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Has Science Made Religion Useless?


irreverance

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Realize that's very tricky.....a balance between being open, and having a place where reasonably intelligent and perhaps personal conversations could be had. Which are not going to happen if you have to wade through nutcase kind of stuff.

My inclination would be to only have the forum open to people who accept the broad principles of liberal/progressive Christianity, so that decent conversations/threads can develop - there are plenty of others for fundamentalists and atheists. But what the hell do I now...I've only been on forums for the last couple of months. Though I think, from the little I've learnt, that there's not much around between the two poles,which provides space for genuine critical and personal reflection.

 

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9 hours ago, John Hunt said:

Realize that's very tricky.....a balance between being open, and having a place where reasonably intelligent and perhaps personal conversations could be had. Which are not going to happen if you have to wade through nutcase kind of stuff.

I don't think to date anybody has had to 'wade through it' on this forum, but I certainly am mindful of it.

9 hours ago, John Hunt said:

My inclination would be to only have the forum open to people who accept the broad principles of liberal/progressive Christianity, so that decent conversations/threads can develop - there are plenty of others for fundamentalists and atheists. But what the hell do I now...I've only been on forums for the last couple of months. Though I think, from the little I've learnt, that there's not much around between the two poles,which provides space for genuine critical and personal reflection.

Well, you know what you would like, so that is a fair enough comment/observation about any forum you may wish to participate in.  My approach is to allow some leeway and tolerance and see where it goes.  Like I said, in all my years here, it's not really been an issue.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Discovery Institute undermined religion's claim to be compatible with science in the late 1990s.
With the Wedge document.

Also before we can reliably discuss whether religion is compatible with science, we should define religion a bit more carefully. 

A classic example the huge STEP study back in 2006 looked at the benefits of prayer on the outcome of a certain type of heart operation.

The long and short of it three groups of people were in the study.
People who were prayed for but did not know it
People who were not prayed for
People who knew they were being prayed for

There was no difference for people in outcomes for the first two groups. BUT the outcome for the third group was worse (statistically).

There are some who would argue God can't be tested. In this sense religion and science are not compatible.

 

I apologize ...  just noticed this is in the PC thread ...  not supposed to post here.

Edited by romansh
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2 hours ago, romansh said:

I apologize ...  just noticed this is in the PC thread ...  not supposed to post here.

Not to distract from this thread, but this section (Progressive Christianity) simply tries to ensure general, supportive discussion about progressive Christianity reserved for those who consider themselves in general agreement with the 8 points.  The important thing, as I believe anyway and will try to manage accordingly, is that there is an opportunity for PC's needing some supporting discussion, to be able to without being discouraged.  Rom, if your comments were inappropriate, then there would be an issue.  But as per what I've usually seen from you, these are genuine discussion questions, in line with this particular topic and not ill-intended. 

Being responsible for this forum is not a precise science, so I hope others understand where I'm coming from.

Peace & good will.

Paul

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15 hours ago, romansh said:

The Discovery Institute undermined religion's claim to be compatible with science in the late 1990s.
With the Wedge document.

Also before we can reliably discuss whether religion is compatible with science, we should define religion a bit more carefully. 

A classic example the huge STEP study back in 2006 looked at the benefits of prayer on the outcome of a certain type of heart operation.

The long and short of it three groups of people were in the study.
People who were prayed for but did not know it
People who were not prayed for
People who knew they were being prayed for

There was no difference for people in outcomes for the first two groups. BUT the outcome for the third group was worse (statistically).

There are some who would argue God can't be tested. In this sense religion and science are not compatible.

 

I apologize ...  just noticed this is in the PC thread ...  not supposed to post here.

I'm quite confused by this.

I don't understand how any of the above indicates that religion and science are not compatible. Is spirituality testable according to known human metrics? Not really, but that doesn't make it incompatible with science. We have absolutely no known ways to understand how the human brain works to any real, appreciable degree, but that doesn't make the human mind incompatible with science. It means that as of yet, we can't understand it, and that makes it a darling of the scientific world.

