A christian question

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Well, I was almost hoping for an individual case study.

I think that's simply because it's harder, generally speaking, to give up a long-held set of beliefs in favor of a new one, rather than taking up a new set of beliefs were none were previously held. But it may just be coincidental: the majority of people in prison are religious because the majority of people are religious.

This is also another seemingly unrelated correlation. I've heard this one before, in fact. It is true that where there tend to more churches, there also tends to be more crime. The reason being? As populations increase, people tend to build more buildings, including churches. Also, as poulations increase, people tend to commit more crimes. Some communities, sadly enough, have never had effective law enforcement. This is very much the problem in many African American communities.

Yes, but there are disproportionately few atheists in prison -- 0.2%, compared to 8% in the general population. That anomaly is too large to be coincidence.

I agree the evidence is not entirely conclusive, and doesn't show causation even if the numbers are correct, but it's still food for thought, and it definitely casts some doubt on the claim that there is a correlation between religiosity and social stability.

Jeremy

If the high crime rate is in correlation to a larger population, then New York City, LA and Chicago should have a higher crime rate. And as for their being more churches because of their being more buildings, those cities have more buildings than any of the cities in the FBI top 10. But they, on average, have far less churches per capita and larger percentages of people who aren't regularly practicing their religion....if they have one.

As for the comment about ineffective law enforcement in African-American communities, what does that have to do with high crime rate in the South? Are you saying that they're more likely to committing crimes and the South has a high crime rate due to its large African-American population? If you are, why do you make that assumption and what is it based on? New York, LA and Chicago have, not only large black communities but many other minority groups as well and they still don't have the crime rate the South does.

No, that's not what I'm saying. There was a similar statistic involving African American communities. There is a disproportionately high number of crime commited by African-Americans, yet it is also a little known fact that it is also African-Americans who complain the most about crime, which means that the reason for such a high African-American crime rate is simply because there is less effective law enforcement in their communities. I suspect something similar may be the case in the Bible belt.

That is something I've noticed about my home town. The criminal element here has absolutely no fear of the police. Heck, a short time ago, someone got robbed......in front of a police station. Contrast that to Ohio. Those cops will kill you if they so much as think you're a danger to them. And as far as lesser crimes, they're not ones you'd want to deal with.

I remember when I went to the amusement park while visiting my mother in Ohio. I was waiting at the bus stop for her to pick me up and the city bus pulled up. Well, as some of the park visitors boarded, apparently, they were causing a little bit of a ruckus, no real trouble but just rowdy behavior from the teenagers on board. A police officer came, got on board and laid into those people like he would've had them put in jail if they breathed wrong. You can bet they quieted down after that.

I don't see that same assertiveness from the police in my home town, I guess, since this is the South and people are more laid back. But that laid-back Southern hospitality doesn't deter crooks and we're, unfortunately reaping the results.

True.


I think that many Christians that "arent fine with non-believers" are also not "okay" with other religions deep down. I also think that the push by some to "eleminate" Christian things from the public is also to blame. Some stores no longer allow their associates to say "Merry Christmas" because they are scared they will Offend. Shoot a monkey, the holiday has become so commercial now anyhow, I cant see how anyone could that deeply offended.... But I digress......

I am "Christian" but I dont have any issues with other religions, or those with NO religion, so long as they arent committing crimes in the "name" of that religion or attempting to discirminate based on their beliefs. Then I dont care for it so much. Most Christians shun me because I dont adhear to the "BIBLE is the only holy word" theroy. I feel, personally that is, that reading other religious texts, and understanding other religions is the path to true peace. I also dont think that Heaven is only open to the followers of X or Y and no others. I had many friends in school that didnt believe, or that believed in a different way than I. I used to only date "good Christan guys". I had one that went to church with me every sunday, and helped in Sunday School that I taught, and we read the Bible together; but he also hit me and verbally abused me and cheated on me. I can see now, that being a Christian isnt the defining factor in who is good and who isnt. I mean look at the KKK and the "National Socialists". They claim to be Christians and yet they want to suspend rights to everyone that isnt Aryan. That is aginst the "love thy Neighbor".....


