Why Christianity is so Persistant

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-The Carrot: Eternal reward for following it.
-The Stick: Eternal punishment for those who do not follow. Some people convert just for "fire insureance" (safety from Hell) even if they're skeptical about the rest of it.
Sense of Urgency: Your decision must be made NOW because you might die tomorrow! You cannot wait to die and then see if there is an afterlife. This ensures the church can influence you within your lifetime.
-Faith: The Bible states that you cannot prove or disprove the existance of God (though some try to). This ensures that you cannot argue a christian out of his belief.
-The Will of God: God, being an entity of infinite power, created morality, and thus is beyond all moral judgement by mortals. When good things happen, believers pray to God to thank Him. When bad things happen, they pray to God thanking Him that they were not worse.
-Pity for Nonbelievers: Believers feel sorry for the poor damned atheists and attempt and pray to bring him/her into the fold.
-Satan: this is a convenient scapegoat for all wrong things, since God in His infinite wisdom allowed Satan to influence stuff and people here.

This is not complete, but as far as I can tell Christianity is a belief defended on all fronts. Once it burrows into a person's psyche, there is not return. If any of this seems contradictory its because what the Bible says and what believers say often do contradict.

hmm. I can definatly see where you are coming from. I used to be a very christain calvinist for a couple years, and the thought that everything is predetermined by god was a very comforting thought for me. Eventually, the logical problems I had with predetrimination and free will, as well as accepting the bible as a perfect revealation became too much for me to accept, and although I do beleive that it is quite likely to be a god, we can't know him except through direct personal revelation. and He hasen't done that to me, so I am a praticing agnostic for the moment. That was why I was so interested in christainity and why I couldn't accept it any longer.

The following is a quote from my blog

It's the nature of belief isn't it - we believe something or not but logic is a tricky thing and I think you could make a logical argument for believing in God. Is life totally random, I mean life itself, not a person's individual life? Are we really just a result of the chance accumulation of enough conditions to create life forms? - pretty amazing huh if that's the case. In some ways it seems more logical to me to believe in a creative force that made us what we are and also to believe in pattern and meaning in life. Even if I'm wrong it makes my life better to believe that anyway - if there's nothing more to life than my ego experience it's a fairly poor outlook I'd say. Can pre-determination and free will not exist side by side? - if light can be a particle and a wave at the same time I don't see why not, just two ways of looking at the same thing.[/quote]

i am seriously impressed - a thread about god and religion which is courteous, thoughtful, INTERESTING, and hasn't got anyone telling me i'm going to hell cos i ain't a christian.

bloody well done, chaps (and i am NOT being sarcastic) - i shall look forward to reading the coming posts.

I believe in god. Christanity is persistant because the bible is one of the number 1 first books created. There a good amount of people who believe in this religion as I do. Christanity was a religion that was spread hundreds of years ago.

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okay Morlock you got me there, I really don't know very much about chaos theory and all that but your argument goes round in circles whether its 'anthropic' or not and it comes back to 'what conditioned the first condition?'. There must always have been something to bring something else into being so where did the first something come from huh?

Tim_p he the man!

I think heaven may be a life as a spirit, not a body, so you don't need food, toilets, cleaning (aspie heaven!) or cinemas or whatever. No carcass to maintain or keep out of trouble, yay!

I lean towards predestination, but I think one has some free will in unimportant matters.


'This is not complete, but as far as I can tell Christianity is a belief defended on all fronts. Once it burrows into a person's psyche, there is not return.'

I'm not sure that this says anything at all. Everything is a 'belief'. Isn't it? Everyone tries to defend their beleifs don't they? Once those beliefs burrow into a person's psyche, they're difficult to shift...some people think they're ugly or fat when they're not.

'If any of this seems contradictory its because what the Bible says and what believers say often do contradict.'

Well, everything humans do is flawed.

Perhaps causality (cause and effect, the fact that everything has a cause and didn't just happen) only applies in the physical universe, perhaps time itself is different outside of the universe and God need not have a cause. Bassicly what I am saying is, I don't know the answer to your question, but I think your question may be flawed, though it is may seem odd I see no logical reason why God needs to have been made.

As causality clearly does apply in the physical world, what, Morlock, do you think brought the universe into existence? If, as many people theorize, our universe was born out of the death of another, then I ask, what made that previous universe? What do you think the ultimate source of space and matter is?

Oh and, Rumio, thanks, I'm not often complimented, you made my day!

Edit:Typo, I wrote "unviverse".