I'm not sure how religion or spirituality are any different? We observe what we can, quantify what we can, examine what we can, interpret as best we can whatever results we can glean, and make the most of it. But that's the messy, inconvenient, truth of all science. It's largely limited and awkward and yields difficult to interpret results that scientists just wade through as best they can with a TON of research conclusions essentially being "*shrug* no one really knows", which scientists write as "more research is needed in this area". 

Any scientist worth their salt won't give much credence to any individual study as it is. They're essentially worthless in isolation until there's a massive volume of confirming and differing results for meta-analysis, and even that is fraught with limitations and challenges for interpretation. I often say that most surefire way to identify that you are talking to a scientist is that they will rarely state anything with certainty. The more truly knowledgeable someone about a complex subject, the more humble they become about how well they understand it.

In my medical training I was constantly exasperated by everything being taught as "fact" because "science". It was perverse, and made my understand why so many doctors are so blindly dogmatic, despite having *terrible* scientific basis for most of what they do. 

The unknowability of God does not make it incompatible with science, it makes it the ultimate scientific question, because that's all science is, the asking and investigating of questions, whether meaningful or actionable answers result or not. Most research produces no significant results, and that absence of evidence is as important as the rare research that indicates clear effects.

One of the most elegant aspects of research is the null hypothesis. All research starts with a hypothesis that they will prove nothing, statistically significant results don't prove anything in and of themselves, they mathematically *fail* to prove that nothing happened. So if the fundamental hypothesis of all research is that it will prove nothing, then isn't that fundamentally aligned with trying to understand something unknowable???

It sounds semantic, but it isn't. It's the very cornerstone of the scientific method and the mathematics behind the analysis of data. No controlled study has ever proven anything, ever. They've only ever failed to prove that there's nothing there. 

For me personally, it all ties together in terms of examining my own faith.

If the statement is more than research science doesn't have much utility compared to other disciplines in terms of understanding God and faith, then yeah, sure, I'll buy that, but that's not incompatibility, just ineffectiveness. But as I said, science is by design pretty ineffective at understanding MOST of what it looks at...so...

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cInteresting that the study was on prayer. Can the mind change the course of events, or how far that’s just reading meanings into what happens, I don’t know. If everyone prayed intensely at the same time for a meteor to be moved off a collision course with the earth, would it have any effect? Could a pebble be moved an inch? I guess not. It’s never been done, anyway, not in a way that can be “proved,” photographed.

But that's not to say it’s not worth praying together. In that kind of concentrated agreement, focused on a higher purpose, we could maybe achieve a few other things, like getting rid of world hunger, or terrorism, or nuclear weapons; providing everyone on the planet with a decent education, basic health care, clean water, toilets, decent roofs over their heads, access to the Internet – any one of which would be a good start, and affordable, and help everyone else as well, if the will to do it was there.

When religion ignores science it’s on the way to irrelevance. When it contradicts it, it’s superstition. But then it doesn’t have to do either. It plays a different kind of role. It refreshes the parts science doesn’t reach. They both come from the same kinds of promptings, the same questionings. Science tells us how to get to the moon, but doesn’t tell us why we want to go there. Even the battiest religion can help us get through the day better than knowing everything there is to know about evolutionary theory. And good religion is informed by science, much as science has been informed by religion. Science without religion or morality is the fast road to hell. Religion without reason, likewise. That's how I think of it, anyway....

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6 hours ago, John Hunt said:

Can the mind change the course of events, or how far that’s just reading meanings into what happens, I don’t know. If everyone prayed intensely at the same time for a meteor to be moved off a collision course with the earth, would it have any effect? Could a pebble be moved an inch? I guess not. It’s never been done, anyway, not in a way that can be “proved,” photographed.

Yes, the mind can change the course of events and not only that but also move objects. I do it everyday. My mind says to pickup a glass of water and my hands obey and move it from the table to my mouth. My mind thinks golf would be nice today so i go play golf and in doing so the course of events is changed. It can even be photographed. 🙂😃😄

Just a little bit of humor to change the course of events. lol

Joseph

PS. Rom, good to see you back. Delete requested  done.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Science is the examination of facts, pick your "scientific topic".

