Why (or why not) be Christian?

[Mustardseed86]

Continuing the "Will you make it to heaven?" threads started by @VincitVeritas which have become a more wide-ranging discussion about matters of faith, Christian belief.

Hope to see you on here when the last thread runs out of space! And new posters welcome too.

We've recently been discussing the evidence for God, the soul and life after death, and debating what constitutes reliable evidence in this context.

Also some talk about whether it's accurate to say humans are 'sinful' and why/why not, some discussion of Paul and the validity of his writings and status as an apostle, how the Bible was formed (and why other writings didn't make the canon) the basis of morality/ethics, whether Jesus's message was intended for an excusively Jewish audience, the meaning of Christ (or Messiah), church tradition and different denominations, end times and probably more I've forgotten!

Wow...thank you for sharing that @Gumbear . And you're right, the frustration is that people will just think it's made up. And of course at times people do make things up. But I think if we use the same criteria we would to assess any other reported incident then it's not too difficult to sift the charlatans from the genuine. But I understand some people will just never accept anything like that. 🤷‍♀️

I can’t stand it that people give all the credit to God when good things happen but when bad things happen it’s “God’s plan” and we should just trust that he knows what’s best for us. That feels exactly like being in an abusive relationship to me.

Exactly!

Seeing young children suffer and dying from cancer cannot be 'best for us' ever!!!

It's just an excuse because there is no god.

Even people who experience miracles themselves don't always take the step of faith. There was a man in my area who was seriously ill in a coma with multiple organ failure and scans showed brain damage. He was only 40 with young kids. The doctors were talking about turning off the machines.

The wife was being suported by the local vicar in the hospital and organised an evening at the local church to pray/send positive thoughts to him (they weren't Christians) and the next day he woke up out of the coma and came out of organ failure. The doctors said it was a true miracle and could not explain how all the organ failures spontaneously reversed. They called him the miracle man. He had some permanent heart damage but otherwise is fit and healthy 10 years later with no signs of brain damage.

Lots of people at the service said they would become Christians if anything changed as a result of the prayer evening. But despite the man's dramatic recovery the next morning none of them did!

@Gumbear But of course people will only believe such 'miracles' if they actually witness them!

Your healing eye story sounds made up to me - of course I'm happy to change my mind once I actually witness it.

I think the cultural shaping of our religious choice is hard to ignore. Brought up in England, even those not religious know the meaning of most of the dumb I’lld of Christianity and they have become part of our law, social interactions and language. This is why this is the most important religion to be taught in British schools.

But not so easy to write off is the expression of interest and belief in something beyond which spans time and geography, Christianity is just a convenient expression of this call to the spiritual realm in the West.

How do you know there is no god. What does god mean to you?

Interesting- where “elsewhere”? another dimension/realm? Another solar system? Did they create our world? Do they still watch us?

Yes that’s who I understand Luke to be, a disciple of Paul which is why I don’t trust his expansions in Mark as being literal truth

How do you know there is no god.

Because there is no evidence for any gods' existence, certainly none that I have come across.

I also struggle with the concept of heaven and hell. Why if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, then why would he create a place of eternal punishment like hell?

Finally, even if one or more gods existed, then who or what created them?

Years ago I went to a funeral of an eight year old - died of heart failure. The vicar did the “God’s plan” speech /in a better place etc. I nearly murdered him. Why would anyone worship someone who does bad not not good - he’s pretty useless.

How do you know there is a god? No one has ever, ever met this god. No one. The bible - a collection of stories, letters, books, all written by men, over centuries, so who never met this Jesus figure - is not proof of anything. It’s historical fiction, so it proves nothing. Moreover, when good things happen, again, it’s not proof that this gods exists, and “he” should absolutely note take any credit for it. In the same way he should not be absolved of the terrible things that happen because “he has a plan”, that is, if he really exits, but there is zero proof of that.

I think this is where people get confused between god and religion. The anthropomorphisation of the divine and the dualism between good and evil has led people down the path of an intervening god who works with the same emotions snd priorities as us. There are so many explanations that have been offered up through time to the question of why fo people need to suffer, Religions like Christianity/God is love/the good guy, really can’t account for situations like you describe

This is true of the Bible as a whole, but not the New Testament, which was written much closer to the events.

It sounds like your main reason for not believing would be the existence of evil?

Wjat do you want as proof? I’m guessing something scientific? See all the other posts about why a scientific framework is not suitable to examine the existence or non- existence of the divine.

it is something to be experienced not examined in a lab.

Unless you are willing to awake from Newtons Sleep you’ll never understand

So God wants worshipping but only does bad not good. The Troubles in Northern Ireland are based around religious differences as is the current conflict in Gaza. The world would be more peaceful without religion.

But those who wrote the New Testament, the gospels, they were not eye witnesses, they just wrote about what they had heard, regarding Jesus. This is the equivalent of me saying that I know what Michael Jackson was all about, because my friend’s friend said that he did/was XYZ etc. And so I shall write about what I think Michael Jackson really thought, believed and wanted the world to know. So given this example, of an analogy, why would we take this information as the solid truth- ordinarily you wouldn’t, because it’s subjective and not accurate!

Religion has caused so many problems, so many conflicts, so much existential pain. Humanity over this constructed god figure, every single time.

Oh I’m sure the world would be much better without religion but that’s a man made construct as is worship (it gives a sense of control).

I really wish people would stop interchanging religion and god.

This is true, but if they spoke to multiple eyewitnesses about Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection then it's pretty certain those people were very convinced about that.

For me the existence of God is weirdly moot. I believe there is no God. That belief gives me comfort and strength, it makes sense of the world for me and it makes me strive to be the best human being I can be, because this life is all there is and I want to leave this world a better place than I found it, even if only in a very small and human way.

For people of faith, it's the opposite. The difference is that faith comes with a lot more historical baggage in terms of scripture to wade through; there is a lot less of that for us atheists. Even there, how we read our writings is always subject to interpretation.

So in a sense it's a bit more like me writing that Michael Jackson wore a white glove sometimes, had a pet monkey called Bubbles and dangled his baby over a balcony.

Or maybe more like if I spoke to people who had known John Lennon (to give a better equivalent in terms of time frame), and used all those sources to write a biography.

They are linked - religions worship a god

"This is true, but if they spoke to multiple eyewitnesses about Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection then it's pretty certain those people were very convinced about that."

But there is literally no evidence that they spoke to any "eyewitnesses" at all. There is literally no contemporaneous evidence that the Jesus character even existed.

The gospels were all supposedly written between 50 and 250 years after his supposed death, so the likelihood that they actually met anyone who "met" him in the first place is at best dubious. The earliest copies of these gospels come from about 300 years later anyway. From about the time of Bishop Eusebius...

This is true, but if they spoke to multiple eyewitnesses about Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection then it's pretty certain those people were very convinced about that.

Why on earth should we believe such an unreliable source? It t could all be made up!

If god was real and if he wanted us to know about him, he could make his presence known to us today.

No different from most other historical figures from the time then, and the documents we have about them.