Being A Christian

[Dibbles old paperboy]

Those suggesting that Christianity has been the cause of most wars obviously weren't listening in class during lessons on 20th century history (you know the century when we all began questioning the Bible and being so well educated we put our faith in science and humanism instead).

All the most brutal killing regimes were secular governments persecuting religious groups and removing religion from the schools curriculum.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

I'm amused at the suggestion that a chaplain being given a 5 minute spot in an hour-long assembly where most of the time is spent hearing about litter in the playground, reminders not to throw wet toilet roll on to the toilet ceilings or about pupils scoring a goal for the football team or getting a badge at the BB or getting a bronze medal for swimming is seen as a situation where Christians indoctrinate and brainwash kids so terribly well that in the words of IOBS church attendances are falling.

As ever, don't let truth get in the way of a snappy soundbite.

It's far more likely that any indoctrination and brainwashing happens in the opposite direction from the one you suggest.

Last week I helped at a religious observance event for P5-7s in the local area... no evidence was found for any pupils arriving at the event with levels of Bible knowledge suggesting their school years had been spent subjecting them to regular episodes of Christian indoctrination and brainwashing!

It appears that you are the one avoiding the truth if you think that preachers of whatever persuasion only get 5 minutes to inform children of their views. The prayers alone would amount to 5 minutes at primary school level.

However even if you were correct, that 5 minutes you speak of is still 5 minutes more than they hear about Confucius which was what my original post was replying to.

Thanks for agreeing my point :-)

Edited March 3, 2016 by TPAFKATS

[insaintee]

There are probably more people about just now that know things that Confucius said than know things that Jesus (reportedly) said. What exactly does it prove?

Well first of you'd probably be wrong. Although yes lots of people do know Confucius who promoted traditional Chinese religion and ancestor worship. As you say it does not really matter and proves nothing.

The bible says that she wasn't made pregnant by a man. It doesn't say that she had never had sex, there's a difference.

FFS virgin birth is almost achievable by modern science. If you believe in god why would you assume he is less capable of carrying out "miracles" then we are. Parthogenisis (true virgin birth) is fairly common in the natural world so it's at least conceivable that there might be some way to induce parthogenisis in humans.

Edited March 3, 2016 by insaintee

[insaintee]

Only one three out of those categories has caused millions of deaths and caused countless needless misery for billions throughout history.

But even then I'm pretty sure cats are evil too

[insaintee]

But why would you discount those gods? You are more than willing to believe in one God, why not many? There's an old saying that the difference between an atheist and a Christian is that the atheist just believes in one less god than the Christian. You've already discounted thousands of gods, I've just discounted one more.

If there is a god then, at most, only one religion, or sect within a religion, can be right with the rest of us going to the bad fire. This means that the vast majority of humans are going to some sort if hell. Why would a god create a world where the vast majority of his beloved creations were going to hell? Especially when, at some point in their lives, most people would have been "wanting" to believe in something greater than themselves. If he exists then he is an evil bastard, though I prefer to look on it as proof that he doesn't exist.

Who says I am?

If God exists then "he" gets the blame for all the ills of the world. but if he does not exist then who's responsible. You really need some evidence that if he exists he's to blame and not us.

Who says the vast majority of us are going to hell?

[FTOF]

But even then I'm pretty sure cats are evil too

Well they've certainly killed millions of rodents and caused them untold misery.

[Dibbles old paperboy]

It appears that you are the one avoiding the truth if you think that preachers of whatever persuasion only get 5 minutes to inform children of their views. The prayers alone would amount to 5 minutes at primary school level.

However even if you were correct, that 5 minutes you speak of is still 5 minutes more than they hear about Confucius which was what my original post was replying to.

Thanks for agreeing my point :-)

I work in over a dozen schools and do over 50 school assemblies per year and am sometimes given 5 minutes for my slot in an assembly.

Can you name one current school chaplain whose prayers in a school assembly last for 5 minutes alone?

