That's probably because they have wildly misinterpreted the Bible. It's the same reason why Christians seem to find it necessary to fulfil all of the dogma of the Old Testament, without realising the Truth contained in the New Testament. It's the most radically misinterpreted of the Abrahamic religions by far.
Then, atheists get this weird impression of Christianity from these confused Christians and base their knowledge of the religion off of that. So basically, barely anyone knows what Christianity is any more, which is quite ironic considering it's the most simple of the three Abrahamic religions. "Be Like Jesus" – really not that hard to follow, imo.
"I" haven't relegated him to anything, I'm just making it clear what he actually set himself as. It's not as "simple as up or down", because Heaven is everything, and eternity in Heaven and your possible admittance to that is no small thing to scoff at. It is everything.
You say atheists get the wrong impression from the confused Christians, but it's what the majority of Christians believe so wouldn't the majority say to you that you are the confused one? That you are the one misinterpreting it?
On that note if it's the majority of Christians behaving a certain way then is it really a *wrong* impression of them?
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
It doesn't matter, really, what they say. A lot of Christians are hateful people and will use whatever scraps they can in the Bible to justify their blindness. Whether God will forgive them for this is not my place to say.
But like I say, it's in the title: Christianity. Be like Christ. It really is not that hard to grasp.
In response to your edit: I said "wrong impression of Christianity", not Christians.
Okay but the same still applies..who is to say their take on Christianity is the wrong one and yours is right? You'd need more than the "be like Christ" thing.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Why would you need more than the idea of being as Christ-like as you can be? You can interpret it in many ways, but the core beliefs of forgiveness, kindness, sacrifice, etc. are pretty much the core of the New Testament, i.e. the primary piece of scripture that separates Christianity from Judaism. If you don't want to be like Christ, why follow his religion? If you want to follow what is often seen as the same God but instead of being kind and spreading love, you'd rather be allowed to judge people and stick to extreme dogma, why not just embrace Islam?
Because things aren't that simple. You need more than "be like Christ..it's CHRISTianity after all".
There are multiple interpretations and so far I haven't seen one that rises above the others, and surely not for the reasons given. You ask why follow the religion if they don't want to be like Christ..but since when has religion ever been about logic? Religion is more or less the opposite of logic.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
The thing is that religion and logic should be more closely tied, because they were, actually, quite logical at the time. A lot of the rules were set in place logically, e.g. the whole clean/dirty foods thing in Judaism was more or less an early application of health and safety based on the quality of food at the time, same with certain parts of the Quran that lay out specific washing rituals. The reasons behind "only man and woman should wed" was because humans had to procreate, and anything else was hindering that. But over the centuries, the reasons behind a lot of it disappeared due to changing times, so the rules became easier to misinterpret.
Other than that, I don't see why you think you need more than "Christianity = be like the Christ". If you play football (soccer to you), except you're punching a cube, regardless of 'interpretation', it's not football, is it? If you support the Labour party (the main left-wing party in England), except you don't care about the labourers and instead support big business owners and bankers, you're not really a Labour supporter.
The problem again is it's not that simple. Religion is far more complicated than any sport. So you do need more than "Christianity means be like Christ" in this context if you want to say your interpretation is right above others. Or that it's not an interpretation at all, but fact..and plenty of religious scholars would agree. It doesn't make them automatically right or wrong, that is the thing..there is no right and wrong.
The fact of the matter is no this isn't like playing soccer, but calling it another name. Also if you're punching something then you aren't playing soccer. Sports usually aren't up to interpretation. You have strict sets of rules.
At the end of the day the best you can do is tell us exactly what the word Christianity means, but that has no bearing on interpretation of texts and God, etc. I mean, why would it?
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Last edited by Surtur on Jul 30th, 2016 at 02:22 PM
My belief is that religion should enhance people's quality of life and help them become better people, since generally that is what they were set up to do, so all of this squabbling about interpretations of faith only hinders that. Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese Christian comparable to Francis of Assisi but active in the early 20th Century to the postwar era, decried denominations because of the way that they broke apart the message of God, and so was often seen by the Church as a bad Christian. But he acted like a Christian should: he worked in the slums for a decade, improving quality of life there, he set up the first workers' unions in Japan, he started the first proper earthquake relief projects, etc.
