Ok so that was surpassingly lame.
Anyway this is going to be a fairly boring post intended to remind me what I have to do NOW THAT I AM ON BLISSFUL HOLIDAYS.
(There is a figurative and metaphorical cookie at the bottom for those of you who read through it, or just scroll down. Whatever floats your boat :P)
1. Clean my room. Properly. Namely, emptying everything out of everywhere, tossing everything I don't need/really want, putting all the rest of the stuff in boxes, figuring out which bits of furniture are broken beyond all hope of repair by use of gaffa tape, and putting it back.
2. Practise for, and record Bach for the Harmer. Write application and get references.
3. Arrange a gazillion lots of gig music.
4. Alter/fix clothes that need it.
5. SLEEP.
That's pretty much it!!! Yay!!!!!
Ok so cookie. For those of you (see: anonymous) who aren't Christian this is going to be a let down :P
OK SO KATIE ANALOGY TIME. I'm kind of embarrassed to be seeing all these analogies everywhere but whatever. They're kinda cute.
Today I spent most of my time doing one of playing viola, driving somewhere, running somewhere with food that I don't have time to sit and eat in my mouth/falling out of my mouth, getting lost, or pulling over to the side of the road to consult my refidex with a healthy soundtrack of profanity. I think I've sworn more today than I have in the last 6 months .____.;;; Either way. I was thinking, in one of the rare times in which I knew where I was going, that God is kind of like a map. As opposed to a GPS. Because He doesn't tell you everything exactly as it's coming up, in a super annoying electronic voice, accompanied by conveniently colour coded graphics and little arrows. And reminders every 500 m that, in 1580 m, turn left at Greenwood Rd. He lets you get lost, He lets you get frustrated and pull over and say where the hell am I??? And He is a WHOLE FRICKIN LOT BETTER THAN STUPID GOOGLE MAPS. If you just look, you'll find where to go. It's ok to keep pulling over to see if you're on course. And He won't give you stupid directions that send you wiggling around in weird wormy paths when in fact you could just be going along one road for the whole way instead.
Yeah.
Extended metaphor, fin.
Going to early session of church tomorrow, wonder what it'll be like! Also Patricia's having a concert WHICH WILL BE AWESOME and I'm going to give her banana bread that I made :D:D:D
Tralalala holidays!
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9 comments:
Being an atheist is like not having a map, but not really understanding how come everyone else seems to want to go to this place so bad anyway, cause you're kind've comfy at home with a nice cup of tea while they're all out a-wandering.
Also by the way, this is a different anonymous, that other guy; kind've a jerk.
OK Katie, since you are now seemingly inviting some discussion on faith I will throw this in:
When it comes to faith in God, religious people can create countless analogies, from anything they see in life, but nothing really can satisfy non-believers because they invariably skirt around the core issue that they perceive to exist in the Bible, namely the claim (just this one for example) that it is God's word, contain infallible truths, either believe it all or no Christianity for you.
That means as well as taking the 'nice' things such as Jesus' Easter resurrection, His miracles + cures, His unwavering love for all man and so forth, you also have to take in that the Earth is ~6000 years old, deny evolution theory, both directly against the current understanding of the world.
Non-believers are not denying the existance of Jesus, nor that he was probably a very wise and moral man who lead a righteous life, and likely crucified unjustly (there is considerable scientific evidence for this as I understand).
So, which is more reasonable?
1. God buried dinosaur bones during His creation week, plus He tweaked various radioisotope dating so Earth can appear to todays humans to be billions of years old when actually, it is pretty much brand spankingly new.
2. Jesus existed ~2000 years ago, was kind, and said some very wise words, annoyed the then authority somehow thus resulted in his crucifixion. His students and followers then wrote about his life, embellished on certain details, which later on was edited and then made into the Bible.
One last vital thing to remember regardless of which one you picked above. You can go to church if you enjoy it, there is nothing wrong with that at all. However, I would advise that you be very analytical about what the pasteur and religious friends say and/or disagree on the best thing you "should" do (from past experience), because they are a bunch of humans with their personal life experiences, interpreting a very old re-translated text, and coming to their own conclusions/philosophies. You are most certainly equipped and entitled to do some independent thinking of your own.
