If the thread opens a can of worms (before being closed), I apologise...dont think it will get like that though.
I personally dont think anything has been done wrong by starting this thread... At the end of the day I've made my opinions known on the topic just above but at the end of the day its each to their own, if someone believes in something then that is totally their choice, I just have one rule myself which I dont like it when people try to force their religions on me
I was a churchgoer in my youth (well mum made us boys go as she has always been religious), was in the choir (13 years old and 4 times as many girls there, what's not to like...). I was confirmed at 13 and then drifted away from the church pretty quickly after that as life moved on. Only went back over ensuing years for marriages,christenings and burials.
When my life hit rock bottom in 2010 I started attending Sunday services to keep mum company and was introduced back into the routine. Now I must state at this point that I am not a religious zealot by any stretch of the imagination but at that time and since that time I have found comfort in it. The fact that when you are suffering from depression there is a place you can go, where everything has been the same for hundreds of years, the liturgy, the routine and all round goodness of people, in a world that seems out to get one over on you all the time is a tonic. Yes I am a Christian, I am proud to be one. I see Christians in my parish do more for the needy in my area than any cash starved local authority, 99.9% of food banks rely on local congregations for funds and donations. I don't want to sell it, I could not be bothered to argue the toss with any earnest agnostic. If you're not interested it is nothing to do with me and I respect your point of view. Are we persecuted? teased and ridiculed sometimes maybe but we do not have our lives and families lives threatened like Christians in other parts of the world. Live and let live.
“WHEN religion is not encouraging strife it is acting as a drug which numbs the human conscience and fills the human brain with escapist fantasies. . . . [It] causes human beings to be narrow, superstitious, full of hatred and fear.” The former Methodist missionary who wrote that added: “These charges are true. There is bad and good religion"
Long live Richard Dawkins - give me something tangible any day!
Each to their own and I totally respect and am fully tolerant of individual views and beliefs (maybe I am jealous that I have no faith or religious belief). But when you look at the majority of conflict in the world you can map its foundations back to religion and the intolerance of diversity. In my book, if there is such a good and great all encompassing being (in whatever religious form you choose/believe), he/she really need to have a word with themselves for allowing the world to get into such a state!
All in my opinion of course, but anyone basing their views/beliefs on the fantasy writings of historical literature that are unfounded (not tangible) are living in cloud cuckoo land. Or conversely, maybe I am for not having religious views or beliefs?
Im not religous at all but I like how people believe in things that might make absolutely no sense to anyone else...but its something they believe in and celebrate. There is a dark side to religion that has been going on for hundreds of years to present, as we are aware of...but I think some aspects of christianity are great.
I am an animal lover...that is my made up religion. It used to be football.
I would say I hope (F) is the truth...life still being an unknown. Well, people of 200years ago appear to have got the idea of religion wrong (if your non-religious) so hopefully there is still more to discover.
F. If you believe in love, luck, justice, any concept in any way similar, you are believe in something no scientific theory can ever prove or create. There are things beyond our understanding, to me God is just one name for those things. Religion can spur someone to do great good or justify great evil - it is neither in and of itself.
J A 'Creator' is a difficult concept to grasp but, on the other side of it, for all this to have happened totally by chance is just as difficult a thing to grasp. I think there is something but don't know what. Time will tell and then we'll either know or know nothing.
I was a churchgoer in my youth (well mum made us boys go as she has always been religious), was in the choir (13 years old and 4 times as many girls there, what's not to like...). I was confirmed at 13 and then drifted away from the church pretty quickly after that as life moved on. Only went back over ensuing years for marriages,christenings and burials.
When my life hit rock bottom in 2010 I started attending Sunday services to keep mum company and was introduced back into the routine. Now I must state at this point that I am not a religious zealot by any stretch of the imagination but at that time and since that time I have found comfort in it. The fact that when you are suffering from depression there is a place you can go, where everything has been the same for hundreds of years, the liturgy, the routine and all round goodness of people, in a world that seems out to get one over on you all the time is a tonic. Yes I am a Christian, I am proud to be one. I see Christians in my parish do more for the needy in my area than any cash starved local authority, 99.9% of food banks rely on local congregations for funds and donations. I don't want to sell it, I could not be bothered to argue the toss with any earnest agnostic. If you're not interested it is nothing to do with me and I respect your point of view. Are we persecuted? teased and ridiculed sometimes maybe but we do not have our lives and families lives threatened like Christians in other parts of the world. Live and let live.
