Chat across the great divide

[thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts]

So this is a bit of an experiment. Threads in this part of MN can get very heated and it is easy to loose sight of the person behind the screen so this is a place to chat and get to know each other whether we are christians, atheists, muslims or whatever. It isn't a place for proving that your viewpoint is right. It is more a place find out what it is like to walk in another person's shoes and that requires empathy, listening, tact and the maturity. We all know that tone is hard online as we just have words and a jokey comment ends up offending where not offence was intended. So to borrow a term from across the Atlantic - don't be a jerk and if you mess up, fess up. We are posting from places of safety (homes, offices, coffee shops) about things we hold dear. So be kind.

Maybe introduce ourselves?

I'm a vicar who was an atheist from 12-18 but I started exploring Christianity at university. The thing that keeps me going through long days is builders tea, non of your herbal rubbish, and plain chocolate digestives.

Anyone else?

How can you actively choose to be atheist?

For me a belief in god is something I could never accept from an intellectual view.
I can't see that hurdle ever being jumped. Does that make me closed because of my cognitive approach?

Hey edd

Yes I knew they were praying for me when I was having my dd, I needed to tell them I was in labour, I won't say why as its possibly outing if thats ok! I just got a message back with 'we are praying for you'. It was an emotional time and I felt very put off that they held the belief that a deity they couldn't even demonstrate the existence of had punished me and my child for the 'sins' of two also made up people! and they held that belief very strongly and literally indeed, it was baffling. I never met to this day such a cruel interpretation of biblical scripture.

But does it matter, do you think, if you don't know about the prayers? Genuine question.

That is very interesting and The Templeton foundation actually did a study in this vain-
Something along the lines of- they took three groups of hospital patients recovering from heart surgery, and selected church congregations from different states (the study was done in USA) and told them to pray for the people in the given groups.

One of the groups received no prayers
One received prayers but were not aware of it
One received prayers and they knew they were being prayed for by a congregation of christians somewhere. (the patients were unknown to the congregations in all groups).

The results were interesting- The first two groups recovered as well as can be expected, nothing out of the ordinary. So it appeared that prayer didn't seem to make a difference to the individuals because they all recovered at similar rates.
But the third group (the group who knew they were being prayed for) actually showed a slower and more troubled average rate of recovery!

I was aware of this study before my dd came along and that contributed to my disdain for them praying for me, no doubt about it.

I've heard that one before. I just meant would you mind? Is there something to object to (in your opinion) if someone prays for someone else who doesn't know about it? And if there is why does it matter?

For me a belief in god is something I could never accept from an intellectual view.
I can't see that hurdle ever being jumped.

Does that make you closed? Only you know that. I would have said the same a few years ago, no doubt. In my case I think I was closed at that stage.

I'm not sure Edd no one has really asked me that before, I think that if I don't know they are doing it, then I can't really have an opinion. I'm sure atheists are being prayed for in the world every day!

Does that make you closed? Only you know that. I would have said the same a few years ago, no doubt. In my case I think I was closed at that stage.

Sorry I know the question wasn't aimed at me but I am in the same ark boat (:D) as westray I think. I just can't square with the god of the abrahamic religions from a logical angle, and I never understood what the benefit of believing in a very personalised version of God, especially the deist view of one that exists but does not interfere.

Ok so it is a choice to be religious or atheist because we can choose whether to be open or closed minded.

...And heres's another introductory post.

I’m a scientist/ artist who has always been an atheist.

I think the experience of transcendence is possible for all humanity.

I probably wouldn’t be that interested in religion were it not for the Born Again Boyfriend episode in my late teens. It was at that time that I was introduced to the idea that you aren’t acceptable from a moral standpoint unless you are a Christian.

This may be why I find one of the most important aspects of any religion to be what it says about people who are non-believers/belong to other faiths. I really want to know if the holy book of a particular religion is supportive of harmonious co-existence in a pluralistic society and if not whether reform is possible.

Aside from that I’m interested in more naturalistic conceptions of Jesus as found in the writings of the founding fathers of America such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine - and in recent scholarly research. Discovering these ideas has helped me enormously.

Ultimately, I’m hoping there will be a third revolution, following on from the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, each of which have shaken our view of our own centrality in the larger scheme of things and humbled us.

The third revolution would be a religious revolution that allowed people to see religions – including their own – as belonging to a dynamic evolutionary tree of belief systems, all of which are wonderfully human attempts to encapsulate and evoke the ineffable.

I wish I had added to my list of suggested "rules" for this discussion
"Please do not suggest that atheists are only atheists because they are closed minded/have suppressed their innate spirituality"

Bert that's really not what I said. I was asked how come I came to faith after years of atheism. Part of the explanation in my case is that I was simply not open to the possibility before - so of course I did not find God. I was careful to say that Westray's experience might be completely different.

