God in an imperfect, temporal, human way.

Like any institution, any particular kind of Christian church has its flaws, blind spots, and broken bits. Whether you stay in any one bit is about weighing the ways it represents the truth of God against the ways it fails or betrays that truth. For some people the issue of sexual freedom will be that tipping point, whilst others will weigh that against the profound truths the church teaches about sacrificial love. Leaving a denomination can be agonising, because it isn't simply a consumer decision but involves deep commitments of the intellect and the emotions.

And for the record, I was brought up as a staunch atheist, and have only ever attended a church of my own volition and by my own decision. I came to faith as part of a long process that involved my intellect as much as my emotions, and was both about experience and the assent of reason.