Are you a "good" Christian, a not practicing Christian, or an Atheist? (1 Viewer)

[Matth]

I'm Catholic legally. Today religions are still transmitted by parents. You got baptism when you are 1 year old, and that's one of the reasons because of which I hate this religion : No fuc*ing infant can understand anything of religion!

Actually, I'm Atheist as a matter of fact, I don't believe in the Christian God, or of any existing Religion. But, as I said, I'm "branded" as Christian.
I attend the Italian Scientific College (Liceo Scientifico) and you can imagine how this can be influent in my choose (I see worlds with objective eyes). Speaking about the problems of Catholicism would be a bit difficult, since I would never end. But, there are surely better religions.

I don't go to Church, I don't pray, I don't believe to miracles, or anything similar. I celebrate the Christian festivities (like Christmas), but not in the right religious manner, only in the "party" side of them (gifts, food, and so on).


What about you?

 

[Puddin]

Religion is stupid and pointless.

 

[Noodl]

This thread will only go bad. I can assure you. Controversial threads never settle well.

Anyway, I'm a Christian in a very loose term, I professionally sing tenor, also in my church choir (Anglican CofE), so I do attend every service I must, but even so, I'm not too bothered, so I don't really care much. I just sing there because I enjoy it and other reasons, not because I'm devout or anything.

No one will get any point across here, because nearly everyone suffers from belief superiority and have a closed mind, like the above post.

 

[Matth]

This is just an informative-colloquial thread. So, no controversies, guys, please.
I believe in peaceful discussions :grouphug:

 

[Da Random]

I'm an atheist myself since I see no point in believing of something that never really existed, sure it's fine to believe in what you want. But don't you come to my door and ask for money just because someone said so.

(No hate, but I am more into the "logic" part of life)

 

[Solid]

I celebrate the Christian festivities (like Christmas)

Which also aren't really all that christian due to the majority of them having pagan roots.

@Topic: I think most of the guys regularly visiting this forum already know I'm batshit insane. Regardless of that it would make me a little bit more sane if all religions could just disappear

 

[Matth]

I more agree with Oriental Asiatic "religions", which are not religions effectively, but lifestyles. For example, Confucianism.

Giordano Bruno was an Italian magic-philosopher lived in the 16th Century, dead and burned alive by the Church.
He was one of the 3 most open minds of those centuries, and that's why he died in that way.
He thought (among his doctrines) that men didn't evolve mentally, but the opposite: indeed, instead of the Ancient Egyptian religion (which was more open to nature and with a better relationship with gods and humans), the Christians made themselves slaves of their opinions and of any possible God.
I simply agree on him, and not only for this doctrine.

 

[Chillix]

@Topic: I think most of the guys regularly visiting this forum already know I'm batshit insane. Regardless of that it would make me a little bit more sane if all religions could just disappear

Let me guess, you're a satanist?

 

[EvoWarrior5]

@Noodl, singing for a church choir doesn't make you a Christian, not even loosely. One is a Christian at heart, not just because of a choir.

@Matt-ers?, I don't feel like baptism at birth marks anyone or anything as a Christian. The point of baptism is to take it when you are ready to fully change your life around and devote it to God. In other words, a decision you make when you grow older. What parents say about them baptising their children so that they can make the choice for themselves later doesn't make sense; you can't devote your life to God if you haven't consciously chosen so. Additionally, a baptism is being fully submerged for a short period of time, signifying the drowning of your older self as it were, and re-emerging as a full, devout Christian. I don't know what they do in Italy, but in the Netherlands they just kind of pour water over your head. That's not even proper baptism. So even though I was baptised as a baby, I don't feel like I've been "legally marked" anything.

Maybe there's a different kind of baptism for babies that works differently and that I am unaware of. What I know about baptism I have stated above, and to have your baby baptised doesn't make sense to me.

As for my own religious feelings: I read up on some Bible lecture a while ago because I needed it as research for a religious story I was writing (Noodl knows exactly what I'm talking about). At some point I did feel like it would be amazing if it was all true, and I wanted to believe, in a way. But that subsided quickly. I guess that defining my feelings with a solid term would make me an agnost. I don't believe in anything solid but I do like the idea of the potential existence of a higher power, whether it be a God or Fate or something else. I wonder if there's a better suited term for that.

I don't expect that I will ever become a Christian. As I said, I like the thought of a God and I think some Biblical content sounds amazing, but there are a few things - which I won't go into here - that just make it so that I can't believe. I won't ever be able to believe in the Christian, Biblical God; even if I like the idea of it somewhere.

