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I'm an Episcopalian who went through a non-believing phase in my early 20s but have come back around, although I also sometimes attend a Lutheran church because of some issues my dad had with the former dean of our Episcopal church.
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Jan 14, 2021 02:55
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Night10194 posted:They were when I was a kid, so I was just following my family at the time. I drifted into agnostic in high school because I was like 'eh, this seems like nonsense if you can change that often' and then later back out of it because one of my professors in college actually addressed some of my main objections to the factual truth of the Gospels. Specifically that they're not meant as historic accounts as it is and that ideas about literalism are new, that they're theological documents trying to express the religious truth of Christ and preach to others. Learning how new Biblical Literalism is was one of the things that brought me back to Christianity. I wasn't raised as a Biblical Literalist, but I didn't have the knowledge to respond with anything more than "The Bible isn't meant to be taken literally" when people pointed out scientific errors or contradictions. Two other things that got me away from Atheism were: 1. seeing a guy riding around on his bike on college campus shouting New Atheist talking points to no one in particular. 2. A video where Christopher Hitchens questioned the Koran by asking why God would choose to give a backwards culture like the Arabs his final revelation instead of a more advanced one like the Chinese, or Greeks, or just about anyone other than the Arabs.
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Jan 15, 2021 05:19
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Nessus posted:I do believe that old Jehovy has shown a tendency to shine his light upon the small rather than the great, based on a cursory knowledge of Bible stories. Well that and the Arabs in the time of Muhammed were in direct contact with the Roman and Persian empires, not to mention the Horn of Africa and India which also had "advanced" civilizations. It was just racist presentism on Hitchens's part. I wasn't a New Atheist, but it really opened my eyes to how bad they could be, and by extension how Atheists could perpetuate the kinds of bigotries that they blame on religion.
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Jan 15, 2021 09:00
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Good news, Jelly Bean pulled through.
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Jan 16, 2021 02:46
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Josef bugman posted:I'm an Atheist and pretty far on the Left, and I like reading what people have to write here because it's very different from what I usually think about, whilst also being usually well thought through. I've found that as my politics moved to the left I've become more religious. How was it for you? Josef bugman posted:Good news, and I hope they stay well! She's got a moderate heart murmur, which is to be expected with a cat her age (which according to the vet is 15 years & 7 months not 17 years like we thought) and shrunken kidneys which were because of dehydration. What ended up saving her life is that I started giving her canned food to treat her well before sending her off, and the extra moisture allowed her to recover enough that we got a QOL check from the vet. Make sure to water your pets, folks.
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Jan 16, 2021 20:19
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docbeard posted:I got one of those little water fountains for my cats some time ago and even though it's kind of a pain to keep clean, they love the thing and thus actually drink so I consider it a good investment. My neighbor, who had one cat live to be 19 and a half, and another (who was the kitten of one of our cats) live to 18, recommended one of those. Josef bugman posted:I love religions and faith itself is something really cool, but in the same way that I can't make myself feel happy, I also can't make myself feel faith. I struggle with my faith, but faith isn't just what you believe, it's what you do and who you do it with. One of my biggest realizations was that while I thought of myself as an antisocial loner, I was really missing human company, being part of a faith community. Growing up my family wasn't super religious but we did go to church every Sunday and we had a lot of friends through that. Liquid Communism posted:Somewhat the opposite for me, but that's trying to reconcile the desire for social justice with the actions and positions of the Catholic Church in the US for you. I'm not Catholic, but as I understand it being a Catholic who is opposed to many of the actions of the Church is something with a long historical precedent.
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Jan 18, 2021 03:35
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Nessus posted:
That's what it's been like for me, I feel the lows of my doubt far more than the highs of my faith and thus there's a part of me that feels like my doubt is the truth and I'm just deluding myself. And if you operate from the assumption that you're only ever going to be deluding yourself then you'll never try and see if you can develop what you'd call genuine faith. But it's hard to say for certain since we all struggle with the inner critic in all aspects of our lives. It was instructive for me when I was an atheist to experience the same sort of second guessing of my non-belief because it helped me to realize that the doubt I feel isn't necessarily a wholly rational skepticism guided by pure logic and reason. Nessus posted:The latter probably depends on your particular sect, although to quote Shinran Shonin who was dealing with the question of 'if we say Amida's name and go to the pure land for sure, why not do crimes and engage in lusts and defilements right now since we're going there anyway?' of 'Do not develop a taste for poison, just because there is an antidote.' From the Christian perspective, sinning under the belief that God will forgive you anyway so you can do whatever you want is the sin of presumption. And from a more practical perspective, living according to Christ's teaching creates a better society and will help you in this life not just the next.
