What is faith: Why Christianity?

Since we cant discuss the previous topic, I will raise what emerged from the "what makes people so angry about the Christian faith?" post.

The argument you raised is on faith! You misunderstand faith. Faith is only as good as the thing you put your faith in!

"Faith is only as good as the thing you put your faith in!"

I disagree. I have found that faith is as good as the person who has it. If i can convicne myself that the acorn on my front porch is holy, I can then have a real faith in it. The acorn is pointless, and any faith in it what so ever is a complete defeat of what you just said, bvecause the acorn is next to nothing on worth value.

Now convincing myself that the acorn is holy is almost impossible, but convincing myself that the thing responsible fror all existence in the world, "God", is holy, is a much easier thing to do. Which is what I believe you have done.

Take most cults for example. Most cultist are far more devoted to their faith than you are yours. Some would die instantly. And in some of the cults where the people would die instantly for their faith, the object of their faith could be something like a statue, or an animal.

The statue and or animal is no where near the greatness of the prospect of "God", yet their faith is much stronger than yours.

So I disagree.

Faith is simple. It is trust with out reason.



"Thanks for reading everything people wrote, you fucking momo.

Closing this thread"

By the way, we can discuss, but you weren't discussing. You asked a qeustion, three members gave yu three completely different answers, all about why we were angry at the faith and you then asked the same exact qeustion with no revision what so ever. You didn't even read what we had to say with any sort of "want" to learn. You were looking for gratification and a pissing contest. Thats why he closed the thread. Because YOU weren't trying.

To try to show you why I beleive Christianity to be the truth without mentioning Jesus or the Bible would result in heresy and wouldnt get us anywhere, so I wont do that.

But what I will do over the coming days (depending on time) is give you a defence of why I am a Christian. I will explain why I beleive the Bible to be the word of God and why I believe Jesus to be who he claimed to be and also why he stands out amongst every other religious figure. Implicit in my response will be why i dont beleive other religions to be true. Finally I will address some of the comments leveled at Chrisitianity in this and other posts over the past few days?

well certainly looking foward to it

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Christianity is a socially engineered mechanism that prevents those who follow its rules to question it.

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Excuse my ignorance but what does this mean? Can you explain why you feel I cant question my faith and why you think people of other faiths can question theres??

ofcourse we can and should question each other's beleifs, but if you just go ahead and say UR RELIGION IS WRONG, AND ALTHOUGH I CAN GIVE YOU NO REASON-MINE IS HE BEST, then really it gets a bit irritating. And it's not just with christians, it happens with almost all religion.
I don't even know why wer'e having this discussion, unless you have something else to contribute and show why christainity is the only true religion.
My(and lots of others here) stance is that there is an element of truth in all religions....show why you think to the contrary.

btw decius, I think ur gettin a bit too emotional here no point in hitting on christianity on the whole etc
and regarding Christianity being a socially consrtuccted thingy, thats not what it started out to be, as is the case with almost all religions, though now most religions are quite far from their original intent

AOD: I would love to be able to present why I beleive the bible to be true but every time I post something it gets deleted because it is deemed unfit for this board.

Decius: Why dont you raise questions about what I posted and we can have a rational discussion about it.

Why dont you put a defence of Budhism and lets examine the evidence? That would be very constructive.

You know I could post what I posted before and then others who may wish to read it can? what do you say?

is christianity being refered to here as the philosophy of the christ, or its dogmatic, overly politicized present day perspective? because it appears to me that the philosophy of christ himself was quite similar to budhist philosophy. both being philosophies of oneness, inaction,and complacency. and if christianity is being refered to as its present form, i would argue that title in and of its self is erroneous.christianity has not been christianity since jesus of nazareth died.

Why then are you not willing to discuss it. In all this it is you that is coming across as closed minded. What in what I have said has offended you so much?

I will have a go at answering your last statement:

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According to me, the teachings of Jesus (as they probably were in truth) were, as you said, quite similar to the teachings of any enlightened individual.

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Jesus taught salvation through grace - Jesus paid the price for our sin it is a free gift but we have to receive it. Every other religion teaches salvation (of one kind or another) through works - follow these rules and you will attain salvation at some point. Religions may appear superficially the same but they are fundamentally different.

But this will probably get deleted.

