Agree with you Rodney

Yes. And of course atheism has always had a calming, peaceful and benevolent effect on humanity- as history demonstrates since the 18th century.

Well put, Jon!

While I would grant you that many of the original unknown things are better understood through science today, I would hardly agree that there is LESS unexplained mystery today. Maybe the point you are making is that, as we make progress in explaining things we previously thought were only explained through a belief in the supernatural, you are more optimistic that we will also be able to explain the things that we don't understand today. But, then you're still left with the question of where the "rules of existence" that we use to explain thing came from in the first place!

agree!

I disagree. with the idea that we "need" to replace God. I also do not agree that we "are wired" to look to a higher power. Maybe long ago the people needed explainations of the unknown, but not any longer. The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize that one guy sitting in a big chair cannot possibly be able to or even cares to listen to prayers. We are not the only living things in this great universe and we would be arrogant to think so.

God is a spirit. Like you can't see the wind, but you can feel it.

I think life is worth living even if there is no afterlife. I see the value of my life and the lives of the others around me every day. Life is good no matter how long it is. I'm not sure what the value of an infinite afterlife is. Maybe at the end of my life the supreme judge will decide if my life was good so it can reward me or if it was bad she it can punish me, but fear of judgement isn't what makes me strive to be good. It is my love for humanity that makes me want to be good and make the world a better place. I don't believe in an afterlife, but most definitely believe in living a good life!

I'm sorry, Ray, but I completely disagree with you. I am in my fifties, and my upbringing included religion. As I have grown older and wiser, I have learned that you don't need to have religion in your life to have a strong moral compass or be loving, responsible, compassionate, giving, and honest. God is just another "parent." I already have parents, and they have not given me advice that is 2,000 years out of date, ignorant, or contradictory. Knowing I have just this one life to live makes me value it all the more, and so the time I spend on Earth is devoted to leaving it a better place. I spend my time tending to my familiy, doing a good job at work, and sharing my time and resources so that others lead happier and healther lives. I also have fun and make the most of each day. I don't live my life as if there is anything after death. I find that way of thinking incredibly sad. The point of life is living it--that's it. Live it and leave it better than it was when you came into it.

And if there is nothing beyond the life you are living, and no higher purpose than to just live this life, where does your concept of "good" actually come from? Why do you even care about making things better for others (unless there's something in it for you in this finite life you are leading)?

So Jen, how do you explain the radical change of those men who say they saw Jesus alive after he died? They could have continued living as you live but made a sudden change in course, sacrificing that life to proclaim Jesus as Lord. And they did it for no gain other than the gain of eternal life with him, suffering persecution and a violent death they could easily have avoided. What sensible explanation do you have for that?

Good point GM. If there is no afterlife or some kind of God, what determines what is good or bad. If you can do something "bad" and no one will ever know, why not do it? Yet, normal people tend to know what is bad and believe they should not do "bad things."

Ray, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there is no such thing as hell. Infinite hell...what is the point of that? Punishment is designed to change a person's behavior. Infinite punishment is illogical. It just makes no sense to give someone infinite torture. You're just taking up a lot of space in hell. What is the purpose? If it is to make YOU feel better, then, you don't deserve to be in heaven. But, if there is no hell, then there's no heaven...so I suppose you have to believe that the rest of us are going to hell, so that you can continue to believe that there is a heaven.

Jen, you make a worthwhile point about the pointlessness of a state of infinite torture, but what if the alternatives are between something of everlasting worth and something that is eternally empty? Like you, I have a hard time seeing the point of endless discomfort with no prospect of ever changing it, but I can conceive of a choice between an empty void and something else that springs from what I guess can be called spirituality.

Sounds like there's a judgement of Ray somewhere in there, Jacob! Perhaps the habit doesn't just rest with religious people!

Just curious which God you want us to believe in?
The God of love and peace from the New Testament?
The God of anger and vengeance from the Old Testament?
The Islamic God?
The Hindu, Norse, Shintu, Inuit, Gods?
Why is your God the right one?

Hi Jon, Well I guess I want to share my faith because I feel it has been such a gift. For those who are open to the possibilty of a God, a perfect start would be to pray to the God of great love, mercy and truth and to be open to where this could lead to.

I think you hit the nail on the head, BF. In my view, organized religions have the potential to help you find the truth, but they cause damage when they suggest that they will provide you with the truth. I believe that you have to find the truth inside yourself, and then consider yourself lucky if you find an organized faith that makes it easier for you to act in accordance with that truth and maybe even sometimes raises questions that help you to deepen your understanding.

