had my faith very aggressively tested tonight.

[SpaceDinosaur]

This is not about the action, I'm fine with what happened. This is about how I feel now.

What's just happened.
I gave a friend a lift home as I was driving and he was quite drunk.
Midway home he asked how we (group of friends) cope with a mutual friend being religious...she's getting married in a church.
I replied that I was religious, he attended my church wedding 6 months ago.
"You can't be religious, you're supposed to be intelligent"
Sorry?
"You're a scientist, you have an analytical mind, why are you acting like a brainwashed idiot?"
God love him he loves a soap box so I was then treated to a tirade of how there was no God, how if there was a God we would be perfect, how God couldn't exist because of the diseases babies in Africa die of. (That was his pet topic)

No responses from me were heard so I allowed him to rant himself out including a full session of calling God all the names under the sun, asking God to smite or kill him now and laughing at me.

I am at peace with the event. Shocked but not upset. He'll apologise for being so aggressive, confrontational and rude tomorrow (if he remembers)

I felt tested. I wanted to come home and open my bible and see where it fell (something I did a lot as a teenager) but I can't find it which makes me sad. I wanted to find the verse and chapter about not testing God.

I would like to ask for a verse or chapter to read. I have a digi bible. I can't explore the book, I can't find it right now.

To be a theist you have to BELEIVE in god. If you do not believe in god you are not a theist. If you consider that there is an impossibility of knowledge then you are not a theist, likewise if you accept that there is an unknown possibility then you are not an athiest. The definitions are very clear.

I am not being sarcastic at all. I do not understand how ignorance can be a privilege. It sounds like an oxymoron.

Knowledge and belief are two DIFFERENT things, it is perfectly possible to believe in something that you have no knowledge of its existence. Aliens, Astrology, Bigfoot, Ghosts, Psychics, Karma, Fate etc etc. Millions of people believe in these things but have no way of knowing if they exist. I know loads of agnostic theists.

UrbanFox Question. If you are not convinced that Jesus existed, do you have an alternative theory of how Christianity started?

Urban fox is entering philosophical territory and appears to be advocating scientific realism. The concepts of knowledge and belief are complex ones. Just getting a handle on what is in the external world when all we have is the evidence of our senses is tricky. The Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy is a good online resource. If you search scientific rationalism, empiricism and rationalism that is a good start.

Within academia it is accepted by peer reviewed historians that Jesus existed. Whether he was a roving preacher who got mixed up in the politics of his day or the long awaited messiah is a matter of belief.

I accept the rough history of the religions...
Islam with the Prophet Muhammed
Judaism with Moses
Hinduism with Aryan scholars...

I think you can accept some things about the history of religions without subscribing to their beliefs.

But it is far more interesting to here how those who think that Jesus didn't exist account for Christianity especially as it is Pentecost next week when Christians celebrate the birthday of the church.

Wow. More philosophy and the concept of truth. Stanford is your friend if you want a go at that. I'm still interested in how atheists who believe that Jesus didn't exist although academic historians are happy to say he did account for the existence of Christianity.

Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy as an online resource. Sorry should have made that clear.

Sorry, I don't know what Mithraism is.

The difference between Christianity and ancient religions is that it arrived within known history, spread rapidly and it's early leaders wrote a lot of stuff down leaving a trail of documents and evidence behind them, with following generations preserving what they can and adding their chapter to church history.

I also accept that there really was a Prophet Mohammed who founded Islam because he left a traceable history behind him.

Ancient religions don't leave the same amount or kind of evidence behind so it is harder to determine their origins.

I don't particularly 'want' the Prophet Mohammed to be true, I just think he was a real person who founded Islam.

With Church history do you have a cut off point from where you think the truth ends and legends take over? Do you believe there was a William Booth who started the Salvation Army? What about Luther and the Reformation, did that really happen?

Do you see what I am asking? At what point do you think the evidence is not credible?

no one is raised an atheist

Yes. Our son is being raised an atheist. His Indian mother does not believe that the God Brahma created life and that the Goddess Durga's chopped off hands created temples. Or that Bramhins can worship while the untouchables can't. His British father does not believe that God sits upstairs and does or does not do invisible or visible stuff.

So our son is actively raised an atheist. We have just had a humanist naming ceremony for him. We will actively teach him about atheism and that we are an atheist family.

After that if Goddess Parvati opens his blinded eyes and convinced him that onions are sinful or Jesus appears to him and teaches him to believe his hand is held by invisible forces - sure, that's life.