 

Religion is :  man trying to become deity, or man trying to connect with Deity, based on man's self effort. (Religion)

 

Christianity, is  Holy God offering the "gift" of Spiritual reconciliation to Himself, by dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself as "born again" Spiritually.   John 14:6

Edited by Fastguitars
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1 hour ago, Fastguitars said:

Science is the examination of facts, pick your "scientific topic".

 

Religion is :  man trying to become deity, or man trying to connect with Deity, based on man's self effort. (Religion)

 

Christianity, is  Holy God offering the "gift" of Spiritual reconciliation to Himself, by dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself as "born again" Spiritually.   John 14:6

Lol, as a former scientist, we never traded in facts, we only hypothesized things. It's kind of fundamental to science that you never actually claim anything as fact, you only claim to not reasonably be able to claim something not a fact. 

Seriously, that's science. I hypothesize that something may have an effect on something else, but my statistical analysis always presupposes that there is no effect. I never prove anything, I only fail to prove that there's nothing. 

As for Christianity, well that's not a monolith either. My particular church, which is quite old and well established, not a rare fringe church, doesn't put any particular emphasis on the whole "dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself". 

My church ordains indigenous spiritual leaders, so the fundamental basis of the church needs to be compatible with both Christian theology AND indigenous spiritual beliefs, so the teachings are pretty broad and philosophical and very different from many other Christian churches out there. 

So no, science is nowhere near as sanitized as people make it out to be. Science is philosophical, abstract, and in practice deeply political and profoundly corrupt, like every other manifestation of human institutional power. Just like churches. 

What is true is that each camp has some pretty powerful branding and PR behind them that has shaped public opinion, when really, they're both just a bunch of disparate organizations perpetually in fighting and trying to influence the dominant narrative.

Again, like EVERY SINGLE manifestation of human institutional power. 

Seriously, anyone who thinks the institution of "science" is some kind of coordinated force for truth has obviously never worked as a professional scientist. 

Lol, that's like saying the law is about justice. Sure...that's the PR, but any lawyer will tell you that that's not the reality. 

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1 hour ago, Kellerman said:

 

As for Christianity, well that's not a monolith either. My particular church, which is quite old and well established, not a rare fringe church, doesn't put any particular emphasis on the whole "dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself". 

 

Well, If there is another way to God other than Christ's Blood, then You are right.

If you're not, then God is right.

It really comes down to one thing...

Jesus said that He is the only way to God, and that no man comes to God "but by Me".  John 14:6

So, that is the Cross of Christ.. which is the blood and death of Jesus....... being offered as the gift  of ="reconciliation between man and God".

Now, if Jesus is a fraud, and a liar, and not the Son of God,  and is just one more "religious icon",  then, pay no mind to what He said, and in that case, you can just keep going like this.......>"As for Christianity, well that's not a monolith either. My particular church, which is quite old and well established, not a rare fringe church, doesn't put any particular emphasis on the whole "dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself". 

However, if Christ is telling the Truth, if He rose from the dead..... then you have  to make a different arrangement between yourself and God before you die, if you want to meet God as "Father", through Christ.... after you die.

Edited by Fastguitars
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4 hours ago, Fastguitars said:

Well, If there is another way to God other than Christ's Blood, then You are right.

If you're not, then God is right.

It really comes down to one thing...

Jesus said that He is the only way to God, and that no man comes to God "but by Me".  John 14:6

So, that is the Cross of Christ.. which is the blood and death of Jesus....... being offered as the gift  of ="reconciliation between man and God".

Now, if Jesus is a fraud, and a liar, and not the Son of God,  and is just one more "religious icon",  then, pay no mind to what He said, and in that case, you can just keep going like this.......>"As for Christianity, well that's not a monolith either. My particular church, which is quite old and well established, not a rare fringe church, doesn't put any particular emphasis on the whole "dying on a Cross as the only means to accept you back into Himself". 

