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Originally Posted by Bender
I just find it difficult to understand how faith drives people. I've heard people say "if i follow God and there isn't one at the end of it, I've not really lost anything. If i follow God and there is one, I gain everything.", but I'm not so sure.
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Nor am I, on that basis. What you're describing there isn't really faith, it's fire insurance. The Christian life is one of commitment, discipleship, submission, worship and relationship. You can't have any of those things to any meaninful degree if all you're doing is hedging against the possibility of an afterlife.
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religion (how should I say this?) 'encourages' people to live their lives in a certain way - according to certain rules. social morals are built around these rules and those who go against them could end up in jail. for example, were society not to frown upon hurting another physically who had done harm to either yourself or family member / friend, I'm sure there would be a lot more injured people out there!
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Quite true. God, through both Moses in the Old Testament and through Jesus in the New, has made clear the rules he expects his people to live by, for the best interests of all. But that's not the full extent of what he has said; it's only part of it.
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So this makes me wonder if religion was really a way of dressing up a set of rules and then placing the onus on the individual with the fear that if they did not follow these rules, God would not accept them. something which we obviously cannot prove either way.
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It's a tempting conclusion, but one that doesn't stack up because of all the inconvenient things the Bible has to say about the servant nature a true leader is supposed to have. Any self-respecting despot, who wanted a religion created for him to help him control the masses, would have had the priests put to the sword and then employed others to come up with better rules that didn't require quite so much selfless living and personal sacrifice. Actually, that happened, throughout Bible history. And yet, somehow, we still have the Bible, in all its inconvenient glory.
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As our scientific understanding of the world progresses, we have far fewer 'miracles' as we know how things work a lot better. this onbviously leads society to lose it's faith in religion as those things the churches used to make people believe are explained away one by one.
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I think it depends on what you define as a miracle. The Bible never calls the stars or the seasons, or the sun coming up in the morning, a miracle, although its writers acknowledged they were mysteries of God that they didn't understand.
But medical science even today would have a hard time explaining any of the healings or raisings-from-the-dead that are attributed to Jesus.
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so where does this leave society and the church. is there actually a benefit from devoting or not? and why do so many people stll believe God exists when we now have answers to so many 'miracles'?
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Well, you can buy a Haynes manual for your car, but if it stirs anything in you (other than a desire to take your car to bits), it's surely more likely to be appreciation for the work of the designer of the car, rather than an insistence that the designer doesn't exist.
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On the flip side, would you agree that faith has been lost due to our advancement as a race and could it eventually decline to a point that religion is merely a cult establishment? what effect would this have on the way we govern ourselves in respect to laws and morals?
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No - faith is very much a part of life in the USA, for example, despite the material wealth and the lead that country has in many advanced areas of research and manufacture. On a world scale, faith is very much a current issue. Atheism, or various kinds of agnostcism, are very prevalent in 21st century UK, but we are more of an exception than the rule in this. It's easy for people engaging in this sort of debate to lose sight of that.
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Originally Posted by mischievious
First hows the painting look, this time of night and not so good light you might find bits you've missed tomorrow in daylight  |
Don't worry, it's just a basecoat for a porous wall. There's two layers of wallpaper and more paint to come yet.
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As to the other bit very well, comes accross like you have patiently (avoiding bold) explained this countless times and will do countless more times 
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Thank you ... you're right, I have, and I certainly will ...
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You paint the concept of god in a very human like manner, e.g. with many qualities, one of which is forgiveness but there are many other facets.
why is God presented with human like qualities....
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It makes him easier to get to grips with, I suppose. That's not the whole picture of course. If you want that you'll have to come to church and listen to me going at it from the pulpit for a great many weeks.
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Though I find this interesting and as a logical, rational and physical being the simplest solution seems to be a religious person has faith that god exists (In whatever form) whilst a non believer should simply claim faith that a god does not exist. It is all a mad accident of atoms and molecules over countless years. Then we just have to accept each other.
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Such was the thesis being explored in
Contact, although Carl Sagan was himself an avowed agnostic of the fence-sitting kind.
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For those on the fence, I believe that most religious circles subscribe to the idea that it is never too late to find god, if that is on your deathbed then so be it.
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Christianity certainly holds to this idea.