It is possible to live a moral, sensible, responsible life, using the advice given in the Bible (or other religious texts). Happiness, sadness, a loss of direction for the future, are just inevitable parts of that life, people around you (or is it God you reckon) help you through those moments with their kindness and generosity.
Take it or leave it, the last paragraph is entirely my opinion.
- Justin
@Anonymous: I'm pretty comfy at home with a nice cuppa too, and although I know where I'm headed is someplace incredible, I'm happy where I am right now. But, what I really want to do at the moment is to become a good person - and the way I can see to achieve/come closer to this goal is to follow God, because He knows what He wants me to be and that's someone better than who I am right now.
@Justin: Wow. You bring up some interesting topics, and because it's kind of late and I just had to exercise some extreme damage control between my brother and my mum, this might not be coherent but here we go.
First of all, I'm pretty new to this. I'm doing research into Christianity, because I want to base my belief on something as well as just 'knowing'. As I understand it, only the words of Jesus and select phrases are actually directly God's word - the rest is filtered through humans who, as devoted as they might be, are still not God. However, it's like this - Christians were intensely persecuted at the time the Bible was being written and compiled. They -could- twist things to make themselves and Jesus look better, but that would just make them more succeptible to more persecution (eh vocab fail). Similar to how the Jews were being 'hunted' by Nazi Germany, they would want to make everything as absolutely truthful as possible, so that when scrutiny does happen, you can stand solid in truth, because if you've exaggerated something or tweaked it, then your case begins to crumble and people suspect you of having bigger, more vital lies. This is based on research, just so you know :P
I do enjoy going to church, and I do listen to the words of my pastor and friends, and I do have issues with some topics. Growing up in a feminist school and taking those ideals to heart, some things are hard for me to understand and they in particular are the ones I'm looking everywhere I can to find all the different viewpoints. I'm not going to base my research only on a few biased sources from the same side.
Let me make this clear - I would be nowhere without the kindness of those who are around me. Seriously. I'd be in a hole somewhere feeling either nothing, or just sorry for myself and generally being a douche if I didn't have so many amazing people to show me kindness, teach me things, to love me. And because I think that God made them that way, I am able to thank Him wholeheartedly because He has made them as they are, and they've been shaped by the people around them. So I strive to see how they do things well, and then try to incorporate them into how I live.
Hope that made sense!!
P.S. Is this Justin Yu, or a different Justin? haha :P
Well, that response looks reasonable on the whole. Of course, one should do research before committing one's belief in something, otherwise it is called faith; and mind you, listening to the church's 'counter arguments' against itself is different to finding out actual counter arguments. Anyhow, I'll tell you why I rejected Christianity (and the whole concept of having a religion), as a start to your research.
I went to church with a Christian friend in my second year of undergrad, curious to see if I could become one myself. Listened to the pastor, his sermon, an account by a guy about how much Christianity changed his life, and the sing-along music. The hour in church, plus around ten minutes after was as close as I ever got to believing. I do not doubt the sincerity of what was said, but a combination of guilt-trip technique, personal testimonials, and the description of the alleged kindness of God proved incredibly appealing until I fully analysed what they were doing. Giving them the benefit of doubt I went again the following week but was greeted with essentially the same routine. I found that although some teaching was done on how to behave as decent human beings and being a force of good to society, most of the time was actually being devoted to praising God and Jesus to the high heavens, sprinkled with thinly veiled emotional blackmail - daring the congregation to love God less given His infinity love for all man. You can note analogous behaviour in people idolizing a pop star, and Lady Macbeth in the play. Unfortunately I do not view what seemed to be an intellectual competition on who can give God the most amount of praise in the most novel and imaginative way as an exercise worth pursuing, and it was a disappointment to find so little substance behind my friend's long and deeply held piety. Having said that, I have been to other church services which gave very insightful sermons, not pushy at all. These sermons, whilst excellent, did not give me any reason to believe in God, they were simply packets of valuable advice that could have been uttered by any good person, experienced in life, outside of church. While the former type is worse than the latter kind of Christian in my opinion, the latter's beliefs can still be taken apart and shown to be problematic as follows.
