genuine question from atheist - view on Christanity and personal responsibility

[kentishgirl]

Hi - promise this isn't just Christian-baiting.

I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is a substitute for having a personal conscience or taking personal responsibility. Being a Christian is like having a 'get out of jail free card' in that you are taught God will forgive you anything. So you can do anything, as bad as you like, go and pray for forgiveness and move on, slate wiped clean, feeling great about yourself. So it doesn't matter if you do wrong. As an atheist, if I do something wrong, it's always with me, it's always on my conscience, so that makes me always try to do the right thing.
I didn't always think this way. It's the only way I can make any sense of something that happened to me at the hands of a couple of serious, committed Christians. One of them even works full time for a church. They did something terrible to me but have shown no remorse, no guilt, and made no attempt to make things right with me. I'm positive they prayed for guidance at the time and then forgiveness afterwards, and now all's good in their world, while I'm still dealing with the fall-out.
Am I really wrong in interpreting Christianity in this way? Isn't it true that it enables horrible behaviour by teaching you that if you do wrong, all you've got to do is pray for forgiveness afterwards, and you are ok, never mind the effect of what you did? Basically if God is your only judge, and forgiveness is guaranteed, it gives you permission to act like a right bastard as long as you say sorry to God afterwards? there's no personal responsibility for what you have done.

Contemplates

When I said "Making the best of of a random disaster is a different thing entirely" I was saying "entirely different to god purposely maiming or killing someone (or having satan do it) just so a Christian could be taught an inspiring lesson.
You misunderstood and went off in some other direction there.

Not everyone you talk to should be believed Well of course not, but again you miss the point. The beliefs you have that have been given you by god are not the beliefs he gave all the other Christians. I don't mean the odd person I happen to have met in the street. I mean there are millions who think that you have got it all wrong, and other millions who think they have got it wrong.

They are guided by faith as much as you are so I'd say that proves faith is a completely useless guide.

You patronising suggested I read the bible. Don't worry, you didn't upset me. You wouldn't be the first to try that when someone dared question religion. As it happens I probably know it better than many of those on these threads who have told me to read it and better than many of the Sunday-Christians I encounter.

Now I said to you "What about if he just stopped Satan from actively pushing people into doing evil"

And your response was about the big picture and how god has a plan, but you said earlier "If God stopped satan when we decided he should, our world would be perfect now, wouldn’t it?"

You appear to be contradicting yourself there. Either we would do evil without Satan's interference or we wouldn't. You can't have it both ways.

If we are capable of doing evil anyway then I'd like to know what purpose is there to Satan.

"From how I've seen them acting, and what they have done or tried to do to people I care about". This doesn't constitute a general case against all churches. It's essentially your experience and observations from your own experience. But then, if your experience counts as evidence for you (and why shouldn't it?), then the experience of Christian encounters with God can also count as evidence.

BigDorrit Gee thanks...nice to know that my ideas are 'tortuous' and 'irrelevant'.

I don't think it is irrelevant that human kind is extremely diverse. If you read the material about the Pirahã for example, you can see how much their language alters our whole ideas of humanity and 'defining' points such as language. Belief and value systems also show huge diversity. So how can you say the 'empirical' evidence is true? How can you say that what is true for one group of humans is true for another group of humans, when there is such diversity? How wide is the group studies? How representative the data?

Ahem...right. I'm not sure that belief is any more flattering BigDorrit. It's a good job my aim is not to impress, isn't it?

Thanks for the apology anyway.

I'm interested to know what 'empirical events' (relevant to the discussion) you have witnessed BigDorrit...

What does an 'empirical event' look like? How do you know it is empirical? Which bit of empirical research does these events form part of?

I was going to ask the same question!

And when you have answered that, I'd also be interested to know how you know that you have had the experience in question, and that it really happened and was not a hallucination, and how you might persuade someone else that you really have had this experience.

And when you have done that, perhaps you would like to say how that is superior, in evidential terms, to someone saying 'I had an encounter with God'.

Is that the entire church, BigDorrit? The church includes all who follow Christ.

Remember many campaign for the same things, marriage equality, within the church....

See, that's the problem with generalisations: they just aren't true. Some churches and some people within other churches have campaigned against gay marriage. Other churches have said nothing about it; some churches have welcomed it; many people in other churches have welcomed it and wanted their churches to welcome it.

"There are many more, but I'm not about to get into a discussion of those" But you're the one with the beef with the church, no?

""The Church" as an organisation. Whether or not members agreed, the organisation campaigned against it." But which church? I don't know if you have noticed, but there are lots and lots of different churches. They didn't all campaign against gay marriage. You can talk about 'the Church of Christ' as all Christians everywhere -- but within that large group there are lots of different churches, and it is some of those who have campaigned against gay marriage.

It's not avoiding the big issues at all. I'm on record here on many occasions supporting gay marriage and longing for the day when my lesbian sister could be married in a church. I'm on record as deploring homophobia -- by Christians or otherwise.

BigDorrit, I am not the one who thinks that evidence of God is something that is important: you brought it up in the first place. Do I take it that you are not able to answer my questions?

Gods timing is a mystery to me. I think that it always will be.
He seems to act in his own time, whereas us humans always want things done a lot faster.

