Random Thoughts Thread

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Another thing: Why do people not capitalize God? Whether you treat it as a name or a title, it's a proper noun. Disbelief in him isn't a good reason either; everyone capitalizes Allah and Buddha and even Molech. The only explanation I can think of is scorn Christ and Christians. And that pisses me off.

The word god doesn't have to refer to the Christian one, and in that context it's not a proper noun.

I'm talking about all the times it is referring to the Christian god.

[AppleQueso]

Recent religious discussion has led me to researching a bit. Looking about, it is quite interesting to see how diverse the beliefs of people are. Atheists are pretty central in their belief there is no higher power, but Christians, Muslims, and Jews have highly selected and widespread beliefs within their religions.

Atheists being "pretty central in their belief there is no higher power" is pretty obvious, because that's literally the only belief you'd need to have to be an Atheist. It's about as useful as pointing out that other religions do believe in a higher power.

And there are a lot of different philosophies and whatnot that Atheists can embrace. Secular Humanism is one popular example, and even some Buddhists consider themselves to be Atheist.

One fact I question though is how the surveys and such I've seen have shown certain things- like show atheist numbers as low as 5% of the population in the US. I think it is quite a bit higher than that.

2008 census said it was about 16 percent claiming "no religion", but I've seen numbers as high as around 20, which sounds about accurate to me.

Keep in mind there are also a lot of people who will claim to be religious if asked, but don't actually have religion playing a major role in their life.

@Valkyrie-Favor: I've heard of something referred to as "Cultural Christianity," where an Atheist will choose to live by Christian ideals and principles because they simply think it's a good model for living one's life. Thought that was kinda interesting.

I think most of the time when people fail to capitalize "God" when referring to the Christian God, it's often just plain a mistake on their part, it's pretty easy to overlook after all. If someone's doing it just plain out of scorn, unless they only specifically take issue with Christianity, I doubt they'd capitalize Allah either.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

2008 census said it was about 16 percent claiming "no religion", but I've numbers as high as around 20, which sounds about accurate to me.

Keep in mind there are also a lot of people who will claim to be religious if asked, but don't actually have religion playing a major role in their life.

That number will certainly be growing. Most of my classmates know little about the Bible, and most younger kids know nothing they haven't heard on TV. As the older population dies off and the faithful youth grow more timid, serious religion could become really hard to find. We'll end up with vague superstition, agnosticism, and atheism in the majority.

@Valkyrie-Favor: I've heard of something referred to as "Cultural Christianity," where an Atheist will choose to live by Christian ideals and principles because they simply think it's a good model for living one's life. Thought that was kinda interesting.

This view isn't new; it's as old as the church itself. Paul of Tarsus has this to say to the Cultural Christians and Sadducees in ancient Corinth:

1 Corinthians 15:12-33

15 My friends, I want you to remember the message that I preached and that you believed and trusted. 2 You will be saved by this message, if you hold firmly to it. But if you don’t, your faith was all for nothing.

3 I told you the most important part of the message exactly as it was told to me. That part is:

Christ died for our sins,
as the Scriptures say.
4 He was buried,
and three days later
he was raised to life,
as the Scriptures say.
5 Christ appeared to Peter,
then to the twelve.
6 After this, he appeared
to more than five hundred
other followers.
Most of them are still alive,
but some have died.
7 He also appeared to James,
and then to all
of the apostles.

8 Finally, he appeared to me, even though I am like someone who was born at the wrong time.

9 I am the least important of all the apostles. In fact, I caused so much trouble for God’s church that I don’t even deserve to be called an apostle. 10 But God was kind! He made me what I am, and his wonderful kindness wasn’t wasted. I worked much harder than any of the other apostles, although it was really God’s kindness at work and not me. 11 But it doesn’t matter if I preached or if they preached. All of you believed the message just the same.

12 If we preach that Christ was raised from death, how can some of you say that the dead will not be raised to life? 13 If they won’t be raised to life, Christ himself wasn’t raised to life. 14 And if Christ wasn’t raised to life, our message is worthless, and so is your faith. 15 If the dead won’t be raised to life, we have told lies about God by saying that he raised Christ to life, when he really did not.

16 So if the dead won’t be raised to life, Christ wasn’t raised to life. 17 Unless Christ was raised to life, your faith is useless, and you are still living in your sins. 18 And those people who died after putting their faith in him are completely lost. 19 If our hope in Christ is good only for this life, we are worse off than anyone else.

20 But Christ has been raised to life! And he makes us certain that others will also be raised to life. 21 Just as we will die because of Adam, we will be raised to life because of Christ. 22 Adam brought death to all of us, and Christ will bring life to all of us. 23 But we must each wait our turn. Christ was the first to be raised to life, and his people will be raised to life when he returns. 24 Then after Christ has destroyed all powers and forces, the end will come, and he will give the kingdom to God the Father.