You have found salvation in yourself, by yourself. God, Christ, and all that is holy is the veneer through which you are accomplishing this salvation. It is a context through which you are carrying out the "rebirth" and reinvention of yourself. It's like The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's red shoes: the ability to "get home" is inside you. You just need the crutch...but don't take this the wrong way, it's OK. Only, don't look at those of us who do not need a crutch as being "lost." I am a happy human being, living my life surrounded by love, helping my fellow human beings and giving back to the community. I am a good citizen. I am my own source of enlightenment and salvation.

Phil, I think your first and second options don't stand as distinctly as you have stated them. From my perspective, the first option you call out can be too easily used by people to absolve themselves of their personal obligation to do their best to live a good life. As stated, it's too easy to "lower the bar" for our own conduct, confident that, when the time comes, God will forgive whatever we have done wrong.

Your second option captures the sense of ownership or responsibility for self that I think people need to foster in themselves, but it doesn't offer any opportunity for forgiveness for the inevitable mistakes we make in life. For myself, I try to shoulder as much of the personal responsibility implied in your second option, but realize that I will inevitably screw many things up and, for that, I'm counting on what you call out in your first option.

adarc, you may not need religion, but do you need faith in something greater than yourself? What if the life you are living is the appetizer (to stick with you meal metaphor) and the afterlife you are so quick to dismiss is the real point of all this?

Kosta, if you do good deeds with a pure spirit and not because those deeds in some way are self-serving, do you not have faith? If not, where does your concept of "good" come from? (I have asked this question farther up the thread as well in response to an earlier post.)

I think a rational mind can easily entertain the idea that because the universe is so complex it either could have been created by God or it could have come about some other way that we don't yet know or understand. There is nothing logical about saying that because the universe is complex it MUST have been created by God, because a logical mind demands proof and there is none. I think the fact that you are convinced that God must have created the world, implying others who don't agree with you aren't capable of logic, is equally lacking in humility. To suggest that everyone will come to the same conclusion as you if they open their mind is not respectful of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others who practice religions other than yours. I respect both opinions -- God created the universe; there is no God.

If you see a car on the road but have no information as to where it came from, is it logical to conclude it just happened, say the product of a random explosion? If I say to you I refuse to believe there is an auto maker because I have never seen one, am I being rational? I am quite sure you will agree neither position is logical or rational. Well, so it is with the bird in the sky and all else in creation, not man made.

As of humility, apparently your idea of it is to be open to all points of view as being equal. This is not humility, it is foolishness. The idea that you say you respect both opinions - God exist and God does not exist - offers a perfect illustration. Both positions cannot be true, only one can. To say you have respect for the truth and the lie is ridiculous.

Finally, can you name something complex that was not created?

jaymike, in thinking about various religions, I have come to the point where I question that each religion is "mutually exclusive". In the case of Christianity, people believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, sent down to Earth to introduce a new convenant and to offer salvation to the world. But is the real essence of faith here a matter of believing that Jesus Christ existed and lived his life in the exact way related in the Bible (faith in a historical account), or is the real challenge of faith one of fully accepting Jesus' teachings about how people should live their lives (faith in a perspective on what it's important for people to do with their lives)? To my way of thinking, a strict reliance on the complete accuracy of the historic account opens up the possibility that one's faith could fail if a particular detail of the historic account is proven to be inaccurate (consider those who claim that the world was created just a few thousand years ago despite geological evidence of the existence of dinosaurs millions of years ago). On the other hand, I find a timeless truth in what Jesus taught. Much of that seems to exist in other religions as well. Is it the belief in a specific immortal being that matters, or the belief in a "ground truth" about life and how to live it that matters?

To GM, part one of my reply,

The thing about Christianity that makes it unique is that it is first and foremost about events, not about teachings. It is about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, in particular, his willing sacrifice of a brutal death on the cross, something he could easily have avoided, but a sacrifice he accepted to offer a path of reconciliation for sinful people, and equally important, his resurrection that proves he was, in fact, the Son of God.

There are many men who have delivered wise teachings but only one man who claimed to be God, suffered a horrible death and rose from the grave afterward. I understand some will wish to dispute these facts but there is overwhelming evidence for anyone who will look carefully. Whether you accept these events or not, the fact remains, if any other religion offers a true path to God, then there was no reason for Jesus to suffer and die.

As the Apostle Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 15:4) “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” So, yes, I say Christianity is mutually exclusive because it is based on events that are either true or not. If it is not true then our faith is useless. If it is true, then all other faiths are useless.

To GM, part two of my reply,

As for the Bible and the point you made about content that may appear inaccurate from a scientific or historical perspective. Some of the Bible is literal history and some of it is not. I can appreciate we can all find something that seems problematic, but I always come back to Jesus. He either is or is not who he said he was.

