I think we all agree that a person can have a general sense of right and wrong without any religious upbringing just by learning what is socially acceptable by the proper ages. Even the motivation to do the right thing when it does not benefit me can be learned from others. But, the radical love like the idea of christ dying for the sins of the world is attractive because it is not rational.  Nobody loves anything that much. But we would like to. It seems that rationality does not give ultimate meaning to life whereas irrationality does. Ultimately there is no reason to live so we must create our own reasons and it must be irrational at some point to be truly meaningful.

So you might say why all the fruitless rules. For example, to wait until marriage seems like an undue burden and totally ridiculous these days. But to wait until having sex makes it more meaningful. If you don't want it to be as meaningful you don't have to wait. Is it rational? No. Not unless you are thinking really really long term, which you could argue is not rational either. To love someone more than yourself like your kids could be evolutionarily programmed...but to want to die for strangers to save them is way beyond what is considered reasonable.

So, we need a story to provide meaning to us. Christianity is the perfect story. The fact that its totally unverifiable makes all the more attractive, all the more irrational. The more reasonable you argue against it the harder we fight back. Isnt is obvious?

Either way, whether you are a believer or not we are trying to create meaning to life where there is none. By doing irrational things, we are proving to ourselves that we have free will, enhancing the illusion that there is a greater meaning to life.

I know the response. You want to live in reality. There's some truth to that. Reality is good. As long as its not so much reality that you committ suicide. We don't want too much of a good thing....

Good question.

Let's address this in reverse.  If there is no God, then even the morality we think we hold ourselves to, in the end, is meaningless because whether we try and live a good life or we murder, rape and steal, in the end we all have the same outcome.  The skeptic says "well I left a better world for the next guy..." yet even the next guy still dies.  Our life is just a "blip" in light of the billions of years the planet's been around.

Without religion, one could maintain their own personal morality, but for what purpose?

Whether one lives under the boundaries of religion or not, if there is no God then what difference does it make?  What are you freeing the religious from so they can do what with their life?  What is it you do with your life that you are liberated and full of peace and satisfaction that you insist those of the faith are missing out on?

None of us chose to come into the world, many don't choose what happens to them while living, and we don't get to choose when we leave it.  Yet somehow in the 76.4 years we live on this planet, out of the billions its been around, we've concluded were smart enough to conclude that its all by accident, and those deceived by the lure of a "God" are depriving themselves of truly living this... accident.  Again, I ask, what does your lifestyle offer that I am missing, and why does it matter?  Our lives will be over with before it begins.

The motivation of a Christian is found in the 'hope' that what Christ said, he meant.  That life would have meaning in how we live it, as those who chose to give up their short lives here, would gain it eternally.... there.   Some think that's a crutch, and it is.  But we all go through life with crutches.

But he didn't really die, right? He lives in heaven now and forever more(according to fundies). All he did was spend 3 days in some kind of suspended animation. You can't call it real death if he still lives.

If the bible story was true, Jesus Christ would be diagnosed as narcissist(with messiah complex, obviously). So it would be rational for him to endure a couple hours of crusifixion torture to get the external praise and admiration his deviant personality requires.

People commit suicide all the time for no good reason. I might be willing to endure a couple hours of torture and 3 days of suspended animation if it would permanently end all religion. There's probably a few of us here that would make that trade.

You've come up with your "own" morality, and this has been done out of your sheer smartness? I assume you have manifested some sort of magical power that allows your rationality to control your instinctual impulses, in the way you feel them fashionably fit to be.

I would like to hear how you came up with your own morality, what it's like, and how your behavior was different before this invention?

 

 

 

 

If I were no longer a christian, lost would be object of mimicry, the christian notion of love as agape, could no longer be sincerely held for me, because of what lies at the end of it in a godless world. If Jesus lived an ideal sort of life, a life devoted to love, only to humiliatingly die for it, and that's the end of the story, than despair conquers the desire to love similarly, because now its perceived in vain. As the moral of the Christian story as Herbert Mccabe sums it, "if you do not love your dead, and if you love, they'll kill", the latter gets abandoned, for the former, a dead sort of living. 

Gone is the teleology of love, that perceives transformative love as the final conquerer of history,  and apathy and indifference become the wounding and permanent marks of life. 

All that would be left is the cheap tracts of humanism, too silly to even bother to read, and a remnant of tragic humanism, expressed in a newly revisited Gospel story, which is beautiful in it's tragedy, but no longer empowering.

Gone is that image of conviction,  that empowers us to radical love, extended even to our enemies, because without purpose, it becomes, what's the point?

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks BB! Its been a challenging year....still learning...

Are you a Trinitarian? If so, Jesus is God. So he punished himself by becoming seperated from himself??? But then later reunited with himself. If Jesus was dead, how could he feel the pain of being seperated from himself???

I didnt say it makes sense. But yes, God punished himself by becoming separated from himself. So the pain of jesus's death was exacerbated by being separated for one and by the pouring on of all guilt of humanity two....the physical pain was inconsequential to those other two....That is the teaching. What did jesus feel after death? There is a lot of argument on that. Some say the 3 days were in hades and he had to fight satan...or not fight satan and bring all the people from hades to paradise....but the main two arguments for regular death are either soul sleep where normally you die and the next thing you know you are resurrected with your body...or the other argument is your soul gets to be with God in paradise until your body is resurrected...then you get to go to heaven...in the case dead people are in paradise or hades technically and not heaven or hell yet...or if youre catholic there could be a short or long purgatory...could be in an instant...

But who the hell knows...it does seem a little ad hoc and overly convoluted....