"Currants Bw..."

[Letters]

Eternal life/damnation as a concept is monumentally wicked, because it plays on people's fear of death in order to instil compliance.

I think in other religions that is arguably true as there is the idea that you have to be 'good' or follow certain rules to get to heaven. In Christianity it's recognised that no-one is actually good enough to get to heaven ("For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"), all deserve hell ("the wages of sin is death") but God made a way by which we could be saved ("For God so loved the world that...", I guess you know the rest).

I see you focus on the "Love the Lord your God" part, that should be a natural reaction to a God who first loved us and sent His son to deal with the problem of sin, the other part about loving your neighbour is the part which shows that Westboro Baptist Church are not the ones who represent the true face of Christianity. They may believe that homosexuality is wrong and scripturally they have good basis for that but the way they obsess over that and treat people cannot be said to be loving. I agree the church has become too liberal but while we were instructed to spread what we believe (The Great Commission at the end of Matthew) it was never supposed to be my coercion. And if we believe there are eternal consequences to people rejecting God why wouldn't we want to tell others?
My definition of Christian teaching is the teachings of Christ. Simply that. By definition, that's what it is. Old Testament laws need to be looked at in the context of that and as part of an unfolding revelation over millennia. It's not about picking and choosing at all, I just told you what Jesus said was most important.

The difference between Jesus and the other people who claimed they were Messiahs of course is that Jesus is alive and the others aren't. I guess we'll probably have to agree to disagree about that.

I don't think many atheists do try and convert people actually. Some do (I'm looking at YOU, Richard Dawkins), but most are happy to live and let live. And why wouldn't they be? They may think I am sadly deluded but if they're not following any particularly teaching then why should they care? I worry about the ones who seem so desperate to 'convert' people (Still looking at you, Dawkins). What happened to them that it's not enough for them to simply not believe, they have to insist others don't either.

I have discovered from experience that I will never argue someone into faith, the bloke who was preaching on Sunday related an experience when he was talking to an athiest on a plane, they talked for a long time and the athiest had an answer for every point he tried to make so in the end he said "look, can I just pray for you?". The atheist said fine and had a powerful encounter with God. If you're interested I can upload the recording of that part of his talk. It's things like that which affirm my faith - seeing and hearing about the way God has touched people's lives directly.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

To claim that there are eternal consequences for not obeying God very much suggests to me how man made it is, and the fact that it doesn't appear until the New Testament suggests that people were making it up as they go along, the concept of heaven and hell comes from Zoroastrian dualism (the eternal struggle between good and evil in the minds of men).

I tend to take Christopher Hitchens view that heaven sounds like a nightmare, an eternity of grovelling and scraping and gratitude to this supposed benevolent dictator who claims rights over us because he created us.

Therefore I take the view also that not only do I think this is not true, I'm rather glad that it seems to me spurious at best

Am I frightened of dying? I would be different from every other person on the planet if I wasn't. But I'm a poorly evolved ape creature with a far too large adrenal gland....I fear a lot of things. Logically there should be nothing to fear from death because there is nothing afterwards, I may know I am dying but I won't be aware of having died or being dead.

Richard Dawkins is an advocate of his position, I'm not a big fan of his but ultimately I don't think he ever makes the argument that people shouldn't believe, he argues that you have no basis for claiming what you believe to be true anymore than a belief in his oft mentioned "flying spaghetti monster"

I tend to prefer Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens who is more of an anti theist, but even at his most vitriolic on faith I don't think he ever wanted religion to be banned his attitude although very intentionally patronising "I'm glad you enjoy playing with your toy, but I don't want to play with your toy and you have no right to make me play with your toy"

And ultimately for all the smoothing of the rough edges and the call for ecumenism, each religion has at its core a need for supremacy of its doctrine. And although the faithful may believe this is for the benign purpose of bringing salvation, for those who preach to their adherents the desire is control.

It's a very human vice, the desire to control and influence others and some have it more than others.

