Using the mind....
OK, so I have recently found myself now following the path of the freethinkers.
My wife and I have talked about the issues just a little bit, which she remains to be a born again, Evangelical Christian. She says that my biggest hang up is that I am too intellectual about faith.
Can that be possible? Can it be possible to ignore certain trouble spots within a religion, willingly, and still be intellectually honest about one's faith?
My biggest point of contention is that many Christians ask others questions that they are not seemingly willing to ask themselves. I'll just throw out a simple example here-
Christianity rejects Mormonism because there is no evidence that Joseph Smith really heard from God and his message is somewhat contradictory to the rest of the Bible.
Christianity rejects Jehovah's Witnesses because they too had another prophet who came along and altered the Christian message.
Christianity rejects the Muslim teachings because God did not reveal anything to Mohamed.
BUT, Christianity accepts the teachings of a man named Paul of Tarsus who only had a vision of Jesus, that no one else could confirm. And on top of that, Paul's doctrinal teachings are very complex and unrelated to the direct teachings of both Jesus and the Old Testament that he quotes.
There are certain criteria that Christianity uses to reject others, but not applied to its own rule of decision.
So, the Bible says that our hearts and minds are corrupt. That could possibly account for a chasm in our understanding of God....but what kind of system has a god who must communicate to humans on terms that they are capable of understanding, and yet they can't use their corrupt minds to attain such understanding?
Is it necessary to stop thinking to be a Christian? I don't ask the question in jest or in ill feeling...it is just that of the majority of those whom I have read, the ones who studied and searched the most have been the ones who have ultimately been the ones to depart from the faith. What are the others ignoring?
My wife and I have talked about the issues just a little bit, which she remains to be a born again, Evangelical Christian. She says that my biggest hang up is that I am too intellectual about faith.
Can that be possible? Can it be possible to ignore certain trouble spots within a religion, willingly, and still be intellectually honest about one's faith?
My biggest point of contention is that many Christians ask others questions that they are not seemingly willing to ask themselves. I'll just throw out a simple example here-
Christianity rejects Mormonism because there is no evidence that Joseph Smith really heard from God and his message is somewhat contradictory to the rest of the Bible.
Christianity rejects Jehovah's Witnesses because they too had another prophet who came along and altered the Christian message.
Christianity rejects the Muslim teachings because God did not reveal anything to Mohamed.
BUT, Christianity accepts the teachings of a man named Paul of Tarsus who only had a vision of Jesus, that no one else could confirm. And on top of that, Paul's doctrinal teachings are very complex and unrelated to the direct teachings of both Jesus and the Old Testament that he quotes.
There are certain criteria that Christianity uses to reject others, but not applied to its own rule of decision.
So, the Bible says that our hearts and minds are corrupt. That could possibly account for a chasm in our understanding of God....but what kind of system has a god who must communicate to humans on terms that they are capable of understanding, and yet they can't use their corrupt minds to attain such understanding?
Is it necessary to stop thinking to be a Christian? I don't ask the question in jest or in ill feeling...it is just that of the majority of those whom I have read, the ones who studied and searched the most have been the ones who have ultimately been the ones to depart from the faith. What are the others ignoring?
posted by The Raging Paradoxidation at
16:24
1 Comments:
The double-standard is definitely there. Any incongruity you may think you perceive is merely sin corrupting your thoughts, and on the flipside, to willingly ignore the incongruity is called faith, which is deemed highly admirable. It's a self-perpetuating feedback loop, almost like a computer virus. I hate the analogy comparing religion to a mind virus--it sounds absolutely horrible--but it has aspects of truth that keep making themselves apparent to me.
I think many Christians are thinking people that really do ponder the big questions, but they tend to fall into the religious moderate camp and not so much the fundamentalist. As such, they may not feel so compelled to get out there and make their views known, whereas many fundamentalists consider themselves apologetics commandos on a mission from God, and we of course hear from them a little more often, unfortunately.
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