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Jan 19, 2021 02:37
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We always could as far as I know, you just put the quote in the other quote. Like so: Quote B Quote A text Quote A end text Quote B end
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Jan 19, 2021 04:02
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Nessus posted:The critique of the universe as somehow being wrong or unsatisfactory here is hypothetically interesting if one allows for a Designer or Creator who somehow did something "wrong." (Personally I don't think that is the case.) However, it also seems irrelevant to the specific point of suffering. That reminds me of a joke my grandfather told me: If God created man what kind of a designer was he? A civil engineer, since he ran a sewage line through the entertainment district.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:44
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Josef bugman posted:It has consequences for you. It has no consequence for others. People rarely conceal their pain as well as they think, inevitably someone will find out and if they cannot help those who're suffering will feel some amount of guilt for being unable to help. And your behavior will almost certainly be affected in negative ways even if you don't let anyone know the pain you feel. I'd also like to know where you draw the line on forgiving yourself. Should one torment themselves every time they snap at a coworker, or forget a birthday? Or are you talking about more serious things like murder?
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Jan 20, 2021 04:34
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HopperUK posted:My guy we are the worst people to judge ourselves because we see ourselves so unclearly. IMO anyway. We don't even know what our own voices sound like.
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Jan 20, 2021 22:31
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I've come across an argument several times recently that goes like this: Jesus existed, but he was just a millenarian cult leader. Aside from predicting the immanent apocalypse he was a conventional Second Temple Judaism practitioner. He predicted the apocalypse would happen within the lifetime of his followers, and when it didn't they just doubled down like all apocalypse cults do and once they decided to proselytize among gentiles their religion began to acquire more and more pagan characteristics. Where did this argument come from? It seems to me like it's something that was worked backwards from the conclusion, since it contradicts scripture, but it can do so at will since it allows one to just declare any part of the bible that contradicts the theory to be a later addition contrary to what Jesus "really" taught. Jupiter Jazz posted:Please pray for my friend Shaun who has a health scare. He lives in Japan and they think he might have the big C (not Covid, the other one). Thankfully he lives in Japan (he's Canadian though) so he has good access to healthcare and will be taken care of. Still worrying. He's had an autoimmune issue recently and they don't know what's up. Please pray for him and his family! Will do.
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Jan 21, 2021 05:21
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Night10194 posted:But again, all this is the secular scholastic interpretation. As a believer, there's a lot to add on to/into there when viewing the story from that perspective. Where are you encountering this take? If it's from, like, a professor in a religious studies program I wouldn't be that surprised. Non-believing biblical scholars. It comes up in responses they've written to the idea that Jesus didn't exist. They argue that he did exist, but that if you want to really challenge Christians you should bring up that Jesus predicted an apocalypse within the lifetime of his followers. And because it didn't happen subsequent Christians adapted the religion to cope with that failed expectation. And that's where the issue of what the "historical" Jesus taught versus what the worshipped Jesus taught comes in. Keromaru5 posted:In two ways: first, that even if the Apostles believed the world would end within their lifetimes, Jesus himself would have known it would take a while. Then there's the even more eschatological take: that the resurrection is the beginning of the Kingdom of God; death has been trampled down, God has united with Man, the end times have begun, and even if they kill us, the Roman Empire won't have the last word. Both are fair points, we're getting versions of what Jesus's students thought he taught them, and that even without the Kingdom of God on Earth, we already know the way to enter into it thanks to Christ. The end of the age and beginning of the next has happened thanks to Christ, but it wasn't as dramatic as people were expecting.
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Jan 21, 2021 21:47
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I find it comforting to learn that every generation of Christians going back to the first has had people predicting that the world is definitely going to end in their life times. I wonder if they also had people who thought that they could decode the scriptures to get things like winning lottery ticket numbers.
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Jan 21, 2021 23:18
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Josef bugman posted:Fair enough. Murder is an interesting example because we do consider it okay under certain circumstances. Self defense is acceptable, and we tend to distinguish murder by various degrees of severity so we acknowledge that accidentally hitting and killing someone with your car is different than putting a bomb in theirs. We also generally consider it acceptable for some people to kill as part of their profession, soldiers and police officers.