The only way to unite mankind is for aliens to invade. "... when you stop to think that we're all God's children, wherever we may live in the world, I couldn't help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together"
I don't think there is anything wrong with starting a thread asking what people believe in, as long as everyone respects other peoples beliefs and opinions without saying their way is the right way, diversity is one of the things I love about our country and it should be embraced. I am a Christian and proud of it, the church community is a great one to be part of with some of the nicest selfless people I've ever met. Most of my other friends are atheists, I have some Muslim friends too and a Sikh, none of us shove our beliefs down each other's throats but can talk about them freely, same should go here.
I used to be athiest myself, I always joked that if I walked into a church I'd burn, but I found myself involved with church people when I started my charity work and then I started attending church myself and (this will sound cliche) my life started getting better and I was much happier. That is me though, everyone has their own way.
For those who claims there are holes in the science, I think it's fair to say that pretty much all scientists agree on evolution.
And there are many Christians who believe in evolution and don't feel the bible in any says that evolution didn't/doesn't happen. All the Christians I know embrace science as they have nothing to fear because If God created the universe, all things will ultimately point to that. Also, my understanding is that the great Charles Darwin himself was not an atheist.
I'm an atheist. I'm amazed that so many intelligent people believe in God - it seems as likely to me as pink unicorns and teapots in orbit around the sun. However, I am not at all miltant about it and really dislike the way Dawkins and friends are so unplesantly aggressive about religious people.
The only thing I really hate (in the UK) is state-funded schools are allowed to decide admission based on the religion of a child's parents.
I'm an atheist. I'm amazed that so many intelligent people believe in God - it seems as likely to me as pink unicorns and teapots in orbit around the sun. However, I am not at all miltant about it and really dislike the way Dawkins and friends are so unplesantly aggressive about religious people.
The only thing I really hate (in the UK) is state-funded schools are allowed to decide admission based on the religion of a child's parents.
I don't like that either, as all children are athiests. You can't brand a child a jew or a muslim.
For those who claims there are holes in the science, I think it's fair to say that pretty much all scientists agree on evolution.
And there are many Christians who believe in evolution and don't feel the bible in any says that evolution didn't/doesn't happen. All the Christians I know embrace science as they have nothing to fear because If God created the universe, all things will ultimately point to that. Also, my understanding is that the great Charles Darwin himself was not an atheist.
According to his autobigoraphy he was. When writing the Origin he said "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
But 20 years later "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
Like many other former believers, he found the problem of evil insoluble. If God is omnipotent he has the power to end evil (disease, natural disaster, man's inhumanity to man). If God is all-loving he would want humans to suffer less or not at all. Therefore God cannot be omnipotent and all-loving.
When doing my philosophy degree I read lost of Christians on the problem of evil. IMO not one of them was able to deal with it.
tell you whats peesees me off though: freakin missionaries. half the white population of urumqi is missionary, and they work at half the market rate (while subsidised by church/pensions) thus screwing up the market and depriving me of more mates!
got no problem with people holding beliefs, but the arrogance of traveling around the world to convert people to your view because they are "wrong" and you have "seen the light" shows some serious delusion about the nature of truth and reality.
I don't think there is anything wrong with starting a thread asking what people believe in, as long as everyone respects other peoples beliefs and opinions without saying their way is the right way, diversity is one of the things I love about our country and it should be embraced. I am a Christian and proud of it, the church community is a great one to be part of with some of the nicest selfless people I've ever met. Most of my other friends are atheists, I have some Muslim friends too and a Sikh, none of us shove our beliefs down each other's throats but can talk about them freely, same should go here.
I used to be athiest myself, I always joked that if I walked into a church I'd burn, but I found myself involved with church people when I started my charity work and then I started attending church myself and (this will sound cliche) my life started getting better and I was much happier. That is me though, everyone has their own way.
