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The Value of Faith and Christianity's Impact on Modern America
According to adherents.com, the United States lays claim to owning the largest national Christian population in the world with 85% of it's total population (approximately 224,457,000 people) vocal about their religious affiliations. That population includes various degrees of religious activity including (but not limited to) nominal (but non-participating) Christians, as well as fully-active full-communicants and life-long clergy. The numbers also lump sum all districts of that faith (Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Petecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, African Indiginous and more) into one large group.
While I'm sure the very unoriginal and often-abused cliché response from a number of defending faithfuls will undoubtedly be "...but how can so many people be so wrong?" (need I really bring up the Nazi party, the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire and Islamic extremists as proof of how something as large as widely accepted can can be so wrong?), I'm going to go out on a limb here and be so bold as to contend that not only is Christianity (as well as all three of the major monotheistic religions) wrong, but it (and the concept of religion as a whole) is downright absurd and has very little literal and moral value to modern man and 21st century society.
1. The Absurdity of Faith
Were you to ask why the majority of people don't believe in Scientology, leprechauns, Greek gods or unicorns, for example, the answer would most commonly be not because any of those folks you've asked have some extensive professional working knowledge of their history, but rather simply because they do not believe such things exist(ed) in the world we live in. Reason tells them that that which they don't believe in is of a lie, delusion or relayed via misinformation, so they reject it. My question is, why should Christianity be any different? Why is the concept of a small man dressed in green hiding a pot of gold beneath the end of a rainbow or a magical horse so far-fetched and unreasonable, while the concept that an infallible man who was born of fallible parents could raise from the dead, give sight to the blind, heal the sick or create wine from water?
Carl Sagan once said, ""Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", so how can the concept of any of the aforementioned be dismissed as ridiculous and unfounded when the very foundation for their dismissal can so easily be applied to something as widely accepted as Christianity itself? Why does Christianity receive a pass here? What factual basis do you have for the existence of Christ that I don't have for the existence of leprechauns?
2. The Fallibility of the Bible
The very idea that an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving god "inspired" fallible men to write an infallible doctrine is as ridiculous a concept as I've ever heard of in my life and that's no exaggeration by any stretch. The idea that an infallible creator could inspire fallible creatures to convey an infallible message is by definition a paradox, so how could it be taken as unquestionable truth? How can an entire religion be based upon a monumentally oxymoronic foundation? If the Bible the supposed word of God is fallible, so too is it's message; ergo so too is the entirety of Christianity. Why is that so difficult for some to understand?
3. The Evils of Faith
We live in a nation where the freedom of religion including the freedom from religion is a natural born right of every citizen who's graced with the opportunity of being born on this soil. So too do we live in a nation where secularism and the concept of questioning the often unquestionable is at worst taboo, but by no means illegal or punishable by any standard, so why does our society still primarily function on a system designed to suppress that very repressive nature by accepting something as defining and limiting as religion as it's guiding moral compass? While I'm well aware that the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ promote equality, compassion for the poor and tolerance for those less fortunate, and while I am well aware that Christ himself is probably the most progressive liberal in the last 10,000 years, the New Testament does not equate the Bible; the combination of the Old Testament as well as the NT does, and seeing as both texts are entirely interpretive, Christianity as a whole is actually more of a moral guideline set forth by man. The OT is chock full of stories of rape, misogyny, murder, intolerance toward homosexuality, slavery and a slew of socially unacceptable practices that most consider "evil" by definition. How can such a contradiction of philosophies ever be considered a suitable foundation for morality? How can such a fundamentally flawed design inspire men to start wars over the interpretations of a fallible book?
Christianity claims to be the most tolerant and loving religion on earth, yet you believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs though you exclude those from your own rival sects will spend eternity in Hell suffering a never-ending existence of pain and suffering for failing to believe what you do. You don't see the failure in logic here? How can an all-loving god willingly condemn his very creations to an eternal existence of suffering for failing to believe in his own flawed system?
You vehemently deny the existence of evolution (most of you, at least), and spend an exorbitant amount of time seeking to disprove the age of the Earth, but refuse to question the validity of dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesman and scrolls who had less tools and practices than we have today to guess the age of the planet at the time. No issue here?
So what are the evils of faith? The neglect and rejection of all logic and reason at the cost of absolute truth, for one.
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That said, it's Q&A Time!
What are your thoughts on the value of Christianity as it pertains to modern society, and do you think it's irresponsible to base our moral compass off the teachings of a book who's historical lineage and philosophical reason can both be questioned down to it's core?
Do you think religion has a positive effect on humanity as a whole, or is the effect of it's doctrines too individual to truly have a global effect?
