Convert Me...

[silkyjonson 1]

Have not read this thread so don't bash me if this has been said but essentially all different forms of religion are an argument that god does not exist. All the different religions make it highly likely that each one was not passed down from a god but actually developed to explain things that people could not themselves explain and many different regions or peoples developed their own story. Also a question for the religious folks, do you think that its nieve to believe that your religion is the one truth as opposed to all the other options?

[Balloon guy 158]

Sorry, BG -- you know I love you, but this isn't the blanket world of labels, this is the blanket party of bad math. It's a silly way to prove either side right, but your numbers are way off. You would have to count every war in Europe since roughly AD 500, since that was when Europe became predominantly Christian (can't leave out Christians butchering Christians, now can we?). That alone, not counting all the deaths from US-led wars, adds up to way more than five mil.

Sorry, but those figures were for religious wars. Kind of silly to pretend that just because England and France were Christian, then any war they fought was religious. In fact that would prove that it wasn't religious, but in fact a power struggle.Nope, the pure communist wars vs pure religious wars clearly is imbalanced on the side of the God-less communist.

[Balloon guy 158]

Have not read this thread so don't bash me if this has been said but essentially all different forms of religion are an argument that god does not exist. All the different religions make it highly likely that each one was not passed down from a god but actually developed to explain things that people could not themselves explain and many different regions or peoples developed their own story. Also a question for the religious folks, do you think that its nieve to believe that your religion is the one truth as opposed to all the other options?

Take 2 religions, Christianity and Scientology.Your logic says they both have a fair chance to be right. But a little digging into scientology and it's not hard to see why they are wacky.I personally looked at 4 religions before accepting Christ, since then I have looked at many others and am always justified the more I look. Enter now the athiest brigade to say: "we think yours is wacky", followed by lame quote about how they just believe in one less religion than me.

[vbnautilus 48]

Enter now the athiest brigade to say: "we think yours is wacky", followed by lame quote about how they just believe in one less religion than me.

Well, it does say something that you had to resort to using scientology to make a favorable comparison, doesn't it?

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I personally looked at 4 religions before accepting Christ, since then I have looked at many others and am always justified the more I look.

What exactly were your criteria for choosing, and for currently finding others lacking? I'm curious, since this was also how I reached Buddhism. Most people don't seem to do it this way, so I'd love to hear your story.

[crowTrobot 2]

since this was also how I reached Buddhism.

i assume (or at least i hope) you mean this is how you reached conclusions about the superiority of buddhist moral philosophy vs. the moral philosophies of other religions. sounds like you're saying you reached the conclusion that traditional buddhist metaphysical claims are literally true by comparing them to the metaphysical claims of other religions, which would make you just as delusional as BG.

[mase_gotsem 0]

so im a beleiver in a greater power but not fully convinced in god/jesus . i mean i pray to them when something bad happens or when my sports team needs to win or when my AA aipf needs to hold for my tourny life .etc etcbut i really dont agree on alot of the stuff in the bible .like sex b4 merriage/ go to church and dont sin or w/e . im a good person at heart and i got a good value for morals/ethics, but im obv not perfect .id like to beleive that god is out there and i say i beleive in him but im not fully convinced at heart .where does this leave me as far as an athiest or a christian ?ive read alot of differant terms in this thread "agnostic" and such and was wondering what are these all about ?this is something iv always thgt about but obv i arent teh sharpest fork in the tray . and never really new how to explain .

[vbnautilus 48]

id like to beleive that god is out there and i say i beleive in him but im not fully convinced at heart .where does this leave me as far as an athiest or a christian ?

I think it's important to separate what you'd like to believe from what you have good reason to believe. For instance, my desire to believe there is a pot of gold under my bed has little bearing on the actual number of doubloons to be found there -- unfortunately.

ive read alot of differant terms in this thread "agnostic" and such and was wondering what are these all about ?

An agnostic is someone who takes the position that it is not possible to determine the truth of the matter of the existence of god. The agnostic acknowledges that he does not know (gnosis is greek for "knowledge": a + gnostic = not knowing). Personally I think it's somewhat of a cop-out. I mean, if you're going to retreat to indecision on that matter you're going to have to be pretty radically indecisive about all sorts of things, like you dont really know if there are invisible gremlins living in your car wheels. But since you don't have evidence that there are, you're going to act as if there aren't. I also don't like the term "atheist". I don't feel need to define myself in opposition to something. For example, I could equally be considered an asantaclausist, but really the term implies some importance to that denial which I am not willing to grant it. There also may be some forms of theism which I wouldn't find objectionable, so I just don't adopt that label (although the majority of religious folk would consider me an atheist). For example, if you define god as "the universe" or "everything" then I cease to be an atheist. P.S. Why would you like to believe in god?