[Dibbles old paperboy]

I don't see how anyone could be a Christian and go fight a war . Apart from going against the 6th Commandment(I think) , what about the whole Christian ethos of turn the other cheek ? Certainly, WWl which was fought mainly in Europe was ostensibly fought by one group of "Christians" against another group (with the obvious exception of Jonny Turk.). .

I think all those "powers" in the Great War, whether the Central Powers of the Entene , all claimed to have god on their side. Possibly , many of the combatants thought they were doing the Christian thing too by gassing their fellow human being. State sponsored murder on an industrial scale to achieve the square root of he f**kin haw . Organised Christianity failed the populace big time during that whole period . At the end of the day , was the Czar any better or any worse than old Kaiser Bill or German George. .

Pro Patria et Diem is just a terrible use of phrase . .

I could see why a Christian would have signed up to fight against Hitler, especially given what we know in hindsight about what the Nazi's were doing.

While I don't disagree about the churches in 1914 being too compliant with their governments' pro-war propaganda, ultimately it was the governments / royal families of Europe that declared war on each other. To single out the churches as failing the populace and claiming they were as much to blame as the political leaders who took their countries into war over a minor incident and kept the slaughter going for 4 years and sanctioned the use of chemical weapons does stretch credulity a bit too far.

Churches played a large part in the formation of CND and the opposition to the war in Iraq.

[oaksoft]

Its the biggest religion on the planet.

Decline perhaps in the UK, try visiting a church overseas, certainly no sign of decline there, and to be fair while many churches in the UK are in decline some are booming, a number of them in the West of Scotland

Fair enough but the pair of you have just ruined my bloody night with that.

I hope you are happy at depressing me.

[oaksoft]

Those suggesting that Christianity has been the cause of most wars obviously weren't listening in class during lessons on 20th century history (you know the century when we all began questioning the Bible and being so well educated we put our faith in science and humanism instead).

All the most brutal killing regimes were secular governments persecuting religious groups and removing religion from the schools curriculum.

Why only consider the 20 th century?

Christianity has been around 2000 years. Consider it in its entirety.

[saintnextlifetime]

I could see why a Christian would have signed up to fight against Hitler, especially given what we know in hindsight about what the Nazi's were doing.

While I don't disagree about the churches in 1914 being too compliant with their governments' pro-war propaganda, ultimately it was the governments / royal families of Europe that declared war on each other. To single out the churches as failing the populace and claiming they were as much to blame as the political leaders who took their countries into war over a minor incident and kept the slaughter going for 4 years and sanctioned the use of chemical weapons does stretch credulity a bit too far.

Churches played a large part in the formation of CND and the opposition to the war in Iraq.

I don't think I was pointing at the churches in particular but more at Christianity as whole . The majority of the troops on the western and eastern fronts probably considered themselves Christian but were still prepared to go and kill as many of his fellow human being as possible. .

My point was simply that , in a Europe that was ostensibly Christian, it simply didnae stop wholesale slaughter on an industrial scale it failed as it had done pretty much since Europe became Christian . .those monarchs were supposed to be Christians as well but some of them certainly must have had evil purposes along with guys like Bismark , a guy that was probably a megalomaniac. .

The science guys you mention ,were more than happy enough to develop the weapons but they had been for a while before that too. .

[Dibbles old paperboy]

Fair enough but the pair of you have just ruined my bloody night with that.

I hope you are happy at depressing me.

To add to your misery, secular governments intent on removing the influence of religion in schools, universities and public life were the 20th centuries biggest state killers and would tend to indicate that atheist / humanist countries are even less tolerant than 'religious' ones.

Nazi Germany: almost 21 million killed from 1933-45

Communist Russia: 10 million minimum killed during Stalin's era, and a maximum estimate for 1917-87 of 62 million un-natural deaths.

Chairman Mao's China: estiates between 40-70 million killed from 1949-75

Pol Pot, Cambodia 1975-9, 1.7m

Kim Il Seung, North Korea 1948-94, 1.4m killed in purges and concentration camps

someone like Idi Amin's 300k in 5 years in Uganda looks like small fry slackerism in comparison... but hey its the pesky church that causes all wars and is the source of much intolerance and the world will be a better place when religion dies a death.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

I work in over a dozen schools and do over 50 school assemblies per year and am sometimes given 5 minutes for my slot in an assembly.