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Jesus taught salvation through grace - Jesus paid the price for our sin it is a free gift but we have to receive it. Every other religion teaches salvation (of one kind or another) through works - follow these rules and you will attain salvation at some point.

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again, u still havn't given any valid reason as to why christianity is the best-for God's sake learning to see truth in other religions will not hinder you own practice.

I think I'll answer Decius's first question
Its the followers that count. If the entire world became monks, then we would hardly make any scientific progress perhaps, so Buddhisim is not that perfect a religion-infact it wasn't even meant to be one-it's followers made it into one. Jesus christ also didn't want his teaching to be a seperate religion, he never even hinted towards, people just started to compile his teachings.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong about Christianity itself, so all christians stop worrying this is not about attacking christianity. Similarly ther's nothing wrong about Islam or Buddhism either-that is if you use your brains when following. If you don't then being a monk you can go sit in the middle of the road waiting for the car to hit you 'as the car and you are one'.
So please stop trying to defend christianity as no one is attacking it in the first place. All that has been said is that Christianity is glorious, Jesus did that Jesus said that-wat you guyz have to concentrate on proving is why should Christianity be the only exculsively true religion.

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Which says nothing bad or good about Christianity, just that your point is voided.

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sums up wat I said

if Christianity is by definition about compliance and inaction then why is it that such things as the Crusades and the Salem Witch Hunts occur. Even today people are still fighting over religion, blood is being spilled. From what i know, and i dont pretend to be an expert, most religions preach peace. If this is so then why have so many people died because of their faith.

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From what i know, and i dont pretend to be an expert, most religions preach peace. If this is so then why have so many people died because of their faith.

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Because humans are stupid, ignorant, judgemental, irrational...etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But to put it in a more tender-hearted way, humans are imperfect.

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Given the past history of Christianity which statistically makes peaceful religions such as Budhism more attractive, what can you tell me that logically makes it realistic for me to choose Christianity over any of these other religions?

1. You cannot explain why I should have faith in Christianity by using the bible as a factual reference (ie, the bible says this, or Jesus said that)

2. You must address the fact that Budhism is thousands of years older that Christianity, preaches one-ness with everyone and everything (thereby removing all prejudices), and why Christian doctrines are superior even though they openly preach prejudice (in regards to gays and prostitues)

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Hey Decius! It's been a while since I've looked at the Captain Cynic site. Looks good around here. Anyway, I just have a few questions about the statements you made because I would like a chance to answer the question being posed here.

Pertaining to Rule #1, can I use the Bible to show the reasonableness of the Christian worldview if I can show that what I'm using is ascertained to be factually probable without reasonable doubt?

Pertaining to Rule #2, I would assume that Buddhism has nothing to do with questioning the validity of the Christian position since it is altogether a different belief system. And as such, I would assume there would be factors within Buddhism that bring to the table a difficulty and skepticism of its own.

I don't see the relevency in the fact that this eastern faith is older, or that it advocates its own teachings as the proper way to following the so-called "righteous path". Isn't that what all religions are doing? Are not all religions posing what they think to be the valid "truth system"?

In such a case, isn't it rightful to argue a neutral stance that begins with all religious truth statements (whether homosexuality or prostitution is evil, or even prejudiced to state that they are) as relative, since you can only know whether one's statement is true or not according to the validity of one's proposed religion (assuming that it's possible one religion can be true)?

Whether Buddhism has stayed alive all these thousands of years is not evidence enough to claim its validity. In five thousand years Chrisianity and Buddhism could survive and be just as popular as they are now, along with any other new religion that may pop up along the way. Many millennia could pass and the religious fervor for these faiths may not plateau and you would still have to show the validity of their truth claims.

I think it makes a difference whether your statement on so-called "prejudice" is based on your moral/ethical feelings or whether it's actual religious opinion. If they are just personal statements of emotion from your beliefs stemming from a moral/ethical debate, maybe they should be addressed in another thread. Arguing about moral and ethical origins is another topic altogether and really has nothing to do with the validity of any one religion.

So, in a long-winded kind of way, I guess my second question would be, Do I really have to explain away your statements on Buddhism?

Again, because of our 'stuipidity' there are flaws in every religion. A stupid person for example, if converted to Buddhism, there would be less killings perhaps but scientific progress would greatly slow down, as the first step to traditional Buddhism is to distance yourself from the world.