However, if Christ is telling the Truth, if He rose from the dead..... then you have  to make a different arrangement between yourself and God before you die, if you want to meet God as "Father", through Christ.... after you die.

Yeah...uh...all I said was that my church doesn't emphasize this stuff. 

So obviously, not all Christian churches promote the same teachings that you seem to dictate are "Christian". 

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On 7/15/2021 at 1:44 AM, Fastguitars said:

It really comes down to one thing...

Jesus said that He is the only way to God, and that no man comes to God "but by Me".  John 14:6

So, that is the Cross of Christ.. which is the blood and death of Jesus....... being offered as the gift  of ="reconciliation between man and God".

Personally, I don't think this was ever Jesus' belief but rather these are words put on his lips by later authors (and we know John was written some 50-70 years after Jesus died).  I think Jesus might have been pushing for people to repent because he thought the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent, perhaps he even thought that he was the Son of Man who God would use to initiate the Kingdom, but I doubt Jesus ever thought he was to be a human sacrifice whose death would heal an imaginary rift between man and God.

I like to think that if Jesus had been more educated about evolution he might even consider that there is no such rift between man and God and that as humans, we are born perfectly human.  We have been evolving for some millions and millions of years.  Humankind (homo sapiens) had walked this earth for more than 160,000 years before Jesus lived.  The oldest written word that we apparently have from God came some 157,500 years after our species first appeared.  That's a long time for there to be this rift between man and God that only Jesus could fix.  And if God did 'create' the earth, he seems to have spent a lot of time waiting for man (some 14 billion years) so that this rift could then exist and he would have to sacrifice his son to himself, to fix it.

I don't think Jesus was either a fraud or a liar, I just think he was born into a Jewish religious culture that was being oppressed by a nasty foreign power and these things helped shape his view of the world and his personal understanding of God.  He probably had the best of intent - it's just how he came to think of life and God, like so many others have come to their views too.

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15 hours ago, PaulS said:

Personally, I don't think this was ever Jesus' belief but rather these are words put on his lips by later authors (and we know John was written some 50-70 years after Jesus died).  I think Jesus might have been pushing for people to repent because he thought the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent, perhaps he even thought that he was the Son of Man who God would use to initiate the Kingdom, but I doubt Jesus ever thought he was to be a human sacrifice whose death would heal an imaginary rift between man and God.

I like to think that if Jesus had been more educated about evolution he might even consider that there is no such rift between man and God and that as humans, we are born perfectly human.  We have been evolving for some millions and millions of years.  Humankind (homo sapiens) had walked this earth for more than 160,000 years before Jesus lived.  The oldest written word that we apparently have from God came some 157,500 years after our species first appeared.  That's a long time for there to be this rift between man and God that only Jesus could fix.  And if God did 'create' the earth, he seems to have spent a lot of time waiting for man (some 14 billion years) so that this rift could then exist and he would have to sacrifice his son to himself, to fix it.

I don't think Jesus was either a fraud or a liar, I just think he was born into a Jewish religious culture that was being oppressed by a nasty foreign power and these things helped shape his view of the world and his personal understanding of God.  He probably had the best of intent - it's just how he came to think of life and God, like so many others have come to their views too.

Yep, it's entirely possible that Jesus, being human, had a fundamentally limited understanding of divinity, like every other human being who has ever lived. 

To me, that's a huge part of faith, the fundamentally unknowable aspect, and getting to a spiritual state where that feels absolutely okay, in fact, it's kind of the point. 

I personally didn't see any point to any religion until I studied many of them and saw central themes through them. 

Then it was like: hmm, okay, there's something, but I have no reliable sources to help me grasp it because they're all fundamentally human sources, which are all fundamentally flawed. So then there is no human authority to which I can turn to define divinity...and oh...yeah...that's the whole point of faith. Neato. 

So to me, it doesn't really matter whether Jesus actually said a specific thing, or what he meant by a specific thing, or what may have been changed or translated along the way, making specific things less specifically valid, because in the end, even the source, Jesus, was a human being, incapable of fully grasping and communicating divinity. 