25 Christ will rule until he puts all his enemies under his power, 26 and the last enemy he destroys will be death. 27 When the Scriptures say that he will put everything under his power, they don’t include God. It was God who put everything under the power of Christ. 28 After everything is under the power of God’s Son, he will put himself under the power of God, who put everything under his Son’s power. Then God will mean everything to everyone.

29 If the dead are not going to be raised to life, what will people do who are being baptized for them? Why are they being baptized for those dead people? 30 And why do we always risk our lives 31 and face death every day? The pride that I have in you because of Christ Jesus our Lord is what makes me say this. 32 What do you think I gained by fighting wild animals in Ephesus? If the dead are not raised to life,

“Let’s eat and drink.
Tomorrow we die.”

33 Don’t fool yourselves. Bad friends will destroy you. 34 Be sensible and stop sinning. You should be embarrassed that some people still don’t know about God.

I think most of the time when people fail to capitalize "God" when referring to the Christian God, it's often just plain a mistake on their part, it's pretty easy to overlook after all. If someone's doing it just plain out of scorn, unless they only specifically take issue with Christianity, I doubt they'd capitalize Allah either.

It could be a mistake, but I often chat with people who do this while using otherwise proper grammar. Besides that, most people who scorn God have no personal reason to scorn Allah. They probably don't hate the idea of him, but the impact his followers have had on their lives.

[DinnerX]

"Christianity is incredibly radical" is not a radical statement. There really is nothing else like it. And honestly, wouldn't you prefer an excited youth leader to one who wasn't enthusiastic about serving his God?

In my experience the youth leaders that talked as dsh described didn't have much substance to back up their feelings, which was... irritating.

I always had a miserable time growing up in church, never fit in or made any friends and my grandparents were crazy along with my dad.

Quite often I felt out of place in the church while growing up as well. Part of the time there wasn't even anyone my age around.

http://marc5solas.com/2013/02/08/top-10 ... ve-church/

That article is dead on. I've seen or experienced all of that.

[Xeogred]

Okay I didn't want to say much but now I have too before I pass out.

To sum it up for me, CHURCH sucks. Perhaps the model church should stop pointing fingers at the world and actually consider that the decline in Christianity is due to their own failures? Cue the article I posted above. Like I said above nowadays, most churches we randomly go to over the last few years end up being among the most uncomfortable places I can think of. The messages are generally condemning the government/world, the fake people, the singing, lol. By the book cliche' uninteresting stuff.

It was just a huge pattern for me growing up since we moved around a lot and every church was pretty much the same. Then a few years back I went to some life coaching big group therapy thing, that was slightly faithful and was by far better than anything I had ever gotten out of 15 some years of church (check out #1 on the list there).

But no they're not all bad, not everyone that attends is phony, etc don't get me wrong there at all. I still believe in something, but I'm not sure what. Nor do I think it is bothered by that. I'm just not interested in seeking it right now, but if I were, I'd worship/practice within the comfort of my own privacy and be my own judge.

I still hold onto some beliefs as others are saying, some of the things you pull from it can be good rules to live by. Still too many standards though and just "never enough", which is what really gets me looking back on it all. Like in that therapy thing, it was a had to be there kind of thing and way deeper than I'll make it sound, but the best faithful thing I pulled from it is that God loved Jesus because Jesus was 100% Jesus. People slip up in wanting to be Jesus, someone they aren't, can't, and never will be. Nor does God want that. God made you, to be 100% you.

Of course it can be beneficial to have a role model and all, but hopefully that makes sense and I really believe that line of thought.

If it's attending church and being insanely involved, or firmly believing God doesn't exist, or worshiping the Flying Spaghetti Monster, just better yourself, be the best you can, and be happy. What really matters.

Couldn't help but listen to Xenogears "One who Bares Fangs at God" while I posted this.

[Gamerforlife]

All I'll say about God is that I believe there is one, but I also believe that all religions are a mix of truth and lies. Much of what you read in holy books is just stories stolen from other cultures and civilizations that are changed and altered, much like how Romans bastardized Greek mythology and gave all the gods new names. Ultimately, you don't need a religion to worship or believe in God. However, religion is a crutch that some people just need. True independence is not something they can handle so they need an organization or a book telling them how to live their life. If it helps them live a positive life, than I'm okay with that. More power to them

That's after years of my own research, studying and personal reflection. That's my world view now. I don't personally believe that any human being can truly fathom or really comprehend what God really is, which is another reason why I don't pay much attention to religion. It's trying to take something that is bigger than human comprehension and simplify it

[jinx]

For the indoor/outdoor thing, I would be close to 80/20. I was never really forced to go outside, and even when I did I would either play my Game Boy or act out scenes from my favorite movies/games. I actually spent more time outside as I got older, because my dad thought it was a good idea to show my little brothers outdoors could be fun. We would play a lot of laser tag in my neighborhood after I moved in with my dad and step-mom.
PE sucked. Luckily we were never really forced to do much. I only had two friends, and we would all sit around playing Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Pokemon. We were forced to play Battle-Ball, but when it was just normal PE activities we were allowed to sit around and do nothing.