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Jan 22, 2021 04:03
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Fritz the Horse posted:I see a lot of people posting about their political leanings. As I'm sure you know as a longtime reader in these threads, things sometimes get a little heated around political/doctrinal issues but mostly the thread is chill. I think the key is this is not a debate thread, we're not going to change each other's minds on abortion/right-to-life and such but we can learn from the discussion. Personally I thought the IVF discussion last fall was interesting and not something I'd really given much thought previous to then. I'd also like to hear more conservative peoples' opinions on matters of theology out of curiosities sake, but I know that for some people there are opinions that given even a chance to be heard are very hurtful and alienating so I don't know how free ranging such discussions could be. GreyjoyBastard posted:and the origin story of his head is very, very funny Not one he's likely to forget I'd imagine.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:37
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William Bear posted:You guys remind me a lot of Paul, if he had access to the internet. I think about his trollish argument in Galatians 5 a lot. And people say Martin Luther was the first poo poo poster.
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Jan 25, 2021 21:43
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Started reading Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. I've only finished the first chapter but it's pretty engaging so far.docbeard posted:I think my folks settled in Ohio (or at least that's where all the family history I'm aware of comes out of, though I don't really know much pre my great grandparents leaving the Amish church to become Mennonites) or else I'd think we were distantly related. Could you speak to the differences between Anabaptist denominations?
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Jan 26, 2021 00:59
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Thanks for the recommendations. I've also got C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity on my book shelf. I read it years ago so I'll probably pick it up again soon. What's the deal with your text/avatar combo? I can't figure out who the saint is.
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Jan 26, 2021 01:54
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An argument I've see pop up is: religious experiences can be caused by drugs like LSD, or by medical conditions like schizophrenia, so therefore any and all religious phenomena are explicable by these means and therefore "untrue". On a secular, materialistic level this appeals to me because I just want some kind of an answer. The biggest hole in this is that so much of it isn't falsifiable since we have no way of testing whether Joan of Arc was schizophrenic, or if Moses was high when he saw the burning bush, etc. Another red flag is that the people I see pushing this theory aren't neuroscientists or anything like that, they're just random people so I don't know how removed this argument is from its sources. Can anyone with more knowledge speak to this issue?
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Jan 27, 2021 05:08
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Nessus posted:I don't know the people in specific so I can't speculate as to motive. I think that if you are not religious, or associate religious experience with bad experiences, an explanation which dismisses the religious experience in this manner would be very appealing. It would dismiss the topic entirely, to the intensity that you prefer, whether it be "this is all founded in the artistic expression of people who we would now consider mentally ill" to "everyone who subscribes to a religious philosophy or otherwise identifies thus is either insane, weak-willed enough to obey the insane, or both." It's not the people saying it so much as that I keep seeing it pop up, so I was curious if anyone else had encountered it. And that it had a certain kind of appeal because it was an attempt at a comprehensive explanation, even if it isn't as comprehensive as it thinks. zonohedron posted:"People with epilepsy sometimes smell something burning prior to having a seizure, therefore every time anyone smells something burning, it's explicable by brain misfires." That was my biggest issue with that line of thinking, it's sort of a godless God-of-the-Gaps argument. docbeard posted:In a sense, everything we experience (up to and including the idea of experience, and the idea that there's a 'we' to experience things, and ideas in general) is through the mechanism of electrochemical reactions in our nervous systems, because that's how human bodies work. And that was another thing that occurred to me, how exactly are we supposed to experience religious phenomena, if experiencing it through our senses is "proof" that it isn't real?
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Jan 27, 2021 21:43
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What are some 21st century miracles?
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Jan 31, 2021 05:43
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BattyKiara posted:I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads. Anything in particular we should pray for, for you?
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Jan 31, 2021 23:55
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Thirteen Orphans posted:God bless you and know that God is with you. My father has bipolar disorder so I know second hand how difficult it can be. Do you mind sharing what you're working on? Lutha Mahtin posted:have you not seen my posts?? Can't say that I have.
