What is your experience with Christianity?

To Church Refugees and Religious Orphans on Easter

 

It seems to me that there is one branch of Christianity that is more bigoted, narrow-minded, and more conservative than the others.

 

That's for sure! They wear red hats and give unthinking support to an evil, morally bankrupt crime boss for President. 75-81% of Evangelical "Christians" seem to be in that category. Confused, misguided lost souls. Fascists in choir robes. Hope they straighten up and come to their senses before it's too late. Idolatry never turns out well. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/08/932263516/2020-faith-vote-reflects-2016-patterns
A Year After the Election, Trump’s Effect on Evangelical Churches Lingers
How Trump Stole Christmas—And Why Evangelicals Rally to Their Savior

 

I go to a United Methodist church where we have two different religions called "Christianity" meeting under the same roof. Upstairs is the Sunday school I go to, where we believe Christianity is about peace, love, and social justice. Downstairs they believe Christianity is about correct belief, exclusiveness, and being saved by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior. The church teeters on the brink of breakup over the gay issue, but so far it stays together--partly because of concern over who would gets the stuff after the divorce. But the issues are major. Of course, we all believe in God, but what is that? downstairs, they think He's the Dude in the Sky--a basically anthropomorphic concept. Upstairs, we're more inclined to say (S)he's the Higher Power, Universal Spirit, Ground of Being, Ultimate Meaning, Great Mystery. Downstairs, they believe God sent His only Son Jesus to earth to die for our sins--Saint Paul's concept of penal substitution or vicarious atonement. Upstairs, we're more Lukan in our understanding of Christ's sacrifice as the world's savior who brings God's presence to humankind Luke's Interpretation of Jesus' Death Jesus' Death As Sacrifice? Downstairs, the Bible is the "Word of God", dictated if not written by Him, and true in every detail. Upstairs, we regard it as the words of men seeking God, inspired the way Rembrandt or Picasso was and expressing truth through metaphor. By and large, they both work at a basic level in keeping members on the straight and narrow and channeling organized altruism. And after Sunday school, we all get together for a common service, sing the same hymns and listen to the same sermon.

 

thanks for all the responses I have often wondered what it is that people have experienced with christianity and what makes them so strongly like or dislike the religion.

 

The gentleman featured supra is, of course, the late great astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, familiar to us from his televised science series. Scientists are trained to be skeptical and to hold out for empirical evidence that has been rigorously tested and has satisfied a panel of scientific peers that it is true beyond a reasonable doubt. I wouldn't want it any other way for our scientists. But as a non-scientist I make a distinction between doing science and doing life. The main reason I don't wait until there is "compelling evidence" is that I think it's unlikely there will ever be enough on this issue, at least in my lifetime, to satisfy the determined skeptic or even the neutral observer. And because life is short.

Nothing is certain, not even that. I have no "compelling evidence' that I'm not a brain in a jar, a character in a virtual reality computer simulation, or a figment of my own imagination. Of course, it all depends on what you mean by "compelling evidence"--beyond a reasonable doubt? preponderance of the evidence? probable cause? reasonable suspicion? clear and convincing evidence? When I think of "compelling", I think of something for which the evidence is strong enough that even skeptics find it persuasive. I usually go by substantial evidence, which in legal parlance means "enough to convince a reasonable person even though other reasonable people aren't convinced"..This is not so much "compelling" as it is something I'm willing to take a chance on. As Luther put it, a "joyful bet", something I'm willing to bet my life on. I other words, I'm an existentialist, but not the "leap of faith" type. I take hops of faith, based on reason, available evidence, personal experience and intuition.