 

[MrBenedevil]

We all know that religion has stopped the technological development by several years. Not accepting new ideas nor letting anyone change their world perspective. I don't get all this religion and god shenanigans. No offense but I personally think that the people that pray to god for help, are just to scared to face their problems. For me religion is a rip off. Haven't we heard enough stories about people having to pay to get rid of their sins or people that live in luxury with the money of dear believers? I want to point out at this point that I respect anyone that does believe in god or anything else. But seriously, the best argument of the church of all time was: "Can you prove that god doesn't exist?". Can you prove that the rock next to me is not some supernatural god that has created the entire universe? No you can't. Therefore I must pray to the rock. Now most people would now point at Jesus. I personally believe that Jesus is a big lie. He might have been some dude that just wanted to get attention, maybe he was mentally retarded. We don't know that. We can compare him to Hitler. Hitler might have been a bad person, but he was absolutely amazing at giving speeches. He got a whole country to believe the lies that were coming out of his mouth. Maybe Jesus was the same. Must have been way easier for Jesus to fool people back then, because how much of the population could afford education? Close to none. It just seems way to unlikely to me that Jesus ever existed and if he did, that he really was connected to god. People back than were just stupid enough to believe anything. We have proven the church wrong so many times, yet they still believe in their god and what not. We have seen evolution take place in so many occasion (random mutations in nature and other transformations), yet the church still doesn't believe in it.

I don't get it..

But....
I don't want to speak only about the extreme Christians. The Christians that do believe in science mostly have better arguments than the lousy church. My physics teacher for example asked some really interesting questions. What if god was a mathematician? Our theories are somehow capable of explaining nature, which is just fascinating. It somehow all works. We can create things with our theories, that can change nature. How is this possible? Was the whole world made out of maths and god was a mathematician all along? You can't explain what weight is for example. You can't explain it. But the formulas somehow work.

Way better argument than the churches: "Can you prove that god doesn't exists?"
It puts things in a whole new perspective. But also shows you how many possibilities there are. So many ways the universe could have been created. Doesn't have to be just god who created the world. There are some theories that we even live in a virtual world. More of that can be found here: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

This had me thinking for a long time and has changed my mind quite a bit. I don't want to exclude the possibility that god created us. But neither do I want to exclude the 100 billion other possibilities.


My conclusion:

-The church is a rip off
-There is only a slim possibility of god existing and with him Jesus
-Praying to god defines you as scared of your problems (In my eyes)
-There are many many possibilities on how the universe was created
-I'm a potato


I have no idea why I like this topic so much and why I just wasted 30 minutes writing this, but thank you for bringing this up. Apparently I always wanted to clarify my position. Hue Hue.

Sushi is in fact weird...

No paragraphs.. Please don't kill me @Noodl.

 

[EvoWarrior5]

@MrBenedevil, slight correction there: the Pope does believe in evolutionary theory, and with him probably quite a number of other Christians. Article can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/pope-says-evolution-and-creation-both-right

When looking for the article I also saw two or three articles that attempt to debunk this, saying that the Pope didn't actually say this stuff or that it has been misinterpreted but w/e, can't be bothered looking into all that now. It can't possibly be complete bull.

Also, I have not read many theological debates but the ones I have read have never featured Christians saying just "you cannot prove it doesn't exist therefore I am right". They always had their own reasons to believe, and perhaps included that it couldn't be disproven. I think that's pretty natural. There will always be dumb people who only use the shit arguments and I have no doubt that there are Christians out there who are terrible at debates, but I have not seen this happen.

 

[Matth]

Thanks for your answers.
@EvoWarrior5 Same here: some water over your head, and stop. But you can imagine that surely a day you could change religion, who says it's not possible? But this would bring to some problems in society, nowadays.

Guys, I'm Italian, from Naples. I have the Holy See (Holy Shit*) near me, in Rome. You cannot imagine how influent the Church has ALWAYS been toward Italian politics, mentality, society. No country in Europe has logically ever had the same problems.
I, as man of the 21th century, I'm disgusted seeing that in Italy many things are illegal or immoral because of the church (in our constitution, it's written that Italy is a laic country... PPFFF).
Abortion (according to the month that's legal but highly immoral), euthanasia (Illegal and immoral), marriage between gays (not existing), Adoption of children to gays (not existing), in vitro fertilization (illegal and immoral)...

We are in the 21th century... Are we??? No, I don't. That's not fact of extreme Christians or moderate ones,
that's fact of an istitution who has influenced Italians' mentality and has stopped it to 2 centuries ago.

I want everybody to worship who or what they want, but religious who wants to estabilish decisions for others, according to their religion... No, I don't stand it.

 

[Noodl]

-Snip-

It's because of singing there over the years, that I'm confirmed, and believe, don't forget there are various levels to a religion, not just -Christianity- i.e born-again Christians (those are the ones that believe everything in the Bible literally, which I consider quite weird, they're usually strange folk too), and then you've got partial believers etc etc.