[mase_gotsem 0]

P.S. Why would you like to believe in god?

becouse i beleive there is something greater out there and that we have a purpose ..its weird becouse im a sinner i sin every day im sinning right now while touching myself as i type this with one hand <jk obv > but you get the picture my every day life is a sin but i do everything with a good heart.so it leaves me confused ,i dont beleive in all that bible crap repent or go to hell if theres a god i beleive it to be all about good intentions .i dont think one religion is right or wrong and i hate when i hear "christians" say dumb things like beleive or your not a christianif your confused your obv not saved type sht .idk im just rambling but if i were to die right now id be going to hell by bible standrds.. so if i dont beleive what the bible says but i beleive in a god where does that leave me ?

[vbnautilus 48]

becouse i beleive there is something greater out there and that we have a purpose ..its weird becouse im a sinner i sin every day im sinning right now while touching myself as i type this with one hand <jk obv > but you get the picture my every day life is a sin but i do everything with a good heart.so it leaves me confused ,i dont beleive in all that bible crap repent or go to hell if theres a god i beleive it to be all about good intentions .i dont think one religion is right or wrong and i hate when i hear "christians" say dumb things like beleive or your not a christianif your confused your obv not saved type sht .idk im just rambling but if i were to die right now id be going to hell by bible standrds.. so if i dont beleive what the bible says but i beleive in a god where does that leave me ?

I like what Joseph Campbell said about the whole sin thing, which is a relatively unusual idea as far as world mythologies go. Kind of a long quote here, but worth reading (emphasis mine):MOYERS: In the Christian story the serpent is the seducer.CAMPBELL: That amounts to a refusal to affirm life. In the biblical tradition we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized. The serpent was the one who brought sin into the world. And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man. This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist that has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.MOYERS: Does the idea of woman as sinner appear in other mythologies? CAMPBELL: No, I don't know of it elsewhere. The closest thing to it would be perhaps Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble. The idea in the biblical tradition of the Fall is that nature as we know it is corrupt, sex in itself is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. ...The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned that world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a thing they truly wanted to because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy. In a wasteland, people are fulfilling purposes that are not properly theirs but have been put upon them as inescapable laws. This is a killer. The twelfth-century troubadour poetry of courtly love was a protest against this supernaturally justified violation of life's joy in truth. So too the Tristan legend and at least one of the great versions of the legend of the Grail, that of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The spirit is really the bouquet of life. It is not something breathed into life, it comes out of life. This is one of the glorious things about the mother-goddess religions, where the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn't something ruling over and above a fallen nature. There was something of this spirit in the medieval cult of the Virgin, out of which all the beautiful thirteenth-century French cathedrals arose.However, our story of the Fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us. Because nature is thought of as corrupt, every spontaneous act is sinful and must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature.CAMPBELL: Remember the last line [of Babbitt]? "I have never done the thing that I wanted to in all my life." That is a man who never followed his bliss. Well, I actually heard that line when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Before I was married, I used to eat out in the restaurants of town for my lunch and dinners. Thursday night was the maid's night off in Bronxville, so that many of the families were out in restaurants. One fine evening I was in my favorite restaurant there, and at the next table there was a father, a mother, and a scrawny boy about twelve years old. The father said to the boy, "Drink your tomato juice."And the boy said, "I don't want to." Then the father, with a louder voice, said, "Drink your tomato juice." And the mother said, "Don't make him do what he doesn't want to do." The father looked at her and said, "He can't go through life doing what he wants to do. If he does only what he wants to do, he'll be dead. Look at me. I've never done a thing I wanted to in all my life."And I thought, "My God, there's Babbitt incarnate!" That's the man who never followed his bliss. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it-what kind of life was it? What good was it-you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.MOYERS: What happens when you follow your bliss?CAMPBELL: You come to bliss.