As for these "spiritual moments" people experience, I would argue people who have them religious or Athiest are not looking upon these experiences in the most objective way. If I hear knocking coming from my attic, is my first assumption that the place is haunted or do I try and at least to rule out the more likely alternatives like a bird having got in or a faulty boiler.
I think there tends to be more of a tendency towards credulity rather than objectively appraising what you went through in such moments.

[Niall_Quinn]

I think in other religions that is arguably true as there is the idea that you have to be 'good' or follow certain rules to get to heaven. In Christianity it's recognised that no-one is actually good enough to get to heaven ("For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"), all deserve hell ("the wages of sin is death") but God made a way by which we could be saved ("For God so loved the world that...", I guess you know the rest).

I see you focus on the "Love the Lord your God" part, that should be a natural reaction to a God who first loved us and sent His son to deal with the problem of sin, the other part about loving your neighbour is the part which shows that Westboro Baptist Church are not the ones who represent the true face of Christianity. They may believe that homosexuality is wrong and scripturally they have good basis for that but the way they obsess over that and treat people cannot be said to be loving. I agree the church has become too liberal but while we were instructed to spread what we believe (The Great Commission at the end of Matthew) it was never supposed to be my coercion. And if we believe there are eternal consequences to people rejecting God why wouldn't we want to tell others?
My definition of Christian teaching is the teachings of Christ. Simply that. By definition, that's what it is. Old Testament laws need to be looked at in the context of that and as part of an unfolding revelation over millennia. It's not about picking and choosing at all, I just told you what Jesus said was most important.

The difference between Jesus and the other people who claimed they were Messiahs of course is that Jesus is alive and the others aren't. I guess we'll probably have to agree to disagree about that.

I don't think many atheists do try and convert people actually. Some do (I'm looking at YOU, Richard Dawkins), but most are happy to live and let live. And why wouldn't they be? They may think I am sadly deluded but if they're not following any particularly teaching then why should they care? I worry about the ones who seem so desperate to 'convert' people (Still looking at you, Dawkins). What happened to them that it's not enough for them to simply not believe, they have to insist others don't either.

I have discovered from experience that I will never argue someone into faith, the bloke who was preaching on Sunday related an experience when he was talking to an athiest on a plane, they talked for a long time and the athiest had an answer for every point he tried to make so in the end he said "look, can I just pray for you?". The atheist said fine and had a powerful encounter with God. If you're interested I can upload the recording of that part of his talk. It's things like that which affirm my faith - seeing and hearing about the way God has touched people's lives directly.

