Religion Why are there still Christians?

[bigsnake49]

I think Christianity made a mess of the whole trinity dogma. So many different points of contention around the trinity. People need something simple like one god like the Jewish or Muslim God. I mean 100 years after the start of Christianity the Orthodox and the Catholics were arguing about Filioque something completely inconsequential and confusing to anybody except the 10th degree theologians. So many heresies throughout its life. Note to myself: If you are going to invent a religion, make it simple.
I think that the early Christians were exclusively but they had some trouble expanding the flock so they turned to the gentiles and had to invent all the miracles and otherworldly acts like rising from the dead which would attract the polytheistic Greeks and Romans. Notice that NT is written in Greek not in Aramaic or Hebrew.

 

[Maciamo]

I agree with Tautalus.
I was Catholic, and I was educated in schools of Salesian brothers.
But over time my faith began to decrease, and today I consider myself a deist, since I am not an atheist either. I believe there is "something" that is beyond the scope of our understanding. But I believe that the bond between us and that "something" is absolutely individual, and any attempt by someone to intervene is an attempt to try to dominate us.

I was also raised in a Catholic family and went to Jesuit school. But I started questioning the logic of Catholic teaching heavily from my catechism lessons at the age of six. I refused to do my solemn communion because I was already a deist by age 12 with a deep interest in philosophy. I was precocious in that regard - maybe because my grandfather had a PhD in philosophy, although he died when I was little so I never really had the chance to discuss philosophy with him, but I certainly inherited his philosophical mindset. I never found anybody around my age who was interested in philosophy or could follow discussions on the topic. Even later at university, even though I didn't officially study philosophy (I didn't the point of a degree in philosophy), during my free time I would go to the philosophy faculty and often ended up discussing with the philosophy professor after class instead of trying to talk with people my age.

Throughout secondary school I constantly argued/reasoned with the teacher (often a Jesuit priest) in religion class. My parents were even summoned once to the principal's office because of what I said in religion class. My father couldn't see what was wrong with what I said, so the principal had to exclaim 'Bu this is a Jesuit school! You can't say things like that in a Jesuit school!" Of course nothing happened. They were not going to expel a bright kid just for disagreeing with a teacher about religion. That would have looked really bad for the school.

I only became an Atheist around the age of 18 as I took great care to disprove all possibilities for the existence of what humans call a god. I even wrote a book on the subject when I was 19 although I never published it. I later found that Richard Dawkins wrote excellent books on Atheism, so I never pursued the idea of publishing a book on the subject.

But even considering this "intrusion", I believe that Christianity, which is at the basis of our civilization, gave us something fundamental: free will.
Free will was the small hole that allowed the acceptance of the development of science (although it took a lot to defeat dogmatism) and our current conception of the world. I think that in Islam it would not have been possible (or at least, in the current conception of Islam): God has already determined everything and there is nothing to do but obey.
And furthermore, despite its natural dogmatism, Christianity has been able to adapt, at least partially, to today's world.

Humans have always had free will (if such a thing exists). It is monotheistic and polytheistic religions that insist that this isn't the case and that our fate is decided by God(s). It is true that Islam is more fatalistic than Christianity, but what really gave us free will is philosophy (e.g. the 18th-century Enlightenment).

 

[italouruguayan]

I was also raised in a Catholic family and went to Jesuit school. But I started questioning the logic of Catholic teaching heavily from my catechism lessons at the age of six. I refused to do my solemn communion because I was already a deist by age 12 with a deep interest in philosophy. I was precocious in that regard - maybe because my grandfather had a PhD in philosophy, although he died when I was little so I never really had the chance to discuss philosophy with him, but I certainly inherited his philosophical mindset. I never found anybody around my age who was interested in philosophy or could follow discussions on the topic. Even later at university, even though I didn't officially study philosophy (I didn't the point of a degree in philosophy), during my free time I would go to the philosophy faculty and often ended up discussing with the philosophy professor after class instead of trying to talk with people my age.

Throughout secondary school I constantly argued/reasoned with the teacher (often a Jesuit priest) in religion class. My parents were even summoned once to the principal's office because of what I said in religion class. My father couldn't see what was wrong with what I said, so the principal had to exclaim 'Bu this is a Jesuit school! You can't say things like that in a Jesuit school!" Of course nothing happened. They were not going to expel a bright kid just for disagreeing with a teacher about religion. That would have looked really bad for the school.

I only became an Atheist around the age of 18 as I took great care to disprove all possibilities for the existence of what humans call a god. I even wrote a book on the subject when I was 19 although I never published it. I later found that Richard Dawkins wrote excellent books on Atheism, so I never pursued the idea of publishing a book on the subject.



Humans have always had free will (if such a thing exists). It is monotheistic and polytheistic religions that insist that this isn't the case and that our fate is decided by God(s). It is true that Islam is more fatalistic than Christianity, but what really gave us free will is philosophy (e.g. the 18th-century Enlightenment).