According to adherents.com, the United States lays claim to owning the largest national Christian population in the world with 85% of it's total population (approximately 224,457,000 people) vocal about their religious affiliations. That population includes various degrees of religious activity including (but not limited to) nominal (but non-participating) Christians, as well as fully-active full-communicants and life-long clergy. The numbers also lump sum all districts of that faith (Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Petecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, African Indiginous and more) into one large group.
While I'm sure the very unoriginal and often-abused cliché response from a number of defending faithfuls will undoubtedly be "...but how can so many people be so wrong?" (need I really bring up the Nazi party, the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire and Islamic extremists as proof of how something as large as widely accepted can can be so wrong?), I'm going to go out on a limb here and be so bold as to contend that not only is Christianity (as well as all three of the major monotheistic religions) wrong, but it (and the concept of religion as a whole) is downright absurd and has very little literal and moral value to modern man and 21st century society.
1. The Absurdity of Faith
Were you to ask why the majority of people don't believe in Scientology, leprechauns, Greek gods or unicorns, for example, the answer would most commonly be not because any of those folks you've asked have some extensive professional working knowledge of their history, but rather simply because they do not believe such things exist(ed) in the world we live in. Reason tells them that that which they don't believe in is of a lie, delusion or relayed via misinformation, so they reject it. My question is, why should Christianity be any different? Why is the concept of a small man dressed in green hiding a pot of gold beneath the end of a rainbow or a magical horse so far-fetched and unreasonable, while the concept that an infallible man who was born of fallible parents could raise from the dead, give sight to the blind, heal the sick or create wine from water?
Carl Sagan once said, ""Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", so how can the concept of any of the aforementioned be dismissed as ridiculous and unfounded when the very foundation for their dismissal can so easily be applied to something as widely accepted as Christianity itself? Why does Christianity receive a pass here? What factual basis do you have for the existence of Christ that I don't have for the existence of leprechauns?
2. The Fallibility of the Bible
The very idea that an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving god "inspired" fallible men to write an infallible doctrine is as ridiculous a concept as I've ever heard of in my life and that's no exaggeration by any stretch. The idea that an infallible creator could inspire fallible creatures to convey an infallible message is by definition a paradox, so how could it be taken as unquestionable truth? How can an entire religion be based upon a monumentally oxymoronic foundation? If the Bible the supposed word of God is fallible, so too is it's message; ergo so too is the entirety of Christianity. Why is that so difficult for some to understand?
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
Gene Roddenberry
"Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here."
Donald Morgan
3. The Evils of Faith
We live in a nation where the freedom of religion including the freedom from religion is a natural born right of every citizen who's graced with the opportunity of being born on this soil. So too do we live in a nation where secularism and the concept of questioning the often unquestionable is at worst taboo, but by no means illegal or punishable by any standard, so why does our society still primarily function on a system designed to suppress that very repressive nature by accepting something as defining and limiting as religion as it's guiding moral compass? While I'm well aware that the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ promote equality, compassion for the poor and tolerance for those less fortunate, and while I am well aware that Christ himself is probably the most progressive liberal in the last 10,000 years, the New Testament does not equate the Bible; the combination of the Old Testament as well as the NT does, and seeing as both texts are entirely interpretive, Christianity as a whole is actually more of a moral guideline set forth by man. The OT is chock full of stories of rape, misogyny, murder, intolerance toward homosexuality, slavery and a slew of socially unacceptable practices that most consider "evil" by definition. How can such a contradiction of philosophies ever be considered a suitable foundation for morality? How can such a fundamentally flawed design inspire men to start wars over the interpretations of a fallible book?
Christianity claims to be the most tolerant and loving religion on earth, yet you believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs though you exclude those from your own rival sects will spend eternity in Hell suffering a never-ending existence of pain and suffering for failing to believe what you do. You don't see the failure in logic here? How can an all-loving god willingly condemn his very creations to an eternal existence of suffering for failing to believe in his own flawed system?
You vehemently deny the existence of evolution (most of you, at least), and spend an exorbitant amount of time seeking to disprove the age of the Earth, but refuse to question the validity of dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesman and scrolls who had less tools and practices than we have today to guess the age of the planet at the time. No issue here?
So what are the evils of faith? The neglect and rejection of all logic and reason at the cost of absolute truth, for one.
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."
Richard Dawkins (The Humanist, Vol. 57, No. 1)
--
That said, it's Q&A Time!
What are your thoughts on the value of Christianity as it pertains to modern society, and do you think it's irresponsible to base our moral compass off the teachings of a book who's historical lineage and philosophical reason can both be questioned down to it's core?
Do you think religion has a positive effect on humanity as a whole, or is the effect of it's doctrines too individual to truly have a global effect?