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Feb 1, 2021 04:21
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Morning Bell posted:Hi all. Long time lurker, love this thread. I grew up orthodox (Russian), more culturally than anything else, stopped being religious as a teen but now seriously examining things. Views right now are some wishy washy weak Unitarian nonsense, but I'm re-examining Christianity. Came to it mostly through literature and philosophy, mostly - old Russians, Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Walker Percy. Any particular works you'd care to recommend? I'm trying to read more theology. Morning Bell posted:I've massively appreciate this thread, and especially find interesting the posts from conservative points of view (theologically grounded or otherwise). I live in a big Western city that's not in America, so it's not something I much encounter. I've found it it valuable to read good discussion with a diversity of opinion, especially opinion I don't hear much in my milieu (or in the SA zeigeist outside of this thread). No shade on my milieu, lots of good things about it. "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own milieu--such a person cannot be my disciple."
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Feb 2, 2021 03:21
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What is double predestination? And can people speak to what predestination actually is instead of just “rich people will go to heaven because God makes them rich because he likes them”?
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Feb 3, 2021 23:07
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Nessus posted:I think the practical difference here is that God did in fact create the movie, if at a remove (by creating the people who created the movie). He created the conditions for the movie to be made, but how involved He is beyond that is a matter for debate. I'm afraid the metaphor is just going to get more tortured the more we try to tease it out, but Deteriorata's initial point is I think a sound one since free will means that man is the director of his own film. God knows what we will do because he has the vantage point of eternity but we choose what we're going to do.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:48
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Liquid Communism posted:I'd say God is inherently outside of causality, if you believe in omnipotence. One answer to the Problem of Evil that I've read is that evil isn't anything in itself, but defined as an absence of good. If you accept such a definition of evil then God created it in so much as he created a universe where the absence of good is possible, but he didn't really create it since it doesn't exist. It seems a little like kicking the can down the road to me, but I haven't read that much about the Problem of Evil yet.
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Feb 5, 2021 08:03
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, it reads as kicking the can down the road to me as well. I don't personally find it a very compelling argument, given the existence of evil that occurs to those who are blameless, such as children abused by clergy (moral evil), or afflicted with crippling degenerative disorders (natural evil). In the case of moral evils that's the result of human action, so to prevent them from happening is to infringe upon free will. Natural evils being evil raises the question of whether something can be evil without free will. People don't think like supervillains and cackle about how evil they are when they do bad things, but a degenerative disorder is just doing what it does while people have choices they make. If something has no choice in what it does can it be evil, or good? Tias posted:Not really on topic, but this is my atheist partners reply to most arguments of benevolent spiritual action: "What about the starving kids who have their eyes eaten by blowflies? Yeah, thought so." Is she saying the blowflies are evil, or that God not stopping them is evil? Because while I can see the issues with the idea that evil is merely an absence of good, I think there is some value to it raising the question of whether evil is just a human label for things versus some kind of absolute moral principle beyond human definition.
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Feb 6, 2021 04:15
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Deteriorata posted:The answer is that that is allowed to exist for an important reason. God could build a world without that, but he didn't. Why would that be? What do you think the answer is? Or rather, what're the ones you feel come closest to answering the question? I think the Problem of Evil is an important issue to address, but it isn't something that has to be completely settled before other questions can be addressed. It might even be that in answering other questions we answer it too.
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Feb 6, 2021 05:48
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Tias posted:Odin is definitely omnipotent. Not sure where you'd get that claim from. But he can't prevent Ragnarok or otherwise change his fate. Tias posted:God either not stopping it, or not designing a world without it, seems extremely pointless for a good God and/or universe. God is omnibenevolent but the universe isn't, so bad things happening in a good place doesn't make it pure evil.
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Feb 6, 2021 20:37
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I finished The Cost of Discipleship yesterday. One of the things that's stuck with me was that Bonhoeffer ascribes the Fall of Man to Adam's desire to become like God. My own understanding, colored by my atheist phase, was that the Fall of Man/Original Sin or whatever you call it was due to Adam disobeying God, and that God punished humanity because the first man didn't do what he was told. I don't know how profound of an interpretation Bonhoeffer's is, but for me it's been something I haven't stopped thinking about since I read it.
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Feb 8, 2021 02:40
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Worthleast posted:That’s rather explicitly the temptation offered by the serpent. Yeah, I figured it probably wasn’t some kind of super insightful interpretation that turned Christianity on its head, but since I’ve still got a lot of internalized New Atheist talking points rattling around in my skull, it was nice to have a clear understanding of what the Fall of Man really represents.
