Can Anyone Explain Christianity?

jfgordon1

Well-Known Member
Speaking of taking peoples word for something... that's exactly what people do when they take the bible as truth. Unless your god came down and told you that stuff himself, you're accepting something written by someone else a LONG time ago - back when the world was FULL of what we can all now accept as silly superstition (believing that the sun is a god, etc.).
The sun is my God :hump:. It keeps the earth warm and keeps everything growing. Without it.. we would be nothing ...
 

Leothwyn

Well-Known Member
If you're going to worship anything, the sun sounds like a good choice to me :)

Fish601: You're right, I shouldn't have said that christians like to quote the old testament when it's convenient. I should've said 'some christians' (conservative zealots mainly). I really don't have a problem with christians in general, and don't mean to be offensive. I have friends and family who are christian, and they're all good people. I just can't stand preachy, judgmental zealots - christian, muslim, whatever.
 

Spasticsmoke

Active Member
its fun to see people still belive in the bible, and becuase they belive in it and follow it it must be true. there are people out there who live in.. (again im going to use HP) harry potter land, running around with capes and broom sticks, and belive in the fantasy world that has been created. YET that dosn't make it true

bassicly for every logical explination of where things came from there is anoter argument against it from religions, is anyone right? who knows.. i know you don't and i know i don't (eventhough we both belive we are right)... thats why this is the threaddd thatt neverrr ennndds yes it gose on and on my friends, some people stated reading it not knowing what it was, and saw some room for them to type and this is becuase, this is the thread that never ends.


either way im not going to live my life under rules 12 dudes at a party thought of...

and ohhh the christain god, you gotta love that when something good happens 'god' did it.. but when something bad happens its not gods fault... eventhoug he/she/it/me created EVERYTHING which would lead you to belive god is also at the hand of all the coruption in this world... what god do you pray to.. seems a little two faced to me.
 

Anonymiss1969

Active Member
Do you see the air and wind but its there some times beliving is good enough
No one needs to believe the air is there, because it is. There are physical properties to air.

The way I see it, air is doing more for me in the time that I type this than any "God" ever will.
 

what... huh?

Active Member
can you offer any evidence that "God" is not real?
Can you offer any evidence that unicorns aren't real?

*edit- damn... looks like someone already used that. I didn't realize that there were so many pages...


Why is it that people are so willing to believe that a controlling entity has existed forever... but that matter has not?
 

Anonymiss1969

Active Member
Can you offer any evidence that unicorns aren't real?

*edit- damn... looks like someone already used that. I didn't realize that there were so many pages...


Why is it that people are so willing to believe that a controlling entity has existed forever... but that matter has not?
Because they were told by their mommy's and daddy's that God is real, who were told by there mommy's and daddy's... and so on and so forth until you get to the original people who were dooped by capitalists and others attempting to control the less intelligent.
 
G

guitarabuser

Guest
Because they were told by their mommy's and daddy's that God is real, who were told by there mommy's and daddy's... and so on and so forth until you get to the original people who were dooped by capitalists and others attempting to control the less intelligent.
I appologize for my previous post. The title of the thread is "Explain Christianity". This apparently was a mistake. I think you really wanted "Defend Christianity". Sorry I misunderstood or I would not have wasted the keystrokes.
 

Anonymiss1969

Active Member
I appologize for my previous post. The title of the thread is "Explain Christianity". This apparently was a mistake. I think you really wanted "Defend Christianity". Sorry I misunderstood or I would not have wasted the keystrokes.
I don't understand why people get so pissed off about this.

I don't blame you that you believe what all of your elders told you as a child. I believed in Santa Clause at one point, too, and I may still believe if they had kept telling me it was real, even after I figured it out.
 

GibsonIconoclast

Active Member
This thread has sort of degraded into a typical athiest vs christian debate. I think I commented in the wrong thread because when I first read the background of the person asking the question it included them saying they were agnostic and they didn't seem to have a prejudice, they seemed like they were looking at it very objectively and considering all possibilities. So Anonymiss seems to have their position set and their opinions decided on most of the issues. If you're an evangelical christian in this argument, I ask you FOR THE REPUTATION AND CREDIBILITY OF ALL CHRISTIANS please don't go about this argument in the way that your evangelical pastors have told you to (you make the christians that can make a case for christianity look bad before they try), usually that won't work with athiests, you have to understand their position, their grievances with religions and how they look at reliegious ppl. If you've been an evangelical christian from a very young age and haven't had much success talking to public school kids about christianity then theres not much chance you can make your argument to an athiest because evangelicals argueing for christianity usually spit out the same typical jesus talk in an easy to recognize tone, and people stop taking you seriously when you go into ur "apologetics toolkit" and try to fix the "problem", immediately your effort doesn't resolve anything but insights a counterargument.
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth." - Einstein