Now you are certainly correct on truth meddling and its effects on your future credibility. But here you say that the words of Jesus and select phrases are God's words and the others are fallible, is that not the same as throwing the credibility of the whole Bible into question? Taking only parts of the Bible which you, your pastor (or some other authoritative human figure) think is the truth also goes against the fundamentalist's literal reading of the Bible, who would argue no-one is entitled to pick and choose any of God's words. To add to this muddle, I will point you to look up the Council of Nicea and Mithraism for the detail on the origins of the Bible and how it was compiled. Lastly, on the questionable accuracy of the Bible - given their importance for an enlightened understanding of Christianity, why are you having to do background academic theological research to find answers instead of having the pastor addressing to it in church. It looks horribly like a hush-up, small-print that otherwise advertised will make Christianity a hard-sell to newcomers.
The arrogance of Christian doctrine seems to be noticeable only to the outsiders. It asserts that all non-believers are going to go to hell regardless of what they did during their life, or awareness of Christ. The typical example will be: suppose I do action A to help a starving child, and a Christian does identical action A - somehow, by the logic of Christianity my action does not count when I die, while the Christian one will be looked upon by God with blessing and smiles (although of coure He does reserve the final judgement on whether you can come to Him or not). It is no good denying this belief if one believes what Jesus said (John 14:6) as once one accepts this one imply the above consequence. I am aware of Inclusivism, but this is never explicitly stated in the Bible as John 14:6, it is a human interpretation that, one can not place absolute trust in. Of course, typically the 'get-out-of-jail card' for this involves:
1. Put your trust in God, pray, and He will lead you where you are supposed to go (chance and luck does that too, and does not require me to conjure up a God to condemn the whole of humanity to Sin for me to have a chance of going to heaven).
2. God is all powerful, He can change even His own rules to let people He likes into heaven (if so what's the point in laying out rules for man to follow in the first place).
3. God loves us all (demonstrated by the suffering of say millions of undernurished children in developing countries who likely will never have an 'enlightened' Christian belief seeing as it is so difficult to codify even for the God cognoscenti).
4. God works in mysterious ways that man can never understand (at least an honest admission of irrationality).
I do not believe in the existance of hell, thus can not be offended by the Christian charges. However, do you find the church's explanation satisfactory here?
We may have to agree to have differences on this. Faith by definition is a belief not backed up by rational reasons. I know you are trying to be a better person than you are now, as am I. I cannot in so doing, accept without question supernatural phenomenons, as well as damnning most (probably) of my ancestors to hell. An amoral person perhaps can further ask for a logical reason for wanting to be good in the fight for survival, in which case we are probably both by his/her definition bound to faith in human decency. I make no apology for my arguments above though, they will come up sooner or later and perhaps even more bluntly than I put it, better be aware of them at the start of your faith.
And yes you are correct, it is I. I doubt any random on the internet would write you such long replies, just a by-stander/friend's words.
To both Katie and friend Justin and anyone else who happens to read:
Firstly, extremely interesting posts here! As someone who grew up being told that the bible was screwed up, along with a billion of other things that threw Christianity into question, I asked most of these questions and raised most of these objections myself. However, I am now a Christian (yay!) so will try to add my two cents, based on what I've researched and learnt, both before and after I became a Christian :) (P.S. I can't guarantee that all the doctrinal stuff I say is correct, but I'll try to be careful)
Firstly: science vs Christanity. There's a billion issues that people have brought up about this, and evolution is just one. Evolution theory as it stands is, as I understand it, starting to be less trusted by scientists, as holes are starting to appear more and more. The idea that the big bang was a random event which accidentally created the universe and all in it, and that the stuff that was created, from the simplest of single-cell organisms, all accidentally and randomly evolved themselves into everything we see today...it just doesn't work. Random and accident just doesn't do justice to the beautiful intricacies of nature, biology, physics, chemistry...and how they all beautifully and perfectly fit each other. Evolution theory, as Darwin described it, involves the mutation or 'drift' of a species, not the complex morphing into what humans (or other animals) are. It is because of this that quite a lot of scientists do believe in God, because they've realised that something like the universe requires a maker. (If we're talking about how lots of non-believing scientists appear in the media...yes, they are there too of course, but I think we all know that the media likes giving attention to whoever they want?)