Thanks itshere I agree with all that, especially with this: Christians can be open or closed, intellectual or unintellectual, just as atheists can be open or closed, intellectual or unintellectual.

outwith always good to have you around :)

one of the most important aspects of any religion to be what it says about people who are non-believers/belong to other faiths. I really want to know if the holy book of a particular religion is supportive of harmonious co-existence in a pluralistic society

Yes. This for me is where I part company with many Christians. I am 'universalist' (I think that's the term) - I believe that God works in different ways with different people in different times and places. I do not believe that you have to be a Christian to be a good person / go to heaven / etc. [In fact the whole concept of getting to heaven is not particularly Christian I don't think]. For me, Christianity is the right path, but I absolutely believe in a pluralistic society, in tolerance, acceptance, and harmonious co-existence between people of different faiths and none.

Hi I think this thread is great, very respectful and inclusive, so often threads about religion end up in mud slinging.

I'm a Christian but have been massively struggling in recent years, just finding the whole thing a slog really. I'm from a family of Christians and it's hard when everyone seems so sure and once I did but now I don't know. I just feel like I go through the motions. The times I have felt most 'connected' to God are the times I was most involved in the church and that worries me, that my faith is/was temporal, based on feelings of belonging and purpose that had no real basis. I'm not intellectual and don't really want to sift through piles of historical evidence and research and I know that makes me sound really shallow but I feel like it shouldn't be necessary to do that to believe as that then makes belief very elitist.

But I'm not ready to give up my faith, I feel like that would be a step too far and that there is still a God there, it's just that I don't recognise him (or her or it or they!) any more and the traditional baptist/CofE/free church prism I have been experiencing him through is too narrow and too cultural.

Doesn't help that I have a non believer for a DH and very staunch parents so don't really have anyone to discuss this with. When I'm at church it's usually with my toddler while DH gets on with jobs or goes for a bike ride or something so I never really get the headspace to explore this and I'm just too tired to at the moment.

Hi, I'm a christian (of Christian parents).

It all just makes perfect sense to me. God, Christ, I can't work out how the universe would work with out it.
I haven't yet found another belief/non-belief system or world view with such internal coherence.

However. I could choose tomorrow not to follow it. I could quite easily be immoral, be mean to people, ignore God, stop praying and stop going to church.
That is how I see that I have free will.

you can't choose who you fall in love with

I think I agree with this. However if you fall in love with the 'wrong' person (someone who for whatever reason you can't form a relationship with). I think you can help it.
Stop going to the place where you see them. Stop talking to them. Never be alone with them. Always be on your guard if you have to be near them. The feelings can be ignored.

Also I think you can choose to love someone you haven't 'fallen in love with' it a decision of behaviour you make. Feelings of love may come. They may not.

This is very similar to how I see religious belief and allegiance.

It seems to me that belief in God just can't be an intellectual thing. That's not to say, of course, that theists can't be intellectual, but not in this particular area (that is not a criticism)It's a matter of considering the evidence. If we look at the actual evidence the only possible conclusion is that there is no God. And that is where the atheist stops. The theist then makes "a leap of faith" into the unknown-trusting in their God. It is a profoundly non intellectual thing to do, like falling in love.

Good to ‘see’ you too Edd!

I’d like to ask you, in the light of what you have written, whether you would like to see something done about some of the exclusivist statements in the Bible – and indeed in the Quran. After all, the Bible does say that non-believers are destined for Hell and makes unkind assertions about Jews – even although Jesus was himself Jewish. In a similar vein, there are statements in the Quran condemning Christians (not to mention Jews and pagans) to Hell.

Most Christians and Muslims seem to have moved beyond this insular way of thinking about others. But do you think all that stuff should just be tacitly ignored or should the existence of those passages be acknowledged and some kind of cordon sanitaire placed round them so that fundamentalists are locked out of using them to justify their own bigoted stance?

Hi...can I join in too.
I am a Christian who was brought up in a Christian family. My DH was brought up in an atheist family and was threatened with being disowned when he became a Christian at university. He managed to hold onto his relationship with his parents until he met me and when he told them he was marrying a Christian they told him he had to choose between them and marrying me. He married me. I understand this was extreme behaviour from them but they made it clear it was about our beliefs.
We continued for 10 years to write to them, tell our kids about them, try and phone, visit, pray etc.
Eventually our eldest daughter who had never met them, wrote and told them about herself and how she was apparantly rather like her grandma and how she would love to meet them. They invited us Christmas week to visit and we have been seeing them regularly since and been able to support them through ill health and practical difficulties. Not sure why I said all that but it was the experience for me of my in-laws being so unhappy about DH's faith/life choices that shocked me. And yet I sometimes get a hint of this on MN that an atheist parent would be devastated if their child announced they were now a believer. At present I have a 14 year old who is not sure what she believes but thinks there is 'probably a God' , a 12 year old who has always had to know how and why everything happens and until he can personally understand how the world came into being, or learn to accept that we cannot know the answer to everything he will struggle with whether God exists. I have a 10 year old who is sure and would say she was a Christian. Obviously I pray for all my children and would love for them to have the assurance that I have through my faith. I also believe that if they decide to follow Jesus and his teachings, it is the best way they could choose in life. I also respect the fact that they are individual beings who will make their own decision about what they want to do and all I can do is love them, pray for them and try and model Christian living to them.
Re the analogy of falling in love, I think quite a Western view is being presented here. For the vast majority of the world, a partner is selected for reasons other than physical attraction and yet many of those relationships develop a deep and lasting love for each other. This is based on the philosophy that love is an action NOT a feeling and that you can choose who you love. The argument for being unable to help who you fall in love with is often used by people to justify affairs. I have even heard Christians using that one....'well God gave me these feelings so it must be okay' Common decency would tell most married people that having an affair is not okay!
In relation to faith it is similar. It should not really be based on emotions. We have been given brains to contemplate these 'higher' things and to state 'I could never believe' I would say is closing down that opportunity completely.
I also agree with whoever said that doubts/questions about faith are entirely normal and healthy. In the same way that it is unhealthy to completely rule out the possibility of there being a God and rule out the possibility of having faith, it would also be unhealthy to suddenly decide one day there was a God and never ever question that again. It is good/healthy/normal for Christians to think about what they believe and why.
Sorry that was sooooo long and rambling.