[Loismustdie 0]

I like what Joseph Campbell said about the whole sin thing, which is a relatively unusual idea as far as world mythologies go. Kind of a long quote here, but worth reading (emphasis mine):MOYERS: In the Christian story the serpent is the seducer.CAMPBELL: That amounts to a refusal to affirm life. In the biblical tradition we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized. The serpent was the one who brought sin into the world. And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man. This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist that has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.MOYERS: Does the idea of woman as sinner appear in other mythologies? CAMPBELL: No, I don't know of it elsewhere. The closest thing to it would be perhaps Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble. The idea in the biblical tradition of the Fall is that nature as we know it is corrupt, sex in itself is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. ...The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned that world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a thing they truly wanted to because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy. In a wasteland, people are fulfilling purposes that are not properly theirs but have been put upon them as inescapable laws. This is a killer. The twelfth-century troubadour poetry of courtly love was a protest against this supernaturally justified violation of life's joy in truth. So too the Tristan legend and at least one of the great versions of the legend of the Grail, that of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The spirit is really the bouquet of life. It is not something breathed into life, it comes out of life. This is one of the glorious things about the mother-goddess religions, where the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn't something ruling over and above a fallen nature. There was something of this spirit in the medieval cult of the Virgin, out of which all the beautiful thirteenth-century French cathedrals arose.However, our story of the Fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us. Because nature is thought of as corrupt, every spontaneous act is sinful and must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature.CAMPBELL: Remember the last line [of Babbitt]? "I have never done the thing that I wanted to in all my life." That is a man who never followed his bliss. Well, I actually heard that line when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Before I was married, I used to eat out in the restaurants of town for my lunch and dinners. Thursday night was the maid's night off in Bronxville, so that many of the families were out in restaurants. One fine evening I was in my favorite restaurant there, and at the next table there was a father, a mother, and a scrawny boy about twelve years old. The father said to the boy, "Drink your tomato juice."And the boy said, "I don't want to." Then the father, with a louder voice, said, "Drink your tomato juice." And the mother said, "Don't make him do what he doesn't want to do." The father looked at her and said, "He can't go through life doing what he wants to do. If he does only what he wants to do, he'll be dead. Look at me. I've never done a thing I wanted to in all my life."And I thought, "My God, there's Babbitt incarnate!" That's the man who never followed his bliss. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it-what kind of life was it? What good was it-you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.MOYERS: What happens when you follow your bliss?CAMPBELL: You come to bliss.

Interestingly convoluted and wrong, but a good read. Thanks for the post. I will destroy it when I have time.

[CaneBrain 95]

