CHUD's religious forum

It has certainly presented me with a number of alternate views on the subject.

I grew up in a very strict Catholic household, and opposing views were in short supply.

Good question. And you're kidding yourself if you honestly think this won't turn into yet another fight.

Short answer - yes.

I have done a lot of reading/thinking about religion because of this forum. It has lead to many interesting conversations in my home. Fighting with the lot of you, you unrelenting pack of hyperliteral aetheists, has inspired in me a deep respect for and interest in religious practice and belief.

So way to go!

Some were incorporated, a lot were used as "food for thought".

The forum has not made me throw my beliefs out the window, but it has certainly made me question how the church as an institution fits into them.

No, because very few, if any, people here have credibility to be persuasive in this area.

It would be like reshaping your entire opinion of Hitler's regime based on a 5th grader's history report.

I've barely ever changed, or even seriously questioned, my religious beliefs based on anything ever written, period.

I've never changed my beliefs. But, I have been educated in certain topics, which has merit on its own.

The most important thing I glean from the religion threads is what it teaches me about the posters involved.

Good thing. Turns out the Bible might be flawed.

Arguments delivered with smug condescension usually do little to change my mind, regardless of the topic.

Exactly.

So, no. I've seen some interesting discussions and debates and swiped some general ideas to use when I can be arsed to argue religion with someone (read: I really can't, it's exhausting and futile, like trying to fuck a brick wall), but in no way has anyone inspired me short of "Fish? Loaves? Holy shit, a Filet-O-Fish sounds pretty good right now!"

I realized that far too many US atheists are fundamentalist in nature.

So, do the DC Chewers now post as some sort of flock, or hive mind? Little creepy...

Atheist fanboys.

Oddly enough, smug condescension usually works on me. To answer the question though, this forum has not really influenced me at all.

Since you're a DC chewer, I guess that would be yes....

I'm way more Hindu than I used to be.

Let's see

Step 1) Phrase contentious proposition as a question born of genuine curiosity.

Step 2) Don't post in the thread again.

Ah, it's "The Devin". Nicely done.

This forum has caused me to question my beliefs, but at the end of the day I'm still pretty sure that Ahau is the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of the Earth, and the creator of all that is.

Absolutely. I'd say that if I was never exposed to this forum, I'd probably still answer questions about my religious beliefs with a shrug instead of identifying myself as atheist. There's been plenty of food for thought, and despite what Banks may think, some very smart people offering it up in mostly polite ways.

I wish I had the clarity that many seem to possess, and had all of this stuff figured out to the point that I could scoff at the very idea of listening to others' takes, but I'm not there yet. Hopefully when I reach that point, there will still be some smug left.

Yes.

There have been maybe a couple people with "extraordinary" education or insight on religion who've posted here over the years, and I'm definitely not counting myself among them.

I don't know if threads here have majorly changed my thinking, but it has certainly been interesting to see many intelligent people presenting interesting cases for various sides of issues. I have certainly gained some new perspectives.

As someone who considers themself a "seeker" of "truth," my opinions have changed numerous times as I've been presented with new information.

Over the years I've been:
Catholic
Atheist
Confused and considering non-denominational Christianity
Agnostic
Confused and considering various Eastern religions
Agnostic

There were other minor segways involving Islam, Judaism, Christian Science, and various other minor religions, but ultimately I now just call myself Agnostic and continue to think and discuss the matter.

More importantly in regards to this thread topic, though, my mind was changed (or at least the initial seeds were sewn) by talking to people and conversing on message boards and listserves. Less so on CHUD as I came here as an Agnostic and remain one, but I do think minds can change (at least mine can and has).

As Dave said, I don't know if there are a lot with "extraordinary" education or insight... but there are many with above average education or insight... and I think that can often be enough to start a little fire burning and get someone to seek out more information on their own.

That I can agree with.

All I said was "credible," not necessarily smart or not smart, not necessarily knowledgeable or not knowledgeable.

I was addressing your original, very specific question.