Jesus provides a pin-point view into a galaxy. A faint whiff of divinity on earth. 

You can read about him and his apparent words and tap into the vaguest, transient of senses of divinity, the same way you can through meditation or being in nature, or whatever your jam is. 

At least that's how I see it, others choose to put their faith in humans who said things, and humans who wrote what those people said, and then humans who had political interests in which words got published, and then humans who translated those words, which change in meaning over time because y'know, humans, and then humans taught those translated, changed meaning words in certain contexts to suite their particular human ideology, and so on and so forth. 

For me, humans are always unreliable narrators, but that's not a bad thing. 

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On 7/14/2021 at 5:30 PM, Kellerman said:

Yeah...uh...all I said was that my church doesn't emphasize this stuff. 

So obviously, not all Christian churches promote the same teachings that you seem to dictate are "Christian". 

You said that your church does not place emphasis on Christ being the only way to God, based on the Cross.

So, if that is not the center of your church's doctrine, then can you tell us what other way or means your church teaches that a person can place faith in that will cause God to give them the new birth?  (born again)?

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20 hours ago, Kellerman said:

 

Then it was like: hmm, okay, there's something, but I have no reliable sources to help me grasp it because they're all fundamentally human sources, which are all fundamentally flawed. So then there is no human authority to which I can turn to define divinity...and oh...yeah...that's the whole point of faith. Neato. 

 

Christianity is built on 2 situations.

 

1. Jesus said that He is the only way God.  John 14:6     and  offers that you can be freely restored back to relationship with God.   In Christian terms this is ..."reconciliation" or "Salvation".

2. Jesus rose from the dead proving that what He said, is true.

 

Now, if both of those or one of those is not true, then dont worry about it.,   Live your life in search of......

But if Jesus came out of that Grave, alive, then that's a different alternative that you can choose to ignore, but it wont be ignored once you die.

If the grave is the end, then, have fun and do what you will.

However if Jesus came out of that tomb, alive...... and He did, i can promise you this.....then, you have till the end of your days to allow God's love, which is that CROSS, to deal with your sin.

You get to choose this, and God will honor your choice after you die.

That is a promise.

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On 7/15/2021 at 6:57 PM, PaulS said:

Personally, I don't think this was ever Jesus' belief but rather these are words put on his lips by later authors (and we know John was written some 50-70 years after Jesus died).  I think Jesus might have been pushing for people to repent because he thought the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent, perhaps he even thought that he was the Son of Man who God would use to initiate the Kingdom, but I doubt Jesus ever thought he was to be a human sacrifice whose death would heal an imaginary rift between man and God.

I like to think that if Jesus had been more educated about evolution he might even consider that there is no such rift between man and God and that as humans, we are born perfectly human.  We have been evolving for some millions and millions of years.  Humankind (homo sapiens) had walked this earth for more than 160,000 years before Jesus lived.  The oldest written word that we apparently have from God came some 157,500 years after our species first appeared.  That's a long time for there to be this rift between man and God that only Jesus could fix.  And if God did 'create' the earth, he seems to have spent a lot of time waiting for man (some 14 billion years) so that this rift could then exist and he would have to sacrifice his son to himself, to fix it.

I don't think Jesus was either a fraud or a liar, I just think he was born into a Jewish religious culture that was being oppressed by a nasty foreign power and these things helped shape his view of the world and his personal understanding of God.  He probably had the best of intent - it's just how he came to think of life and God, like so many others have come to their views too.

Well, its like i just told someone else.

If Jesus didnt rise from the dead, then you have a point.

However, if He did come out of the grave, and He did..... then you have a problem that you can't solve by analyzing it, or speculating about it.

Edited by Fastguitars
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1 hour ago, Fastguitars said:

You said that your church does not place emphasis on Christ being the only way to God, based on the Cross.

So, if that is not the center of your church's doctrine, then can you tell us what other way or means your church teaches that a person can place faith in that will cause God to give them the new birth?  (born again)?

My church has a very, very abstract doctrine, and doesn't fuss too much about any "factual" details of the Bible. 

