[Different subject, different post]
If we're gonna switch things up, then I shall explain why 99% of all Christians are NOT Christians, and should not claim to be. It can be said for all religions, as well.
If your religion has a clear set of rules (the ten commandments, the Christian bible, the torah, the quran, whatever) for the followers of such religion to follow, or it contains rules that are supposedly the spoken word of your god, and you do NOT follow them to the letter, you should NOT claim to be part of that religion. Your religious dogma states how you should live your life, how you should act and be. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, you shouldn't check the box and click "Next." The good part is that if you were forced into this as a child, you're not locked into a life-long contract. You can break the contract, as you were a minor when you signed it, and it will never hold up in a court of law.
Okay, stupidities aside... My point remains the same. If you don't agree fully with how the god of your religion states you should act, there's no reason to claim to be of that religion anymore. You can't accept SOME parts of your religious text are true and should be followed, while others are just "allegory." As I have stated in the other thread, at that point you are no longer part of that religion and are just making up shit as you go along, using your previous religion's doctrine as a base. The only reason one seems to claim allegiance to the same religion is so their family and friends will still "accept" them.
Claiming to be part of a certain Religion.
Re: Religion and atheists
I disagree, Furd. I don't think it's up to you (or me, or anyone except maybe the Pope and that's only for Catholics) to determine what the requirements for being part of a religion are. Sure you may think of the Bible as the word of God, but you may also acknowledge how it's been changed and mistranslated over the years and say that some parts which contradict the overall theme are invalid. Or you could choose to be a "red-letter" Christian and just follow the instructions which God himself is quoted verbatim as saying. And hell, you could even pick and choose which books to follow, ignoring canon and acknowledging apocryphal texts, since the whole collection was decided on pretty arbitrarily anyway. There are a million different ways to be Christian without being a Biblical literalist. As you probably acknowledge, the Bible is not just one story with a clear central message; it's a collection of books from different authors over hundreds or even thousands of years, and as such cannot and should not be treated as a monolithic entity in which every word is absolute.
Re: Religion and atheists
Yes, this is why there's so many denominations of religions that believe in the same central god, I know. That's another point that I mentioned in the other thread - with so many religions based on the same god, but declaring themselves differently, why is it that ANY of them would still believe in a god at all? There clearly is no one central "truth" to it all. The scientific method, however, creates ideas that explain the world around us, then tests whether those ideas are correct until a single fact is obtained. Believing in such a method just makes me dumbfounded as to how anyone can simply ignore the world around them and just accept things "because god did it."Godavari wrote:I disagree, Furd. I don't think it's up to you (or me, or anyone except maybe the Pope and that's only for Catholics) to determine what the requirements for being part of a religion are. Sure you may think of the Bible as the word of God, but you may also acknowledge how it's been changed and mistranslated over the years and say that some parts which contradict the overall theme are invalid. Or you could choose to be a "red-letter" Christian and just follow the instructions which God himself is quoted verbatim as saying. And hell, you could even pick and choose which books to follow, ignoring canon and acknowledging apocryphal texts, since the whole collection was decided on pretty arbitrarily anyway. There are a million different ways to be Christian without being a Biblical literalist. As you probably acknowledge, the Bible is not just one story with a clear central message; it's a collection of books from different authors over hundreds or even thousands of years, and as such cannot and should not be treated as a monolithic entity in which every word is absolute.
And yes, it does seem like I skipped over the first part of your response and went straight for what I wanted to read, kind of going off on a tangent, so let me address the first thing you said;
Declaring yourself a part of a specific religion, in my eyes, means that you agree with everything the religion stands for. I really just don't get how you can claim membership and NOT believe everything it does stands for. It could just be myself not understanding it, but it doesn't seem logical to me. This is why I have issues with non-fundamentalist, non-literal religious people. The crazies who want to limit human freedoms, and punish people for being who they are, I completely understand. However odd that is.
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Re: Claiming to be part of a certain Religion.
These posts were separated into their own topic as they weren't relevant to the topic of the other thread.
"He's like fire, and ice, and rage.
He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun.
He's ancient and forever.
He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe.
And... he's wonderful."
Re: Religion and atheists
Well that can, perhaps, work for certain sects. There are over 20,000 different denominations of Christianity, as well as a rather large group of "unaffiliated." Saying you're a Christian doesn't actually imply anything about your specific beliefs - it's the sect that gets specific. Being Christian doesn't automatically equate to Biblical literalism, but saying you're a member of the WBC does. I'd advise against calling people who adhere to a non-literalist sect of Christianity as "non-Christian."furdabip wrote:Declaring yourself a part of a specific religion, in my eyes, means that you agree with everything the religion stands for. I really just don't get how you can claim membership and NOT believe everything it does stands for. It could just be myself not understanding it, but it doesn't seem logical to me. This is why I have issues with non-fundamentalist, non-literal religious people. The crazies who want to limit human freedoms, and punish people for being who they are, I completely understand. However odd that is.
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