I think I'm gonna bow out of this discussion because it does not seem to have a point to it other than "I'm going to prove the other side wrong", thats quite a waste of time in the realm of religion, when people have firmly decided on their beliefs there's little chance of them changing their views and all a discussion like this will do is make each side hate the other more. Well eventually this thread will die so I guess all someone can do in the end is wish Anonymiss the best of luck in finding somethig that makes him happy through his life.
 

fish601

Active Member
This thread has sort of degraded into a typical athiest vs christian debate. I think I commented in the wrong thread because when I first read the background of the person asking the question it included them saying they were agnostic and they didn't seem to have a prejudice, they seemed like they were looking at it very objectively and considering all possibilities. So Anonymiss seems to have their position set and their opinions decided on most of the issues. If you're an evangelical christian in this argument, I ask you FOR THE REPUTATION AND CREDIBILITY OF ALL CHRISTIANS please don't go about this argument in the way that your evangelical pastors have told you to (you make the christians that can make a case for christianity look bad before they try), usually that won't work with athiests, you have to understand their position, their grievances with religions and how they look at reliegious ppl. If you've been an evangelical christian from a very young age and haven't had much success talking to public school kids about christianity then theres not much chance you can make your argument to an athiest because evangelicals argueing for christianity usually spit out the same typical jesus talk in an easy to recognize tone, and people stop taking you seriously when you go into ur "apologetics toolkit" and try to fix the "problem", immediately your effort doesn't resolve anything but insights a counterargument.
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth." - Einstein

I think I'm gonna bow out of this discussion because it does not seem to have a point to it other than "I'm going to prove the other side wrong", thats quite a waste of time in the realm of religion, when people have firmly decided on their beliefs there's little chance of them changing their views and all a discussion like this will do is make each side hate the other more. Well eventually this thread will die so I guess all someone can do in the end is wish Anonymiss the best of luck in finding somethig that makes him happy through his life.


I dont expect to change anyones mind i am using this as a learning Experience and it is building my faith.
God himself done amazing things infront of people and some of them still didnt believe so a simple conversation with me isnt gona do anygood.. at least i dont think it would
 

morgentaler

Well-Known Member
To explain Christianity you need to take a step back in time, and consider the roles of the first superstitions and mythologies.
Early man didn't know much, and the thing about living in a world you don't understand is that for many beings it is scary. You can see this not only in humans, but in other species as well. For early man, legends of great ancestors, gods, or even simple stories of how an animal got its spots, or how the giant saber toothed wolf was defeated by a hunter would have been quite reassuring.

Add in the natural state of superstition, the idea that an action - however inane - can influence the outcome of an event, and you have the beginning of religion. To understand how pervasive superstition is, you can even see it in birds in the video 'The Superstitious Pigeon'.

Anyway, storytellers in early civilization were held in high regard, for they not only passed on legend, they passed on the knowledge of the generations before them. And this put them in a position of power. In some cultures there is little sign of abuse of this power (North American medicine men are highly regarded, but rarely in a position to abuse members of their tribe) while in others there is significant manipulation of the populace via superstition and religion.

The thing about religions is that they invariably create a false wall of superiority around those who practice them. "Our god" is better. "Our god" is true. "We" shall be rewarded for our obedience. "The unbeliever" shall be "cast out / punished / destroyed / etc.".

Whatever the first religion was, and we certainly will never know because it existed before written language, it evolved and splintered into many factions, modified by its adherents over time to fit the needs of the ruling class - often kings, clergy, or a mixture of the two.

Christianity is just one of those splinter religions, no more or less valid than the religions of Islam, Norse, Aztec, Egyptian, etc. etc.
And, in fact, you would be hard pressed to find two Christians who believe the same thing about their religion if questioned separately. Some believe the bible is merely a book of parables intended to educate, while others believe that it is the inerrant and literal word of "God". The latter seem to miss the part where the inerrant book is a heavily edited and oft-translated document bearing only some resemblance to the original Greek manuscript. But that's a whole other can o' worms. :)

On a planet where there are over 5000 identifiable gods recorded in history, the god of Christianity is just another face in the crowd, but one that has persisted thanks to ardent imperialism. We can thank the Romans and their Empire for this, not only for spreading it through conquest, but providing an Imperial framework which the church was based upon. Conversion is easy if you suppress the beliefs of the older generations, and plant a belief system in the young. Entire populations in a geographic area can be converted to a new belief system in two generations, and prior culture can be erased as quickly. You can see examples of this in South America, where methods of agriculture that have been handed down for thousands of years are dying out or lost altogether simply because new tools for creating monoculture farming, or imported trade goods eliminated the need for this information, and the elders sometimes died before the young realized they were losing the traditions of their people.

So to sum it up, the explanation for Christianity is that it is simply a successfully propagated belief system adhered to by a significant, but not dominant, percentage of the population.
 
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