I also think that people fear change and things they dont understand. they also fear people that want to suspend a freedom they have enjoyed (religion and speech), and NO ONE, not the athiests, christians, or anyone else, wants to have someones views FORCED DOWN THEIR THROATS. That is a huge factor as well.

But the United States was founded on many freedoms. The first amendment provides for the Freedom OF Religon, not freedom FROM religion. In other words, it was craftaly worded by the founding fathers to allow for all religions to be accomadated. Many of the fouunding fathers were deists (spelled wrong I know) and they made it so any one religion would not be the "state" religion, but all religions (or none at all) would be acceptable.
Woah, dont tell anyone else in the Bible belt I said this, or I'll be run out of town.... lol.

Same here.


-SpaceCase

Having just found my long and arduous way to God in my own way, my preferrment is for a) people who have thought about spirituality and come to their own conclusions, including not to believe (like my father); b) people who haven't thought much at all, and c) people who try to force their beliefs on others in a violent or non-violent way.

It goes double for politics. I am fascinated by dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, particularly their propaganda and social systems, and often use Soviet iconography when thinking about the way politics is run, but thank my lucky stars I never actually had to live in the USSR itself and that I had the freedom to campaign for a party that lost the election. I shared a flat in Poland with the daughter of a [nationality deleted] who had to flee the country after her father lost an election, so I understand it all to well.

Essentially my religion is a part of me, not me a part of it, so I cannot condemn anyone who has thought about it and come to their own conclusions to Hell for all eternity. I know I've felt God near at times, but it took a long time (twenty-six years in my case) to be able to sit in church and really understand Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection, so I do not feel able to judge others on what they may or may not feel for themselves. My father rejected Christianity because of some of St Paul's attitudes to women, but he is as good a person in my eyes as Benedict XVI. Similarly most pagans are good people and often have a stricter moral code than most people who consider themselves Christians.

The social aspects of a religious community (e.g. my little village in Berkshire struggling for two years with no rector, which has actually brought the parish together in adversity, the Bible Belt, etc.) are interesting but for me religion is really one's personal faith and as I said, it has taken me 26 years to accept the Jesus part of Christianity (God I had no problem with whatsoever). Even then I am reluctant to go out shouting "hallelujah" on the street, though I was passing the Christian bookshop and popped in to speak to the lady there who counselled me through the darkest period of the last few months and was part of my own spiritual path.

Christians, at least, many Christians, are NOT fine with other religions.
I myself recieve death threats everyweak 'cause I'm Wiccan.

I don't know what sort of place you live in NC, but when we lived in the Midwest, my mother was held in a sort of subtle, dangerously mounting contempt by the entire community of gossips, all of whom went to the same parish, knew everyone else in town, never lived anywhere their entire lives, and had their collective head so far up the collective spchincter that daylight was a myth to them . . .

Sorry I never got back to you on all this. It's just that I didn't have time. I'm too busy doing other things. I'm glad to see that you are all still having fun. I wanted to post another post with this message in it so that I can find it and read it when I get a chance.

Adios.

Then they are not real Christians. Christ's main tenet was "Love thy neighbour as thyself" and I assume Wiccanism has a similar moral precept. Christianity was posited as a way of reducing the Ten Commandments of Jewish law down into one. Just because I am a Christian I have no problem with any other faith or non-faith (it took me a long time to work this one through). However anyone who tries to make me feel ashamed of being what I am will find they have been playing with fire.

However man is not perfect and has often twisted religious morality for their own social or political ends. Basically what the death threats mean is that you are viewed as an outsider in a community with strict rules and thus to narrow-minded people labelling themselves as "Christians" you are a heretic and must be destroyed. This bears as much relation to Christianity itself as Adolf Hitler's beliefs did to the theory of evolution.

