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There's a lesson here for everyone -don't trust grandparents - esp if they're Baptists - and there we were thinking you were safely at the pub! - Kids these days! - I don't know!!

Nice post Dubya. I recognise the expectation that was never fulfilled. I didn't fake anything to others though, I just told my parents I'd had enough. My dad was especially disappointed, and right to this day he very, very occasionally tries to convert me back. Boy, does his brain work slow!

Btw, where do I post my own beliefs? They'd be very easy, something like this:

My beliefs? Preciously few if any. I couldn't say 100% sure that I don't have any, but none springs to mind at present. Maybe a few things I care about. Nature is one that readily comes to mind. Both as a fascinated interest and a concerned interest. It is something I truly care about. But that doesn't make it a belief. Still can't think up any of those. Unless you count the somewhat less serious belief that if there is a devil incarnate, it is in the form of the Windows operating system or other Micro$ucks software.

There’s hope for you yet Gee Dubyah, the seed of salvation has been sown in the field of your heart, and you won’t know what has hit you when the Holy Spirit germinates that seed, It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. The moral of this blog, thank God for godly Grandparents.

Dubya

Thats really interesting...

I cant say I heard anything when I began, I just got this sense of peace...

Sometimes now I hear God speaking through a song, usually secular, through a friend, a colleague, through a thought that came from nowhere but which has the cool knowing of a friend unseen.

Peter, interesting too to hear you as yourself...

cheers both of you..
PB

Peter

Was struck to come back to you on this one...

Preciously few beliefs if any?

I cant believe that, surely you have a very complex belief system that would be mainly scientific?

PB

RE: 3

that sounds like the sort of thing smokers say...

"At first i just puffed away and didnt see the point, next thing I knew I was on a pack a day and couldn't be without them..."

Just an observation.

The point here goes straight to the heart of the issue of the reality or atherwise of any religion - adherents say they are plugged straight into god, but he talks back through a wind in the trees or a sense of peace. It just seems a little whimsical to me. I feel peaceful (occasionally!) but I don't extrapolate that feeling to imply the existence of a supernatural entity.

pb in #5
If you change 'belief' into 'world view' I'll go along with you a lot more easily. Scientific belief is a rather contradictory term.

In science, you don't 'believe' anything. It's the opposite of a law court: be skeptical and distrusting by default, if you want people to believe anything, show us why. The burden of proof is on the party making claims that they understand how something works. There is no 'trusted to be correct untill proven wrong'.
When I present some work at a meeting or conference, I do not only do that to inform those interested in the subject. It is also an occasion where the audience can take the oppurtunity to poke holes in it anywhere they think they can. It's basically an invitation to people to throw their worst at it (in a professional, constructive manner, meant to expose any flaws, thereby spurring the presenter on to improve things). If after all the questions and criticisms your work is still standing, then you can have some degree of confidence that you're on to something good.

I don't follow the approach above in all areas outside my work. I think few people would even speak to me anymore if I did, constantly distrusting them etc. But I do question things that other people take for granted. Simple example: table manners. During my holiday in 2005 one of my friends commented on me using my spoon to pull little pieces of meat from the main part, instead of using my knife to cut pieces off. She agreed that both methods worked fine on the soft chicken meat I was having, but she insisted that using the knife 'is how it should be'. I told her that that was arbitrary load of bollocks (one of my good friend to whom I could say a thing like that without the slightest trouble). I followed it up by asking her how she would feel if I would burp in a clearly audible manner. She would find that still way more offensive and was really adament that that would be a fundamentally vulgar thing to do. So I pointed out to her that in some cultures is is *required* to burp a little after dinner as a sign of appreciation to the host for the meal. She simply refused to believe it. People can be so ignorant and many do so NOT use their brains.

Many people just go by what their parents have told them and what most others do in the society they live in. Never realising that much of it is a completely arbitrary coincidence, stemming from the country and age they live in. And boy, oh boy, does such a narrow view breed intolerance. Because is is of course not limited to small things like table manners. Think about how people speak about their values. Some cherish them very much and see it as a duty to enlighten others. 'Of course, make them become just like us. We're happy being that way, so it's for their own good that we make them become like us. We're trying to do good to them.' Maybe this would be a good time to bring religion into it. If you're born in the West your parents may have told you that after you die, heaven or hell awaits you, depending on how good a boy/girl you've been. If you had been born in India, you probably grew up with the idea of reincarnation, your spirit going into a newly born baby (or calf) of a higher or lower cast. Utterly different ideas, to the extent of being irreconcileable. So religion, like much of 'good tatse' and 'generally accepted good manners' is just a coincidence of birth. And I don't accept that any of those things are 'just so'. You want to convince me of something? Fine. Bring your list of rational reasons. You won't do very well by saying that everybody does so.

