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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Schmaven]

Spiritual beliefs are on 1 hand, simply internal tools we can use to affect change within our own minds.  It's always a risk that we fool ourselves into believing we've accomplished more than we actually have.  But sometimes random other people will comment about noticing changes in us, in which case, it is likely actual change has ocurred.  Some spiritual wisdom is lost in translation over the years, just like not all ancient wisdom works either.  That's why we need to be logical in our approach and not be mislead by mistaken views.

[McTraveller]

Christianity uniquely has the "show me the body!" veracity argument.  Then you get into "if Jesus did resurrect, then it's probably worth considering what he was reputed to have said, because the general scholarly consensus on the early writings is they are good enough eyewitness accounts - at least as far as 'these are authentic accounts of people who saw something, and the way their documented makes it likely they believed what they saw and it disagrees enough between the sources to make it unlikely to be fabricated.' "  (Remember, those guys weren't writing "the Bible" - they were just writing letters to people.)

On the flip side, if you can find any evidence (and people have been looking, to no reasonable avail* as far as I know) that Jesus was dead-dead at some point after Easter, then yeah it's just another "be nice to your neighbor" teacher with some questionable supernatural claims that make you wonder why so many followed him in the first place.

*Sure there are conspiracy theories, but nothing considered to be academically robust.

[Strongpoint]

Spiritual beliefs are on 1 hand, simply internal tools we can use to affect change within our own minds.  It's always a risk that we fool ourselves into believing we've accomplished more than we actually have.  But sometimes random other people will comment about noticing changes in us, in which case, it is likely actual change has ocurred.  Some spiritual wisdom is lost in translation over the years, just like not all ancient wisdom works either.  That's why we need to be logical in our approach and not be mislead by mistaken views.

Many techniques of modern psychology are similar to rituals of the past and we can learn a lot from studying how and why certain religions evolved. And yes, religions evolve in ways very similar to biological evolution.

Also, I am not someone to discard cultural roots simply because I don't believe the stuff that our ancestors did.

If anything, one of my largest issues with Christianity is that it violently destroyed millennia of the culture of so-called pagans all over the world, leaving us only with scraps. Mostly stuff that Christianity twisted and stole. Like... you know... Easter. Or Christmas.

[EuchreJack]

Apparently, few records exist of the Romans. Writing wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now. Plus years destroy records, let alone centuries.

[Strongpoint]

Christianity uniquely has the "show me the body!" veracity argument.  Then you get into "if Jesus did resurrect, then it's probably worth considering what he was reputed to have said, because the general scholarly consensus on the early writings is they are good enough eyewitness accounts - at least as far as 'these are authentic accounts of people who saw something, and the way their documented makes it likely they believed what they saw and it disagrees enough between the sources to make it unlikely to be fabricated.

There are still huge leaps from "a historical Jesus" to "Christianity is true".

Even if you will provide me with 100% evidence that there was a person who died and was resurrected and his name was Jesus Christ, I see no reason to believe that Christianity is true. I'll simply conclude that like many myths this one had something real in its foundation. After all, the Gospels aren't compatible with each other, they can't all be true. (and that not counting non-canonical ones. Who exactly decided which are true and which are not? By what method? How can we know if it was the correct method?)

Even if you prove that Jesus is historical and every event in the Gospels is somehow true. All that you will really prove that there was a being with supernatural powers claiming some stuff with no way to check if he (or rather it) wasn't lying. 

Also, even if the Gospels are true, Paul's letters remain his opinion... you need to prove that those are God-inspired. Good luck. I wanna know your methodology.

Even if you prove that you'll need also to explain why we should take seriously modern interpretations of stuff like Angels, Satan, Hell, etc. Those are not what Bible says.

And last but not least, you'll need to find a way to find the denomination that gets it correctly.

[jipehog]

FYI most religious think about god much less than you do. They don't need proof as they have faith. Personally, I don't believe in god. However, I also recognize that religions enshrine the collective wisdom of past ages, played a significant role in our cultures and society, and still do in various social roles.

[WealthyRadish]

People give me shit for performing tauroctonies at the office (the box of scorpions for the genitals is proving particularly problematic) but I can't help it. I never wanted to believe that Lord Mithras really did birth himself fully formed from that stone, but the explosive growth of the religion circa 1st-4th century AD is just too illogical otherwise.

[Strongpoint]

FYI most religious think about god much less than you do.

I know. It is one of the reasons why they are still religious people. Note I don't imply they are stupid, they simply forbid themselves to think about it.

[Egan_BW]

That can hardly be a rule, since plenty of christians come to the conclusion that JESUS IS LORD and nothing else matters and promptly revolve their whole lives around religion and put annoying signs everywhere. I don't think that they're simply prompted to not think about it.

and they're called baptists

[jipehog]

FYI most religious think about god much less than you do.

I know. It is one of the reasons why they are still religious people. Note I don't imply they are stupid, they simply forbid themselves to think about it.

Love also have component of faith and often contingent on not overthinking it. And some of the smartest people are unhappy.