I agree with the role of philosophy. I was referring to the context of Western civilization, based on Christianity, wich later allowed the recovery of the ancient Greek philosophy and the development of the Enlighment. Christian thought was omnipresent, but new currents of thought still developed.

 

[TaktikatEMalet]

Only people with low IQ or with an agenda actually follow these religions that were set up at a time when people didn't have much knowledge

Christianity is stupid but Islam is the worst religion around and people still care about it, it's hilarious

All you need to consider is, if god existed or was a good god why would he make disabilities, birth defects and living things kill and eat one another

 

[norbert]

Being an atheist with no sympathies toward any religion, Christianity included, I have to concur with Richard Dawkins that some religions are just much worse than others and Islam is a case in point. But belief in the supernatural and god(s) is generally ridiculous in our times, a problem that has come a long way and shows you that scientific and technological progress does not equal social and cultural progress. The US embraced a philosophy called pragmatism according to which you can have all the scientific discoveries in the world without drawing any philosophical conclusions from them. You can accept evolution, that matter is composed of atoms, that people walked on the Moon and still believe that Jesus turned water into wine. If the great minds of the past followed that kind of schizophrenia, we wouldn't have made any progress at all and would still believe the heavens were divided into layers of spheres. Not only do poverty, diseases, wars and injustices make the questioning of the existence of a god legitimate. All it takes is to have a look at nature. Why would a mercyful, all-loving god invent a parasitic worm called Onchocerca volvulus from which so many children in Africa go blind? What's the divine purpose of bacteria, viruses, mosquitos and billions of other species that make no sense at all except in the context of a natural eco system that warrants no divine explanation? And even here many of these life forms are parasitic and thus only damaging and useless. What's the purpose of the vacuum of space, permeated with deadly radiation? Stars coming into existence only to die after hundreds of millions or a couple billion years without nurturing any form of life in their solar systems. What's the divine purpose of a dead, cold world like Pluto or Neptune? Gods and religions are nothing but fictional reflections and ideologies of human societies. They may have had their purpose in the past when people were ignorant and illiterate and when rulers needed a strong religious ideology to consolidate and justify their power but not in the 21st century.

 

[Stuvanè]

I return to intervene as an old philosophy graduate, mostly because - after more than a month since it was published - I still haven't understood what the ultimate aim of this thread is (except to slander a faith that has now been reduced to its lowest terms). , and secondly because certain judgments on Christianity seem to me even more dogmatic than what the faithful of this belief have expressed in the past.

Let me start by saying that I am a Christian by baptism and family tradition, but not practicing and with very little or no faith. I have no particular sympathy for the Church, especially for its political interference (I'm from Romagna and anyone who chews a bit of medieval and modern history knows what I'm talking about), and I hate what it has done with regards to fine minds like Giordano Bruno and Galileo.

But be very careful not to throw the baby away with the bathwater.

In the meantime, we should understand what is most annoying about Christianity here: whether it is its precepts/morals or the fact that some Christians "believe" in the scriptures, calling them fools compared to those who follow science.

On morality, it seems to me that the issue is now a non-problem. For a long time now, the West has no longer followed any Christian/biblical morality, and has instead constantly demonstrated amorality - not to say depravity - at all levels. The 10 commandments seem to mirror the current daily behavior of the average Westerner. (Also in this regard, I don't intend to teach anyone anything: I consider myself a textbook sinner in all respects).

Regarding the fact that some persist in reading the Bible and/or believing in it, I would say that among them today almost no one of average education - with the exception of some minority, fanatical or hyper-conservative groups on which constant cherry-picking is applied - does so by approaching it with an absolutely literal interpretation.
Even if memes and the media want us to believe otherwise, I would like to hope that the very secular and casual West will be able to understand once and for all that a text like this (like all religious texts) must be contextualized historically, and read through a tight allegorical exegesis (I point out that it is the Christians themselves who equip themselves with these tools, given that the debate had already arisen in the first centuries of the common era; while in our times it is almost easier to find among the critics of Christianity those who claim to use the Bible in the literal sense). If anyone is interested in these issues, relating to a reasoned biblical interpretation, find some studies by Pierre Grelot.

I believe that very few in the Western world today uncritically adopt the Bible as a scientific text, to recover scientific theories or data. This was a note that could have been addressed to the faithful (and not even all) of a few centuries ago; now it seems to me to arrive gratuitously and quite out of time, with the intention of somewhat artfully creating a fence between faith and science, making the former seem completely obstructive compared to the latter. Be careful about calling Christians idiots or giving poor IQ scores. This boundary between faith and science, as proven by facts, has been much more fluid and permeable than we are willing to admit (just take a look at the list of first-rate scientists who were also religious to disprove such an assumption I doubt they were all indoctrinated idiots. Google it and you will find tasty surprises: here is a first list relating to the Catholic field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists ).

But in any case, even if science and faith have stepped on each other's toes for centuries and continue to do so, their respective ultimate contents and objects of study remain largely very different, it never hurts to reiterate this. If some naive Christians have not understood it, even many atheist scientists, conversely, are not joking.

