Yes, the definition of a belief is broad. You didn't say religion, you said belief bro...
Christian-Atheist Relationships
- Thread starter Thoreau
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Yes, the definition of a belief is broad. You didn't say religion, you said belief bro...
So long as you agree on a few things I wouldn't see a problem - for example how to raise the kids (ideally in a way that they can choose their own beliefs either way), and not pushing beliefs on each other.
Acceptance and tolerance are key to making any relationship work.
Acceptance and tolerance are key to making any relationship work.
And where do you live?
If any of you want to watch a good movie, that happens to be about extremists...Kingdom of Heaven. About Crusader extremists, a great movie 
It is gory though, just to put it out there, peoples heads getting cracked open by axes....
Grossly historically inaccurate as with the trend with Hollywood....but good entertainment.
It is gory though, just to put it out there, peoples heads getting cracked open by axes....Grossly historically inaccurate as with the trend with Hollywood....but good entertainment.
Lol
You'd be surprised at the people that honestly believe that we live in igloos and have dog-sleds Everyone knows that is Moscow and not Canadia. They also have bears running about on the Red Square.
Canada is actually like that in the NWT ( Northwest Territories ), but some...not to be stereotypical, but most of them are southern Americans. Thinks that Canada is like that. Maybe we are stereotyping southern Americans
Lol
Completely off topic, the only time I will post it here, and I don't want to be blamed for a spam fest...so please it be the last time anyone posts Soviet Russia jokes here:
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No, I'm probably wrong about that.
Yea but you made me check up on my claims which is good. Now i know for sure.
which is good. Now i know for sure.Mind Over Matter
Registered Senior Member
I think it's in how we socialize and train our children.
From a very young age, we train them in right and wrong using behavior modification that is psychologically sound and tested to work on mice and dogs, in addition to people. We use threats of punishment and bribes of rewards as the fundamental motivators for the children to do what is right.
In school, we ask the children questions, but if they give us an honest answer, we laugh at them, scold them, or put a negative mark on their Permanent Record. When we ask them a question, it is understood -- and they will learn usually sooner than later -- that the question really isn't what they believe, but what we expect them to say. Not only that, but they had better look like they agree with what they are saying. If we ask them, "is this statement true or false," and they honestly believe it is true, but know we want them to say "false," and they say, "false" and quickly glance to heaven for affirmation or in apology, then OH BOY! Rolling your eyes at us? Now we have a major problem with a little wiseacre.
When we were learning subtraction in grade school from a nun who knew very little about math, I put down -1 as the answer on a test question, 2 - 3 = ? I knew the answer because my dad had told me how to do negative numbers while I was in kindergarten. I got it marked wrong and asked why. Yes, I was that socially innocent, or clueless if you prefer. Sister said, "you can't take a bigger number from a smaller one. The correct answer is you cannot do it. It makes no sense."
I sensed the teacher actually knew there was a way, but didn't want to confuse the class with it at this time, so I asked, "can we agree that there is a way to do it, but we just haven't learned us yet?" Then she got very angry and demanded, "IF I ONLY HAVE TWO APPLES, HOW CAN I GIVE YOU THREE?" I was scared and confused. I thought, could it be that she honestly doesn't know about negative numbers? It was telling the honest truth as I saw it, against lying to save my skin. Lying didn't even occur to me at that age, so I stammered, "well, I suppose you could owe me one." BAM! Straight to the principal's office -- again.
So not only do we require kids to learn to say what is literally the "right" answer, but the "right" answer is objectively whatever the Dominant Thinking in the classroom would think ... the challenge is for me to know what kind of lameness goes for truth around here and how to smile and recite what I'm supposed to say.
I think this is one of the reasons I have such a hard time getting even my friends to speak from their own mind and heart. I'll ask a friend, "what do you think about this situation, personally?" He says, "well St. so-and-so wrote this, and Father so-and-so wrote that, so I think it's probably a Good Thing, what it is you're saying, that is." I ask, "I think what the saints say are very enlightening, but still, what is your honest opinion." My friend can't answer because it's been so long since he felt safe giving his personal opinion, that he forgot how.
Also, when we argue in academic settings, we might use body language to try to set the tone of the discussion, but the record of that disagreement will only show who prevailed in a literal sense, not whether the person who won was the bigger jack*ss. That part of it goes unrecorded.
That, to me, is one place where we fail to get value from the Bible. To me, the literal sense of the Bible is the least important one, in terms of how God's Word can heal and transform us. It was not until I learned to access the deeper meanings, as first introduced to me by my spiritual director, that I started getting benefit from the Bible other than spouting off what I think we were supposed to say is literally right.