I think thats great Sadie, the community and charity side is brilliant.
However, the actual beliefs (God/Jesus/The Bible), to me, seem absolutely mental.
tell you whats peesees me off though: freakin missionaries. half the white population of urumqi is missionary, and they work at half the market rate (while subsidised by church/pensions) thus screwing up the market and depriving me of more mates!
got no problem with people holding beliefs, but the arrogance of traveling around the world to convert people to your view because they are "wrong" and you have "seen the light" shows some serious delusion about the nature of truth and reality.
They know nothing. They have no more supernational powers than I do yet claim to know the history of the world and what happens when you die. They are morons and deserve all the ridicule they get.
tell you whats peesees me off though: freakin missionaries. half the white population of urumqi is missionary, and they work at half the market rate (while subsidised by church/pensions) thus screwing up the market and depriving me of more mates!
got no problem with people holding beliefs, but the arrogance of traveling around the world to convert people to your view because they are "wrong" and you have "seen the light" shows some serious delusion about the nature of truth and reality.
They know nothing. They have no more supernational powers than I do yet claim to know the history of the world and what happens when you die. They are morons and deserve all the ridicule they get.
Hope I'm not fuelling things here, but can we please keep this civil. It is an adult forum and has the potential to be really destructive or a quite interesting discussion of different beliefs, which I believe was the intention.
I don't think there is anything wrong with starting a thread asking what people believe in, as long as everyone respects other peoples beliefs and opinions without saying their way is the right way, diversity is one of the things I love about our country and it should be embraced. I am a Christian and proud of it, the church community is a great one to be part of with some of the nicest selfless people I've ever met. Most of my other friends are atheists, I have some Muslim friends too and a Sikh, none of us shove our beliefs down each other's throats but can talk about them freely, same should go here.
I used to be athiest myself, I always joked that if I walked into a church I'd burn, but I found myself involved with church people when I started my charity work and then I started attending church myself and (this will sound cliche) my life started getting better and I was much happier. That is me though, everyone has their own way.
I think thats great Sadie, the community and charity side is brilliant.
However, the actual beliefs (God/Jesus/The Bible), to me, seem absolutely mental.
You could say the same about all sorts of things though... purely hypothetically, take money for example. There is no way a thin bit of paper will ever be physically worth £10,000. But if you sign that cheque, apparently it is. Why? Because we believe it to be, that's the only reason.
Evolution is pretty much a scientific fact nowadays but there are wholes in the theory - for example bats that have echolocation abilities. What are the odds that a bat would spontaneously mutate to have the capacity to generate the echoes, the ears to hear them with, and the brain to process it... then that bat would have to survive, and breed, and all those genes would have to be dominant, or every lady bat our example gets it on with would have to be carrying those exact same genes - all the while other non-echolocating bats of the same species somehow end up living in circumstances where suddenly echolocation is the big difference, and dying out.
You could also look at the dinosaurs - hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and they get wiped out in a freak incident that mammals just so happen to be better suited to surviving, and thus end up top of the evolutionary scale. Pure chance, that's all it is.
This doesn't prove that evolution does not exist, simply that our understanding of it is very, very basic. I do not believe in an omniscient creator being watching us in every moment - but I firmly believe that there is some sort of higher force that human brains will never be able to comprehend in entirety.
For those who claims there are holes in the science, I think it's fair to say that pretty much all scientists agree on evolution.
And there are many Christians who believe in evolution and don't feel the bible in any says that evolution didn't/doesn't happen. All the Christians I know embrace science as they have nothing to fear because If God created the universe, all things will ultimately point to that. Also, my understanding is that the great Charles Darwin himself was not an atheist.
According to his autobigoraphy he was. When writing the Origin he said "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
But 20 years later "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
Like many other former believers, he found the problem of evil insoluble. If God is omnipotent he has the power to end evil (disease, natural disaster, man's inhumanity to man). If God is all-loving he would want humans to suffer less or not at all. Therefore God cannot be omnipotent and all-loving.
When doing my philosophy degree I read lost of Christians on the problem of evil. IMO not one of them was able to deal with it.