My church teaches of God as unknowable, not as a discrete being with a specific will, but as a larger concept of the interconnectedness of all living things. 

However, it doesn't really matter what my church teaches, I'm not trying to preach anything. 

 

My point is ONLY that YOU don't get to dictate what Christianity is. You are entitled to believe what you believe, entitled to preach what your particular version of Christianity claims to be the truth, but Christianity is not a monolithic belief system. 

There are different types of Christians all over the world with vastly different beliefs and moral systems. You don't get to define what they should believe. 

You don't have to agree with my church, but you also don't get to invalidate them. My church is not some obscure fringe, it's one of the oldest and largest Christian institutions in my Country. They have as much claim to Christianity as any. 

You've been taught what you've been taught, and you are entitled to believe it, but don't for a second assume that others aren't entitled to a different interpretation of what it means to be Christian. 

You don't own that. No one imbued you with the power to own that. 

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1 hour ago, Fastguitars said:

Well, its like i just told someone else.

If Jesus didnt rise from the dead, then you have a point.

However, if He did come out of the grave, and He did..... then you have a problem that you can't solve by analyzing it, or speculating about it.

Tell me, where do you get your certainty as to the "facts" of God's will?

Did human beings who are equally certain of said "facts" teach you this? Because I wasn't taught by such certain, "factual" clergy. 

If you and I traded upbringings, you would probably be the one who had more vague notions of faith and I might be berating strangers on the internet that their version of faith is "factually" wrong. 

Who knows. That's one of the most fascinating parts of studying religion. The inability to separate out faith from social conditioning. 

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2 hours ago, Fastguitars said:

Well, its like i just told someone else.

If Jesus didnt rise from the dead, then you have a point.

However, if He did come out of the grave, and He did..... then you have a problem that you can't solve by analyzing it, or speculating about it.

I think you would benefit by asking yourself....why wasn't Jesus required for more than 160,000 years of any God/human relationship?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/17/2021 at 8:56 AM, Kellerman said:

Tell me, where do you get your certainty as to the "facts" of God's will?

Did human beings who are equally certain of said "facts" teach you this? Because I wasn't taught by such certain, "factual" clergy. 

If you and I traded upbringings, you would probably be the one who had more vague notions of faith and I might be berating strangers on the internet that their version of faith is "factually" wrong. 

Who knows. That's one of the most fascinating parts of studying religion. The inability to separate out faith from social conditioning. 

 

Isn't your point of view based on what you are describing as why i have mine?

"fastguitars, you believe what you believe based on what you have been taught to believe".

Well, Kellerman, welcome to yourself, as what you believe is based on your group, and your point of view is consistent with those you classify as your "church".

As for me, im not a part of denominational thinking. 

Why is that?  Its because Christianity is not a religion, and Denominations were not created by Christ or by the Apostles.

Denominations are the work of MEN, who decided that "their opinion" was going to be the rules and regulations that defined THEIR Denomination., and so, they are defining your point of view, which you think, is you own point of view.

Not quite.

 

So, setting the traditions of men aside, and all the POV that create religious POV, let me just just say this...

Jesus is real.  He died on the Cross.  He came out of the Grave.   And He said that "No person comes to the Father by by ME".

If this is not true, then there is no reason not to keep believing what your particular "church" teaches, which is...>"your opinion is truth, and all truth is relative".

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55 minutes ago, Fastguitars said:

 

Isn't your point of view based on what you are describing as why i have mine?

"fastguitars, you believe what you believe based on what you have been taught to believe".

Well, Kellerman, welcome to yourself, as what you believe is based on your group, and your point of view is consistent with those you classify as your "church".

As for me, im not a part of denominational thinking. 

Why is that?  Its because Christianity is not a religion, and Denominations were not created by Christ or by the Apostles.

Denominations are the work of MEN, who decided that "their opinion" was going to be the rules and regulations that defined THEIR Denomination., and so, they are defining your point of view, which you think, is you own point of view.

Not quite.

 

So, setting the traditions of men aside, and all the POV that create religious POV, let me just just say this...

