It’s Stupid to Think Christianity is as Stupid as Some Skeptics Suppose

I am sure many of them are as are many people who may not have chosen to be a minister are also.

I know many men and women of God who are just as important but fulfill other needs God has.

Some are preachers some are farmers some are doctors...it all depends on what your calling is.

Apparently mine is to be a teacher.

 

oh I do not disagree, many good preachers out there, just like with any other profession, some bad too

 

Very many bad ones, fake Christians also.

It's why I can't attend a normal church, I get into too many disagreements because many of these people do not like it when you ask them questions disputing what they are telling you.

You quickly find yourself blacklisted.

They hypocrisy amongst Christianity is absolutely astounding.

Maybe that's what God meant when He tells us the path to Heaven is narrow or whatever that saying is.

 

The whole bible is about "knowing" God. But your "relationship" with God is, as you say, that of not knowing, which means no actual relationship.

 

Before you do no doubt. DM was correct.

 

It would appear that the real problem is self-righteousness.

 

And smug and sanctimonious. I have family members who are Christian and sometime I go to a service with them as sort of a family obligation type of thing. At a recent service the so called Pastor stated "Christian live better lives than non-Christians" (dramatic pause for effect) "I've seen it."

 

The real, intended Christianity enjoyed a very brief existence in the first two centuries. Since then it has increasingly been adapted to the mind of "the natural man who receiveth not the things of the spirit". This happens always to all religions. And still, there are those with "ears to hear", but not many.

 

That’s the way I feel about the people who don’t believe I’m sitting next to a pink unicorn. They have nothing to stand on

 

So do you think that God may possibly be a hoax?

 

That is such a beautiful example of an unknowledged prejudice from the pAstor

 

The real point is your NEED for a relationship with an imagined god and if it serves you..that’s great

 

The problem is when they want others to have a relationship with their magic sky man and demand their religion be taught in school -- or do harm to themselves or others, e.g., avoid medical treatment to be in sync with God's will. In extreme cases, doing harm to others can mean starting a war or supporting a war that would otherwise not be supported.

 

At one point in the Bible one could know God because he walked around on Earth, talked to people, even wrestled with them, or on a given day if he was up in the sky could be asked to cast down fire. And this no longer happens for what reason?

 

I think "hoax" when a lot when of a preachers starts pushing tithing. Funny how a lot of Christians talk about the new covenant when it comes to slavery and so forth -- but the Christian leaders sure love that old covenant tithing.

 

The problem is fundamentalists don’t understand that if a Christian God exists the two greatest gifts we’ve been given are love and logic.
It would appear the later gift has been rejected by far to many true believers. There are however a number of exceptions within the ranks of todays
biblical scholar such as John Shelby Spong and. a long list of others fundametalists refuse to read. Their loss.

 

I'm sure you will be a great teacher, but don't teach science.

 

An this is the kind of post that shows the person for the stumbling block that we are warned not to become.

 

Of course you don't really believe that "walking around the earth" stuff. But the bible is about Knowing god. This is something else, or more of the same, that has been lost by Christianity over the centuries: Knowing vs. knowing. In fact, I can elaborate at length in the most spiritual manner on this and nearly every modern "Christian" either cannot grasp what I'm saying, or argues and rejects it. But here it is:

When the bible references "knowing God", it is referencing Knowing as an actual, immediate experience. (The word "immediate" here is most important, meaning without medium or "go-between" but a direct Knowing that is indistinguishable from BEING it.) It's like this.... When you say "know", do you mean you know it like you know your phone number, like you know the Lords Prayer, like you know your way home, and like you know how to multiply 43 by 68? You could write the book explaining to anyone not only your phone number, but how to memorize the Lord's Prayer, how to get to your home from where ever, and how to multiply and the reader could then DO IT the first time they tried if you gave good instructions based on what you know.

BUT, when you say "Know", you would mean know like you know how to ride a bicycle. You cannot explain that in a book of any length such that a reader could then get up on a bike for the first time and ride it successfully because they read your book on it. That Knowing is part of you and it is the result of direct experience.

In the case of the bible, it is all about the progressive discovery that God is your own identity. It is about the final step: experiencing God as a direct, immediate experience of "IS", such that no distinction is found or noticed between God and self. This is the basis and meaning of "I am". This what what the ancients Knew and most people cannot or will not grasp, so they gradually transform the spiritual into the carnal. This is where Christianity is today.

Watch the hate and insulting rejection that is posted in reply to this. Religionists cannot receive this. They can only accept a religion myth that promises them magic.

 

It's true. The don't even understand God's love, which is unconditional. Ask them about unconditional love and they will tell you about conditional love, not knowing that is what they are doing. Unconditional love is not like any human love. It is transcendent.

 

The concepts of God realization, self realization, if real (no pun intended) should be supported by evidence and/or theory. This sounds more like what I understand some Hindus to believe in rather than Christians. Either way believing something to be real doesn't prove it is real.

 

I’m not aware of any of today's biblical scholars specifically mentioning conditional love in relation to God when discussing the New Testament.
The Old Testament is a very different story. Not only is the God of the Old Testament prone to conditional love he’s prone to totally unpredictable, nay downright irrational cruelty. Some trying to solve this puzzle come the tired old argument from Job that we are ‘being tested’. I don’t swallow it preferring to never underestimate the random cruelty of the universe. Not that I suggest evil acts should sometimes go unpunished but it does appear to be the case unless, like all true believers, you cleave to the comforting delusion sinners will all burn in hell. What a vicious application of omniscience that is. True believers however can comfort themselves with a reading of Nehemiah Ch 13: V 18.

 

You might read selected works of Meister Eckhart, Experiencing the Depth of Jesus Christ by Mme Jeanne Guyon, and books by Thomas Keating for starters. After in-depth study of both, "first hand", I find Hinduism and Christianity to be VERY similar in many ways. It's just the Hindu writings on self-realization are far more common than those of Christians.

That can be true, or not, depending what is meant by "real". There really, honestly, truly IS truth to the promises of Christian mystics of what is actually self-realization and all the experiences that go with it. But is it revealing the true reality of Being to us, or is it a trick of the brain and consciousness? My own experience of it leads me to believe the latter explanation.

 

Human love? You're probably correct that you don't remember any scholars mentioning it. But my reference to spiritual love was characterized as unconditional love. Not "human love", which is always conditional.

I don't disagree.

 

You should see the church my mom used to go to.
Your status in their community is weighed based upon your car , amount of money in the bank , size of your house and your ability to put other people down lol