I'm out for the day but I'll answer your question later outwith

Enjoy the sun everyone :)

Bertrand, I am quite happy to agree with you about the not-intellectual aspect of faith, and the analogy to falling in love works well.

My experience is that religious faith feels in many ways similar to falling in love or becoming a parent. In my case this is enough to make my rational side wonder whether religiousness/spirituality is in some way biologically driven, with people having greater or lesser inclinations toward religious behaviour because of some physical cause.

Regarding sacred texts advocating unacceptable behaviour, I don't think that anyone can say, "this is exactly what followers of religion X should do for all eternity" because each text is a product of the culture in which it was written. Christians in 500 years time might be horrified by things we think of as perfectly fine - the unacceptable use of resources to Provide bread and wine for communion, for example.

Sorry if I'm not expressing myself well. I'm typing on my phone which is on its last legs with a longish delay between typing and seeing the letters appear, and with a tendency to crash and lose everything I've written, so thoughtful writing is tricky.

Another one out for the day. There are some really interesting ideas here. I know scientists and engineers who are Christians and artists who are not so it is not straight hearts and mind or science and arts thing. As someone who is on the more artistic side of the spectrum of personality I find it easier to describe stuff in that way. Part of talking like this is finding out how other people hear that. I agree that there is something very western and post enlightenment going on in faith/no faith debates. It may not be a hearts and minds issue but an enlightenment/postmodern debate. That is just throwing it out there so please don't take offence - just thinking out loud.

The exclusivist claims of religion are certainly there. For me it becomes about how we interpret them. There are Christians who do not believe that I can be a proper Christian because, despite being a vicar in the C of E, I'm a woman. Dealing with exclusivist claims about who is and isn't in is part of my working life. For the record I don't believe that there is a hell of burning torment and thus it follows that I don't believe that those who are not Christian or those who are not in the same sect/denomination/church as the exclusivist who is making those judgements, are going there. I also don't hold to a literal interpretation of scripture which is a very 19th century issue. Something has changed which is affecting our debates but I do need to get out.

Have a good day in the sunshine if you are in the UK.

Itsheresomewhere I'm not suggesting at all that christians are untintellectual, more that they have chosen to ignore that aspect of their cognition when it comes to faith.
It doesn't matter how clever or not you are- that's not what I'm suggesting.

It's more to do with ignoring any rational judgement when "choosing" to have faith.
Because faith can't be explained by logic.

But that would sit very uncomfortable with me. Does that mean to be "open" I have to ignore part of my judgement, my analysis of situations?. Because I am a logical person- would god want me to abandon part of myself in order to "accept christ" as my saviour.

If "choosing" faith I have to throw away part of my inner dialogue in order to accept it then is that what it means to be "open".

To be unquestioning, unthinking, not to rationalise- I have heard these words before from christians.

"Ours is not to question"- no because if we do we can see the gaping holes.

That's my problem.

I still remain unconvinced that faith is a choice.

whether you would like to see something done about some of the exclusivist statements in the Bible – and indeed in the Quran.

Well, it depends what you mean by 'something done'. I certainly don't think we should edit the Bible - it is what it is, has been a fixed canon for actually I don't know - 1500 years? - yonks anyway. But I do think we should read it in the context of when by whom and for whom each book was written and interpret it accordingly. Although I may feel strongly about certain interpretations though I would uphold someone else's right to their own interpretation (within reason!) - so I don't think one type of Christian can seek to impose on others what they should believe, or how they should interpret it. Yes, this means I have to acknowledge that some Christians hold beliefs, which for them are biblical, which place me in the devil's clutches. But that is what I mean by tolerance and inclusion. I have to see even the nutjobs (forgive me) as my brothers and sisters in Christ, even though they would have me rot in hell.

westray Not trying to persuade you of anything. My faith is rational (to me) because it is experiential. Unless I deny the reality of the religious experiences I have had, and the impact that my faith has on me, I cannot not believe.