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jcsbanks

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Everything posted by jcsbanks

  1. The Rhino, As another newcomer here, thanks for sharing. I am sad that you are distressed with the way you feel about yourself, your past and your future, but hope that your questions will do you a huge amount of good, and as you come through this allow you to see the world with a spring in your step and perhaps help others to joy that can come through liberation from this horrible guilt and fear under which you have submitted yourself. "1: What you believe the afterlife entails and why?" Personally I believe when I die, I rot. This requires me to make the most of life on earth. As an ex fundamentalist christian, this did not liberate me into sin, but made me more loving of my fellow humans. I did not see them as conversion fodder, I did not bring an agenda to everything, but could simply weigh up using logic what I thought was the best decision. If I do something kind, I'm not doing it for god, but because I think it is right based on reason, or because it just feels good. "2: how you cope with guilt over sin and fear of hell?" I don't believe in it. I think doing so would waste away the precious years I have on earth. "3: do you let the fear of hell or guilt of sin overtly effect your religious views and/or your actions ?" Nope. Liberated from all the hate and mind chains. "4: how do you reconcile yourself against such confident fundamentalists such as Mark Driscol? (I don't like the guy, but his confidence that I'm likely going to hell scares the pants off me)." He can be as confident as he likes, doesn't make him right, I think his morals are corrupt and his world view is distorted. He may as well believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, to me that is how I assess the evidence. It sounds like I have little respect for his views, that is because he has little respect for mine. I'm not trying to talk you into atheism, but for me it is liberating. I don't have to inherit the immoral views of a literalist interpretation of the bible and I have every defence and more against evangelical, charismatic or pentocostal apologetics and hysterics, fake signs and wonders and all the associated garbage. I'm here to learn more respect for more moderate religious views. I've given a counterpoint to faith above, I hope it is not aggressive, it is not meant to be!
  2. Hi Alamar, I haven't seen anything in medical practice, whether in life or death that would carry weight (pardon the pun) towards evidence for a soul. I think the existence of the soul is not something that can be settled by scientific method. I suppose that leaves us with a situation where we believe that everything has a rational/scientific explanation and therefore reject the notion of things like the soul, or we just say it is in another paradigm to science and science has nothing to say about it. What I did find was that being at the coal face of medical practice eroded my faith and made me less idealistic, but also uncomfortable with the received morals of conservative christianity. It certainly made me very critical of "evidence" for healing/miracles/answered prayer/resurrection/prohesy/signs/wonders because a key part of a physician's education includes appraisal of evidence and scientific method to avoid bias/inappropriate or ineffective diganoses/treatments. Because my previous conservative beliefs had claims that could be tested by scientific method I found them wanting when I applied the same rigour to them as I would to a simple medical intervention that was arguably of much less eternal consequences if you take evangelical teachings literally like I once did.
  3. Not prying at all Jonny. I started to question first and initially it scared my wife, but we went through it together. As we discussed it we shared many of the same concerns, but expected that our questioning would result in a stronger faith. What we did not anticipate was what happened which left us rejecting the idea of faith as a means of making important life decisions where reason suggested differently. Now she is a little surprised about me reading about liberal ideas, but after discussion realises that I'm not planning on adopting them, rather seeking to understand and respect them. It appears that I can find more common ground and mutual respect here than I could with a conservative. My politics are Thatcherite though. Under her policies there was considerable and surprising social mobility through hard work in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s and for me it brought me out of poverty not just economically but with the emotional benefits that not being poor also brings.
  4. Thanks for the welcome. Very interesting replies. I will enjoy reading more here and contributing where I can.
  5. I became a Christian at 16 after reading the "Journey into life" tract after attending a local Anglican (charismatic/evangelical) church where a friend attended. Although a budding scientist I didn't for some reason question why I believed it, that came later. I went to university to study medicine at 19, and attended a similar but non-denominational church in Edinburgh where I met and married my wife nearly 16 years ago. We are happily married still, I'm working as a family physician in a semi-rural area in Scotland and she has started a laser cutting/engraving business, and we're renovating old farm buildings. We have a beloved rescue cat, no children. Some of our family and friends are Christians. Most that are Christians are conservatives. Within a year of marriage we both lost our faith and would since describe ourselves as atheists. I couldn't square a literalist interpretation of the bible with the world I saw around me, and have come to dislike the intolerance and hate that fundamentalist/conservative Christianity pushes. Perhaps unfortunately I'd not experienced liberal/progressive Christianity and was effectively taught by the charismatics that it was effectively contemptible. We'd now say we are humanists and perhaps I've tended towards a slightly aggressive atheism a la Richard Dawkins but need to let the pendulum settle and develop a more balanced respect for people of more moderate faith and understand them better, and that is why I'm here. One of our Christian friends linked some of Bishop Spong's thoughts on Facebook under a thread "Christianity for people that don't like Christianity". A fundamentalist Christian friend thought that either Spong was illogical or was cherry picking. I actually see a great humanist and it warms my respect for liberal/progressive Christians, but I still do not believe in God. My question: Does belief in God matter when it could be argued that progressive Christians have more in common with atheist humanists than they do with conservative Christians? Best regards, John Banks
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