I remain mindful, no matter how wise I may be in human terms, I am a mere spec next to the ruler of the universe. It stands to reason that some things won’t make sense to me or that there will be questions I cannot answer. I don’t worry much about them because Jesus has proven himself to me.

jaymike -- Thanks for both of your replies. I have a couple of comments in return.

If, as you assert, Jesus has proven himself to you, I suspect that it was not with facts and overwhelming evidence, but through something else that transcends the normal framework we use to "think logically". Your point about not being able to fully understand everything in this area is, I suspect, an extreme understatement for both of us! What I come away with is an appreciation that the conventional concepts of justice and fairness that we attempt to apply in our lives don't have relevance in God's framework where the perfectly innocent can be sacrificed to atone for the collectively guilty. I've come to the conclusion that justice and fairness are tools that we have been given to help us live the way we should be living here on this earth. I think God works within a different framework.

I struggle with the idea that different religions are mutually exclusive and that only one can be right. For starters, even if I granted your point for the larger grouping of religions, there are those within Christianity who claim that only their particular brand of Christianity is valid with all the rest being apostasy. A lot of damage has come from that self-centered a view. If I shift to the larger collection of religions, I find people in those religions who live better lives than I do. I have a very hard time believing that God doesn't acknowledge their worthiness.

Thanks for the discussion GM. I should clarify since my statement, "Jesus has proven himself to me," was not precise. I should have said an examination of the evidence has proven his resurrection to me. In actual life experience, God has directly proven himself to me, which is to say things have happened in my life that so defy probability they cannot be explained apart from him.

Good morning, jaymike,

Thanks for your further comment in this discussion. I'm down to semantic hair-splitting with you at this point, but I figured it might be worth another comment in the spirit of the conversation we're having here. You said that your examination of the evidence had proven Christ's resurrection to you. I will again submit that the "evidence" you are referring to is not the traditional "evidence" that we look to when we seek to prove something in science, or when we seek to diagnose a disease, or even when we seek to convict or acquit someone in a court. I think the evidence you are relying on requires faith to accept.

Well GM, I would say yes and no. Sure enough, we do not have the type of hard physical evidence you would normally find in a trial. So, yes, faith is required. It is true, I cannot claim certainty of my beliefs beyond ANY doubt. But guess what, every other belief, especially atheism, also requires faith because none can be proven with hard evidence.

On the other hand, circumstantial evidence is often quite important in court cases. If we were to hold a trial and present all of the available evidence and testimony, I believe twelve open-minded jurors would conclude Jesus did rise from the dead. In fact, most people who scoff at Jesus have never really considered the evidence.

So true and not many people know this.

I think many people today may be spiritual without feeling satisfied by an organized religion. I like that your definition of "good religion" expands to people organizing to do good in a community. This applies to PTO groups, Girl Scouts, Big Brother/Big Sister, and volunteerism in general. Whether there's an afterlife or not, doing good begets good which is better for everyone now. To me, that's not pointless at all.

I respectfully disagree that offering "eternal assistance," when there may be no afterlife, is not the ultimate expression of compassion. Helping someone now, here, to feel better about themselves is the most compassion I can imagine. I believe most religions have done a good job of trying to quantify how we can treat each other well, but one can follow those rules without necessarily believing either in God or the afterlife. I think that's why some people are pulling away from organized religion, because they don't see that it meets their needs now and they feel demands from it (to believe in God and the afterlife) that for them aren't meaningful.

Karen,

While it might seem good to help someone "feel better about themselves," many people need exactly the opposite. In such cases, the loving thing may well be a kick in the pants of some kind.

Just as a grossly rough example, if a man is sitting on railroad tracks eyeballing in defiance the oncoming locomotive, would you sooth him by praising his courage or yell at him to get off those tracks.

In a similar way, many people are sitting on some type of real life train tracks. The last thing a friend would do is make them feel comfortable about staying there.

I understand there are also cases (most likely the majority of cases) when the loving thing for a person to do is offer encouragement to another, but the idea that there is universal virtue in helping someone feel good about themselves is just not right. Some, if not many, cases require a very different approach.

Karen, I have already asked a question similar to this twice on this thread, but I haven't gotten any responses, so I'm going to try asking you. I can't tell the extent to which you are hedging when you say that "there may be no afterlife", but if we assume that there is nothing beyond this life, what causes you to want to "do good", recognizing that often doing good requires us to put ourselves in a disadvantaged position? Why not live your life as a hedonist and do whatever makes you feel good while you're alive?

If your hedged point about whether or not there is an afterlife reflects a real uncertainty about the possibility, it seems to me that it would be hard to set a question as important as that aside. Can someone really see that as a not very important issue if they have any uncertainty about its possibility at all?