We may question wether or not a man named Jesus existed, and wether he did those things. Bear in mind the Bible was not meant literally as some people take it, but are in fact an exaggeration in some books. Personally, I don't do the confession stuff to a guy in a weird stand, which is a Catholic(?) thing anyway. My mother is quite devout now and she enjoys her faith. I share a similar view to my father, who recently converted from a rigid atheist to an attending Christian, but in a different way. An important take on religion in my opinion, is that it's a very free subject, and each person may practice and interpret in the way they like, and it's pivotal they are not shot down, or denied or whatever so for doing so. Anyway, my father and myself believe not that there is an almighty God above that does all sorts who will take care of our sins blah blah blah, but that there is some sort of spiritual power in existence, and that Christianity itself, and Jesus in the Bible set out a way of life to follow that is good, that being the some of the commandments etc etc, although that seems obvious, I don't want to explain anymore, but there's more to it than that.

It's very important not to just belittle people because of the way they practice. Each to their own, remember.
You'll actually find that most Christians you speak to, possibly excluding born-agains, are quite open minded to scientifics and other explanations, very few, only literal believers will debunk scientific theory. The theories and religions co-exist.

 

[EvoWarrior5]

About the Bible, that's because it is the "Word of God", and supposedly every writer was spoken to by God and wrote according to His will.

Admittedly, below that small statement I went on a bit of a rant, opening up on just why I cannot believe. I'm putting it in spoiler tags so people can decide for themselves whether to read it or not.

Spoiler

One of the reasons I cannot believe is just because of that. There's horrible, twisted stuff in the Bible: about murdering homosexuals; slavery and the (non-existent) rights of women; and other stuff. Also a lot of contradictory things in differrent sections of the Bible. I wouldn't accept an argument from a Christian saying "yea that bad stuff was just of their time, but that's not from God" <-- no. It's either the Word of God or it's not. If you start saying that some sections are wrong or simply only of that time and now dated, then what can we still trust in the Bible? What's left to base your trust on?

Also, there are how many religions over the world? Probably hundreds, if not exceeding a thousand or two. They're common in every culture, and they're all different. This could either be because a) there definitely is a God and this is universally recognised, except the vast majority are wrong or b) humans just tend to have religions for particular reasons. I'm going with option b on that one, personally. Humans are inclined to assign agency to things that we find hard to explain, this is hardwired into our brains. When bad things happen to us, we tend to wonder whether someone is behind it, so that we are aware. But when no human can be behind it, we wonder: could there be an almighty being who created us and is punishing us? That's one of the reasons every culture has a form of religion. Secondly, religion is convenient in an altruistic society. If you tell people that there is an invisible deity that will punish you for overstepping the social boundaries, sure as hell people will become scared and be a lot more inclined to follow the social rules. That is what religion has been used for time and time again; I don't need to elaborate on that, everyone knows about those things. Hell being of course the prime example.

 

[MrBenedevil]

the Pope does believe in evolutionary theory

In all honesty. I don't trust the pope since there are so many incidents where bishops and other people are abusing money donated to churches for their own use. They live in luxury and only have to do a few things to make the people happy. Who knows if more people profit from the peoples charity money.

Also, I have not read many theological debates but the ones I have read have never featured Christians saying just "you cannot prove it doesn't exist therefore I am right".

In fact even my religion teacher tried to debate with us. We smashed his arguments, but he kept repeating:"Can you prove that it wasn't god?". Got me very angry. Most of the time the extreme religious people just resort to this argument, which I have seen in quite a few debates(Even though all German debates on television are shit). Yes indeed I have no hobbies.

 

[Matth]

What I continuosly say is:
People give too much importance to religion, whatever religion it is.
I don't understand why. Ye, there could be a God, and so on, but...
Who cares?? Worship it, if you want, but not anymore! Men are the key of the progress of the humanity, not any God.
Worship scientists and famous inventors, then ...

Too much importance and relevance is given to religion.

 

[Solid]

Let me guess, you're a satanist?

Being a satanist would imply that I accept the bible, acknowledge the word of god as the truth and do the exact opposite because I'm such a rebel. It's just beyond laughable.

You can't explain what weight is for example.

??? Yes, yes you can.

 

[MrBenedevil]

??? Yes, yes you can.

Bad example as I just remembered that weight is defined. Kg for example by a silicon ball. But I could ask further and further until you couldn't explain me the things anymore, which is what I was trying to say.

 

[Puddin]

God doesn't exist.

 

[Chillix]

God doesn't exist.

When I was small dad told me one time that when its raining it means that god is pissing on us.