As a child, I can remember going to church and Sunday school regularly. There was a lot of drama that went on and it tore our family apart. We stopped going when I was around 7 years old, but Christianity was still practiced within our home. Stuff like praying before diner or bed time, the idea of going to hell if we sinned, etc.

Now-a-days, I have a family of my own. We don't practice any religion and I don't necessarily believe in any sort of high-power. Most religions have a similar set of rules and morals, which to me is just a list of common sense things. Don't hurt yourself; Don't hurt others; Don't do "bad" things. I don't feel like getting in a debate about what is "bad" and what isn't, but I'm pretty sure most of us can say murdering somebody is a bad thing, or doing drugs that ruin your life is a bad thing. My daughter watches a lot of Mister Rodger's Neighborhood, but I cut out any episodes dealing with religion (which isn't many surprisingly).

On the other side, my dad has actually started practicing Christianity in recent years. With so many kids, stress after the storm, and him constantly depressed, I think this was a good thing for him. Even though I don't believe in it, he generally seems happier. The only that that stressed me out and pushed us further apart is when he was trying to get me into it. When I went to visit my dad, the last thing I wanted was to have a Bible shoved down my throat. I visited him because I wanted to see my dad, not get a lecture of how better off my life would be if I started going to church again.

So, I guess I'm an Atheist. However, I don't really care either way. Practice your religion and be happy, and let me not give a crap and be happy.

[dsheinem]

That marc5solas post is great. Everyone should read it. I've experienced all this stuff firsthand.

http://marc5solas.com/2013/02/08/top-10 ... ve-church/

That article is dead on. I've seen or experienced all of that.

I saw some truths in that article, but I also felt the article undercut its own logic time and again as regards the "spiritual/scriptural intelligence" of people who leave the church:

They get smart...someone actually treated them as intelligent

most of our churches are sending youth into the world embarrassingly ignorant of our faith

There's an implicit claim here that IF people were treated as intelligent and knew the scriptures/faith with greater depth while being in the church that they would somehow not rebuke the church later.

In my experience, I found that instead it was the very critical/hermeneutic mechanisms the church taught me to use TO become well versed in scripture/faith that also gave me the ability to understand the total intellectual vacuousness of scripture and religion as a whole. So it isn't that "those kids just haven't been taught the REAL Bible" so much as that "the REAL Bible" offers a lot of contradiction and imperfection that can't be reconciled with its self-purported holiness or those of its characters.

I've written about this some elsewhere in the forums, mostly in that now locked "Homosexuality" thread...I'll copy/paste/spoiler some of those thoughts here if newer folks are interested:

Like many agnostics I came to my position after many, many years of practicing a faith. I spent the first 20 years or so of my life attending church 3-4 times a week, leading Bible Studies, and - for at least 10 of them - trying to set something of an example as "the good Christian" since I was the minister's son. Lots of folks had me pegged for seminary. You'd probably be surprised by how much theology I know and how much I know about the line of thinking you've been proposing in general, but I can't really understand its justification anymore in light of an increasing knowledge of a wide variety of interpretations and implementations of Christian doctrine by organized religion (which is at least part of why I left the faith). I also can't abide it's place in national politics, as many of the worst offenders for using the scriptures to sow hate and division seem to have the loudest voices in the discussion of political issues.

I was never "on" a seminary track, but I was a very devout/fully committed/dyed in the wool Christian into early adulthood and plenty of people at church/school thought I'd be heading that way. I believed I had found a way to live in the presence of the lord (hooray for Clapton references!) and believed I "felt" much of what you described above as being "more than conscience" in my day to day life. I struggled with leaving the faith, it wasn't simply an acting out/"I want to sin for a bit" kind of thing and it took many years of going back into/out of church before I finally reached a place where I saw a big enough divide between what I knew to be good, true, and loving and what the church taught about those same things. There was a time where'd I'd have probably been right in line with your thinking on homosexuality or other religious/political issues, but I've been thoroughly convinced of the harm of that way of thinking (on myself and others) over the course of the past 10 years or so.

I'll add that losing that "God voice" in my head was also the lifting of a burden the likes of which I had never known. Owning oneself fully and completely > self-destructive meta-conscience mind games.

Under Christian doctrine I am still a Christian (I confessed my sins, accepted Christ as my savior and "fully" welcomed him into my heart, etc.) and I suppose that if it all turns out to be true, I would end up in heaven on the grounds that once someone is saved they can't lose that salvation (the "prodigal son" fiction applies here again). My mansion wouldn't be very big, but I always saw that "carrot on the stick" thing to be ridiculous/contradictory given that there would be no pride/jealousy/etc. in heaven anyway.

[Luke]

Why won't google let you have a beer with your boss?

[jinx]

I wonder where I can get boiled peanuts around here?
Why the hell are they so hard to find outside of Louisiana/Mississippi?