40 awkward Questions To Ask A Christian

yes, very much so, all Ive been doing today is eating, smoking dope, fucking, drinking booze.. and havent made salah at all .. I havent even washed my feet all day..

 

Did you read the rest of my post, or just the first 6 words? It would be much more productive to actually respond to my entire post rather than pick and choose the parts that suit your particular agenda, while ignoring the things that challenge you. (sound familiar?)

You haven't said much, and what you have said isn't particularly original or insightful. I was just trying to figure out if you were actually joining the discussion, or just being an asshole.

 

My hero.

 

I just want to food at the end the month.. its the only time I indulge in Pork..

 

When you have something more productive to state, please get back to me.

 

Haha. Ok. That's enough of that for one day.

 

Hi, I don't have a lot of time right now so I will get back to this furthur but to quickly say something and then answer some things... first of all, I am probably not the type of person these questions were even designed for but that was kind of my point... As I mentioned before, my beliefs stem from not just christianity but Buddism and Taoism and just the things I have personally experienced on a spiritual level...
But about the study about prayer.. I did a quick search for the exact study that I have heard about repeatedly (which has been cited almost everywhere, including Time magazine for one lately and didn't find and I don't have the time right now to keep looking but I will find it...), I do remember it said prayer for ANOTHER person who is ill had no effect on outcome and it didn't matter what type of prayer or religion but there has been higher healing when you have some sort of prayer for yourself- they do not know if it is because prayers being answered, or maybe it's just calming or the positive thinking/the faith.. but in any case, to me it doesn't matter why... I personally think prayer keeps you in tune with where you come from (God.. if you wanna call it that... I believe we are all not seperate although we are here on this sphere and when combined we are God, although God is a power greater than us and is not us... but anyway... I will search for the study again and find it. Actually I think I have some papers citing it and it may be easier to look for them and find it that way..)


As for you saying you get the feeling I say "don't take it literally" about the fuckery of the old testament... you would be correct...
I, for one, do not take much of the Bible literally. If I took it literally it would piss me off and I do not care much for the old testament so I'm not going to defend it. I believe the Bible was written obviously not by God or Jesus but by man and a sign of the time that it was written... I believe much of it was meant to be metaphors and I also believe there are books of the bible hidden by the catholic church and for other reasons that show more of the true nature of Jesus... I also believe Jesus was married and other things...

so anyways...do i believe God ever actually talks to people? I don't know. I believe God is in you and all around you and when something comes from a place of God/Love you know it... but if I HEARD God, I'd think mental illness first...

Also, I do not think Jesus meant for the Bible to be taken literally or even meant to be worshiped as the ONLY way to God...
I do believe he is A path...
so like I said, I probably am not exactly the person these questions were meant for...

and..let's see... oh, no, I do not believe God would tell me to kill someone. I'm not gonna go furthur into the old testament right now because I think it's messed up mostly and not the main point I get from the new testament...

 

Oh and the reason I still have been replying to this thread and answering questions though I do not believe I am exactly the type of person it was meant for is... I do not believe that dogmatic fundamentalists are the only people who can use the Bible as part of their spiritual beliefs... people take it in all different levels of whether it's literal or not... I do tend to see much of it as metaphors... but I don't think that's any less a way to take it then literal...

btw, the thing I believe in MOST from the Bible is when Jesus says... "The Kingdom of Heaven is Inside of You" and I can go more into that later and why it's why I base what I believe... but that's it for now

 

As i originally posted i have dealt with some real scum in my life, in business and work, a sociopath neighbor .

The worst scum i have met are some religious people, borderline sociopaths.
They would complain that muslims and we jews refer to others as goys but the christians in some cases are so mercenary it set a new benchmark.

The way these christians imposed on my friends death and funeral was very sad, Keith was an atheist.
Rest in peace my dear friend.