Returning to your original question then, that 'surely, I must have a mostly scientific complex belief system'. No beliefs, but I do have a world view. A critical one. Rejecting quite a lot that most people accept outright. Wondering about many things: WHY? As to whether it is complex? Well, I do occasionally take time to ponder things, why I go about them the way I do. Something I would recommend to everyone.

Btw, religion was not my target in this post, it's just there because it is one of those arbitrary things, part of a list of such things. If anyone wants to respond, I would be quite interested as to what they think about rejecting commonly held ideas, not necessarily focussing on relgion.

Peter

Nice to have a conversation with you without the cutlery flying!

I agree that so much can be passed down from your parents.

I became a Christin in my early 20s in university, living away from home in England.

I started at the bottom and questioned every assumption I could find I had, believe me. It drove my parents mad. They were certainly not bible believing Christians so I didnt get it from them. Funny how we both landed so differently despite questioning everything.

But you know what I now believe to be the absolute truth after many years of infuriating questioning? Love.

Loving God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself. Not saying it is easy, but Jesus said it summed up the entire bible. Deep man... :-O

I feel like I may only have 5% of the profundities of the Christian faith in my head now, but if I implemented love 99% I would have lived one fantastic life.

At a very basic level, just think about the warmth and humanity of that meal you shared with your friends while on holiday. Jesus based so much of his life around meals, an opportunity to make his love real to others. To me while your science is a crucial part of your life, it is possibly the love from your relationships with others that really makes your life worthwhile. I may be wrong, but that is how I feel about my own life. That is truth and that is the level Jesus *really* works on.

The other point is about western Christianity. Jesus Christ while in his earthly life was a middle eastern Jew, certainly not a white American or European WASP. Christianity is a tree with 100% ME jewish roots.

To understand it truly, not saying I do, but you really need to have an eastern worldview. The western sacred secular divide is one typical western error.

I have known Christians from India, Israel, Congo, thailand, China and a number of other African countries. They are most certainly not westernised Christians and it does not follow that faith in a resurrected middle eastern Jewish rabbi (Jesus) is.

And the other point is that there are so many believers from eastern cultures, so that it is a big misconception to think of it as a western religion.

I think most people automatically equate it with people like GW Bush nowadays but that is a great mistake.

Undoubtedly many western Christians do confuse their family and societal values with their faith and cannot distinguish between the two.

But if you look carefully at anything I have said, I would like to think it is 99% based on what the bible explicity says rather than what my parents or culture does, but I am always open to learn. I suppose one of the biggest disparities in my life on this account would be that I live a fairly individualistic western lifestyle. But I dont necessarily see it as a virtue to adopt eastern habits for the sake of it.

That is why I tend to focus on the good news of Christ, his life, sacrifice and resurrection; it is so pure it is hard to imbue it with western values and it is the beginning, middle and end of the Christian faith, I believe.

PB

PS - It looks like you still have an open mind about God, :-D

sorry Peter, that PS was for GW, not you, sorry for any confusion....

PS - It looks like you still have an open mind about God, :-D

hi dubya,

i used to be a cssm leader in northern ireland. for a couple of weeks each summer we'd work with the kids, play on beaches, sign and do crafts, run bible competitions .... all the sorts of things you probably did.

i am really sorry you had a negative experience. no one should have forced you to feel like you didnt belong unless you could testify like others. your story is unique and worthy of respect. please accept my apologies on behalf of cssm for the sense of exclusion you seem to have experienced.

you are obviously a very bright, articulate and thoughtfu person. i wish you well, and (without seeking to offend you) I wish you god's blessing in all your endeavours.

Hi pb, post #8,

I'm not sure what to say about love, as in sharing a meal, being the highest truth. It can be a wonderful thing, but so can other things. I'll leave this one open for the moment.
More interestingly for discussion were the various places in your reply where you seemed to suggest that the faith that people, including yourself, come to hold is something more than a geographic accident (you didn't get your strong faith from your parents, non-Western Christians are all over the world, etc). Both from general observation and even from what you yourself and others write in this thread, I think it is really little more than a geographic coincidence.

First the general observations. Societies that by a large majority adhere to a particular faith do so for pretty long times. Unless perhaps their land is conquered and forced to convert. I believe the number of Hindus in India exceeds 800 milion (not sure, please correct me anyone who has a good source). So at least something like 1 out every 7 people in the world live in a predominantly Hindu society. Now, do 1 out of seven people born in Europe or the Americas spontaneously come to feel the presence and the love of Hindu gods, the way you say you feel Jesus' love? No. Similarly, more than 1 out of three people in the world live in a predominantly Christian society. How come then that hundreds of millions in India don't feel Jesus? Looking at the numbers they should. But they don't, because of where they grew up. Even when minority religions are inserted in some country through immigration (e. g. Hindus and Muslims in Brittain) they remain to a large extent on their own isolated religious island. Their children may go to a Muslim school, get Muslim friends, marry a Muslim, get children whom they raise as Mulims, and then repeat the cycle. 'True' cross-over is rare. Our PM will soon convert, but from one flavour of Christianity to another. Did he ever ponder becoming a Taoist or Shintoist, or adherent of some indigenous South American multi-god faith? My guess is no. Most will very stubbornly stick with what is around them.