"The Bible teaches how to go to Heaven. Science how heaven works." It's a dated joke attributed to Galileo, who probably heard it in turn from Cardinal Baronio, but it doesn't get old: old but gold.
If we wanted to talk about it in purely philosophical/Aristostelian terms, science is currently able to identify the material and efficient causes of nature and reality (what a reality is "made" of and how it is born/arises). The formal causes (i.e. the profound and original essence, unless the mathematical modeling that the physics of nature does can be equated with finding them) and the final causes (what reality is ultimately used for) escape it. Science and religion generally converge their attention on these points. Why there is being and not nothingness is the ultimate question that has held the human mind in check for millennia, whether we want to use reason or not.

But here too I would like to hope that, after a giant of thought or as Kant was in the end of the 18th century, it was clear both to the faithful and to the most convinced scientists and rationalists, that what escapes a space-time categorization (Soul, World and God, the nodes of both metaphysics and religion), it cannot be the object of rational demonstration and therefore become the object of science.
Therefore, if the believer cannot affirm anything about the existence of metaphysical objects rationally, neither can the iron rationalist. Indeed, I would say that the atheist - if he wanted to be fully honest with himself and not self-contradictory - should exercise prudent skepticism here, and also abstain from judging the existence of God, under penalty of wanting to ascribe to himself a type of demonstration that our epistemological and rational faculties cannot cope.

Now if human rationality has its limits and if Humanity, for millennia, has almost always felt the need for a prop to give a profound meaning to itself and to the world, it is not as if there is much else left outside of religion and of faith. Which is certainly to be criticized and condemned when it is used ideologically, forcibly political and persecutory towards other communities or individuals. But it cannot be suppressed on an intimate and personal level.

You ask yourselves why these anthropological elaborations that smack of myths and fairy tales continue to exist. Let's not beat around the bush too much: no one is happy to imagine themselves transient and thrown randomly into existence. Subconsciously we almost always harbor a hope that our earthly adventure will not end in a memorial stone under which to rot. These are questions that pop into our heads either when we begin to glimpse our end, or when we are in a desperate situation, with which we measure our finiteness. Someone said there are no atheists on a crashing plane.

You ask why people believe (stupidly?) in a presumed and imaginary benevolent and transcendent God, despite the evil that afflicts and weakens the world. I would turn the question around: it is precisely because Humanity experiences evil that it develops a religion, either to find comfort with respect to the pain it feels in the face of misfortunes and injustices, or because it is hoped that these negative events, in the economy of existence , happen according to a superior logic and with a purpose that we cannot understand, but which justifies our suffering (the famous "Providence", which is not just a fantasy or a Christian whim, but something already discussed by the thinkers of Classical times , especially by the Stoics).

Having said this, and regardless of whether one is a believer or not, why do I believe that Christianity should be recognized as having some merits (despite all its limitations, because it is the result of human development)? For at least three points:

• it has effectively focused on and spread the ethics of reciprocity, that is, love/respect for oneself and others, more than any other system. What we would like done to us, we should do to others (Mt 7, 12). A moral rule already present in other philosophical and cultural systems, even older ones, but no longer expressed only in a negative key, but rather positively and proactively. I believe that even a non-believer can accept what is in fact a cornerstone of normal civil life;

• it highlighted the distinction/separation between the religious sphere and the temporal sphere with the famous «Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's» (Mt 22, 21; Mk 12,17; Lk 20,25). One could object that the Church has done something completely different in history: correct, but this falls within the aspects to be execrated in which religion is reconverted by its officials to a political instrument and in any case represents a failure to fulfill a precept given by its founder (the mess is caused not by the Christian message as such, but by its lack of and opposite application);

• as long as we try to consider it intrusive and alien compared to the indigenous European culture, and as much as I myself recognize that it has had some negative or disruptive effects compared to previous civilisations, Christianity has also given a lot, and the connection with this that Europe is as we know it now is inextricable (by the way, this applies to all religions, but here perhaps even more so: religion survives because it often becomes an ethnic marker that distinguishes the identity of those who profess it). At a biblical level there are parts that are universal literary masterpieces (see the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes). But it is mainly to Christianity and its medieval monks that we owe a large part of the preservation of the literary heritage of Antiquity. The biblical-Christian contents are in fact the inspirational ideas for much of medieval and modern European art. A Europe without the skyline of its basilicas and cathedrals, without the Divine Comedy, without the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment or Michelangelo's Pietà, without Bach's masses and chorales, would be a rather squalid and insignificant place.

I would therefore urge caution among those who want to get rid of Christianity and eradicate it from the Old Continent. Precisely because you see parallels with the collapse of ancient civilizations, remember that Christianity took over not so much by virtue of its initial cultural and conceptual scope (in the end it is a sort of vulgarised Platonism/Neo-Platonism), but because it found fertile ground there, with a population who no longer found satisfaction in previous cults. For someone it was a good thing, for others a terrible misfortune or an involution.
What is certain is that a void is almost always filled by something else. One thinks of beginning the age of full Reason, then perhaps he will have to deal with something more bigoted than what he has abandoned.