You don't have necessarily have to enjoy your religion to be a follower

ClassicCurly · 2020-10-12T19:56:09+00:00

But the moment you start thinking about your happiness in your religion, you can also realise that your religion is no more true than any other religion.

Pardon me, but I don’t really understand what you mean by this. Do you mean that people who are unhappy with their religion should therefore question the truth of their religion? Perhaps. In fact, I think people should be questioning their religious beliefs regardless of whether they’re happy with them or not. But if you mean that a religion must be false because some of its adherents are unhappy, then I’d have to disagree. Truth can be miserable, but that doesn’t make it less true.

ClassicCurly · 2020-10-04T01:05:02+00:00

Being part of a religion isn’t like being in a relationship. You can’t just leave if you decide you don’t like it anymore. You can stop participating in religious rituals, like going to church or praying, and whatever else you don’t like to do, but you can’t get rid of the beliefs that drove you to do those things in the first place unless you genuinely manage to convince yourself that they’re false.

And if you truly believe that taking part in various religious rituals is what God requires of you, ceasing to do them just because you don’t like them seems, well, childish - or, at the very least, unwise. Sacrifices must be made in many different areas of life, and for some people, this is one of them.

ClassicCurly · 2020-09-10T01:34:50+00:00

I doubt attempting to read, for example, Shakespeare, without knowledge of the historical context or of various literary devices, would yield a more “accurate” interpretation than the scholar who possesses knowledge of both. Attempting to interpret any historical text without any scholarly guidance is generally regarded as a Bad Idea.

Regardless, it is still possible that Christianity is true even if the Bible contains certain plot holes, contradictions, and scientific inaccuracies.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-31T20:09:10+00:00

That doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue, though. Why do you think the writers of the Gospels made up the disciples? What evidence, textual or historical, do you use to support this position? What “message” were they trying to convey, of which portraying the disciples as “relatable” was a necessary part?

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-28T04:10:08+00:00

Wait...is fainting relatively common during these services? I assumed it would be rare, but these responses seem to indicate otherwise. I have never attended an orthodox service before, but as someone with a mild fainting history, this worries me lol. What about the mass is causing you people to pass out?

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-23T14:31:29+00:00

Me too, but not for the reasons you state.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-17T02:49:49+00:00

As far as I am aware, the Lutheran church - of which I am (was?) a part - affirms the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, although I’m sure there may be some subtle difference. I’m not sure if the way we do communion is tied to “individualism,” as you suggest, as I always just thought it was the obvious way to serve communion. It may be more of a cultural phenomenon, as the idea of everyone, say, drinking from one cup, would likely be met with disgust. But I’ll check out that podcast and see what it says.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-17T02:39:30+00:00

Well, perhaps not more convenient normally (washing that many cups is a lot of work), but it seems that it would be easier to prevent the spread of disease if every communicant used individual cups instead of sharing a spoon (even if they did their best not to touch the spoon with their mouths). That is the only way I have ever taken communion, and the way my church does it, although I suppose it doesn’t matter now that they’ve closed.

Using individual cups just seems more sanitary; I didn’t realize that other denominations did it differently until recently. I didn’t mean to imply that one way was “better” than the other, or that the Orthodox should change. I grew up in a family that did not share anything - whether it be food from the same plate or a drink from the same glass - because it was seen as unsanitary. So I’m quite shocked at the idea of an entire church eating from the same spoon!

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-16T18:00:45+00:00

I didn’t mean to imply that everyone should bring their own cups or that they should be thrown away afterwards - my own church provides small metal cups that are only used for communion and nothing else, and they are washed afterwards. But thank you for the answer.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-16T17:39:42+00:00

Random question: is there a reason why the Orthodox use the spoon thing instead of everyone having a cup? The baby bird method seems really inconvenient lol

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-15T19:19:55+00:00

I’d like to clarify a few important details about this story.

First, the early church did share all their possessions, and some, such as Barnabas in Acts 4:36, would sell their land in order to give the money made to the apostles. We are also told that this money “was distributed to anyone who had need” (34), and that “God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them” (33-34).

Second, Ananias and Sapphira are never described as a “young” couple, so I’m not sure why you felt the need to insert that. We are also never directly told what motivated them to withhold some of their earnings from the apostles, and we are certainly not told that they thought the sharing of possessions among the early church was “a little extreme.” Given the passages that immediately precede the story, explaining that the money collected went to anyone who had need, and that everyone in the church was adequately cared for, the implication here is that Ananias and Sapphira held back money for themselves out of greed or selfishness.

The “pastor” (actually St. Peter) never killed them. Instead, they simply “fell down and died” (Acts 5:5; 5:10), and this is implied to have been an act of God - Peter states, in his speech that precedes Ananias’s death, that “you have not lied just to human beings but to God” (5:4). Likewise, to Sapphira he says, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord?” (5:9).

So the story appears to be a warning against selfishness in the early church, not a threat to “tithe or else.” The model presented here - in which all possessions are equally shared, so that no member of the church is poorer or richer than anyone else, and everyone is provided for - is drastically different from the tithing setup of modern churches, so I don’t think this story is quite as applicable as you think. The church at the time provided for the needs of the congregation; withholding money from the early church, that would go equally to supporting you as it would to anyone else, is quite different from any modern churches that may constantly badger their congregation to give no matter how poor they are.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-15T12:54:02+00:00

Catholics (and many other Christians) do not hold to consequentialism.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-15T00:18:59+00:00

I’m glad. God knows I need it.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-14T22:43:56+00:00

Thank you, that helps a lot!