Deborah:

Here's the "saying" you allude to. The question is what did Jesus mean? I find it really stimulating to study the saying of Christ and mine them for meaning, hopefully you will as well.

19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." 21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But a time is coming--and now is here--when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." 25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (the one called Christ). Whenever he comes, he will tell us everything." 26 Jesus said to her, "I, the one speaking to you, am he." John 4:19-26 (NET)

Deborah, what evidence do you see that suggests people's faith in the power of love, kindness, etc. is growing? In a world where information flows as easily as it does in this one, and where technology is capable of doing both great good and great harm, I have a hard time finding clear evidence of the trend you are describing. Beyond that, I have yet to see much evidence that anyone is achieving deeper understanding of the "truths" we seek. Individually, we certainly may be understanding truths more deeply, but I have yet to personally discover a truth in anything that spiritually matters that I don't think others who came long before me also had discovered. The specifics of our experiences in discovering "truths" may differ, but I don't think the basic essence of the "truths" is anything that hasn't been out there for eons.

I remember asking my high school English teacher (who happened to have been a Jesuit priest earlier in his life) a long time ago whether he thought Man had progressed philosophically over the centuries. He answered me by saying, "Well, if he hasn't progressed, he certainly should have." At the time, that was the most disappointing and (as I saw it then) most evasive answer I had ever heard from this teacher. Over the years, I have come to a better appreciation of why he answered my question in the way he did.

Amy...Exactly!

Amy, a friend of mine who is a Justice of the Peace, has told me that he has seen a steady increase in the number of marriages he performs over the past 10 to 15 years, especially when one or both parties are marrying for the second time. He thinks that some of the increase is due to the cost of a church wedding but he has been told by a number of people he has married that neither of them are affiliated with any church. I don't know if funeral directors would tell you they have seen a change in the number of funerals with or without a member of the clergy being present. I would point that funeral arrangements are often made by surviving family members and not the person who has died; their choices might be different. So while it may be your belief or your opinion that church weddings, baptisms, etc. have remained at the same rate of, say 1960 or some other point in time, I think you may need some research to support your position.

Dennis, Just curious as to what the cost of a Church wedding is..LOL! The Church was the cheapest part of my wedding! We asked the Pastor for a suggested donation and he said "Whatever you feel comfortable giving..." We were married at St. Charles Borromeo in Waltham.

I agree that people make up the church and people are faulty. But it is the institution that allowed it. It is the belief (of those in power) that the church is more important than the people which facilitated the cover-up. Rather than follow their own teachings, they abandoned their beliefs to protect the church. Similar to the problems at Penn State – they covered up the sins so that the football program would not be hurt.

Blind faith no more. I do not follow those that lead simply because they lead.

And I’m not suggesting you should stop believing anything. I’m happy that you have something you believe in. But you state “If the church is broken, we don’t abandon Faith”. Based on the statistics in this article, I respectfully disagree.

UglyHat,

I respectfully submit to you that it is the people, and the people only, that can change those statistics!

Dave, I agree with that too. This article and many others reference a ‘growing number’ of religiously unaffiliated people. So in fact, the people are changing those statistics.

loudcris,

Some comments and two questions ...

First the comments, unless I missed something, when it comes to creation and the meaning of life, science offers you no more than a theory, partially reasoned theory at that.

Also, what is your basis for "trusting" science? It is often proven false. Remember the flat Earth? How about the prediction of a pending Ice Age only a few decades prior to the current predictions of doom about global warming.

Now two questions …

You say you found it “harder and harder to believe.” Harder to believe what? And what exactly has made it harder?

Very well said, Tippy! "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

@ Stephen Georgeson: Thank you. I am a smart gambler, I can't lose... ;o)

Sheryl, that may be true if some religions, but not all. And that still leaves you with a question of what role faith plays in your life. Your point is like saying that because some schools are bad, education isn't worthwhile.

Sheryl:
The same could be said of government, families and public schools. Anytime people organize in a community structure there are necessarily rules of engagement otherwise you have anarchy. If done compassionately and wisely, controlling the masses is actually a very good thing.

Leslea - How refreshing it is to read your comment! You're right. Religion is man's way of reaching up to God (which will always fall short, and is subject to human failures). But love is His way of reaching down to us, and that was evidenced in Christ at the cross. Thanks for being a light in all the darkness!

Just curious. Without churches or religion, where would have you learned about God and Christ in the first place? I'm not challenging your point about personal faith, but, for all of its human flaws, I have a hard time taking "religion out of the picture" as you suggested.

All depends upon one's definition of religion. There is a pure and undefiled religion, as James talks about. But I agree with you, Phil, that "bad religion" is man-made. But we ought to lessen our emphasis on 'religion' and focus on a 'right relationship' with Jesus.