Hew is slow to anger. And appears slow in a lot of other things. He has enormous patience. He gives people a lot of chances to get things right.

Have to put a disclaimer in there. That is not true of absolutely everyone. Some people do die tragically unexpectedly young.
So while we all think we have plenty of time for x y and z, a few people do not.

He not Hew

Lesley. I dont think that church is suitable for you. I dont think it is suitable for many people.

So in summary BigDorrit, you

1. Are arguing with Christians about the nature of God, which you do not believe exists, but dispute their description of Him anyway.

2. Say you don't like the church and have experienced 'empirical events' which have informed this view. Yet you complain that the church is inconsistent in it's views.

Hmm, I can appreciate it might be frustrating that the actions and beliefs of Christians do not conform to your stereotypical view of us but would you really prefer it if we did?

Correct me if I'm wrong BigDorrit.....

BigDorrit obvious attempt to change the focus? Who decides on the focus? We are miles away from the original OP's question anyway. My summary was from what you had said, in a view to gain some clarification of points you hade made.

Evidence? Surely you must know by reading my previous posts evidence, in the scientific sense, to back up my religious beliefs, which I believe in Faith, does not concern me. I have experiential evidence, but this is anecdotal and personal to me. As I have said before, I am more interested in how belief affects people's lives than backing up beliefs with scientific evidence. This is a philosophy, religion and spirituality thread after all...

^had. Typo.

backonlybriefly
You misunderstood and went off in some other direction there.
Apologies!

The beliefs you have that have been given you by god are not the beliefs he gave all the other Christians
I would say God hasn't given people their beliefs, more a case of people making their own ideas up based on lack of studying what the bible actually says, in context.

I don't mean the odd person I happen to have met in the street. I mean there are millions who think that you have got it all wrong
There are also millions who don’t bother to read the book and so aren’t particularly well informed either. You inferred yourself that you think you are more well-versed in what the bible said compared to many ‘Sunday-christians’ who don’t bother to study it out.

They are guided by faith as much as you are so I'd say that proves faith is a completely useless guide.
I agree there is probably no point in having blind faith in something that you haven’t bothered to read about. The bible is there for everyone but most don’t bother.??

You patronising suggested I read the bible. Don't worry, you didn't upset me. You wouldn't be the first to try that when someone dared question religion.
I am glad you say it didn’t upset you, but I would also like to say I didn’t intend to be patronising. How else could I have worded it to make that point?
And I welcome questioning everything - really leaving no stone unturned and studying it out. That’s what I was saying to you when you thought I was being patronising. Far from it. I question everything myself and think its really healthy. That is to say if it is done without just being obstructive and difficult for the sake of it, that is. And in case that gets misunderstood, I am not accusing you of that! I don't know you well enough and only you can answer that.

but you said earlier "If God stopped satan when we decided he should, our world would be perfect now, wouldn’t it?"??
Our world would be perfect if it didn’t have suffering in it, wouldn’t it?
If God had stopped satan a long time ago, right back in the beginning, if God had made satan a nice little robot with no freedom of choice, that sort of meaning is where I was coming from.

You appear to be contradicting yourself there.
It seems that we may have both misunderstood each other but I hope I’ve explained it more clearly now.
If we are capable of doing evil anyway then I'd like to know what purpose is there to Satan.
We’re capable because we (mankind) are now imperfect. I come back to my analogy of the contaminated water.

But removing satan is an unknown quantity because it hasn’t happened and the bible doesn’t discuss it happening our way, it isn’t mentioned until such as time as it will happen in the future (not in our theoretical “what-ifs”).

Satan is still very much a busy little bee – the bible describes it (as I am sure you well know) like a lion seeking who he may devour. Forgive me if I am quoting what you’ve read yourself already, I don’t want to make assumptions and many people reading this thread may not have read as much as you tell me you have, so I want my replies to be understood and not in some hidden code!

126sticks

I'm glad people think that not all churches are like the one I've ended up at. I tried another one but it was very dull and full of old people.

I seriously need to take a break from church-going and reconsider

Contemplates I think you're making the free will/satan thing too complicated and avoiding the point.

Most Christians seem to justify suffering by saying that we do it to ourselves. That god would like to prevent it all, but to do that he'd have to make us into robots and we'd lose free will.

That argument is internally consistent up to a point. But then when I ask about Satan I'm told that he applies pressure to make people do evil. Now that isn't internally consistent because god could just as easily not have created Satan. He wouldn't need to take away our free will for that.

So since it no longer makes sense I asked and am still asking "what's the point of Satan".

On the the other subject of you dismissing the beliefs of millions of Christians I agree that they are wrong too of course. However I am not claiming that god puts faith and knowledge into people and presumably you are.

If you don't believe that knowledge is inserted into your head by god then how else do you know what to believe. The bible on its own proves nothing. You have to have an outside force telling you which bits to take literally and which are just stories.

Christians frequently say "Oh I read the bible and then I pray to god for understanding" (or the other way around). They know it's true (they say) because god inserts the sureness.

But those other Christians (and indeed Muslims/Hindus etc) also have this sureness. If you say the sureness is an illusion/mistake for them you can't really say "but when it happens to me it's genuine".