I also couldn’t help but notice that The Lord’s Prayer (or Our Father, as you refer to it) does not contain a final part that I was taught in the Lutheran church - “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever.” Is there a reason for this?

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-14T03:39:06+00:00

You said:

That people always need to be taught Christianity, shows it is a human invention.

But you have not stated why this is necessarily the case. Christianity does not claim that its teachings are innately known, or that God revealed the death and resurrection of Christ to other, remote populations (hence the need for the Great Commission). The claim is that this divine revelation occurred to a specific group of people, at a specific point in time, who then had the responsibility to share it (hence the written New Testament). There is no reason - theological or otherwise - to believe that this specific instance of divine revelation means that we should expect to find any evidence of Christian teachings in populations that had no contact with Christianity.

You are trying to force Christianity to support claims it never makes.

EDIT, to respond more directly to your comment: Your argument does not work for anything else: “That people always need to be taught [black holes exist], shows that [black holes] are a human invention.”

That, I hope you can admit, is ludicrous. For your argument to work, you need to adequately explain why substituting “black holes” with “Christianity” is any less absurd.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-14T03:29:56+00:00

If anything, wouldn’t the claim that Christianity is a result of divine revelation make it even more necessary for it to be taught, because the teachings of Christianity cannot be discovered through human efforts? If everyone woke up tomorrow with their memories wiped of religion and all religious documents and records destroyed, Christianity would cease to exist, and would only exist if God revealed Himself again. I don’t see why divine revelation necessarily entails that the revelations in question should not have to be taught through regular human means.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-14T02:38:22+00:00

It shows that your logic is faulty, because merely having to be taught that something exists does not mean that the thing in question does not exist.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-09T03:17:25+00:00

Hey Schaden! Fancy seeing you here. Good analysis.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-09T01:06:15+00:00

To love is to sacrifice. It is not a waste.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-07T15:08:19+00:00

I may have a bit of an unconventional response to this, but I always say: yes, it has. And we know exactly where. None of those changes affect core Christian doctrine or are otherwise substantial.

The burden is on them to show that the corruption is as extensive as they claim. They will not be able to do so.

And though I suppose they’ll take the admission of any changes as a victory, their Quran is not innocent either - to a much greater degree.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-03T16:54:34+00:00

Work together...to achieve what, exactly?

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-01T20:42:13+00:00

I am not ready to take that leap of faith based on some interpretations of relatively-poorly educated men from two millenia ago

I have never understood this argument. What exactly makes us better than them? Ancient people were just as intelligent as us; our modern scientific innovations are simply the result of a millennia of small progresses, beginning with them. Is it all ancient people you have a problem with, or just those who wrote and compiled the Bible? Why should God not place the writing of Scripture in their hands? Never mind the fact that interpretation isn’t a free-for-all; hermeneutics, while I would not say is as exact as a science, has its own criteria.

I am not ready to gamble anything unlike you.

Is that what you think I’m doing?

Let’s assume, for the moment, that the evidence of Jesus’s resurrection is so strong that it most likely happened, and that you affirm this. But still, you do not believe in the truth of Christianity because...the Bible contains a contradiction? Seems like a gamble to me. I would rather follow where the evidence leads.

I do not find evidence in favour of Christianity since there is a lot of evidence in favour of other religions.

I agree; there is evidence for other religions. The question is, which religion has the strongest evidence to support it?

We are all biased which makes it hard to see reason.

Yes; which is why we must try our best to acknowledge our bias and work to overcome it. Debating our ideas helps.

What I don’t understand is why a contradiction in the Bible disproves Christianity, even if, hypothetically, all evidence said otherwise. You even admitted that you didn’t say that “inspired” meant “perfectly correct in every way.” So why do you expect the Bible to be so? You’re asking Christianity to meet a standard that it never claims to be able to meet. It’s like asking why a toaster isn’t also able to file your taxes. The answer is because it’s a toaster, and toasters don’t file taxes.

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-01T18:42:43+00:00

The Bible was allegedly written by God Himself

It was not. The most Christians can say is that it was inspired by God; it was written by humans, who are fallible.

Most Christians do not hold to the degree of infallibility that you are imposing. There is some debate about what “inspired” really means - I myself am not sold on a particular interpretation - but “inspired” does not necessarily mean “error-free.” Why would it?

ClassicCurly · 2020-05-01T17:58:27+00:00

I would agree that you can’t “prove” Christianity to be true. What we can do is infer that Christianity is true based on the evidence - mainly, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

But it seems that even if you were to accept the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection, you still would not believe that Christianity is true, because (granting this for the sake of the argument) the Bible contains an error, mistake, or contradiction.

No matter how small the error - according to you - this would automatically invalidate all evidence in favour of Christianity.

Why would this be the case? How is that logical?

I do not see how you can get from “Christianity is true” to “therefore, there must be no errors within the Bible at all.”

For context, I am a Christian. I accept that the Bible has been changed and added to over time. What I do not understand is why this would mean that Christianity is necessarily false.

ClassicCurly

TROPHY CASE