Rant about Christianity.

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Yeah, same here. I stopped believing in God, and my religion for that matter, after I had read some of Steven Hawking's books.

But it does seem to me that people on this site in general have some sort of grudge against Christianity as a collective whole. I think this is a rather wrong and dangerous additude to take.

As for organized religion and the cults related to that, I think that the people involved in that are a bunch of cowards and hypocrites.

"Guilt" is something a person can have with or without religion though. The difference between having a religion and having no religion is that religion reminds you that you have a conscience and reminds you that you are supposed to pay attention to it.

Christians, for example, believe:

Rom 2:14 Even when Gentiles, who do not have God's written law, instinctively follow what the law says, they show that in their hearts they know right from wrong.

Rom 2:15 They demonstrate that God's law is written within them, for their own consciences either accuse them or tell them they are doing what is right.

I think this is the main reason why atheists are quick to label religious people as "self-righteous."

Christians and people from other religions are NOT "self-righteous." They are just following their consciences, or, in the case of the ten commandments and other Biblical doctrine, or whatever the holy texts are of their religions, they are following God's laws.

Sometimes Christians will stand up for a cause or assume a stance on a moral issue. This is because their religions and their consciences tell them to. To NOT follow their religions or consciences goes against God.

Thus their stance is clear, firm, and unshakable. And they cannot be persuaded by argumentation against their stance.

Building on my previous post, it is because Christians seem self-righteous to many people, particularly those who may ignore what their consceinces tell them to do in favor of personal persuits and pleasures.

That's funny. I have a conscience, and I'm an atheist. A conscience is just a psychological mechanism to tell you when you're violating your own moral code. I would speculate that an atheist violates his moral code far less frequently, because it comes from within instead of being imposed by doctrine.



I think a bigger part of it is the quick resort to what The Book says, as you've done. And it's not just done in religion. American constitutionalists tend to do the same thing, and I find it equally irritating. If your idea has merit, you don't need to claim the authority of some old document to get support for it. Especially from those who don't hold the document in the same esteem that you do.

If you're a Chevy owner and you show up at a Ford dealership and the salesman opens by telling you that the Ford Bible says his product is superior to Chevies, how convinced will you be?

Quoting scripture to a non-believer (possibly a believer of a rival god) is a non-starter. It's not only ineffective, it's counter-productive.

Americans...we like all-in-one, does-everything doohickers. We like Walmart, even if we go to the ones that are called Target. We admit that they don't usually work properly, but we love them anyway. It's a part of our nature. Really, it serves reason that we would want an all-in-one, does-everything god. We don't even make too much of an issue over how people go about kissing his ass anymore; we are one of the most liberal countries in the world, after all. In spite of our strong points as a culture, though, our affinity for the quick, the easy, and the convenient has one adverse side-effect: we are slow to the realization of inconvenient truths. Our addiction to religion is a symptom of this. Our slowness in realizing what is happening to our planet is another one. It doesn't mean that we are bad, as a culture. It doesn't mean we are stupid. America is the last culture in the world that I would regard as ill-spirited or stupid. However, it does mean that we have some hard lessons to learn.

Christianity is 2000 years old. Monotheism is much older. American desire for convenience is very young in comparison. You can't really blame monotheism on it.

I wasn't. I was being interesting. Of tangential interest, your estimation of the age of Christianity is probably slightly off, depending upon what you mark as the advent of its birth as a proper religion.

the two things that have doomed humanity since the dawn of civilization has been politics and religion. i actually meet some christians that thought jesus last name was christ. haha

With the amount of Christian posts out there, maybe we can combine them all into a sticky...

ya know his middle name was herschel, right? hence jesus h christ.


/joking