Did you come across Swinburne in your studies Jints?
I make no claims one way or the other but as an ex philosophy student you might find it an interesting read if you have not encountered him previously.
Comments
When my life hit rock bottom in 2010 I started attending Sunday services to keep mum company and was introduced back into the routine. Now I must state at this point that I am not a religious zealot by any stretch of the imagination but at that time and since that time I have found comfort in it. The fact that when you are suffering from depression there is a place you can go, where everything has been the same for hundreds of years, the liturgy, the routine and all round goodness of people, in a world that seems out to get one over on you all the time is a tonic. Yes I am a Christian, I am proud to be one. I see Christians in my parish do more for the needy in my area than any cash starved local authority, 99.9% of food banks rely on local congregations for funds and donations. I don't want to sell it, I could not be bothered to argue the toss with any earnest agnostic. If you're not interested it is nothing to do with me and I respect your point of view. Are we persecuted? teased and ridiculed sometimes maybe but we do not have our lives and families lives threatened like Christians in other parts of the world. Live and let live.
Peace be with you.
Long live Richard Dawkins - give me something tangible any day!
Each to their own and I totally respect and am fully tolerant of individual views and beliefs (maybe I am jealous that I have no faith or religious belief). But when you look at the majority of conflict in the world you can map its foundations back to religion and the intolerance of diversity. In my book, if there is such a good and great all encompassing being (in whatever religious form you choose/believe), he/she really need to have a word with themselves for allowing the world to get into such a state!
All in my opinion of course, but anyone basing their views/beliefs on the fantasy writings of historical literature that are unfounded (not tangible) are living in cloud cuckoo land. Or conversely, maybe I am for not having religious views or beliefs?
I am an animal lover...that is my made up religion. It used to be football.
yer man Justin Hawkins does it better
"... when you stop to think that we're all God's children, wherever we may live in the world, I couldn't help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together"
I used to be athiest myself, I always joked that if I walked into a church I'd burn, but I found myself involved with church people when I started my charity work and then I started attending church myself and (this will sound cliche) my life started getting better and I was much happier. That is me though, everyone has their own way.
The only thing I really hate (in the UK) is state-funded schools are allowed to decide admission based on the religion of a child's parents.
But 20 years later "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
Like many other former believers, he found the problem of evil insoluble. If God is omnipotent he has the power to end evil (disease, natural disaster, man's inhumanity to man). If God is all-loving he would want humans to suffer less or not at all. Therefore God cannot be omnipotent and all-loving.
When doing my philosophy degree I read lost of Christians on the problem of evil. IMO not one of them was able to deal with it.
it's nuts!
tell you whats peesees me off though: freakin missionaries. half the white population of urumqi is missionary, and they work at half the market rate (while subsidised by church/pensions) thus screwing up the market and depriving me of more mates!
got no problem with people holding beliefs, but the arrogance of traveling around the world to convert people to your view because they are "wrong" and you have "seen the light" shows some serious delusion about the nature of truth and reality.
However, the actual beliefs (God/Jesus/The Bible), to me, seem absolutely mental.
Evolution is pretty much a scientific fact nowadays but there are wholes in the theory - for example bats that have echolocation abilities. What are the odds that a bat would spontaneously mutate to have the capacity to generate the echoes, the ears to hear them with, and the brain to process it... then that bat would have to survive, and breed, and all those genes would have to be dominant, or every lady bat our example gets it on with would have to be carrying those exact same genes - all the while other non-echolocating bats of the same species somehow end up living in circumstances where suddenly echolocation is the big difference, and dying out.
You could also look at the dinosaurs - hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and they get wiped out in a freak incident that mammals just so happen to be better suited to surviving, and thus end up top of the evolutionary scale. Pure chance, that's all it is.
This doesn't prove that evolution does not exist, simply that our understanding of it is very, very basic. I do not believe in an omniscient creator being watching us in every moment - but I firmly believe that there is some sort of higher force that human brains will never be able to comprehend in entirety.
I make no claims one way or the other but as an ex philosophy student you might find it an interesting read if you have not encountered him previously.
EDIT: Helps to include the link!
http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/swinburne-evil.pdf