This has been going on since the dawn of civilization, from the way I imagine it. It was a problem that Jesus had to work through -- he often did it by using shock value or confusion momentarily disturb their value systems so they couldn't even give a straight answer to a simple question like, "Tell me, was John's baptism of heavenly or of human origin?" They didn't even consider which choice was actually true. They considered what would happen to them if they answered this way or that.
Please don't equate your personal experiences with standard practice the world over.
Strange, Feynman told much the same story too.
There are a lot of more or less watered down interpretations of those books. As many, probably, as there are people who read them.
Mind Over Matter
Registered Senior Member
Yeah, everyone needs to remember a basic thing: the Bible is not intended to be a book on science or history. It was written to teach uneducated people about God. Stories, poetry. Ancient people did not have universities or advanced science, but they did have their stories. There may be some parts that are true, but we are not expected to take everything literally.
Now, the New Testament is different. The gospel IS intended to be an historical account and describe Jesus's life in the best way possible, recording the most important of His works and teachings. Some details we might want to know today are not recorded because they were not considered important enough to record, or maybe the things we're interested in today are not the same as the interests of the people 2,000 years ago.
Or maybe, just maybe, they are tools used to control the sheep herd.
Thoreau
Valued Senior Member
The problem is when society is so disillusioned that their concepts "right" are, in fact, unproductive of a blossoming species and thus would conclude that, depite majority opinion, it is in all actuallity "wrong" from a basic moral stance.
What I mean by this, is that for centuries upon centuries, people have been teaching the "word of God" to their children. But they only teach it in half of it's reality. I was taught it when I was a child. We always hear Sunday school children reciting how much God loves them and is watching out for them through speech, song and presentation. But they are not informed of the horrors and utter atrocities that are committed in the Bible by not only God himself, but also by man at direct command of God. We don't hear how David, by word of God slaughtered 18,000 Edomites in 1 Chronicles 20:3. We don't hear how God himself buried 250 men alive in Numbers 16:32. Or how God ordered the murder of all first-borns in Exodus 12:29. Or how God repeatedly ordered the murder of all unbelievers in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Numbers, 1 Samuel and other books. Not to mention all the other morally bankrupt actions of God himself throughout Deuteronomy alone!
So, these children grow up believing that God loves them and that God is on their side. They believe this without any doubt. And as they mature, some of them actually read the Bible for themselves. They are then confronted with threats of damnation, the terrible acts of violence and murder, and the written TRUTH of the Bible - that truth that it is far from a respectable moral guide. But because they are already so brainwashed into thinking that this seemingly all-knowing, all-powerful God really has their best interests in mind, they sometimes adhear to the extremist passages in the Bible that condone condemnation and murder of others simply for being different (gay, non-Christian, etc). And of course the one's that don't are more commonly known as moderate Christians.
This is why I have and will always stand by my belief that the Bible (and Qur'an and Torah), have no place in a productive and hopeful society. I can find better teachings of peace, acceptance, tolerance, compassion and love (all of which are required in a successful human society) in Jainism than I could ever find in the three religions of Abraham.
And it's been far too long that we continue to delude ourselves with this mindset that religion is more good than evil. We need only to look around are our current state - to witness the Jihadist wars, the Christian condemnation of gays and non-Christians, the polgymists who abuse their women because they are allowed to according to the Bible, and the psychotic mother who uses (and firmly believes) the ideology that her God wanted her to kill her children - to see that religion is a plague on society which is turning us against each other for superficial and nonsensicle reasons... all because it is ordered as such in their texts, by their gods.
So, yes, I will teach my children about Christianity. But I will teach them the entire truth of the Bible. We will read that f**ker word for word and I'm sure, even at 6, or 10, or 16 years old, they will conclude, as I and so many others have, that the God of the Bible is immoral, incompetent, angry, vengeful, jealous, and insecure - characterists that deem any being, much less a God, completely unworthy of our devotion, respect and admiration.
So, in summary, that is why I lean away from ever raising kids with a Christian parent.
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I'm an atheist and I dated a woman who was a born again Christian for about 10 years. She was really into it, her entire vocabulary was based on her belief and she always gave 10% of her paycheck to the church of her choice, whether she could afford it or not. I even went with her to church a few times. Anyway I stayed with her as long as I did because she was very attractive to me and she knew how to treat a man both in and out of bed better than any other woman I ever met. She stayed with me because I was equally good to her and she never stopped believing she was going to save me. However I knew she wanted kids and she was never going to have any with me. As much as I hated doing it I broke up with her and she did meet someone else and had two kids.