the absense of religion does not mean the absense of peace, fellowship, or a feeling of belonging. i for one, would argue that of all the things things that caused peace, or continued peace, it would NOT be religion. religion has been a root cause of conflict in many, many wars throughout history.
I wholeheartedly agree. The practices built around a faith have little practical purpose aside from a symbolic reminder of the original faith.
A set of practices will not change the world for the better. A small group of faithful individuals is the only thing that ever has. The most radical change coming from those who followed Christ. Horrible practices in other countries have been done away with, and entire cultures and ethnic groups have been saved at the hands of people who believe that the God they pray to loves the people who haven't been placed in the richest nation in the world. Missionaries put stops to blood feuds, recorded tribe histories in alphabets and languages created for those tribes, and have brought medical and financial aid to billions of people.
And instead of focusing on that, you focus on the few butchers that killed millions for their own gain, claiming God was on their side. You totally ignore the efforts of millions of people who have worked their whole lives to make sure they were on God's side. Not that they felt they needed to, but because they knew God had accepted them, and obeyed when He called them to spread the word.
Perhaps it should be viewed from the exterior. I believe that we live to be happy, if that is through a lie, what difference does it make? To you, your "lie" is the truth, as true to you as everything that you have ever learned. You go through life happy. Of course I suppose this is based on the fundamental belief that the point of life is to live and be merry. I could see this complying with bob's point of view as well. If knowing the universal truth gives makes you happy, then your search for that is all-important.
All in all, I fail to see how whether "knowing the truth" or not makes any difference at all in the end, as long as you are happy.
Ahh, Hedonism. Say I was happy at the expense of others. Would that OK? Of course not. How do we define what is better good? Someone being happy or someone beaing healthy? Is it up for individuals to determine, or is there a standard that is universal? Where do we know where our right to be happy ends? What if someone is unjust or selfish themselves when they say that their rights are being infringed upon?
What good is being happy anyway? To say that here and now is the only important time would be the downfall of civilization. So we devote ourselves to lasting significance, of course. We decide that the randomly generated genetic code in our bodies must somehow make a difference for all the other people who are just walking worm food. What's the point, Sati?
We all have a concience that tells us it's good to do things for other people. If we are to accept the secular interpretation for this, it is a useless endeavor, we're all going to be dead anyway, and it won't matter. If we accept the Christian version, "We love, because He first loved us." As C.S. Lewis argued so vehemently and so elequently in his books, and what is blatantly apparent to me, is that every impulse I've ever felt can be harmonized with Christian teaching about the nature or the fall of man. It cannot be harmonized with humanistic/hedonistic/secular ethics or tenents.
Organized religion has its ups and down, down being that you are forced to beleave it, and you cant let your mind run free, like most christians (specially those hardcore bastispts) you only think of god... ONLY GOD. which, is a bad thing, if god had wanted us all to think about him all the damn time, he would of changed the way our minds work, and placement of certain elements in there. But no, he made us the way we are today, either through planned evolution, or just on the spots genetics.
I don't know about you, Bill, but I've lost myself in God's word, prayer, and discussions about God for hours at a time. The fondest memory I have is from a missions trip I took in Chicago, where 6 of us sat at a table, eating Cheez-Its, drinking Mountain Dew, talking about the incredible things God did in our lives and the lives of our friends, until 2 A.M. And it wasn't the Dew that kept us up so late, we went to sleep because only then did the last of our sextet finish discussion the finer points of Armenianism and it's effect on his relationship with God. I have never felt such bliss, and the joy I've found in the Lord is the only joy I've found where I've not had an emotional downturn as compensation later. My first kiss with a beautiful girl was followed by a break-up, my placing at old Tae-Kwon-Do tournaments were followed by me getting my arse handed to me by people who were just plain better. The adrenaline rush of a roller-coaster is met with a longing for that rush again. The joy God has showed me has proved to me the depth of His love.
So for now, I'm sticking with Dan Brown. Or somewhere approximately close to him. If faith is something so deeply ingrained in the christian soul, why would one feel the need to defend it? Doesn't that betray the very definition of faith? Are the authors proving something to the rest of the world or are they merely trying to prove something to themselves and reaffirm their own weak faith?
Yes, you may have no cause to believe your mother is was a whore, and smile and walk on. But, assume that same person screamed at the top of his lungs through a bullhorn "DUBBILEX' MOTHER IS A WHORE!" And, everyone clamored around you, or at least, started to wonder what the truth was.
Let me take it a step further. You were spending the last few minutes telling everyone how pure and virtuous your mother is. Then this one guy comes along spouting what you know is a lie.
Are you going to sit idly by and suffer his claims, or are you going to point out the obvious, that perhaps, DNA testing has showed that your parents are your biological parents, and that you were concieved well after their marriage? Or, are you going to sit by and let everyone think that your mom is a prostitute?
Let us go father still from the original analogy, but closer to the specific issue at hand. Assume that your mother is having people over for a party later, free beer for those over 21 (awesome mom, you have), cookies for everyone, both caek and pai, and some good old fashioned LAN play afterwards.
But, who would want to go to a party thrown by a whore? She's providing a free gift, but if everyone thinks she is someone she is not, who will want to go?
Who would take Christ seriously if people thought that he had an affair with Mary Magdaline(sp, sorry), and that the Son of God himself was really just a normal guy with a lot of talk who met an untimely end? Who would embrace what I know as the truth, that Christ payed for their sins and bought them out of bondage, if everyone thought he was a lecher?
What sane, compassionate person would
not themselves proclaim the truth, to the point of being crucified themselves for attesting to it?
Christianity is about more that fulfillment, or my own little life and how God's made it so much better. Christianity is about how God himself has stepped into human history and affected every single person on the planet.
EDIT: Sorry for length, just wanted to say all I wanted to say.