I've noticed from various transatlantic experiences that Europeans are less likely to do that than Americans, who tend to feel that there is an either/or in a debate (Christianity v atheism, left-wing/liberal v conservative, pro-Bush v anti-Bush etc) rather than shades of grey. I don't intend to generalise or direct this at anyone here in particular (and I'm amazed on this forum that I have yet to run into a thread like this that degenerates into name-calling, which I find happens on many other forums). For example, the film "Contact", where scientific rationalism goes head-to-head with Christianity, makes no sense to me as a European, whose best and most rationalist science teachers were also Christians who made no secret of their faith. As a Christian watching that film my instinct was to follow the scientist rather than the preacher and a similar debate in Britain wouldn't have even got off the ground.

See this excellent article: http://www.truthdig.com/dig/page3/200512_an_atheist_manifesto

Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality—belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society’s health.

Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.
These facts notwithstanding, religious moderates tend to imagine that human conflict is always reducible to a lack of education, to poverty or to political grievances. This is one of the many delusions of liberal piety. To dispel it, we need only reflect on the fact that the Sept. 11 hijackers were college educated and middle class and had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

Most of the Fundamentalist Xtians I've met have been quite hypocritical in that they don't even live the philosophies of Jesus who preached tolerance and nonjudgmentalism.

I just have to roll my eyes. They don't even see that they're not even following their OWN religion.

And of course, due to this large fundamentalist surge (it's like an epidemic), politics and religion in the US are once again wholly enmeshed. And now making a vast majority of the larger decisions for a multinational, multi-religious nation. It isn't fair.

Politics corrupts Religion and Religion corrupts Politics. This is why they are separated.

However the term fundamentalist has been twisted politically as well. I am a fundamentalist Christian in that I believe in:

The Five Fundamentals of Faith

1. The Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

2. The Virgin Birth.

3. The Blood Atonement.

4. The Bodily Resurrection.

5. The inerrancy of the scriptures.

Yes I will agree that some Christians who call themselves fundamentalist can be hypocritical just as other Christians can be.
What is interesting is your definition of fundamentalism.

I am one that takes the five fundamentals seriously.
However there are others that take the concept into the realm of behavior and state that you have to not do this, this, this and this, which ends up in legalism, just like the Pharisees in Jesus's day.

Don't get me started on the whole "seperation of church and state" fallacy. There is no such thing. The First Amendment simply states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Also, I believe to seperate politics and religion in the way that I assume you mean (correct me if I am wrong) would be that one's private religious affairs would have no bearing on one's public life. If so this would make the person just as much a hypocrite as the one's you condemn in your post.

Christians should seek political participation and representation as they go about their duties of evangelizing the world. There are numerous perspectives on why Christians should be involved in the political process: duty, responsibility, natural leadership, love of our brothers and sisters, a basic compassion for mankind, etc. One perspective that too often goes unnoticed is the concept of submission to government. Submission to the governing structures requires participation.

While the words "separation of church and state" do not appear verbatim in the Constitution, that is certainly the intent of the First Amendment. Thomas Jefferson himself said as much; he coined the above phrase to describe the meaning of the establishment clause. Centuries of Supreme Court decisions agree with him.

Also, an often-overlooked fact is that every state constitution contains even stronger prohibitions regarding religious entanglement than the First Amendment.



The part I have the most trouble with is why so few Christians realize just how disastrous a marriage of politics and religion is, for both of them. Can you name a single theocracy, Christian or otheriwse, that's turned out well? When the Catholic church had political power, the religious freedom of other Christian denominations was severely curtailed, and many atrocities were committed in the name of God. And you don't have to look farther than the Middle East to see the same thing today.

It's the arrogance of those who advocate theocracy that bothers me most of all. Despite hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary, they think that their theocracy will turn out just fine.

Jeremy