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islam

IamThunderbolt said:
This assumes that the point of following Jesus is not going to hell (which is a completely understandable assumption giving the revivalistic history of the US and how most talk about the faith in our individualistic dominant culture), but the story of Christianity is much much larger than that (and our popular understanding of hell is more informed by medieval artists and Dante than it is by Scripture). It isn't even the story of heaven and hell at all, but rather heaven and earth. The story of Scripture is one where God is setting all things right and the restoration of humanity to it's God-image-bearing self is a big part of this. The culmination of the story isn't being plucked off the earth and rewarded with heaven or tossed into hell, it is the restoration of the earth and humanity to the way it is supposed to be, as the Christians pray, "[God's] will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And the majority of my time as a follower of Jesus is spent working toward that end - talking about and working for the future God envisions for the earth (the Kingdom of God as it's called in Scripture) inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So our church feeds the hungry because one day there will be no hunger. We fight economic and racial injustice because one day those will not exist. I don't consider one second of being part of the church wasted. Reducing Christianity to living by silly rules and worrying about the gays, while completely understandable [and regrettable] in our current climate, especially if you're in the American South, is incredibly myopic.

Most other things are political/power consolidating distractions from what the church is supposed to be.
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Creamy's question, to which I was responding, was specifically asking about the risk of not believing when consequences are eternal life in heaven or eternal torment in hell. If that is the only reason to be religious, as Creamy's post that I was responding to indicated, then it all seems rather silly if you believe neither heaven nor hell exist. I was not intending to belittle your or anyone's good works and efforts to make the world a better place, I was just responding to Creamy's simplified dichotomous reasoning to believe.

Having said that, if God is going to do away with hunger and racial injustice at some point in the future anyway why bother working on it now? That seems futile. This is a serious inquiry on my part. I don't follow that logic. It seem much more imperative to work on fixing those things if you were the only force out there intending to try and fix them. If an all powerful being is going to fix them at a time of his choosing in the future, why would our efforts now have any impact?
 
birdman said:
Creamy's question, to which I was responding, was specifically asking about the risk of not believing when consequences are eternal life in heaven or eternal torment in hell. If that is the only reason to be religious, as Creamy's post that I was responding to indicated, then it all seems rather silly if you believe neither heaven nor hell exist. I was not intending to belittle your or anyone's good works and efforts to make the world a better place, I was just responding to Creamy's simplified dichotomous reasoning to believe.

Having said that, if God is going to do away with hunger and racial injustice at some point in the future anyway why bother working on it now? That seems futile. This is a serious inquiry on my part. I don't follow that logic. It seem much more imperative to work on fixing those things if you were the only force out there intending to try and fix them. If an all powerful being is going to fix them at a time of his choosing in the future, why would our efforts now have any impact?
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That's a great and important question. I have a meeting @ 11, but will respond when I get back - didn't want you to think I was ignoring you or leaving your hanging.

Short answer that needs a lot of unpacking (which I'll come back to do):

a) because people matter and we don't know when everything will be set right - so we work toward that goal pointing toward that hope as we do it knowing that as Paul said to the Corinthians, our work is not in vain.
b) We do it now because it is who we were created to be - in doing these things now, we are fulfilling our job description as humans, which is basically: 1) Display God's Image (including mercy, love, creativity, etc.) 2) Live in a close relationship with God and 3) Care for God's creation (which includes people)
c) Living in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus affects all of this, most notable our relationship with God - which in turn affects how we live here.
 
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Deacsfan27 said:
No you won't, you get off on arguing. It's cool. I'll just ignore your comments overall.
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You have to admit, progressive policies are anything but what you describe. It sounded pretty good, though.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
We talked about Pascal's Wager yesterday, but I can't make myself believe in something I don't believe in.
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To make the wager you don't have to make yourself believe in anything. You just have to live as if you do. According to Pascal, anyway, the belief will come.
 
Junebug said:
To make the wager you don't have to make yourself believe in anything. You just have to live as if you do. According to Pascal, anyway, the belief will come.
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Right, and I steadfastly disagree with that.

I can attend UNC games for the next 20 years but I will never, ever pull for UNC athletics.

Also, applying that to anything but religion is absurd when you think about it, so why is it not considered absurd when applying it to religion?
 
birdman said:
Creamy's question, to which I was responding, was specifically asking about the risk of not believing when consequences are eternal life in heaven or eternal torment in hell. If that is the only reason to be religious, as Creamy's post that I was responding to indicated, then it all seems rather silly if you believe neither heaven nor hell exist. I was not intending to belittle your or anyone's good works and efforts to make the world a better place, I was just responding to Creamy's simplified dichotomous reasoning to believe.

Having said that, if God is going to do away with hunger and racial injustice at some point in the future anyway why bother working on it now? That seems futile. This is a serious inquiry on my part. I don't follow that logic. It seem much more imperative to work on fixing those things if you were the only force out there intending to try and fix them. If an all powerful being is going to fix them at a time of his choosing in the future, why would our efforts now have any impact?
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I hope everyone read and took my comment with a grain of salt, as I was joking around.

There's no logic that Christianity, Islam or Judaism, is the "magic answer" to punch a ticket to eternal joy. Radicals on each end of those regions have really made things easy for the "moderate" religious folks to stray away from organized religion.

However, I've kept a belief my entire life that there is a God, just not the God that we are told we're supposed to believe in for inexplicable reasons. And in response to the gay comment above; I'm pretty sure two gay guys, who have loved each other for their entire lives, lived by the golden rule, etc., aren't going to be damned to hell because they don't like chicks, it just doesn't make sense and people who believe that have really fallen behind the times.
 
IamThunderbolt said:
That's a great and important question. I have a meeting @ 11, but will respond when I get back - didn't want you to think I was ignoring you or leaving your hanging.

Short answer that needs a lot of unpacking (which I'll come back to do):

a) because people matter and we don't know when everything will be set right - so we work toward that goal pointing toward that hope as we do it knowing that as Paul said to the Corinthians, our work is not in vain.
b) We do it now because it is who we were created to be - in doing these things now, we are fulfilling our job description as humans, which is basically: 1) Display God's Image (including mercy, love, creativity, etc.) 2) Live in a close relationship with God and 3) Care for God's creation (which includes people)
c) Living in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus affects all of this, most notable our relationship with God - which in turn affects how we live here.
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Man, if every Christian operated like this...
I look forward to your full answer. My own thoughts are that I feel compelled by instinctive altruistic tendencies (evolutionarily seeded behaviors as described above) to act in a way that benefits my fellow organisms because it ultimately benefits me and my genes. This is not a conscious thing, I just feel compelled to spend my time working to protect the environment and wildlife populations and I know I'd feel less happy working in some other profession. Either that or it is residual catholic guilt.

I believe (and yes it is a belief without much evidence) that religion was invented as a mechanism to provide insurance for innate altruism because, in social constructs that depend on altruism, selfish cheaters are prevalent.
 
WakeandBake said:
Well this is what we have done for 13 years in the region. How do you like the results?

Also. You left out a bullet point 6) bought and sold by monied interests who dictate foreign policy to secure natural resources.

Perhaps we are the bullies you speak of in some circumstances. Is that possible, that out great power could be corrupted?
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re: '13 years..' Islam has hated the west long before we were a country, let alone entangled ourselves in conflict with some of their countries..

And I concede your additional bullet.. absolutely that can and does happen.. but your subsequent assertion of 'platitudes' aside, that's what the aforementioned checks and balances are meant to address, even if they don't (or can't) address them immediately.
 
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