Do you get verbally attacked for being Christian?

[mygreatauntgriselda]

Does anyone else feel peer pressure not to be Christian (or at least not to mention it for fear of ridicule) or get verbally attacked for being a Christian?

I often feel I might be ridiculed so keep a low profile about it at social events, unless I am with other Christians. If I do mention it in conversation, I often get a very aggressive response.

On Friday I was out with some friends I have known on average 20 years each. Conversation turned to the Gaza conflict. One friend then started "ranting" about how all wars are caused by religion (a gross over simplification IMHO - wars are complex and involve disutes over rights, territory, resources etc).

She then started "ranting" about how faith shools are the root of all evil and I found myself being verbally lynched by four women, who had all had a glass or two, about the fact that I am Catholic and our children attend a Catholic school.

These were very PC fiends who wouldn't dream of making blanket statements about people from other faiths but felt fine about being very insulting about Christians.

Has this happened to anyone else - how did you react? I argued my corner but am feeling that I do not want to see any of these "friends" again if they have so little respect for my views, beliefs or feelings.

i've had this argument with athiests so often over 4 years on MN [you are not a real christian unless you believe every word of the bible as literally true] I can't really do it anymore

Athiests killed thousands in secular states. Your point is?

Who are the intelligent people in the ID lobby?? And if they are intelligent why do they believe such a pile of horse manure?

Theo Hobson (my least favourite Christian) attacks atheists by saying "are you as intelligent as Rowan Williams, and can you see through a 'delusion' which he cannot?" Which is hardly the point - the Archbishop of Canterbury may well be an extremely erudite man able to speak many languages, but that doesn't stop something he believes in from being wrong. After all, I could turn round to Hobson and ask if he considers himself more intelligent than Dawkins, Dennett, Sam Harris or any other prominent atheist intellectual. Actually, he probably does, the twat.

Let's not get into the "who killed more" debate as it is very tedious and proves nothing.

It's not so much that atheists say "you are not a real christian unless you believe every word of the bible as literally true" - well, I don't, anyway - it's more that we accept that they want to pick and choose, but then it's only fair to challenge the basis on which that picking and choosing is done. For surely as soon as you start doing that it is all up for grabs.

That is absolute rubbish UD, when you read literature, for example Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Piers Plowman, you don't assume it is all literally true, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have a huge amount to teach. There have always been scholars who have understood the metaphorical quality of the Bible - it was such a natural tradition in those days i would say it was only in the middle ages that people started claiming it was literally true, for reasons of power. That is why Christ chose to teach through parables- oh hang on, no, he meant the story of the Good Samaritan as literally true, it really happened to a friend of his, and the story of the prodigal son, yep, his hairdresser.
There are quite a few Jewish eminent scientists out there? Do you think they believe the Old Testament is literally true?

Yes it is tedious to go on about who killed who, exactly.

Forgive me for bowing out have to attend to RL.

I think ruty is missing my point. I was not dismissing the fiction of the Bible, or any other fiction, as having nothing to teach.

My problem is that there is no evidence - never has been - for the supernatural or "divine" stuff in any of it. Given that this is the case, why should I accept it as anything other than a collection of writing, some of which is fictional, some of which is probably hugely embellished historical incident and some of which is exaggerated to make the protagonist appear in a good light?

think what you like UD of course. I just typed up a huge explanation to you and deleted it. Have to attend to Power Rangers role play.

Thanks MT for your comments. Thinking about it now I still can't help feeling it was an unsolicited onslaught. I guess I feel the ranter friend should have been a bit more sensitive.

Totally happy to debate etc but it was a very aggressive rant and what she was saying seemed slightly ill considered TBH (about all the worlds evils being caused by religion - if we had less testosterone and power mongers there might be fewer battles for example.)

It is ironic that she is atheist and was ranting so aggressively and intolerantly about christians being "divisive" etc. I would never attack anyone so aggressively for their views, (even my pro Zionist friends as I realise there views are influenced by their Isreali extended families even though I find some of their views hard to stomach).

Hard to explain but you would have had to be there to hear the ferocity.

Not sure what to do about it now though.

The friends are my book club and I am due to host the next one but not feeling I want to:

a) cook for + feed someone who feels they cannot tolerate my views
b) risk being the subjct o another onslaught (not my idea of a fun relaxed evening)

If I say nothng it implies I felt it was OK, which I don't.

Am happy to have friends with differing views and do have many (have very diverse friends) but this felt like an intolerant attack. I have known these people for 20 years FFS!!