Was this thread inspired by the paranormal thread? Because that thread is starting to read like an atheism debate.

That's because it is, really.

My particular experience says not really, but I was just saying that hyperrational asshats like ourselves view religion as legitimized superstition, so ESP and ghosts bring up all the same issues.

Here's the thing about the original question though; how many great epiphanies have you had about any subject that you can trace back to a single event or conversation? Even if you did have your mind blown and views changed by a post on a message board, would you really want to admit it? No one likes to admit they were wrong, or that they were convinced of something by an outside source. It wafts of intellectual weakness.

My views have changed on a lot of little things over the last four or five years. Can't really say if any of them were, because of something posted here on CHUD. I for one am always trying to learn new things, as I have a far of crystallizing in my thinking. If your mind is not growing then it is dieing. The one real vanity that I do have is my mind.
This a intellectual weakness. It is actually intellectual strength to admitting you are wrong if you feel you might be wrong. The problem is that pride get in the way. It is funny that the foundation for all sin is pride in both Buddhism and Christianity. It the worse of all sin in both faiths. Yet so many people think that pride is a good and necessary thing.


False humility is not becoming DaveB. You have a better understand of religion then most people. I have found eduction to be a very long process. It not something that happen in say 4, 6 or even 8 years, but a life time.

That you don't believe in death? That is all Hell is according the bible. There is also more then one heaven, which heaven are you talking about, the sky, or space? You don't believe in messengers?

There are a few things you might want to consider here. First, death is not interchangeable with Hell in the Bible. The closest you get to that idea is the afterlife in the earlier parts of the Hebrew Bible kind of represents the Greek afterlife. Sheol and Hades are both dark and gloomy places everyone goes to and you could go with the interpretation that both simply refer to the grave. Hell in the later part parts of the Bible is a whole different story. In that later parts of the Bible, it is explicitly referred to as everlasting death, which is different from annihilation. Annihilation cannot, by definition, be everlasting.. Everlasting death is a state worse than annihilation, it's the state of being conscious and conscious of one's complete and total separation from God forever.

Heaven also does not refer simply to the sky. The reason that the Kingdom of Heaven is literally called the "rule of the skies" in some places in the Bible is that some Jewish writers interpreted the 1st commandment as barring you from doing things like writing down the name of God on something that is destructible or speaking it. So, instead of referring directly to God when describing Heaven, they referred instead to the sky as a symbol for something above and beyond temporal existence.

You need to study this more. I can start throwing around bible verse if you wish, but the bible is quit clear on the matter the dead sleep until Judgment day, then everyone goes in to the lake of fire. The lake of fire is a transformative process. The lake of fire is God and the believers. Hell can not be a place of fire since God is Fire. The believers become like God, a fire, also Hell goes in to the lake of fire. Now who survive the transformation, and who does not is a question for debate. Part of the confusion come from the fact that the soul dies with the body, but the spirit return to God.

I know that, but do you know that there is more then one heaven, and both the sky and the stars were heavens. Also my whole post was somewhat tongue in check.

To be honest, this is such a wildly divergent interpretation of the afterlife than anything I have ever encountered in a religious or scholarly setting, I have absolutely no idea what you're basing this on. To my knowledge there is exactly one verse that strongly implies psychopannychism--"soul sleep"--in the entirety of the canon and absolutely nothing that states that everyone enters a "lake of fire." The only book of the Bible I can recall using heavy and explicit Lake of Fire imagery is Revelation and 1) that is easily the most transparently allegorical book in the entire canon and 2) it's what we call a deutrocanonical text, i.e. it barely made the cut. It's one step above the Apocrypha in terms of authority. Hit me with the verses and your exegesis. This should be interesting.

verses off the top of my head that talk about the dead sleeping
Ecclesiastes 9:5For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

Ephesians 5:14 For this reason it says," [Is 26:19; 51:17; 52:1; 60:1; Rom 13:11] Awake, sleeper,And arise from [Eph 2:1] the dead,And Christ [Luke 1:78] will shine on you."

