Crisis of Faith

mr friendly guy · Post by **mr friendly guy** » 2006-11-02 10:54am

Superman wrote:
Ethereal41 wrote: You cannot pluck verses from the Bible and use them to support your own assumptions. If we regard relgion as totally infaillable and sacred, then It's either all or nothing
That's quite a blanket statement fallacy there, and it's bullshit. Hopefully, as you get older and more learned in your education, you'll see how silly this type of thinking is.

The Bible was written by many authors throughout many periods of history. It has gone through numerous translations. Give me a break...

I see a logical flaw in that, but not because of a black / white fallacy or a gross generalisation. If you work from his premise that the Bible is totally infallable and sacred, then the conclusion should be you believe all of it as opposed to "all or nothing". However the main problem is his premise which is just an unsupported claim.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-02 11:20am

Has anybody encountered the bullshit attitude "the more literal you interpret The Bible the more true you are to the real meaning and therefore deserve respect"? I see some of that here and this is my 2 cents.

Christians are not going away any time soon. Unless someone's truly a moron and going around proselytizing (and that includes teaching creationism in schools, etc.) quoting passages from The Bible and pointing out its contradictions I see as pointless. Any dweeb can open up The Bible and point out contradictions. Sometimes it is called for sometimes it is not.

What's got to happen is over time, religion becomes a private matter, something people cling to for hope in times of uncertainty for personal comfort. The attitude should be whenever religion is brought up, the believer feels embarassed and recognizes it's a crutch for them, kind of like when you question a scientist about their religious beliefs and they admit they are religious and become embarassed. For this attitude to work, people will have to pick and choose which parts of The Bible they want to believe in.

Of course we still need people to fight the good fight against the Pat Robertsons and so on, but some kind of athiest crusade is not necessary.

So Ethereal41, I see no problem with picking and choosing as a way to solve a crisis of faith. As long as you don't start Bible thumping or quoting the Bible as evidence to non-believers, I don't see why you couldn't live a happy life and have everything else in your life logical except for your faith.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-02 02:18pm

brianeyci wrote:What's got to happen is over time, religion becomes a private matter, something people cling to for hope in times of uncertainty for personal comfort.

The Bumper Sticker demographic would never go for treating religion as a private matter.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-11-02 03:38pm

brianeyci wrote:Has anybody encountered the bullshit attitude "the more literal you interpret The Bible the more true you are to the real meaning and therefore deserve respect"? I see some of that here and this is my 2 cents.

Christians are not going away any time soon. Unless someone's truly a moron and going around proselytizing (and that includes teaching creationism in schools, etc.) quoting passages from The Bible and pointing out its contradictions I see as pointless. Any dweeb can open up The Bible and point out contradictions. Sometimes it is called for sometimes it is not.

What's got to happen is over time, religion becomes a private matter, something people cling to for hope in times of uncertainty for personal comfort. The attitude should be whenever religion is brought up, the believer feels embarassed and recognizes it's a crutch for them, kind of like when you question a scientist about their religious beliefs and they admit they are religious and become embarassed. For this attitude to work, people will have to pick and choose which parts of The Bible they want to believe in.

Of course we still need people to fight the good fight against the Pat Robertsons and so on, but some kind of athiest crusade is not necessary.

So Ethereal41, I see no problem with picking and choosing as a way to solve a crisis of faith. As long as you don't start Bible thumping or quoting the Bible as evidence to non-believers, I don't see why you couldn't live a happy life and have everything else in your life logical except for your faith.

If you're trying to live a life based on logic and reason, including faith just to keep you in that warm and fuzzy spot is rather stupid when faith can be shown to be completely irrational.