That's the Irish Catholic in me swearing BTW

My mention of christians killing people was not meant to bring up the whole 'christians cause wars thing' but to emphasise that christians felt very strongly about their belief at the time and did not allow different opinions.

If religion is a society run by men which seeks to find the best way to live then yes it should change over time and yes there would be different opinions.

If religion is from god and the 'facts' change over time or vary between sects then it implies god got it wrong at first and is working on it OR it implies that christians have no way to know what god wants and are simply guessing.

I am often criticised for making the ludicrous suggestion that any christians believe in the bible, yet there are even christians here on MN that do. Maybe you could all get together and compare notes.

well theology has a wide ranging set of opinions on the Bible onager, but i find it odd that athiests always say, ah no there is only one valid way of interpreting the bible.

What you are talking about, 'christians' killing and persecuting, was one dominant group persecuting another. this has happened throughout the ages, with religion and without. Religion is used to validate persecution, but it could just as easily be something else, anything that justifies one set of people being better than another.

What ruty said. (But with the qualification that there are of course many atheists with an extremely good grasp of theology who do understand the diversity of belief even within a single religion. Just perhaps not so many on this thread.)

What you are talking about, 'christians' killing and persecuting>> was not what I was talking about (though a lot of that went on) I am refering as I said to them really being sure (enough to kill those who disagreed) that the bible was the word of god.

It's not atheists telling you there is only one way to read the bible, but christians. Now and for 1000s of years.

Now you can say they had it all wrong, but it invalidates the "christianity must be true because some many people have believed in it" since they all believed something different.

But if you are of the opinion (backed up by the evidence) that gods are not real, then "theology" is just another branch of literary studies. And, you know, I'm very happy to read lots of books. But life is short. Give me one with a convincing plot and don't expect me to believe it's real.

I'm not sure that Christians did claim that the Bible was completely literally true for most of church history - AFAIK there has always been plenty of debate about what it means, which treated many parts of it as poetic or allegorical language.

Yes there have been periods of history when church orthodoxy was required, and used as a means of control. But I think they have been "blips" rather than the overall story of Christianity.

It's a bit like the myth that everyone used to believe that the earth was flat - actually the idea that the earth was a sphere is a very old one, and "flat-earthers" only became a movement in (I think) Victorian times, as a kind of deliberate rejection of science.

It does seem like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" argument - either Christian belief is invalidated because they are unable to change and adapt the details of their belief in response to clear scientific facts which were previously unknown (like UQD's favourite diagram), or else what they believe is invalidated because they do keep changing the details.

Christianity is not a rule-based religion. Those who have tried to make it into one have been in error, and not following the basic teachings of Jesus. We do not proclaim in the creed that we believe in the Bible, but that we believe in God (whose workings are revealed in the Bible). There's a big difference.

A book you might find interesting DJ.

read my post 09:39:10 for my answer onager.

christians killing christians, christians killing athiests, catholics killing protestants, protestants killing catholics, christians killing jews/muslims, muslims killing christians ad nauseam. All about power.

Ditto Millwall fans killing Leyton Orient fans or whatever (no offence meant whatsoever to law abiding Millwall fans)

'OR it implies that christians have no way to know what god wants and are simply guessing.'

Or that God's truth is revealed to us over the passage of centuries, just as the truth of science is.

perhaps we could just agree not to mock anyone for their beliefs or actions.

question - yes
disagree with - fine
have a good old fashioned stand up theological argument with even.

But mocking another demeans us all.

Oh, I dunno. Mockery has it's place. I'm rather fond of Elijah, and he was sarcastic enough to make the hair stand up on the back of ye're neck.

I appreciate that many ideas are cherished and held dearly by others, but I'm firmly of the opinion that ideas are fair game in a free society - for mockery or promotion, whatever. I've been mocked for being a Christian (yes, even for doing the whole 'believing the bible' thing) and apart from it just coming with the territory, I think it's sometimes healthy to be challenged like that. I've been more than verbally abused at times, and that's out of order. But verbal (or typed) fireworks? If my faith could be knocked over by a bit of mockery, I'd consider it wasn't much of a faith to begin with.

Hooray! I agree with KayH. I'm always agreeing with her. She talks so much sense for a bible-basher

Even when I believed god existed I didn't really think he'd be that bothered by people's petty concerns, e.g. whether they believed in him or not.

ah, but I'm not talking about mocking faiths - I'm talking abput mocking people - big difference

ie "i think your ideas are silly" vs "you are silly for having those ideas"