1 Corinthians 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

Ephesians 5:14Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

Thessalonians 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

Matthew 10:28"Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather [Heb 10:31] fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in [Matt 5:22; Luke 12:5] hell.

the spirit returns to God

Ecclesiastes 12:7then the [Gen 3:19; Job 34:15; Ps 104:29; Eccl 3:20] dust will return to the earth as it was, and the [Job 34:14; Eccl 3:21; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59] spirit will return to [Num 16:22; 27:16; Is 57:16; Zech 12:1] God who gave it.

Acts 7:59
And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

James 5:20let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will [Rom 11:14; 1 Cor 1:21; James 1:21] save his soul from death and will [Prov 10:12; 1 Pet 4:8] cover a multitude of sins.


Judgment of fire beside Revelation

1 Corinthians 3:13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

1 Corinthians 3:15
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

John 10:34
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

Those are just the verse off the top of my head. you not only have to study the text, but the context it was written in. it you do not understand Judaism at the time of the writing of the NT how can you understand Christianity. There is only one book we can say was not written by a Jew and that was Luke. Acts and Revelation the authors are unknown, the author may or may not have been Jewish. Even when Paul is talking to the Greeks it is with in the context of first century Judaism, because the Greeks had all the Jewish Holy texts, because of Sadducee, which were the Hellenistic Jews.

That's not something to be proud of, honestly. If nothing you've ever read has ever made you question what you believe, you're not reading the right things. And that goes for anybody, no matter what their beliefs. As an atheist, I read things that change the way I see the world all the time. As far as I'm concerned, if that never happens to you in your lifetime, you're intellectually dead.

Yeah, that holds for study of all literature. I agree you have to know something about Judaism as it was practiced in the Second Temple period in order to fully understand the New Testament. Given that I have cited Jewish sources and discussed how Christ fits into the post-exile development of the canon, I understandably take issue with the position you seem to have that I know nothing about it and you're quite versed in it. In all honesty, something close to the reverse seems to be the case. Also, for at least one example, it's commonly thought that some books--such as Esther--have non-Hebrew sources and were later incorporated into the canon. In the case of Acts, the fact that they have similar Greek and are addressed to the same person leads people to think that Acts and Luke were written by the same person. Hence, if you believe the author of Luke is not Jewish, there's reason to think the author of Acts is also not Jewish. [/quote] Um, okay, since Paul was a Jew living in the first century, I have a hard time picturing him communicating to anyone divorced from a 1st century Jewish viewpoint, so providing an explanation for that is kind of unnecessary. Also, outside of the epistles he wrote to the churches he previously visited in Greece, the only instance of him talking to Greeks occurs in Acts... and he's engaging them with their own Greek religious concepts, which I don't think helps your point.

Concerning your citations, yes, they're all using sleep as a euphemism for death. None of them remotely address what kind of interim state exists, if any, or deny the existence of an interim state. Also, the references to fire really don't lend themselves to the interpretation you're giving them...

I was being snarkful.

I don't have the ability to be magnanimous when it comes to the religious, which is why I avoid this forum, generally - I just come across like an angry twat. Which I'm actually not. My brother became a born-again Christian about...oooh...18 years ago now (Jesus. What the fook happened to time) and it forever, and completely, changed my view of religion, and the type of mind you have to have to buy into it. He was completely and utterly brainwashed, to the point where he was unrecognisable as my brother. I was a young teenager at the time, and his fire and brimstone rantings succeeded in freaking me out deeply. It was a horrible time, and I was affected by it on a pretty visceral level. He came out of it all, thankfully - still bears the scars, but deep down, knows that he effectively submerged himself in complete delusion - a delusion so acute he believed at the time that he actually saw manifestations of Jesus, and demons etc. Nonsense, obviously, which he will begrudgingly admit now, but it just shows you what absolute belief can reap.