As for the accuracy and reliability of the bible...Christian doctrine says that the entire bible is correct, without fault and God-inspired (e.g 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Many people say that it was edited and changed over the centuries - but one very important thing to note is that of all ancient texts known to civilisation, the Bible has by far the highest number of copies and manuscripts (1000+?) throughout the ages, the earliest being dated to about the same century as Jesus' death. They've all been compared, and they are all extremely accurate, I think it's something like a 98%+ similiarity? (I can't remember the stats exactly, sorry). If you compare to other works, I think the most has max 60 copies found...so I think 1000+ is a pretty outstanding number. Another thing to remember is that people didn't really have time to 'edit' the bible; if I stood up in 50 years' time and said that John Howard was the president of USA, everyone would know that it was false. So as for back then; they were claiming that Jesus died and rose again, with witnesses to him being alive again, which is a pretty massive claim for anyone to make...and people would've known back then if it was utter crap.
Justin, you also said that the church service you experienced was a shallow combination of praise and emotional blackmail...I’m sorry that it was like that. You also mentioned that pastors should be addressing questions like bible credibility during services. I totally agree! But you have to remember, part of the pastor’s role is to help lead the people of the church to continue growing in their faith, not just address questions from those who don’t believe. And if you had gone to more services, I think you may have found that such questions would have been addressed (for example, the sermon today included the addressing of a science/religion issue, although not as the main point). On the other hand, remember that pastors are also human...and the basis of the sermon is can become more on morality, life advice etc as opposed to being centred on the bible and Jesus. In these cases, we just have to be careful and discerning as to which church we go to.
The ‘Christian and non-Christian doing exactly the same thing but with different results’ scenario is a question posed extremely frequently by people, and I myself once thought that it was remarkably unfair. But then, something clicked. This whole Christianity thing isn’t about what we can do or have done – it’s the fact that no one is perfect. To understand Christianity, we have to understand that God is fully righteous and just, and basically, anyone who isn’t perfect must be punished and deserves to die. It may seem very harsh...but as someone once put it, how can God let an imperfect being into a perfect place? So we all deserve to die and go to hell...but this is where Jesus comes in. God sent his only son, Jesus, to die and take our punishment, so that -we- could choose not to go to hell. The condition is that we believe and accept Jesus’ death in our place, and confess him as Lord and Saviour. It’s like if Barack Obama decided to send in his son/daughter to die instead of some convicted rapist who he didn’t even know, except x100000000 more crazier! It is for this reason that so many Christians praise God to high heaven and worship with so much sincerity and passion...because we believe that God has done a crazily stupidly full-of-love act to save people who have rejected their creator and deserve to die.
Wow, massive post! I hope that answers some stuff, or clears up more...or better still, gets the thinking caps going and induces more questions! Because for me, in the end, the reason why I became a Christian was because I became convinced that it was true. Not because it was nice, not because I wanted to ‘be a good person’...but because it was simple, unadulterated truth that could not be ignored.
God bless :)
- Elaine
Well Elaine, these kind of discussions have been had countless times by countless numbers of people before, and no doubt also yet to be had in the future. There is not much use at the end of the day to keep them going, because both sides are nearly always unable to change their viewpoint. My concern was that the problems with Christianity's claims are not vocalised enough to new religious converts, who really should be aware of them.
Now if you have solved these conundrums intellectually - good for you, but my logic still does not permit me giving your explanations a stamp of approval (I have actually heard these before your mention).
Don't quote statistics to back up strong absolute statements. You have actually invalidated your own argument on Bible perfection by saying it is only ~98%+ (?), rather than the required 100%.
I do not think the whole Bible is rubbish. I take the reasonable bits to heart, and leave out the superstitious and the ridiculous. Christians do not have the option of doing this.
It is very nice to talk to you! :)
-Justin
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