Can you name one current school chaplain whose prayers in a school assembly last for 5 minutes alone?

"Sometimes"

Once again you've made my point for me ;-)

I don't know the names of school chaplains, current or past.

[Dibbles old paperboy]

"Sometimes"

Once again you've made my point for me ;-)

I don't know the names of school chaplains, current or past.

That's OK if you don't know chaplains names, I'll settle for school names where chaplains pray for at least 5 minutes during a school assembly.

[saintnextlifetime]

To add to your misery, secular governments intent on removing the influence of religion in schools, universities and public life were the 20th centuries biggest state killers and would tend to indicate that atheist / humanist countries are even less tolerant than 'religious' ones.

Nazi Germany: almost 21 million killed from 1933-45

Communist Russia: 10 million minimum killed during Stalin's era, and a maximum estimate for 1917-87 of 62 million un-natural deaths.

Chairman Mao's China: estiates between 40-70 million killed from 1949-75

Pol Pot, Cambodia 1975-9, 1.7m

Kim Il Seung, North Korea 1948-94, 1.4m killed in purges and concentration camps

someone like Idi Amin's 300k in 5 years in Uganda looks like small fry slackerism in comparison... but hey its the pesky church that causes all wars and is the source of much intolerance and the world will be a better place when religion dies a death.

After the '45, there was certainly a move in this country to "clear" a people of a certain creed/culture . I don't know what the figures are for deaths but there were atrocities, starvation, depravation from these clearance that lasted almost 70yrs and totally changed the face of this country . . for ever

[Reynard]

How does that disprove what he said?

Because its increasing in size

Has done since it became an organised religion.

He may or may not be correct about his own patch of soil. I don't think there's much doubt that "churchgoing" is not at levels in the uk it used to be. But thats not to say folk have necessarily dumped the entire thing or that this cant change.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Reynard

[rea]

I've already mentioned this recently when talking about praying, but here goes again ...

Christians believe that god has a plan, demonstrated when they say things like (funnily enough) "It's all part of god's plan" when an infant dies.

Christians believe that god is infallible.

Christians, therefore, believe that god has an infallible plan.

Christians pray to god and ask him to do stuff, like "Bless this food".

God will only do the things asked of him in prayer if they are part of his infallible plan, otherwise he won't. So what's the point in praying? The things will either happen or they won't regardless of whether they are prayed for or not.

God's infallible plan therefore includes everything that happens, the good and the bad. The idea (or usual excuse) of free will goes straight out the window.

If free will therefore, in reality, doesn't exist in the Christian universe then why have commandments that tell you what to do (or not to do) when you have no choice over what you do? If free will doesn't really exist then why punish people for committing "crimes" when they had no choice in the matter? Or maybe punishing people for doing what god has made them do is all part of his infallible plan.

If free will does exist then it means that god's plan is not infallible as the actions of even one person could change the plan. If the plan is not infallible then god is not infallible. If god is not infallible then his "promise" about eternal life cannot be 100% relied upon and he is just telling you what you want to believe.

So, if you believe in an infallible god with a plan then you logically cannot believe in free will. Whether or not there is a god, I prefer to think that I "live or die" by my own choices and will take my chances on eternal damnation.

If only metaphysics was that simple.

Take prayer for example, and as an example the best known prayer...The Lords prayer have a read and you will see that only one part of it is about a "plan" the rest is about lots of other things that do not fall into your argument above.

If you want to think a bit further about Free Will v Divine Sovereignty then the paradox certainly predates Jesus, have google at three things, Aristotles "sea battle" william of Ockham and "circumstance" and more recently have a think about Schrodingers Cat, where the observation defines the outcome

[rea]

Christians believe that there is only one god, even though, in the bible, god talks about other gods. Are you saying that you are not a Christian?

I think you need to have a look at a Bible again with and see what God means when talking about other gods.

To start with the use of upper and lower case is an English language construct only, the original Greek and Hebrew have no such linguistic feature.