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Feb 8, 2021 05:51
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https://twitter.com/ebruenig/status/1358907159170457605?s=20 https://twitter.com/ebruenig/status/1358907596221149191?s=20 Thought the thread would like to discuss this. Tias posted:We've moved this to the heathenry thread, but essentially: Odin has power over more or less everything, but is bound by fate so Ragnarok is an exception, kinda. I'd call that omni-competence rather than omnipotence, but then we'd be arguing terminology instead of theology. ulmont posted:This answer has the disadvantage of not being further explainable (by definition) and the advantage of being easily explainable (to this level) by analogy with treatment of children, the mentally disabled, and pets, where the infliction of suffering to greater or lesser degrees (primarily for medical treatment but also to help the subject fit in the larger world (school, other training)) is necessary to avoid greater harm or produce greater good. The existence of Evil could be the divine equivalent of chemotherapy. And the child analogy is also pretty apt, how many times are you told as a child "try it, you'll like it" and it even turns out to be true? HopperUK posted:We buried one ninja out back a few years ago and now every drat year there's ninjas popping up all over the place. You can't just keep cutting down the ninja tree, you need to poison the roots.
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Feb 9, 2021 00:12
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I don't know Bruenig, and don't know editors. Forgiveness from the proper perspective is invaluable. See Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace. In the Twitter thread she talks about how we don’t really have forgiveness but exoneration, wherein the transgressors isn’t forgiven because their behavior is justified and excused, such as a convicted murderer being proved innocent. True forgiveness comes with true repentance for acknowledged wrongs. So I think it’s fair to complain about this forgiveness narrative, but not to say that our problem is that we’re too forgiving.
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Feb 9, 2021 04:01
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Nessus posted:My perception is that this problem arises almost entirely from about four different priors, and if any of those priors stop being true, the problem stops existing. Summarized, those would be: I'd also like to hear about the Islamic answer to the Problem of Evil. Reminds me of something I read about, that a Mongol Khan invited Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists to convince him about which religion to convert to, and that the Christians and Muslims teamed up because they were offended by the Buddhists. I think the most common hang up is #3, the "why do good things happen to bad people?" conundrum. If God can do anything, he can stop anything and so why didn't he stop this or that bad thing? We've come up with a bunch of answers in this thread, and there are God knows how many more elsewhere, but we can't know for certain which of them are right because we lack divine perspective.
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Feb 9, 2021 05:38
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Tias posted:It really depends on who you ask in the islamic world. Zaydi and Twelvers are on the moral realist side of things, in that the moral value of acts is accessible to unaided reason, so that humans can make moral judgments about divine acts. They posited that individuals have free will to commit evil and absolved God of responsibility for such acts. God's 'making things right' more or less consists of punishing evildoers ex facto. Interesting. I think those are all answers that have been posed to the problem of evil by various Christians too. Keromaru5 posted:2) Forgiveness does not necessarily mean you have to trust the person, or continue to give them your time. It's perfectly fine to cut yourself off from toxic people, or bad influences. My mind often turns to this comment from Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog (specifically, from this post). Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog has a bunch of articles about the Problem of Evil on his front page, what I've read so far has been very interesting. sb hermit posted:I just want to pop in and say thank you to everyone with the great quotes about explaining what I had always thought about regarding forgiveness, but putting it so eloquently and solidifying some other ideas that were a bit vague at the time. Forgiveness is for the victim, not just the perpetrator. We want to feel better after we're wronged in some way, and it's easy to think that we'll feel better if those who injure us are punished, but we don't need them to suffer, or even mend their ways in order to stop hurting.
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Feb 10, 2021 07:04
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My father is going in for surgery tomorrow to have a tumor removed from his remaining adrenal gland, please pray for him.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:37
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TOOT BOOT posted:I think everything will probably be okay but I'd appreciate prayers for our new cat Rocky. We took him in off the street a couple days ago because he was limping pretty badly. He had been hanging out around our property for like six months. During the course of an extremely lengthy vet visit they determined that what they thought was a broken leg was a very infected bite wound, probably from another male cat. I just had a cat go through a health scare last month. I'll make sure to pray for Rocky.
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Feb 13, 2021 00:04
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Dad's back from the hospital. He had to stay overnight because his blood pressure spiked twice during the surgery. They saved the adrenal gland, but we don't yet know if it's still functional.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:44
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