You've got your figures exactly backward. 90% of people use religion as sheep use a shepherd (and yep, that's an analogy unironically used in the church). They want to be told what to think and what to do. Most of them never actually read the bible themselves to find out everything that's in it, they just leaf through and read the "greatest hits" their pastor recommends (John 3:16, Romans, Psalm 22, etc.) rather than the really challenging verses like the ones, in God's voice, saying slavery is okay and ordering his followers to murder everyone in a village, including women, babies, the sick, and the elderly, when the village has done nothing to provoke them. To go off on a bit of a tangent, most Christians will never consider questions like these:The obvious question -- who does Cain marry? His sister, or did God create races that he had already determined would not believe in him?After the flood, God says, "Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being as I have done." Okay, so if man was intrinsically evil before the flood, and God is here conceding that he will continue to be intrinsically evil, 1) how did God screw up the creation of man so badly? and 2) what exactly was the flood supposed to accomplish? Whatever it was, it seems to have failed.Why doesn't God stop Lot's daughters from having sex with him in the cave by pointing out to them that, duh, only two towns were destroyed, and if they walk around awhile they'll find the rest of humanity alive and well? Why does he allow incest without a peep (repeatedly, if Cain marries a sister), while killing people for burning the wrong incense, or a guy who's just trying to steady the ark when its bearers stumble?What is going on in 2 Samuel 24? The Lord puts it in David's heart to perform a census. David performs the census, then immediately feels guilty. Sure enough, a prophet tells him the Lord is hugely pissed at him (despite the fact that He ordered the census in the first place). He tells David, you get a choice: seven years of famine, three months of being chased by enemies, or three days of pestilence. David takes the pestilence. 70,000 men (apparently people whose only crime was standing still to be counted) die. But before the Lord's angel, who's administering this pestilence, can destroy Jerusalem, "the Lord repented," as the KJV says, and he stops the angel. Leaving aside the utterly ridiculousness of getting pissed off when someone does something you inspired them to do, what does it mean if the Lord can repent? It means that he can make mistakes and he knows himself that he can and has. His followers never seem to read enough to notice this. [by the way, this isn't the only mistake the infallible, perfectly good God makes: in 1 Samuel 15, "the Lord repented that he had made Saul king."]Anyway, like I said, that's a bit of a tangent (and there are dozens of other questions that could go in this list), but my point is that 90% of Christians don't even know that these ARE questions, because they don't know the bible well enough to know they're in there. They don't know that at least three times, the Messiah is said to be "like Moses," i.e., fully human, not divine. Fact is, they don't know, and they don't _want_ to know. To know it would require thinking about it. Thinking about it might require questioning it. Far easier to just sit in church once a week, do what the pastor tells you, act self-righteous all week long, and ask Jesus to help your hand hold up in the Main Event.It would be generous to say that fully 10% of Christians really engage with their faith, thinking about it, questioning it, arguing with it, and -- the most egregious fault to my scholarly, history-oriented mind -- researching it, seeing how it has evolved over the centuries (the KJV didn't just fall on our heads out of the sky one day), why what was included was included, what was left out and why it was left out, how people over the centuries have used and understood the text, etc. On a moral level, I'd say not even close to 10% of Christians actually believe in total obedience. If there's anything God wants, it's total obedience to his will -- if anything, that is the message behind Uzzah's death, isn't it (or is God just being kind of a jerk there)? And not too many people, especially not Americans, are willing to surrender their egos utterly to obedience. As I said earlier here, the very few who do are the standouts of mystical Christianity, like Merton, King, Avila, Assisi, Kierkegaard, Mother Teresa, etc. The best most Americans can do is like DN, asking God to make them a better person and to help them show that good soul whenever they can. Lois understands this issue of obedience. He has struggled with it for years, and confesses that he can't do it. But at least he knows what's being asked of him, instead of pretending it isn't.Yep, your figures are backward -- about 10%, generously, of Christians are actually using their religion in a useful way. Ninety percent are just sheep happy to be led around, duped, deluded, and conned by power-hungry, Mammon-worshipping, mega-church-wannabe assholes like Pat Robertson.

I disagree but I enjoyed reading this. Very thoughtful. I think most people are happy to keep their religion to themselves and ignore the crazies. And I think most Christians are like DN in that they live their lives and enjoy their faith and try to be good people and dont try and impose their views on others. That is all I meant by practicing religion responsibly. I think the bar you set for religious people is very high.

[Balloon guy 158]

I disagree but I enjoyed reading this. Very thoughtful. I think most people are happy to keep their religion to themselves and ignore the crazies. And I think most Christians are like DN in that they live their lives and enjoy their faith and try to be good people and dont try and impose their views on others. That is all I meant by practicing religion responsibly. I think the bar you set for religious people is very high.

I understand on one level the idea for people to 'keep their faith to themselves'But at the same time, there is another side, being as we believe that we have found the answers to all of life's questions and also the only way to receive Heaven. If these things are true, and only if, wouldn't you feel we would have an obligation to mankind to tell everyone we could? Of course if it's not true, then I can understand why it would be annoying.

[Randy Reed 0]

Okay, I'll concede that you believe athiests can't prove there isn't a god, and you can't prove there is so you rely (through faith) on a religon to give you morality. You laugh at some but come to the conclusion a particular one has the morality you like best and then follow that one.Why do you need a religon at all then? Why don't you just jump to the morality part? There isn't any moral conduct a religous person has that non-believer could have as well. Cheating, stealing, etc? I've seen numerous sets of commandments by real people that I would follow before Moses 10.

Take 2 religions, Christianity and Scientology.Your logic says they both have a fair chance to be right. But a little digging into scientology and it's not hard to see why they are wacky.I personally looked at 4 religions before accepting Christ, since then I have looked at many others and am always justified the more I look. Enter now the athiest brigade to say: "we think yours is wacky", followed by lame quote about how they just believe in one less religion than me.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

Sorry, but those figures were for religious wars. Kind of silly to pretend that just because England and France were Christian, then any war they fought was religious. In fact that would prove that it wasn't religious, but in fact a power struggle.Nope, the pure communist wars vs pure religious wars clearly is imbalanced on the side of the God-less communist.