Respectfully (for a change), I don't think most Christians and especially most theologians really understand Christianity or the teachings of Jesus (yes, yes, I'm an arrogant sod, etc, etc). Don't forget, the Book has been (mis)translated many times. Literalism is a huge problem too. As is the understanding of what love actually is. At a best guess I'd say love is a force that provokes an emotional and physical response in humans. Most see it as just the emotion. The instruction to love thy God above all else, for me, is an instruction to remain attuned to the wider, natural forces we are subject to but have shut ourselves off from as the focus on materialism and individualism has intensified. On top of that, I have never found an endorsement for the church in the teachings of Jesus. The church is mentioned and is built on Peter, but it is far from conclusive this suggests a physical church. On the contrary, the church discussed in the Bible seems to be entirely metaphysical. The church is a state of being, a spiritual collaboration. Just because a bunch of Christians carried out a branding exercise and met in a physical location does not endorse a physical church, not by the actual teachings of Jesus at least. The church seems to be a very human endeavour to me, a thing that flies in the face of the intent of Christianity. Christianity is about people, not places, things or the very human trait of leaders who encode language and keep it to themselves as a mechanism of power. It seems inconceivable this is what Jesus intended when he established his church. Once the church is separated from the faith then all the ailments and obscenities of the church can be explained. The church appears to be one of those false idols Christians are warned against and in my reckoning it is the prime candidate for the foretold anti-Christ, the false prophet that preaches love whilst enacting every human evil (sin) imaginable. The deceiver. I'm not a theologian (thankfully) so I haven't had the dubious benefit of brainwashing. Given the many translations, what remains is something I can therefore examine without prejudice, although I fully understand that the "devout" would see such an examination as blasphemy. Which sort of makes my point. The church is all a bit to human for my liking. The mission of the Christian seems misunderstood too. The idea a loving God and his son who insist we have free choice and will be judged upon the choices we make seems to fly in the face of the instruction for Christians to get out there and convert the shit out of everyone. What would be a definition of success? Total conversion? 100% Christianity? How could that be an expression of free will? If there are no disbelievers then how can you have believers? It is only the disbelievers that provide any form of distinction, light has no meaning without darkness, existence has no meaning without a void. How can the mission of God be to eradicate itself through the removal of such distinctions? It makes no logical sense. From what I can determine, "conversion" is by deed (example) rather than word, and there is no end status attached, no prize, no membership. Just a state of being. And they'll know we are Christians by our Love. And they shall be converted when they witness our deeds and understand and experience the force (not emotion) of love. It is well worth chucking out Hollywood and contemplating for a moment what you are actually experiencing when you experience love. There's no soppy, wishy-washy human emotional bullshit going on (unless you can't think beyond the movies). Love is incredibly empowering, motivating, uplifting. It makes us more than we (think) we are. Nothing else touches it apart from it's natural counterpart that must exist, hate, which makes us less than we are. Both have been reduced to mere words. But there are real forces at play and if you give yourself the opportunity to go beyond the very tight confines in which the human has been caged through centuries of indoctrination (particularly by the church), you'll know there are forces at work, one that binds and one that splits. The "people" who have captured this world (the material) know how to use these forces. Divide and rule is a staple through the ages. The abuse of love, compelling one human to destroy another in supposed protection of yet another is the foundation for all war. We are up against some very hateful an very cunning shits and we can look at our iPhones and the listen to the experts (who are so fucking clever they have created this horrible mess all around us, a pit of human suffering in the main) and we can laugh at the notion we don't already know and understand all there is to know about ourselves and our reality and we can laugh even louder at those who refuse ignorance, and every time we do that we make ourselves smaller and the shits who have enslaved us even greater. Conversion in the human sense does exist, except it's us being converted to hate and I think the church has played a very large role in that. I think Jesus would burn the churches down if he came back for a visit. He'd be pissed. I'm sure of it. The only thing I like about the church is the silence. I think the church works best when it is completely, totally silent. Gives you a rare opportunity to think and feel. Then they go and spoil it all by starting up those chants, same stuff every week, in response to the guy in fancy dress. None of it is very convincing. None of it seems useful, but it has proven itself to be very, very dangerous. That doesn't mean there aren't real Christians. Plainly there are, we know them by their deeds. But they could do all that without an encoded society presiding over them, no?

[Letters]

I'm not sure how one can look at a personal experience objectively, they are by definition subjective.
But I'm not sure how you explain what happened to the bloke on the plane. I've heard about too many of these dramatic encounters or healings to dismiss them all.
As I said I can upload the audio if that's helpful.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

I never cease to be amazed by the lengths either those who are christians or those defending christianity go to sweeping the old testament under the rug and pretend as though the Bible only begins with the Book of Matthew.

As I explained earlier on in this discussion (last week) even the teachings of Jesus cannot be considered to be particularly moral, it encourages people to forsake family bonds and planning for the future in order to give themselves completely to him as disciples. By any modern standard this is the behaviour of a demagogue.

I don't personally believe that any virtue that Christianity teaches has any supernatural origin or could not be possible without Christianity, and given that i believe Christianity is a human created fiction it is appropriate to believe that the Church is a necessary component of the faith, because faith can only exist with the negation of doubt or alternative explanations......and this is the foundation of the desire to proselytise.