On the other hand, people like FrankC and ElCapitan just come across like good people, and that's what I've learned from this forum. You can be a good, bright, discerning person (as much as you can judge that from someone's posts on an internet forum) and still believe in something for which you have no proof. I don't mean any snark by that - it's a genuine realisation. It confounds me, still - but I have had to rethink my 'religious people are just weak, deluded fools' mindset. I still believe that being religious is being delusional, and I believe that I don't have that mental facet which would allow me to delude myself in that way, but that doesn't mean you're an idiot, or weak, or mad. It just means we're very different.

People like Thomas Galvin, Sorro, and CTDelude, people who used to post things here like 'Gays choose to be gay and will burn' (Thomas Galvin) 'Homosexuality is no better than bestiality' (sorro) and 'UFOs have been sent by Satan to challenge the faithful' (CTDelude) just added fuel to my indignation. But with the likes of DaveB balancing the books, this place has become a little less polar in its discussions. And if you don't mind me saying so, Overlord, you've mellowed massively over the years

To answer the original question: yes the religious forum has changed my view, or more specifically made me realize some things.

Throughout my life, when people would mention some faith that they had (Santa Clause, life after death, gods, etc.) questions and doubts would come to mind and I would push them down.

Even though I haven't believed in Santa since I was a tyke, I would still come up with these tortured arguments for god.

I also kept noticing that people of one faith usually thought people of others were ridiculous:

People who believed in Yahweh would laugh if someone mentioned psychic powers/big foot/whathaveyou. One person would subscribe to a conspiracy theory while thinking other where stupid.

Heinlein said something like: "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."

Even after seeing all of this I still had the same tortured rationalizations for the existence of a god.

Actually, this forum made me realize that I have been an atheist and sceptic all of my life.

I have to agree

Um, okay, since Paul was a Jew living in the first century, I have a hard time picturing him communicating to anyone divorced from a 1st century Jewish viewpoint, so providing an explanation for that is kind of unnecessary. Also, outside of the epistles he wrote to the churches he previously visited in Greece, the only instance of him talking to Greeks occurs in Acts... and he's engaging them with their own Greek religious concepts, which I don't think helps your point.

Concerning your citations, yes, they're all using sleep as a euphemism for death. None of them remotely address what kind of interim state exists, if any, or deny the existence of an interim state. Also, the references to fire really don't lend themselves to the interpretation you're giving them...[/QUOTE]


Two some point to help you understand were I am coming from.

Descartes said something to the effect of trues are the building blocks of your life. When you find a block that you believe to be untrue do not remove it, but mark it. If you remove it the whole structure may come down, but if you mark it you can always remove it once you find a better truth to replace it. This one of those things I try on occasion to live my life by.

Also:

Timmy do you like Gladiator movies, or have you ever study the ideal of universal through Jesus Christ? I am not talking about Unitarian Universalism, because the UU church for the most part no longer teach that Jesus is the way and only way. The Christian universalists have a lot of good points, and I have gotten some of my ideals from them. How ever some point that they argue like the second death and aionios simple do not have a strait answer, but they could be right about those also. If you have not yet study Christian universalism you, should you can learn a lot from them. Just take everything with a grain of salt. Something you can learn a lot from even those who might be wrong. There was a point when I use to worry about things like who is or is not saved, and the different levels of salvation. Then one day I had an afflatus, and realized these things do not matter. It all about the personal, and not the group.

Oh, good. The thought that someone might actually say something like that was frightening. Hell, I have heard people say something like that.

jeez, when eenin and Cuchulain post to each other, it's like gobbledeegook.

As for me, the discussions here for the past few weeks have basically made me feel more comfortable in accepting what I believe (which is: I don't). I work in an organization that is Christian based, and over the years I have supressed my feelings so much, that I stopped thinking about my feelings on it. I have enough responsibilty in my life than to spend time addressing my feelings about religion.

But these threads that have been active (plus a Devin thread I came across from a while back) have made me readdress my thoughts on the subject.

So, although the thread has not changed my mind about my beliefs/thoughts on religion, it has helped me to address them again. Unfortunately, all it's made me realize is that I work with a bunch of people who believe in something I can not get on board with.

I have also heard a lot of people say something like that over the years.