Evidence?! Oh dear Lord.

littlejeopardy I haven't said jesus didn't exist and I am not trying to prove he didn't. I was making a point that we cant be certain he did, its still not proven. As to how christianity started, well I could cite a hundred different possibilities but maybe its better to point to all the religions that have started since then. Would you agree they are all nonsense yet still they managed to get people to believe in them and give their lives for them. New religions pop up all the time, even now, they don't have a problem getting started.

thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts Not trying to get philosophical, was just answering a point from dizzytomato who didn't understand the difference between belief and knowledge. It is NOT accepted in academia that jesus existed, it is accepted that a jesus like figure or figures 'probably' existed.

littlejeopardy So if a religion starts within know history, spreads rapidly, its leader leaves a trail of written stuff preserved by followers then you believe its true? Have you looked at how many world religions fit that view. Interesting that you only reference Judaeo-Christian world views.

Babettescat NIce to hear your son is being raised an atheist, I suppose I was referring to the western world where atheism is so common its not given a name. I still think your probably referring to humanism but would be interested to hear what beliefs you think atheism involves.

What did I say about beliefs and atheism? You said you can't raise a kid atheist. I said you can. Atheism is about having a perception of the world that correspond to reality, not about vagaries of feeling your hand held in the dark.

Is the non-collection of stamps a hobby? Is the non-belief in imaginary Goddess Laxmi a belief? It is simply a fact.

My grandmother believes the Goddess Saraswati blesses books before exams but only if you've washed yourself with raw turmeric paste each February. My MIL believes special water from a special vessel will cleanse her grandchild of sins. My close friend believes Allah is offended by people who keep snakes as pets.

None of them can ever be proven wrong. Voila. We are raising our son to believe nothing but proven facts. and that some people are beyond belief pun not intended

To say that the physical world exists is to make a metaphysical claim and to say that evidence is the foundation for your world view is to make a statement about philosophy and empiricism or maybe rationalism depending on how you stack the thing up. Atheism in its current form expressed by the four horsemen is a late flourishing child of the enlightenment. So if you come into philosophical territory with claims about what belief is or what knowledge is then it might be helpful to work out what the terms mean. None of the four horsemen are philosophers and it shows.

The same problem exists with history. Mithras studies in popular history of the sort that makes its way into the DaVinci Code comes from the late 19th century whereas the most recent academic stuff suggests that it is much more complex, of different t periods and likely derivative from Christianity but it is a while since I looked at this stuff In depth.

How a small band of people whose leader had just been executed found themselves starting a world wide movement is something that is hard to explain. So I'm fascinated to discover how it happened if you take God out of it.

What do people who don't believe think actually happened to start Christianity?

You can see from the gospels how the story of Jesus built up as time went on. Mark, in the earliest manuscripts, simply ends with women discovering an empty tomb and being told by a man/angel that Jesus has risen. No resurrected Jesus, no post death appearances.

Then you get to Matthew, written much later. It's clear that people have been saying that the disciples stole the body and made up that Jesus had risen. Matthew has a story where Pilate puts a guard on the tomb to stop the disciples stealing the body. The guards witness the angel moving back the stone revealing the empty tomb.
They then tell the chief priests what they saw and the chief priests give them a large sum of money to say they fell asleep on the job and that while they were asleep, the disciples rolled back the stone and stole the body.
Tellingly, Matthew says 'and this is the story widely circulated among the Jews till this day'.

So clearly at the time people were suspicious of the resurrection and claimed the disciples stole the body. What's interesting though, is that the gospel writers weren't averse to making stuff up to counter these arguments. Along with the guards you have Doubting Thomas putting his hands in wounds to counter arguments that the risen Jesus was a ghost or hallucination. Other weird stories in the gospel include apostles walking along with the risen Jesus and not recognising him until he reveals himself.

So what do I think happened to cause Christianity? I think there was a guy called Jesus with fairly unremarkable teachings which were embellished post-death to include things like prophecies of events that had already happened (destruction of temple), and to appease the Romans (give to Caesar etc). I think he was crucified, and possibly his body was stolen. I think a cult then built up around him, with charismatic leaders taking his story on for their own purposes (see Paul versus James). Group hysteria may have played some part. The destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD was devastating and I suspect had an impact on the spread of a new take on things. Remember Jesus turfing the money-lenders out of the Temple? Jesus saying the Temple was bad and a new way being needed was, I'm sure, not the actual actions of Jesus, but a reaction to events that had happened and were being rationalised.

Apologies for the long and rambling post, it was a question that provoked some thought!

Babettescat Yes, I did say you can't raise children in an atheist belief system, because there isn't one. That doesn't mean you can't raise a child to think sceptically and logically, then as a consequence they will probably be an atheist.

Atheism is about having a perception of the world that corresponds to reality No it isn't, atheism is about one thing and one thing only, "it is a lack of belief in god(s)". That is all, it is not a system of how to perceive reality. For example, you can be an atheist and still be spiritual.

You can be an atheist and still believe in homeopathy, the Loch Ness Monster and that Elvis works in the chip shop.

Being an atheist says nothing about a person except their position on God.