However whilst I believe Church and Faith are co-dependent, I do accept your point that they are not one and the same

I remember having a discussion with someone whose grandparents were catholic missionaries who spent a lot of the church's money to bring comfort and aid to deprived parts of the world, Now the Church's motivation in doing this is all too clear, even the current Pope has stated that the Church cannot be thought of as "an NGO"....we will help you with poverty if we can sign you up to our cult, i mean save your souls. However these individuals i suspect as jesuits believed in doing good for it's own sake (converting these people is doing for their souls, what you have done for their bodies with food, clean water and medicine).
I may disagree with their belief that they are doing the Lord's work because I believe some people will be naturally compelled to do good works without a divine invigilator, but it doesn't really matter because although i'd rather not see the propagation of christianity, they did help other people.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

I'm not sure how one can look at a personal experience objectively, they are by definition subjective.
But I'm not sure how you explain what happened to the bloke on the plane. I've heard about too many of these dramatic encounters or healings to dismiss them all.
As I said I can upload the audio if that's helpful.

I wasn't dismissing anything.

I am saying the people who have the experiences tend to treat them subjectively, some who are already people of faith do so as a result of "wish fulfilment".

Yes i get the argument that to the unbeliever all signs are dust in the wind, but my point would be that you saying "i don't know how else you explain it" is not evidence for the supernatural (which is at it's core very humanistic, the need to use guesswork to fill in gaps in knowledge), it's just a lack of explanation within the confines of human knowledge/understanding.....saying it can't be explained is not the same as saying it cannot be anything else.

Especially given how little we understand how the brain works still.

[GP]

I think in other religions that is arguably true as there is the idea that you have to be 'good' or follow certain rules to get to heaven. In Christianity it's recognised that no-one is actually good enough to get to heaven ("For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"), all deserve hell ("the wages of sin is death") but God made a way by which we could be saved ("For God so loved the world that...", I guess you know the rest).

I see you focus on the "Love the Lord your God" part, that should be a natural reaction to a God who first loved us and sent His son to deal with the problem of sin, the other part about loving your neighbour is the part which shows that Westboro Baptist Church are not the ones who represent the true face of Christianity. They may believe that homosexuality is wrong and scripturally they have good basis for that but the way they obsess over that and treat people cannot be said to be loving. I agree the church has become too liberal but while we were instructed to spread what we believe (The Great Commission at the end of Matthew) it was never supposed to be my coercion. And if we believe there are eternal consequences to people rejecting God why wouldn't we want to tell others?
My definition of Christian teaching is the teachings of Christ. Simply that. By definition, that's what it is. Old Testament laws need to be looked at in the context of that and as part of an unfolding revelation over millennia. It's not about picking and choosing at all, I just told you what Jesus said was most important.

The difference between Jesus and the other people who claimed they were Messiahs of course is that Jesus is alive and the others aren't. I guess we'll probably have to agree to disagree about that.

I don't think many atheists do try and convert people actually. Some do (I'm looking at YOU, Richard Dawkins), but most are happy to live and let live. And why wouldn't they be? They may think I am sadly deluded but if they're not following any particularly teaching then why should they care? I worry about the ones who seem so desperate to 'convert' people (Still looking at you, Dawkins). What happened to them that it's not enough for them to simply not believe, they have to insist others don't either.

I have discovered from experience that I will never argue someone into faith, the bloke who was preaching on Sunday related an experience when he was talking to an athiest on a plane, they talked for a long time and the athiest had an answer for every point he tried to make so in the end he said "look, can I just pray for you?". The atheist said fine and had a powerful encounter with God. If you're interested I can upload the recording of that part of his talk. It's things like that which affirm my faith - seeing and hearing about the way God has touched people's lives directly.

https://oddshot.tv/s/GEPMcz

Undeniable, tbh.

[GP]

Believe it or not, George isn't at home, Please leave a message at the beep. I must be out, or I'd pick up the phone, Where could I be? Believe it or not, I'm not home

[Letters]

[Niall_Quinn]

Take a chill pill, George will be back soon enough.