So why does it matter who is seen as "right and wrong", when one party has spent their life dedicated through personal sacrifice to the cause of good, whilst the other, more "official" side has done little but refurbish its temples through donations from the poor and casted judgement on those who don't follow their strict interpretation of their faith?
I never actually said it matters who is right or wrong. What I've always said is that there isn't really a sure fire way to know that information.
The only thing we know for sure is the definition of Christianity.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
I actually agree because I wasn't saying the core beliefs weren't simple. What I was saying is deciding how to interpret the various religious texts is not simple at all. I was just talking about how people interpret the bible.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Last edited by Surtur on Aug 1st, 2016 at 05:19 PM
The number of hateful Christians are a ridiculously small minority and those are the ones that misinterpret the Bible. The Jewish God (the one that predates all the others ones) is however, all knowing and all powerful, so I'm not sure what part you're saying Christians misinterpret.
But that's a secondary function of religion, not the primary one. The primary function of religion are to follow the tenets (613 commands, or 10 commands). You have laws for God=>Man and then separate laws from Man=>Man. The idea is that neither one of these can be ignored but if there is a priority, it's the former.
Last edited by MS Warehouse on Aug 2nd, 2016 at 12:07 PM
The Jewish God is as far as I can see the same as the Christian God, after all the Old Testament and a large part of the Tanach are the same ancient texts, albeit in a different order. I interpret the God of the old testament as often being quite a harsh and cruel God, but I understand why he was so, after all humans were young and were pretty much just running riot and breaking all of his rules, so he had to keep them in check. He did also however put a lot of innocent people through their paces, for example Job and Abraham, but there were reasons behind these instances.
The misinterpretation that I mostly see is that you get Christians who are incredibly and actively homophobic because of a few passages that talk about not laying with another man, whilst completely ignoring the massively important part of the new testament that says "do not judge", since it is God's job to judge, not theirs, and so instead if they take issue with a person or their lifestyle they should be kind to them and pray for them if they're really that worried. You get a lot of Christians who are very judgmental, America in particular is known for this. And as for the misinterpretation of how exactly God is all-powerful and all-knowing, I already explained how I viewed that earlier on about humans misjudging the meanings of those phrases, but I do have a question for you: if God is, in fact, all powerful in the way that the Old Testament shows, why is he no longer like this? Christianity explains this by saying that God after giving humans the Christ took a step back and allowed them to get on with their lives.
I'm afraid I can't speak much about Judaism in particular because I am not as educated in it. I mostly know about the differences between Christianity and Islam, so my apologies if any of my points are lacking due to this. Hopefully you can clear some of this up for me.
With conditioning I meant external stimuli. Internal stimuli would directly compromise free will.
According to classical theism God's benevolence is not granting you salvation, it's offering you salvation. I don't think any Christian would consider God forcing people to live in paradise to be an act of benevolence.
We live by a simple creed. Judge a person's choices as opposed to the person. I find it difficult to separate the two but that's how religious jews live, that's why they're the opposite of judgmental (you get a few here or there). We aren't like Christians. We don't try to convince people of God and how to live. We have our own lives and are cool with others living theirs (7 laws of Noah).
My experience with religion wasn't exactly good. It's very strange though because some of them could be hateful and yet very nice and likeable. My spanish teacher who I had for 3 out of 4 years of high school was pretty cool for a Brother. Since I was in the advanced class there weren't many students in the class so it changed the dynamic of things. He had been stationed in Hawaii and would always talk about how much he got laid(which is what they call it when they put that necklace around you when they greet you). Keep in mind this Brother was in his late 50's so it was amusing to see.
But then one day he just made some alarming comments about homosexuals. hateful comments. It was just rough because he was like a friend. He taught Spanish like I said and when we were seniors we had a project where we had to make a pinata. He helped me make one, it was a ninja turtle(raphael of course) and I still have that pinata in my home. It just can leave a person feeling very disillusioned.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
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