Why are you still a Christian?

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nausearockpig
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Why are you still a Christian?

#1 Post by nausearockpig » Tue Mar 14, 2017 12:36 pm

What a fun read.

http://ultratechlife.com/blog/why-are-y ... -thorough/

* not sure where I saw this. Maybe there somewhere...

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Bandit72
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#2 Post by Bandit72 » Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:57 am

I never was!

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nausearockpig
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#3 Post by nausearockpig » Wed Mar 15, 2017 3:07 am

Bandit72 wrote:I never was!
Are you sure??? Remember, you don't need to believe in Jeebuz for him to love you!!!

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Hype
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#4 Post by Hype » Wed Mar 15, 2017 9:58 am

Most people are cultural/traditional Christians, not epistemic or practical Christians (let alone moral ones!)... And most people are disposed to feel spiritual in some way, so it gets directed toward whatever culture/tradition they're from. It's no more mysterious than why people retain, or even cling to, their cultures when they emigrate... and it has nothing to do with truth.

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Larry B.
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#5 Post by Larry B. » Wed Mar 15, 2017 10:59 am

Hype wrote:Most people are cultural/traditional Christians, not epistemic or practical Christians (let alone moral ones!)... And most people are disposed to feel spiritual in some way, so it gets directed toward whatever culture/tradition they're from. It's no more mysterious than why people retain, or even cling to, their cultures when they emigrate... and it has nothing to do with truth.
Ah, come off it... being a Christian it's obviously different to being Canadian or British or Scottish or Glaswegian, it's different from mere cultural characteristics, which aren't even static to begin with.

And that thing about "a disposition to feeling spiritual" sounds a bit bullshit, but even if it were true it can be guided by non-Christian parents towards actual real things, such as sciences of art.

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Hype
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#6 Post by Hype » Wed Mar 15, 2017 11:31 am

The success of Christianity has always been insinuating itself into local cultural customs while pretending to offer a universalist Ethics (that really adjusts itself in practice to more or less whatever the existing norms are, or, in the case of Colonialism and its legacy, to maintaining the norms of the culture which brought Christianity, however long ago -- see, e.g., Uganda, Jamaica). Not only that, but it has always been bound up in nationalist sentiments, especially in Europe: think about the Dutch Republic and its war against Spain, the Church of England, the 30 Years War, the various breakups of former Soviet States along ethno-religious lines... and on and on. There's a reason why that old joke best told by Emo Phillips still resonates:



Your second point is fine, but obvious. But of course the same problem Christian parents have with enforcing tradition on their children applies for non-religious parents and their children. As a general rule, children will end up more or less like their parents as far as traditions, beliefs, etc., but sometimes not. See, e.g., the son of murdered semi-famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hare: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... istianity/

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Hype
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#7 Post by Hype » Wed Mar 15, 2017 3:31 pm

If y'all haven't read Russell's famous "Why I'm Not A Christian", here's an interesting part from the beginning of the original lecture he gave:
As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is ‘Why I am not a Christian’. Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word ‘Christian’. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians—all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on—are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?

Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature—namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course there is another sense which you find in Whitaker’s Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things; first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.

But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it concluded the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

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Bandit72
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#8 Post by Bandit72 » Thu Mar 16, 2017 8:42 am

Emo Philips always makes me need to take a breath of air when I watch him :lol:

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crater
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#9 Post by crater » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:47 am

Bandit72 wrote:I never was!
I'm not and to the best of my recollection never once identified myself as Christian or as ever being religious.

Of course I was dragged to different churches by my mother as a kid, but each time she told me she wanted to get me baptized, I refused. For no other reason because at the time I didn't know how to swim and I didn't know how deep the dunk tank at the church was so I was afraid to get in :lol:

I did eventually start attending a church when I was about 14 when I finally relented after being repeatedly invited by a friend. We joined the youth group because that's where all the girls were. I then asked my skater friends to come to the youth group and the major selling point to get them to show up was because the church always took the youth group on field trips. So they started attending too. We got to visit Yosemite a few times, Lake Tahoe, Disneyland and we went to 49ers, Giants and A's games and a few other places for super cheap and it was with a bunch of friends I'd be hanging out with anyways, so it was always cool. We would skate the parking lot or in the gym before the youth group started, sit inside the church and listen to religious garbage for about an hour and then skate home. They also had these things called "After Glows" were we would go to someones house and hangout there. Usually it was at a house with a pool and they would turn into pool parties and as a 14 year old seeing girls in bikinis was always awesome :boobs:

Only we ended up causing such a headache for the youth group leaders (we would prank call their house all the time and at all hours) and not listen to a damn thing they would say that they eventually quit and the new leaders that took over weren't nearly as fun to drive crazy, so we all just stopped showing up one day.

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perkana
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#10 Post by perkana » Thu Mar 16, 2017 6:51 pm

I've been lucky that my parents have never pressured my siblings and me into any religion (I'm an atheist thanks to my brother, I used to be an agnostic just to protect myself from others). And it's hard in Mexico. A lot of people discriminate you (usually hypocrites).
A guy I dated a while ago (he was a Christian) cried because I was going to hell :lol: I thought he was joking at first, but he really was concerned.
I also remember something funny about the bible. A guy once told me and some other people that his wife was reading her baby a passage about someone eating babies and her son started crying like crazy. We had to laugh about that.

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kv
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#11 Post by kv » Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:23 pm

My mom was raised Catholic...She went to Catholic Schools till college...My dad was an atheist...My mom raised me as a Catholic...With weekend church, baptism, first communion, confessions etc.

When I was 13ish she told me I was old enough to decide on my own...Aside from funerals and weddings I've never gone back...These days she only goes then too...I always respected her decisions on how she raised me Catholic then allowed me my own choice.

Never in my life have I ever believed in God.

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nausearockpig
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Re: Why are you still a Christian?

#12 Post by nausearockpig » Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:10 am

kv wrote:///Never in my life have I ever believed in God.
Except for Robert Smith, right?

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