My understanding is that an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in any god--Judeo-Christian, Muslim, pagan or other god of supernatural theism. I tend not to think of God in anthropomorphic terms--the "Dude in the Sky", so to speak. But I do believe in a felt presence of a Higher Power "in whom we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28).I tend to think in terms of the Lakota "Wakan tanka" (Great Spirit, or as I prefer "Great Mystery") . I consider God to be fundamentally incomprehensible, but I use the term for something I infer from my limited knowledge, experience, and intuition--on the one hand, as "wholly other" (as theologian Karl Barth liked to say). But on the other hand, known to us by inference from reason and observation, and by the experience of a presence that is close to us--i.e. ,"immanent", as well as "transcendent. I've mentioned before my decision to take a chance on a life-changing experience triggered by the passage in Gen. 1, sec. 27, that humans are made in God's "image and likeness" (which I take to be insight, although others might have different opinions). The items of evidence that persuades me to take a chance on such an entity are: (1) the integrated, ordered complexity of the universe, or what's been called "fine tuning" or the "anthropic principle" ;(2) the "fortuitous coincidences" that led to life, consciousness, and human rationality, that seem to me to be too good to be just lucky accidents; ; and (3) human idealism that gives life ultimate meaning (Tillich's Ground of Being).. None of these is compelling evidence of a God. However, they are intuitively convincing enough for me to take a chance on the proposition.

As a Chrisitian, I'm drawn to Jesus' teachings about love of God and neighbor, and the John Gospel's message that "God is Love". The closest thing I have for "compelling evidence' of that is that if everyone acted on it, there would be heaven on earth, and if nobody did, it would be hell.

 

I wouldn't put it quite that way, but I do agree that when power, money , status and sensual indulgence get involved, as they inevitably do in any human enterprise, spiritual values tend to get compromised. A recent example would be the Southern Baptist Convention leaders' release of information about a cover-up of information about involvement of its clergy in a sex scandal. I'm sure this thing has been going on since the Upper Paleolithic, when shamans assumed responsibility for rituals to bring the game so the congregation could relax after a hard day's work of hunting mammoths. I'm willing to keep this in mind, use my best judgement, "take what I can use and leave the rest". I think it's useful to put religion in historical-metaphorical and evolutionary perspective, along with the as well.as the search for eternal truth.

I just dropped some jargon on you, so I think a brief explanation is in order.

• Historical. "Historical " means that I try to put the different passages of the Bible in their likely historical context to see what problems the author was trying to solve;
• Metaphorical.That means that a good deal of the Bible is allegorical, not literal.
• Evolutionary. The Bible, like other scriptures, is a product of human cultural evolution, functioning to protect and advance the meme system that it represents (not necessarily that of the individual believers.)

I think it's probably an exaggeration to say that religion is "nothing but" a con game. There are lots of good religious people, some in leadership positions in their churches. Religion gives the believers a sense of meaning and purpose, a set of moral guidellines, and an instrument of organized altruism, as well as community. It can be a mind crippling disease, but doesn't have to be.

 

Well if we are talking about evidence for the existence of God then I think that you may be approaching the entire thing from the wrong direction.

Hebrews 11:1

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

I actually find it funny that the word evidence is used here. But yes this verse is an adequate description for the word faith. If you looked up the word faith in the dictionary then this is what it should say.

Matthew 12:38-40

"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying 'Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." But Jesus answered and said 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth."

So you may be familiar with the story about how Jesus rose again after three days and nights. Yes, He rose again from the dead. And...

Acts 1:2-3

"until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

After Jesus rose from the dead He presented many infallible proofs of His resurrection for forty days.

 

the christian bible is the ultimate expression of human vanity,
to imagine an almost entirely mineral universe,
was created for the sole purpose of enabling the existence,
of their own species.

no belief nor lack of one, has any least thing to do, with the existence of non-existence, of one god or a billion of them.
which is utterly independent and separate from,
anything we might choose to pretend or imagine about them,
nor demand of one another to do so.

neither does the existence of the unknown,
prove nor disprove, nor require nor prevent,
the existence of anything.

 

The Christian Way is challenging when you want to be selfish and you are encouraged to check that and to do things for other people instead and it's rewarding when you succeed in doing that you will get more joy out of life than if you were only jonesing for your own fix and it's true if you only look out for number one your life turns to number two and it's comforting if you have a personal relationship with the Almighty than you will never be alone again for all the days of your life and it's frustrating when you focus on the Perfect then you see all the imperfections in the people around you and it's humbling when you look at yourself and realize that a big part of why the world is the way it is is because of the dude strolling around in your sandals and it's encouraging when the Almighty offers His forgiveness and the graces to keep on trying to do better each and every day.