Not buying it...most of the Middle Ages saw Europe embroiled in civil wars that had a great deal to do with the Protestant Reformation. The Spanish Armada's attack on Britain was specifically because fanatically Catholic Philip wanted to oust fanatically Protestant Elizabeth from the throne (not that a lot of casualties came from that particular incident). England was Protestant, France was Catholic. That they were both "Christian" does not prove that their wars were never religious and always a power struggle, and how do you propose to prove that the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe had nothing to do with power at all but was solely religious? Those numbers are getting a full-body rolfing massage.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

i assume (or at least i hope) you mean this is how you reached conclusions about the superiority of buddhist moral philosophy vs. the moral philosophies of other religions. sounds like you're saying you reached the conclusion that traditional buddhist metaphysical claims are literally true by comparing them to the metaphysical claims of other religions, which would make you just as delusional as BG.

Certainly. I wouldn't even say "superiority." I would just say "most fitting for me." I'm a Western Buddhist, so I don't believe in the traditional metaphorical claims -- I regard those as historical superstitious trappings. The rest of it is largely advice on living up to one's highest goals and ideals. I like it and find it effective. I don't accept it as "true" in any sense other than that I've tried it and it worked for me, and I could never pretend that I know it to be "true" based solely on my faith in it.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

Interestingly convoluted and wrong, but a good read. Thanks for the post. I will destroy it when I have time.

Before you spend a lot of time attacking the wrong thing, note that Campbell never said, "follow your id." As William James observed, "If 'it feels good' were the sole criterion, then drunkenness would be the supreme human spiritual experience." [Obviously he never tried LSD, but I digress.]What Campbell means is more like what John D. Rockefeller meant when he said, "The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it -- every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have." Campbell meant find the one thing that makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work and work hard, and do that thing.The rest of it's pretty interesting, though, about the idea of a fallen world versus one that is in itself divine, and what different societies you get when you start from the two different premises.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I disagree but I enjoyed reading this. Very thoughtful. I think most people are happy to keep their religion to themselves and ignore the crazies. And I think most Christians are like DN in that they live their lives and enjoy their faith and try to be good people and dont try and impose their views on others. That is all I meant by practicing religion responsibly. I think the bar you set for religious people is very high.

Fair enough ... I understood the sentence differently than you meant it. I don't think I'm setting the bar any higher for Christians, though, than I set it for myself. When I read the bible, I read it asking questions like that, and a large part of why I'm not a believer is that I wasn't satisfied with the answers or the lack thereof. Buddhism has no particularly sacred texts, so I can't approach their texts quite the same way (although I do approach them as a critical reader), but I do want to know the historical arc it's followed as well, how it moved from one culture to another and how it changed the culture while the culture changed it as well. I'm of a rather scholarly, researching bent, I know, but if the fate of your eternal soul is what's at stake, then I truly don't understand why everybody wouldn't take so careful and critical an approach.

[crowTrobot 2]

Certainly. I wouldn't even say "superiority." I would just say "most fitting for me." I'm a Western Buddhist, so I don't believe in the traditional metaphorical claims -- I regard those as historical superstitious trappings. The rest of it is largely advice on living up to one's highest goals and ideals. I like it and find it effective. I don't accept it as "true" in any sense other than that I've tried it and it worked for me, and I could never pretend that I know it to be "true" based solely on my faith in it.

i don't think there's any valid comparison between how you found "buddhism" and how someone finds fundamentalist christianity then.

[vbnautilus 48]

Before you spend a lot of time attacking the wrong thing, note that Campbell never said, "follow your id." As William James observed, "If 'it feels good' were the sole criterion, then drunkenness would be the supreme human spiritual experience." [Obviously he never tried LSD, but I digress.]What Campbell means is more like what John D. Rockefeller meant when he said, "The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it -- every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have." Campbell meant find the one thing that makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work and work hard, and do that thing.The rest of it's pretty interesting, though, about the idea of a fallen world versus one that is in itself divine, and what different societies you get when you start from the two different premises.

That's exactly right. He was saying something more like "follow your dreams" rather than "do whatever ya want". The issue of treating the divine as something separate from nature was basically the deal-breaker for me and religion. It's why I became a scientist, which to me is a lot closer to worshipping nature than western religion is.