So the real meaning of any of the dozens of words that we translate to the word god or God have to be read into the context not based on capitalisation...on the basis that God and Lord mean Supreme being and god and lord do not

..for example the "god of this age"

There are dozens of different greek and hebrew words that are translated God or god, so you need to do a bit more work than just saying what you have above

[rea]

I'm not dealing with metaphysics, only logical progression from claims made by Christians or the bible.

I never said that all prayers asked god for something. I should maybe have been clearer.

The discussion isn't about pre Jesus, though.

As for Schrödinger's cat, that depends on whether or not you apply the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics to the experiment, or perhaps the relational interpretation where the cat would also be an observer, the real issue is whether the different observers have the same information.

I dont, Singular Universe for me...or at the very most one at a time.

Lee Smolins book Singular Universe and the Reality of time is good on this and particularly becuase the first half of the book is written by a philosopher

Though i have to say that until we can actually find the 96% of the Universes mass and energy that is missing i think most of this is up in the air

[rea]

You're not trying to blame me for someone else's translation, are you?

I deliberately try not to capitalise god, lord, his, etc. I will capitalise Jesus as that was (allegedly) the guy's name.

Nope but your assertion that God accepts that there is more than one god like him because he talks about them is incorrect as a contextual reading will demonstrate.

At least you accept he was a guy...i am happy that that was his name,

So are you a multiverse guy then?

Edited March 4, 2016 by rea

[Guest TPAFKATS]

That's OK if you don't know chaplains names, I'll settle for school names where chaplains pray for at least 5 minutes during a school assembly.

In Renfrewshire they would account for 5 minutes cumulative not individually.

I understand that there is also a communion every day in RC schools during Lent although this is voluntary not an assembly.

[Reynard]

That's not what you said though, is it?

Considering that the population is growing then it would be logical to assume that the number of Christians is increasing. It was estimated that the number of Christians would increase by about 0.75bn people between 2010 and 2050. This would equate to the same % of the world's population in 2050 as it was in 2010. In the intermittent period (which we're obviously in now) it was estimated that there would be a slight dip before rising again.

Anyway, on a slightly different but related point, lots of people believing in a delusion does not make the delusion any more real than if only a few people believed it.

No. I said it was the biggest religion on the planet.

But it is increasing in size. As is Islam. Islam possibly at a faster rate, I don't know I would need to check. Islam will probably be the biggest religion at some stage mainly because once it becomes dominant you can be killed for apostasy. That hasn't been the case for Christianity for hundreds of years. You wouldnt really be free to voice the opinions you are able to do here once Islam is dominant.

Most of the people I know who declare themselves religion free have simply replaced those sort of beliefs with beliefs in some other philosophy or ideology. I think humans are just wired that way. Fair enough.

[oaksoft]

To add to your misery, secular governments intent on removing the influence of religion in schools, universities and public life were the 20th centuries biggest state killers and would tend to indicate that atheist / humanist countries are even less tolerant than 'religious' ones.

Nazi Germany: almost 21 million killed from 1933-45

Communist Russia: 10 million minimum killed during Stalin's era, and a maximum estimate for 1917-87 of 62 million un-natural deaths.

Chairman Mao's China: estiates between 40-70 million killed from 1949-75

Pol Pot, Cambodia 1975-9, 1.7m

Kim Il Seung, North Korea 1948-94, 1.4m killed in purges and concentration camps

someone like Idi Amin's 300k in 5 years in Uganda looks like small fry slackerism in comparison... but hey its the pesky church that causes all wars and is the source of much intolerance and the world will be a better place when religion dies a death.

You seem absolutely certain that no Christians were involved in those wars.

[oaksoft]

How does that disprove what he said?

It doesn't.

He is confusing absolute numbers with relative change in numbers.

[oaksoft]

Because its increasing in size

Really? Over what period? Since Christianity began? No chance. The peak was probably in the 1800's.

Either way, the fact that something is increasing in size (and I would seriously dispute that) does not make it the biggest thing of its type on the planet.

Edited March 4, 2016 by oaksoft