Jesus is real.  He died on the Cross.  He came out of the Grave.   And He said that "No person comes to the Father by by ME".

If this is not true, then there is no reason not to keep believing what your particular "church" teaches, which is...>"your opinion is truth, and all truth is relative".

I'm not the one trying to dictate some form of "truth" about what Christianity is to you though. 

I'm only sharing what my Church teaches as an example that Christianity isn't always a consistent monolithic message even though they use the same Bible. 

I'm not trying to convince you to believe what I believe, but you are trying to dictate that what you believe is the one truth that all Christians must believe. 

Sure, Jesus existed, but at the end of the day, you've read about him in a book written by people, and interpreted by people, and people are deeply fallible, and tremendous capable of interpreting the exact same things in wildly different ways. 

My whole point is that neither of us should have the hubris to try and dictate to others what the "truth" is. 

But you seem determined to try and tell me what my faith should consist of. 

Well...you can try. 

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1 hour ago, Kellerman said:

I'm not the one trying to dictate some form of "truth" about what Christianity is to you though. 

I'm only sharing what my Church teaches as an example that Christianity isn't always a consistent monolithic message even though they use the same Bible. 

 

As i stated...

You are a product of your "church", as you are defining what you say is wrong regarding what im teaching, based on what you have been taught.

So, you are become, what you are defining me to be.

Now, i explained that i am not a denomination.   You do not hear me talking about my church or what my church says, as im not that person.

Im not what my church told me to tell you, and that is why, i only quoted what Jesus said...

"how do we know that is what Jesus said, said the skeptic"?, which is the same as me telling the Atheist,....."you can't prove that God does not exist'.

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10 minutes ago, Fastguitars said:

As i stated...

You are a product of your "church", as you are defining what you say is wrong regarding what im teaching, based on what you have been taught.

So, you are become, what you are defining me to be.

Now, i explained that i am not a denomination.   You do not hear me talking about my church or what my church says, as im not that person.

Im not what my church told me to tell you, and that is why, i only quoted what Jesus said...

"how do we know that is what Jesus said, said the skeptic"?, which is the same as me telling the Atheist,....."you can't prove that God does not exist'.

I'm not going to continue arguing with you. 

But to be absolutely clear, I'm not trying to convince you to believe anything, or say that what you believe is wrong. 

I'm saying that *I* don't hold the same beliefs and that a lot of other Christians don't hold them either. But we're still Christians. 

You don't get to dictate what Christians have to believe, but you are 100% entitled to believe it yourself. 

Feel free to respond, but I won't be responding anymore on this matter. I've been as clear as I humanly can be. 

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On 7/17/2021 at 1:05 PM, Fastguitars said:

Christianity is built on 2 situations.

 

1. Jesus said that He is the only way God.  John 14:6     and  offers that you can be freely restored back to relationship with God.   In Christian terms this is ..."reconciliation" or "Salvation".

2. Jesus rose from the dead proving that what He said, is true.

Scholars say that John's gospel is the least likely to reflect what Jesus might have said. But overall, there seem to be many ways of salvation described, which is why there are so many Christian denominations - around 30,000 of them (I think comparable numbers for Judaism and Islam are more like 100). You can be saved by works (James 2:21-24); by faith alone (Galatians 2:16); only by helping the poor and needy (Matthew 25:34-46); by baptism (Mark 16:16); only if you endure to the end (Mark 13:13); just by believing (John 3:16); by keeping the law (Romans 2:13); by being born of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5); by eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood (John 6:53-54); and so on… dozens of them, frequently contradicting each other (eg; in Romans 10:13 you can be saved by calling on the name of the Lord, but in Matthew 7:21-23 you won’t necessarily be); some passages say that you can never lose your salvation while others say you can – it’s a Babel of confusion, although of course that’s not God’s fault, it’s ours (1 Corinthians 14:33).

The one thing he doesn’t really say is what has become the main plank of most Christian theology and practice – that he came on earth to die on a cross as payment for our sins. That’s Paul’s later interpretation. There’s no “altar call” in the gospels.

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