 

I have never met a christian who goes around imposing on atheists funerals... I mean, if you happen to be talking about westboro baptist church or the like..that is like compared all white people to the kkk or all black people to the NBPP.

anyways, yes, there are some sociopathic christians who are just terrible people. and there are terrible people of all sorts out there... i can't figure out if you are just pointing out these certain people or hinting that this is common, so i suppose that is all i'm going to say to that post.

 

"I have never met a christian who goes around imposing on atheists funerals..."

Well i am telling you they exist.
My friend would not have appreciated it a bit and it was the falsest funeral i have ever been to.
I was not alone in feeling disgust and some other close friends were not given sufficient notice to travel to the funeral.
It was an insight into how low people can stoop and it was noteworthy that it was the christians who were interested in his estate.
Just a massive show of lack of respect.

 

I need to say hear that one can believe in a God , or creator and not be a part of any dogma . I dont know if it is covered on that list I did not read it all . Some people are worried if Adam and Eve had belly buttons . One of the 10 command ments states that thu shalt not covvet thy neghbors ass .

 

Rat,
for sure belief in a g-d can go without a dogma, possible.

But normally bible bashers have strange beliefs.
They wash their cars before church and send girls with low cut dresses out to convert.

 

I think the " Bible bashers" think that the Bible was meant to be interepted as lit. truth . The Bible is more of a moral code book . Without a moral code of conduct a society would not stand up . I think its less about atheism than many people have problems with organised belief systems . Its not the Bible , its the way a church uses it . Some people see God as a creative life force of the cosmos , that we are all a part of . God is there wether we see or accept him/her or not .

 

but belief still has nothing to do with morality. christian or otherwise.

you're right about a relatively safe and relatively stable society requiring some degree of self dicipline on the part of its individual members, to ever even be such a thing. but again, while a shared belief can contribute to this, there is no intrinsic dependence on their being one, or any.

rather it is the universality of mutual consideration that makes any advance toward civilization in any meaningful sense of the word civilization, possible.

again beliefs can be mixed or even non existent, and long as mutual behavior is mutually considerate. and likewise, no belief, can prevent the absence of such consideration from creating an utter and absolute living hell on physical living earth.

 

You guys don't feckin get it at all!
Most crims show more honour and loyalty than feckin christians.

Despite all the books christians still often lead very bad lives.

 

Belief is part and parcel of human consciousness, consciousness emerging for the purpose of finding direction. The belief from which stems all moral purpose is there is good in the world and I must have it, in simplest terms I must find food and shelter from mishap. We believe to see looking for our good and we see it in order to confirm our belief and we choose to invest our behaviors in those things that demonstrate to us relative satisfaction depending on our model of good. Whether necessary or not it is demonstrable that belief is part of sorting out bicameral, (split minded,) perspectives. That is given choices which is the right way forward.

A belief is a standard of accuracy. A belief in good and evil is not a standard metric and as such both terms are rendered meaningless in practice as an essentially good man can do a horrible thing in any instant based on his sliding scale of measurement, not killing as a general principle but killing in a specific legitimate, or special circumstance. Our protections extend naturally to that which we call ours or our own. The thing that makes possible mans inhumanity to man is that he tells himself that the other is not me nor mine. Mutual consideration is ultimately beneficial at the level of self identification and hence the adage love your neighbor as yourself.

 

It is a bit hard for me to put my self in the mind set of some one that states that there is no God , if that is your point , and I can not answer for Christains as I think of my self as a new ager , for lack of a better term . I believe more in karma , if it dont get you in this life it will the next.

 

Despite the plain easy to read code bible bashers are no wiser?

Some of the most disrespectful actions i have encountered have been from bible-bashers, not from societal scum
Now that's something to think on?

 

To think that these 40 questions will pose major problems for "Christians" is to assume that all or most Christians are fundamentalists who take the Bible literally. This is a common assumption among atheists, but actually only a minority of Christians fall into that category--although it is admittedly a vocal one that hogs media attention.

