All the problems with Christianity

Post Reply New Topic

Of course not, silly! :P If he was, he would take all of the credit for himself!

That's an interesting take on my question. I asked it because you said you have an undergrad psych degree, and thought you may have studied TMT, as I did in mine (briefly). When religious belief is threatened, such as by reading an atheist essay, death thoughts become more accessible (measured for example by ambiguous word completion tasks e.g. COFF__ which can be completed as either COFFEE or COFFIN). There are strong correlations in a variety of experiments, well replicated. I won't try to explain it all here; you can either read on it or not, or maybe you already have.

Your thoughts on the value of truth are interesting. Regarding religion, it comes down to the question: If there's no God, would you want to know?

I would rather know, even if the truth hurts. I value the life I really do have more because I know it's short. I value other people's lives more. I'm more against war, guns, and the death penalty because I don't believe that God will make things fair (e.g. "kill 'em all & let God sort 'em out.") - death is death. I'm more driven to do what I can to improve this world, because it's the only one we have.

It rings a bell, but it's been a while since I was in University, so I couldn't really remember the details of it.


Personally I'm along the same lines, actually. To me, even assuming there is a God and Heaven that we'll go to after we die, that doesn't diminish the importance of improving and taking care of this world as well. I don't really concern myself with the afterlife too much because it's not something I think I have a lot of control over. If there is a Heaven, then I'm fairly confident that I'll get into it. If there isn't a Heaven, then there's nothing I can really do about it. Either way, it's better to focus on what I'm doing while alive, because I consider it intrinsically important to be an ethically good person regardless of anything about the afterlife (or lack of).

If this is a sign, i'll take it in good faith.

In principle, I suppose you could tell yourself that. I did, before I grew out of religious belief. I decided that I didn't want to live a lie, that I wanted to know whether religion's a con, even if difficult. Without the belief that life is eternal, this life becomes more precious, and this world more precious - because it's all we have. That's hard to deal with at first, in the transition to atheism. But we do come to terms with it, and we're better off for it. It's not that those things aren't possible, to some extent, with religious belief. The vitality and sense of urgency is certainly dulled by belief that life's eternal. It also depends on what brand of religion you smoke. I heard a quote of George Bush Snr., while he was president: he allegedly said not to worry about the environment, because God's 2nd Coming is going to take care of it all. Similarly, the idea that perfect justice happens after death makes it easier to kill people in war. You seem fairly moderate, these latter examples may not apply to you, but the point still stands. It's not that belief in eternal life rules out appreciation for this life; it's that with the belief that this is all we have, comes a greater sense of urgency about its limited and fragile preciousness, and the need to improve this world, because nobody else will.

Religious belief also hampers ethical development. If there's no God, and the Bible is the work of ancient humans, then moral development is unduly restricted to their interpretation, as flexible as this may be. We are much better off considering ethics as a branch of philosophy, without such hindrances. Opinions and ethical behaviours regarding animal rights (e.g. is meat murder?), abortion, same-sex marriage, divorce, feminism, etc. etc. are greatly influenced, for the worse imo, by religion.

I can understand what you're saying there. Perhaps a sense of personal urgency is dulled by believing in an afterlife, but I try to separate this world in my mind from anything else regardless of whether there's an afterlife or not. The way I see it is that this is all we have in terms of being alive, so we'd better make the most of it. It's pretty clear that after we die we're cut off from interacting in this world anymore, at least in the same physical way. I know some people believe in ghosts and whatnot (personally I don't), but even if there is ghosts they clearly can't interact with the world in the same physical way as when we're alive. And since other people have to live here after we're all gone, we need to be concerned with it.


Well, I wrote my thesis for Philosophy on ethics, and didn't actually mention anything religious in it. It was more because I believe ethics to be intrinsic and not reliant on religion, and attempted to construct an ethical theory based out of rational analysis, and to an extent human psychology, that could make sense to anyone regardless of religious belief. I'm not sure I think that religious or spiritual belief has to influence those things for the worse, but I do think there's certainly cases of people using religious belief as an excuse not to think about and explore ethical issues philosophically, which I agree isn't good.

I agree with Nietzsche. It is not love that makes fundamentalists stop from burning us at the stake, it is a lack of love. In other words, if I truly believed that if someone did not believe in my dogma, he would be tortured for eternity, it would be inhumane to not torture him. Finite pain vs infinite pain. Luckily, I am not a fundamentalist.

I consider myself a fundamentalist. However, I also think of it as there being a fine line between being a fundamentalist and a "fundamental extremist."

I think that you've got good reasons to believe as you do, but I still think you're wrong. I'd say it really is a lack of love. Love in terms of Jesus' teachings is all about what you DO. Torturing people to make them believe or pretend to believe contrary to their will is out of place in Jesus' teachings. Fundamental extremists don't really care a thing about love, otherwise they'd show it. They're driven by agenda, most likely a personal one. It may be their agenda or that of some authority who has indoctrinated them to believe that agenda as THE (T)ruth, but it is nonetheless unbiblical. If it is something that has to come through force, it does not come from Christ.

Reasoning with someone to persuade them to follow Christ should be sufficient. If solid reason fails, it can reasonably be inferred that person is unwilling. Since we know from the Bible God only wants a willing servant, it is best to assume that the best way we can show God's love to those who reject Him is to leave them alone about it. It seems to me that's what God would do.

Of course, while we may say things that no matter what will offend someone to steer them from sin, we must do so while showing compassion by merely trying to warn and convert them and not with hatred like a certain group...''coughwestborocough'' No matter what it is.

Ok, here we have it! Pinned down! Well stated, AR, and it even seems to be internally consistent. The errors are in its unfounded assumptions, blaming non-believers rather than recognising the inadequacy of Christian claims.

I was referring to this assumption earlier. You conclude that people don't believe because they're "unwilling" rather than recognise that there really is no "solid reason" to "follow Christ".

Before you vomit your vacuous religious propaganda in my direction, let's rather define "solid reason". You go first.

***INTERMISSION***

While we're waiting for a response, here's a quote I just happened to stumble across, and though I'd post. It's from an article entitled "Strategies of Dissimulation in the Pseudosciences" by Jacques van Rillaer (1991), discussing Karl Popper, philosopher of science, on pseudosciences such as psychoanalysis. It's not without relevance to the discussion:

You're the one attacking Christianity and making, to use your word, vacuous claims. You haven't answered any of my questions in regards to so-called claims my religion makes. If you want to hang on to your delusions or intellectual dishonesty, that's your problem, not mine.

I believe that the Bible should be taken metaphorically. It cannot be taken literally or historically because,
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... tions.html
http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/page/ ... radictions

You mean because a website says so? And biased websites at that? Just because a website says something doesn't make it true. Yet another red herring. Give me two Bible contradictions you're interested in and we'll go from there.

???? Choose any of the hundreds given at the site