British Expatriate Network

I opened this so any general discussions on faith, religion and christianity wont steer the other thread too far off course. Feel free to talk about anything - even Momons.

I have no problem with "people of faith," but I do have a problem with the ignorant of faith. I have worked with many many christians of different denominations here. I'm afraid to say that alot of them are the most ignorant hurtful people I've ever met. But I've met two truly wonderful people - a minister at the Presbyterian Church in Youngstown NY, and a minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Buffalo NY. Prior to meeting them I was spiritual I guess, but certainly not what you'd call a christian. I've long held an unpleasant dislike for the Catholic Church, in part due to the veneration of the Pope as God on earth, but largely due to its scandals, and due to alot of it's congregation's focus on homosexuality yet they ignore idolatry and adultery. I know many christians who have no idea what the philosophy of their faith is, but they will quick to use it as a justification to persecute others. That isn't faith, that's pathetic.

But what truly frightens me is Evangelicalism. I dislike anyone who says they're here to do God's will not just in their own lives, but for mine as well. I don't like their influence and I don't like their message - "we will take over America any way we can." This is a political movement not a group of christians. They want faith to run your life, and they intend to use the government to do it. They don't just want people to agree with them, they want it put into law that you must agree with them. And perhaps most frightening, depsite having one of their own in the White House, they think he's too liberal!! I'm amazed that the things they say and advocate aren't on the front page of every newspaper in America with "these people are mental - avoid at all costs" written next to it. When they call judges communists or akin to the KKK and call to abolish or even kill them, or when they advocate sending in the National Guard to take Terri Schiavo by force if necessary, or when they call on assasinating other world leaders we should listen! And we should worry because of their connections. Tom Delay and Bill Frist have attended both Justice Sunday events. Both agreed that the country and Supreme Court is too liberal and ignorant of God. Think about that - seven of the nine Supreme Court justices were named by Republican presidents. 10 of 13 federal appeals courts are controlled by Republicans. Both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans. The vast majority of state governments are controlled by Republicans. A Republican has been President for most of the last 50 years. Yet Evangelicals aren't satisfied!

I am not a christian and I do not have faith. Sometimes I have what you could call a crisis of un-faith when my spiritual side goes all wobbly and needs clarification. But all too often when I seek it in christianity I'm told "because God says so" when they really mean "because I say so."

I think the instances where you have used the term faith could better be replaced with religion.

A lot of people seem to be memebers of a religion more than they are a follower of their particlular deity ( or pantheon).

The members may tend to beleive that to be good followers of the deity they must be good followers of the religion, and those in postions of power of the religion can control this group of people by changing the edicts of the religion.

Power corrupts etc......

Fundies of all stripes scare me. All that accusation and pointing of fingers, the whole "Believe what I tell you or get smited!", the way they can't deal with the fact that someone, somewhere is having a good time. And I certainly don't want to live in a monotheistic theocracy. All that sexual frustration and repressed anger seems to pop out at the slightest provocation. And why are so many of these monotheists down on homosexuality and women?

completely agree, in Utah it is blindingly obvious that they are using the church as a crutch for their own beliefs. There it has become the culture not the church which is gone headlong into demonization of anything that doesn't come Mormon giftwrapped. They are brutally conservative and completely intolerant of anyone who is not of their ilk. What amazes me is that these are relatively intelligent people. I was considered an unworthy subject and was ostracized at the outset of my time there, because I was from somewhere else, I did not condemn homosexuality, I think guns are a dumb idea. I have to say I was more Christian than all of them put together when it came to not judging people, helping those who needed help and forgiving those who had not treated me as I would want to be treated.

They me be a recognized religion, but they have absolutely nothing to do with being christian.

Maybe because the first actual Christian apostle, Saul of Tarsus (AKA Paul) was a repressed homosexual with a misogynistic point of view. http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

Sorry about the link. He really should do an index of the page. If you’re interested in Paul in particular just search for tarsus in the text.

A thread about religion, I can see where this is going to end up wink

neutral

You can go so many places with a topic like this.

A quote from the Book of Jeremiah, says "gods Bible? Look at it. It was made as a lie by the false pen of scribes"

There are alot of facts that can be shown to be fact and there are others that could never have happened.

Many of the Christian Traditions we have today, come from pagan and other older religious bases. Christmas an example there. But so do some of the stories we get from the Bible. People state them as fact, but there is very little fact there or again they are drawn from other tales..

Moses for instance. There is no evidence for his existance. For a man with such importance in the Egyptian house hold, there is no mention of him. They make no mention of the Jewish exodus.

The birth of Moses, reads very much like the myth of the birth of Sargon The Great, king of Akkad. placed in a basket and cast into the river and there have been other variations from the early sixth centary like Dionysus confined to a chest and thrown into the river nile or Osiris having the same thing done. Can go on and on

Like Jesus? The myth of the winter-born king, coming back from the dead, a mixture of divine and human? Although that sounds more like Mithras than anything else.

Or the "they're not like us, they eat babies" tale, applied to the first Christians and then thrown out during the Burning Times to justify killing the wise women...

/says the man who worships trees, rocks, the Sun and believes that there is a big fat woman who lives in the moon, but she's actually three different women.
//Sargon the Great? I think I read that in a Spiderman book mrgreen

In the third century AD the roman emperor constantine and his mother were enjoying an afternoon at the coliseum watching the lions and christians engage in fair and balanced combat. The emperor remarked on the fanatic faith of these people willing to die for their religion. The mother replied " what if you had a whole army of these fanatics"? Thus was born the Roman Catholic church.

Shit you mean fox news was reporting, back then, in a fair and balanced fashion.
lol.

Well smack me with a kipper rofl

The people who kill the most get to write the history. There's no doubt that Christianity hasn't been exactly peaceful or tolerant over the ages... but that's how the world has worked. It's the whole First Commandment thing.

Of course you can, the thread can go down, and resurrect again after 40 days :wink:

RELIGION has ruined faiths of all kinds.

It was RELIGION that made the Crusades and wasted half of Asia.
It was RELIGION that crashed into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
It was RELIGION that blew up Tube trains and buses and ultimately caused the death of an apparently innocent Brazilian.

Religion is the unrelenting following of a doctrine.

Faith is different. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith cannot be proven in the five senses, no matter HOW many times OjnhA asks for it. But then again we don't need to prove it. We have the evidence. Hebrews 111 is the evidence.

If you do not have faith, you cannot understand it. It's like a deaf person asking how we can find bird song so beautiful, or a blind person disbelieving the wonder of a sunset.

I can entirely understand that anyone exposed to RELIGION does have faith and possibly never had.

Those of us who have been blessed enough to be exposed to the true word CAN have faith, and do have faith in God.

If you don't need to prove it (conveniently) and a passage in a book written a long time ago by multiple, anonymous authors is the "evidence", then how can anyone claim it to be the "true word"?

Man's words are powerful - so powerful that we are able to apply them to an unseen deity and expect them to carry even more weight than perhaps they deserve.

True faith is believing in yourself and your fellow man to do the right thing, without fearing some threat in the afterlife or some reward that will never come.

Nice differentiation between faith and religion, there, E17 )