What's wrong with atheists asking about the reason for suffering anyway? It's a valid concern however you respond to it. And don't you think religious people can be as annoying as fuck, saying things like, "Well, who created all of this? You think it was just chance?" Well, yeah, it likely was (depending on your definition of the word "chance"). The worst is when people know you don't believe in a god but say, "I'll pray for you." I'd rather you didn't; you could be doing something constructive.

Was it confirmed Elijah Moon is The Exploding Boy

agree

Also please stop lumping all protestantism in with your unitarian thing

The Exploding Boy and I are nothing alike. Our main difference is we're different people.

cool

What do you mean when you say Jesus is divine, Charmbag?

Divine according to the narrow confines of contemporary American Protestant Christian doctrine?

It's true that I don't feel obligated to make my understanding of Jesus's divinity line up with orthodox Christianity. But I try to read the Bible every day, I pray every day, I thank God in Jesus's name for my meals every day, and I live my life according to the values espoused by Jesus and Paul, though not withot a lot of doubt and struggle and flip-flop-ing. I have come to accept all of that as part of my humanity though.

To me committing to a lifestyle that Jesus called his followers to commit to, makes me more of a Christian than someone who unquestioningly accepts doctrine that was derived from Paul and the early church, and freshly interpreted (misinterpreted) by successive generations of Christian orthodoxy...about the nature of Jesus's personhood.

I do regularly recite the Nicene and Apostles creeds in evensong though (because I sing in a cathedral choir)...and I'm interested in what they mean every time I do. I don't understand how to just blindly accept a creed like that. It isn't how my brain works...

We're not Unitarians, officially. We're called the Uniting Church but we're actually the Presbytarian, Methodist, Congregational and Wesleyan churches of Australia merged into one denom.

All the major holy books are centuries out of date. Read something else.

Looks like we covered all the bases in this thread. See you all again in six months

Well done, folks. Everyone be back here in March.

Which denomination were you raised in, Charmbag??

basically "non-denominational" evangelical

Why does Sonic Johnny sound so hostile towards "atheist pricks", as if secularism is the world's biggest problem right now? Why not focus his anger on, I don't know, people who rape and decapitate in the name of their god? Also, why do religious people get all worked up about people dismissing their god, as if such an all-powerful being can't handle criticism or being dismissed?

If there were a god in the sense of the three big He-God religions, I don't think he would need people sticking up for him. And, despite my reservations about Richard Dawkins, he was on the money when he asked why "reason must politely tiptoe out of the room" when people discuss their religious beliefs.

Thread needs more Dawkins

Like Billy Graham style?

Reason is always welcome in the room when I'm discussing my religious beliefs... I love logic...was there something in particular your rationality prompts you to discuss when it comes to religion...?

it's suspected based on the fact that he doesn't like anything but he seems to be more able to write readable posts

^ yeah his tone is different but someone on fb said that so I was j/w

What is this post

And yeah I guess Billy Graham can be a good reference point. Socially conservative, Bible believin' American protestantism, pretty mainstream, not fundamentalist, not obsessed with "young earth" shit or anything. Probably more hostile to Catholics than Graham was though. My dad was actually hostile to all religion most of my life though, only my mom was Christian.

This is why I consider myself politically atheist but philosophically agnostic. Religion is only really harmful as a vehicle for oppression, both of human rights and of objective truth. That sounds horribly pretentious but I think it makes sense.

Also I think it's really important to define exactly what we mean by "God" before we say definitively whether he/she/it exists or might exist. The anthropomorphic beardy lightning bolt man is on par with the spaghetti monster in terms of ridiculousness, but more broad ideas of God are less offensively stupid and even rational in some instances.

It was directed at the person who did the Dawkins quote.

People love to talk about how religious people won't deign to talk about their beliefs and subject them to logical analysis but whenever I say I would love to discuss both logic and my beliefs and any possible intersections between the two, everything goes quiet...

This sounds pretty much like my church except that it isn't hostile to Catholics and isn't socially conservative. We're not really anything tbh lol. Though officially we're mainline Protestant, and accept Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). So we're supposedly Calvinists...

Were the churches part of a group, or individual?

This is where I started out after my angry atheist stage ended

The nature of non-denominational is that they are individual. But while the churches I grew up in weren't fundamentalist in terms of shutting off from contemporary society, they were fundamentalist in terms of being rightfully inflexible about doctrine like the nature of christ, or about the sins condemned in the Bible, or the existence of hell. They took a (traditional) stance on all these things. Not being socially conservative suggests to me that your church probably doesn't place much emphasis on sin and repentance, but mine did. Even though sola scriptura is pretty ineffective at least it wasn't full blown cafeteria christianity (except when it came to money, lol)

And I can and do read informed debate over theology elsewhere so doing it here seems pretty unappealing

I love to discuss theology here because people have such different views to me...I find that really exciting.

Why is it right to be inflexible about the nature of Christ, or sins condemned by the bible?

When you say sins - do you mean the 10 commandments, or Leviticus type laws?

eh. all claims eventually reduce to unprovable propositions

therefore all we have is correlation. religion has no predictive power. science does. the end

does dawkins accept that argument?

eh who cares. plenty of smart people out there who aren't assholes