[McTraveller]

I'm fairly critical of my own faith, and still have it.  So "mileage may vary" I guess?  Sure lots of people just blindly follow what their parents or some charismatic person tells them.  Others are pretty measured and serious in their pursuits.

Incidentally almost all scholars agree there was a historical Jesus, even according to the decidedly secular Wikipedia; there is definitely scholarly debate on just about everything else about Jesus though.  If you just study Jesus (mostly with the Synoptic Gospels) you get a different picture than what the institutional church developed over the years.  Unsurprisingly, because for many many years it was politically motivated, fairly opposite what Jesus reportedly taught.

It's also interesting reading about the academia regarding the gnostic gospels for instance (which is why they aren't in the Canon, incidentally) - how their authorship is unknown, or they pulled in works provably from other religions, etc.

[jipehog]

There is a scholar in biblical historiography I know (very critical of existing accounts) who keep telling a joke about the time his grandkid talked about the Adam and Eve story and he asked her if snake can talk, and vexed she answered grandpa its just a story! I like it because sometimes kids are so much wiser than us 

Like in any fable the only thing that matter is the moral of the story not the details.. and works best if adjusted to suit the time and tailored to the audience whether its the bible or any other story you read before bed time.

For example, currently Jews are celebrating Passover, which tells of event that modern evidence suggest that almost certainly never happened. And yet it is a great foundational story that work on various levels with themes like the struggle for freedom and justice that work today just as well, a tradition of shared experiences[1] that connects them to the past and to each other.

[1] contradiction? sure, but each one of our lives is full of them anyways, though we don't necessarily realize.

[TD1]

I'm fairly critical of my own faith, and still have it.  So "mileage may vary" I guess?  Sure lots of people just blindly follow what their parents or some charismatic person tells them.  Others are pretty measured and serious in their pursuits.

Incidentally almost all scholars agree there was a historical Jesus, even according to the decidedly secular Wikipedia; there is definitely scholarly debate on just about everything else about Jesus though.  If you just study Jesus (mostly with the Synoptic Gospels) you get a different picture than what the institutional church developed over the years.  Unsurprisingly, because for many many years it was politically motivated, fairly opposite what Jesus reportedly taught.

It's also interesting reading about the academia regarding the gnostic gospels for instance (which is why they aren't in the Canon, incidentally) - how their authorship is unknown, or they pulled in works provably from other religions, etc.

'Works provably from other religions' is interesting, if that's a metric for exclusion. Plenty of the Bible, and in particular the Old Testament, has similarities to other religions/narratives. See, most obviously, the story of the Great Flood which is predated by Gilgamesh's Epic.

Of course, the Abrahamic argument would be that there is One True narrative, and the others are just riffing off that event. But it's interesting when said others likely predated Abrahamic narratives.


As for the historical Jesus, yes, it's quite likely he existed. The Jewish author Josephus wrote about him within a century of his death, though the narrative was likely corrupted/edited by subsequent Christian interpolators. In its broad strokes, it has Jesus live as an educator and die under Pilate. It mentions his brother, James, and how he died.

I'd say these broad strokes are likely true, and all we can really say on the man without becoming involved in mythology.




Edit: Though, the historicity of the Bible is an entirely different subject. Take, for instance, the supposed census. This was called for a governor who ruled after Herod died, meaning one of the two statements (there was a census, and Jesus was born during Herod's reign) must be false.

Additionally, any such census would require Jesus' family to go to Nazareth, their current hometown, not Bethlehem.

It seems overwhelmingly apparent that the census, and Jesus' family's trip to Bethlehem, was written into the narrative later by Luke, who wanted to cement Jesus' claim to the title of Messiah (the saviour who was meant to be born at Bethlehem).

Which, incidentally, disagrees with Matthew's account of the family living in Bethlehem, sans-census/inn/manger.

The takeaway being that the Bible, for obvious reasons, is an unreliable and often contradictory account, being composed by various authors with various intentions and understandings of what happened.

[Schmaven]

Playing god's advocate here: Given the flaws and unreliability of human memory and perception, I don't see how the accounts of many people given 2000 years ago could be any other way but inconsistent.  Yet somehow still, a meta-analysis of their meaning, and even also including other religions, seems to converge together.  No 2 people can experience the same event exactly the same, so even without the addition of human error, the accounts would necessarily be different.  Add in linguistic and cultural differences across the ages, and there is a broad spectrum of beliefs in our modern world that all appear quite different, but I suspect have a lot more in common than not.

[MaxTheFox]

What would such a disproof even look like? A philosophical takedown of my values? If someone can convince me my core values are wrong, sure... but good luck. Not happening.

If anything, one of my largest issues with Christianity is that it violently destroyed millennia of the culture of so-called pagans all over the world, leaving us only with scraps. Mostly stuff that Christianity twisted and stole. Like... you know... Easter. Or Christmas.

I have a limited amount of empathy and I'm not spending it on random pagans who lived 1000 years ago. Simply put I don't care what was done in the medieval era.