Then some specific examples of people in this thread. You say you didn't get your faith from your parents. And indeed, parents don't determine everything. That's why I said 'parents and others in the society they live in'. You mentioned the Bible a few times, I assume much of your faith comes from reading it? But then why did you start reading the Christian Bible, why not Buddist scripture? My first thought would be because you grew up in the West. If you convince me you lived as a devout Muslim/Buddist/Hindu etc for a number of your adult years and then crossed over to Christianity, you may start me doing some very deep thinking. But the overwhelming 'default' option is to go along with parent/friends/etc of course, and this is what most people do. Those people should ponder the hows and whys of their life a lot more than they actually do. But I don't think many religious parents encourage their children to question their faith. And when I say 'question' I mean really question deeply, to the point where there is a chance their faith might crumble away. Look at Dubya. He was *expected* to grow Christian faith.

Richard Dawkins has repeatedly called for an end to the religious indoctrination of children by their parents. I would not expect you to warmly applaud that, but maybe you would ponder that thought as little interesting thought experiment. Suppose we could switch off religion for a while, i. e. children would not be introduced to it by their parents or other people and children would not be told that in the past people had held these sorts of religious faiths. In other words, children would grow up having to come up with their own answers. No parents or others to take cues from when it comes to interpreting the complex feelings that can arise in the human mind. Would 1 in 3 spontaneously come to feel the presence of Jesus, 1 in 7 the presence of Hindu gods, 1 in 6 Allah etc? It's impossible to carry out the experiment, but if I could take a bet on it, my money would be on saying that very few children would say 'Yes, I feel that this is the presence of such and such a god talking to me, he often tells me he loves me, and this I will now take as a lead to live my life by'.
If religious people were to take a moment of self-critical honesty and rational thinking, they would not expect people to come to feel the presence of any gods. If god is there for all to hear/see/feel, then why is there such a job description as 'missionary'? Because religious fairy tales are so non-sensical that people need a certain amount of brainwashing to accept it.

practical note: my responses to any of your responses to this post my take a longer time. I became active on this forum during the holidays. Unfortunately, now that I'm back to work I have distictly less time for it. And thinking up posts like this one and then going over it for language (not a native English speaker) does take quite a bit of time for me.

Hi Sarah,

thanks for your concern. maybe you were one of the leaders in Newcastle (mid-late 70's)

i wouldn't say CSSM was a negative experience - on the contrary - i had a lot of fun - and the people were really nice. No-one made me feel anything although it was an evangelical mission i suppose, i just didnt get anything from what I assume to be the main part of your religion - the one on one with god bit. it makes me wonder whether people who "hear" god are really just hearing their own desires played back to them by their subconscious - that I suppose was the point of the credo - but the word limit....

PB - I have an open mind about most things, but with christianity, i tried it (and inhaled, to continue my smoking metaphor from post 6!!) and there was just nothing there.

i think you are wrong on this, i think you want it (god) to be true, and so it becomes true for you. Fair enough, but not for me. Your thoughts?

Peter,

well said sir. Religion is a habit you pick up from those around you to fill something you think you are missing out on.

I am waiting for one the christian guys here to comment in more depth on the silence i experienced. Was God busy that day? Wasnt there a bit in the good book about suffering little children onto himself?

Peter, GW

Your English here is better than mine, I reckon, fyi.

Geography and religion. Yes you make some valid points but if you look up Christianity on wikipedia you will get more info on its current geography.

My central point is that worshipping a middle eastern Jew is hardly very WASP.

My parents were actually angry/alarmed when I became a Christian, they did not expect it.

Yes I had friends who prayed for me and dissussed it with me. There are many testimonies of people who experience Christ aside from any contact with any Christians; but I think that is a deadend for you and will mean nothing.

However, I can say that there is a thriving business in black market bibles etc in the muslim world, for what that is worth.

I think it is naive for Dawkins not to think he has a belief system that he is passing onto children. Of course he does. Would he really advocate that a global law be enacted to be enforced by the UN, in which no families in any culture be allowed to pass their beliefs onto their children?

That would mean Dawkins could not teach that God does not exist to any children.

What would the UN then allow children be taught? Or is it only that Christians should be forbidden to teach their beliefs to their children?

How rational is that?