So many questions, so little time. But fortunately, the post groups them into several main categories, so I'll focus on them. The first is "global religion", which apparently refers to the fact that there are lots of religions in the world, so why do we assume ours is the right one. This question can easily be turned against atheists. There have been lots of religions throughout history, and atheism is still relatively rare. So how can atheists think their beliefs are the right ones, when so many think otherwise? Also, the post suggests that Christians are the products of upbringing and similar non-rational influences. But so are atheists. It would be naive for atheists to assume that Christians are the product of non-rational influences while atheism is the result of pure reason. Research by the Pew Forum on religion and public life found a correlation between atheism and atheist parenting. But in my experience, a more common cause seems to be Christian parenting of a repressive kind. I think one of the leading causes of atheism is religion. In his book Faith of the Fatherless, psychiatrist Dr. Paul Vits finds a relationship between atheism in prominent non-believers and bad fathering. Bad experiences with religion or religious people also seems to play a part. Francis Bacon argued that religious divisions also helped to breed non-believers. Is your blood boiling yet at these over-generaliztions? Maybe that will give you some insight into how Christians feel when they are reduced to stereotypes. Yes, there are lots of religions and gods, and as a fallible human I could be wrong. I'm also sure that my childhood experiences helped to shape my beliefs, and that if I'd been born in Afghanistan, I'd probably be a Muslim. But faced with the alternatives of throwing up my hands or making what seems to me to be the best choice on the basis of my experience and available evidence, I choose the latter. I assume that at least 75% of the things I believe are wrong, but that's life. I have no problem making choices on election day, in full awareness that some folks think that Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich would be a better President than the one I'd pick. I'm right and they're wrong!

Next we have the category of "Commuication with God". How do we know that it's really God talking to us instead of the Devil's? The implication here is that Christians "hear voices". I go along with Lilly Tomlin's view: when you talk to God, it's prayer. When God talks to you, it's schizophrenia. I tend to make decisions on moral and spiritual matters on the basis of available evidence, personal experience, scholarship, and intuition. I did have a life changing experience once, but it came in the form of thoughts, not "voices", and I decided that they were good thoughts because they seemed to work well in my life. Jesus told us that we can tell the good ideas from the bad and ugly ones by their "fruits".

Then there is the category of "Morality", where we are asked why humans need moral precepts when lions can be moral without them. Although some humans seem to resemble lions in their predatory behavior, I think our species has benefited from the teachings of philosophers and religious teachers over the centuries. Lions have some really nasty habits. Besides murdering poor Thompson gazelles, male lions kill male cubs not fathered by themselves.

Even more ludicrous is the discussion of "Miracles", where we encounter the question: If God gave a man cancer and the Devil cured him to subvert God's plan, how would we know it wasn't really a miracle? We have here what Harry Turman liked to call an "iffy" question-- kind he refused to answer. If God gave somebody cancer?! I'd consider that "God" a demon, on a par with Satan. But then again, the God I worship doesn't give people cancer.

As for the "Characteristics" of God", we're asked why it took Him six days to create the world, if He's supposed to be omnipotent. Well, first of all, who said the earth was created in six days. The Bible, I know--but as early as the third century, Christian theologians like Origen argued that the Genesis story wasn't to be taken literally. It is allegory. Genesis probably says it took God six days for creation so He could rest on the seventh, thereby reinforcing the Sabbath which was important to the Jews in keeping their distinctive customs during the Babylonian captivity.

The question about Noah's Ark is a classic example of "question begging". The statement that the Noah's Ark story was "copied almost word for word" from the Atrahasis story is certainly an exaggeration. It's obvious that the Biblical account is similar to the Sumerian and Babylonian stories, but so what? We're talking myth and metaphor here. And logically, it wouldn't follow that the Sumerian/Babylonain Sky God is the true ruler of the universe just because a Bible story may have derived from Mesopotamian mythology. Marduk created the earth from the corpse of the monster Tiamet, so he'd have prior claim.