Ref brainwashing, have you ever examined the actual evidence for the resurrection of Christ? Many eminent judges and authors have concluded it would still stand up in a court of law today.

Lastly, I noticed another post your love of nature. I would suggest that according to Romans chapter 1 this is a clear reflection of the glory of God, which is the way he designed it and the reason why he made it so.

May I suggest that some of the reasons you have rejected faith in Christ might be misplaced. Could it be you have rejected arguments, ideas and attitudes that in fact have no basis in the bible but may be grounded in the culture you grew up in. I think that very often people reject a caricature of God rather than God himself.

Good to hear from you again.

PB

PS GW ref the silence of God... I can't explain everything... God is a great mystery.
If God spoke to us all like a telephone conversation all the time there would be no need for faith.
Unfortunately sin comes between us.
Many great Christians I would say most Christians never audibly hear from God.
Maybe we exaggerate how we hear him and hurt others. Dont forget that to hear God you should read his word, which he has taken the trouble to write as "love letters" to you. ie the bible. It says it is a living word.

I cant explain everything to you, I dont know everything. Maybe a good test would be to call out to God again and see what happens? Call it an experiment perhaps.

PB- "If God spoke to us all like a telephone conversation all the time there would be no need for faith."

Why is there a need for faith?

PB

God didnt write the bible - some men did.

Men whose raison d'etre was to administer the church - their jobs if you like. On a previous post you claimed MacIntosh was forced to bite hios tongue because of career pressure - that may be so. What of these chaps? what pressure was on them to maintain the faith that provided their elevated status?

An omnipotent God, who will "Suffer little children" - but won't answer their prayers, but requires them to interpret a sigh on the breeze, a pretty sunset?????????

A big ask for those not predisposed to religion by their family circumstances....

Dubya;
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind.....

Here comes the mother of all waves.

Swooooooooosh.

Glug glug....glug glug.

Hope he had his scuba gear on and a couple of full tanks of air.

JW

Why is there a need for faith? John you little rascal, always testing me. The answer to your question is in the context from whence you plucked my quote on your pretext, you rapscallion.

By the way, you again label me a member of evangelicalsim in this blog somewhere yesterday.

Have you not checked your own blog out recently ref my last post on post-evangelicalism? I posted a checklist for PE and ticked most of the boxes so by YOUR standards I reckon you would be more correct to call me post-evangelical. This of course poses you the problem of what label you now use to describe your own faith outlook now that I have acquired yours???

Remember, PE outlook still subscribes to a canon of scripture.

I read on wikipedia this: "Evangelicalism is typified by an emphasis on evangelism, a personal experience of conversion, biblically oriented faith and a belief in the relevance of Christian faith to cultural issues."

John, just to be straight I wouldnt presume that God would exclude Christians from a non-evangelical background, to me what he is looking for is faith in Christ, his sacrifice and resurrection.

But as even PE believes in a canon, lets look at wikipedia definition of evangelicalism;

1) The gospels are saturated with Christ and his disciples evangelising ie preaching the evangel or good news.
2) Christ said anyone who wanted to enter into heaven had to be born again, ie believe the gospe/good news.
Look at Paul's road to Damascus experience for example, such conversions are the meant and drink of the NT.
3) The NT is from start to finish about the evangel or good news ie belief in the substiutionary sacrifice and resurrection of Christ atones for all our sins by grace, and we no longer have to fail in our own efforts to please God through trying to be good.

I dont think these three planks of "Evangelical" belief can be seriously contested from the canon, which is accepted by PEs. (And PE cannot exist without Evangelical foundation by the way).

And evangelical thought certainly subscribes to the apostles's creed and nicene creed, two of the earliest creeds of the church.

Point is this;

1) I dont fit into evangelical pigeon hole, more PE by your standards.

2) What is commonly thought of as evangelical is plainly mainly about practises central to the early church in the new testament as described in depth and length in the NT and continous with early creeds.

3) Take the evangel(ical) ie gospel or good news out of the Christian faith and remove it from the text of the New Testament and you have nothing of significance left.

Conclusion, the label you intend as a tool of marginalisation against me defines itself in greek as the central theme of the new testament and is therefore strictly speaking, biblical. But by your own standards it misses me anyway as your standards actually define me as post-evangelical.

By my standards I prefer the timeless "bible believer" which is contested as meaning nothing by you.

But as you dont even believe in the bible or a canon you have no grounds to object. I believe nobody will ever take this label who does not believe in the bible as *the* word of God. Can you think of anyone?

So finally, believing the bible as the w
ord of God is without argument the traditional, original, mainstream Christianity.

Strange how ridiculous it sounds to even having to argue it, that Christians believe the bible, I mean, do Muslims believe in the Koran?

PB

PS Nobody could serious dispute there are disagreements on secondary doctrines but the early creeds define a very broad umbrella indeed and always have done.