We all have a testimony to bear in our faith we should be proud of it. I am a Christian because it is the religion I grew up with. I also believe in a God in the same way I believe santa clause. (please don't take this out of context as I will explain later) Other religions and belief systems are just as good for human kind.

Christianity was the simplest path for me to take on my spiritual journey as it was easily available in my language. My parents are baptists. My friends are Christians. So why work really hard to convert myself to another belief system? I do think it is best to work hard to find the truth.

I grew up with santa clause. I don't believe in Santa Clause anymore but I do believe in the christmas spirit. The spirit of giving to people in need. The idea of the santa clause just helped to embed my faith in the spirit of giving. You can't touch or prove that the giving spirit exists but when enough people act upon it, it manifests itself. This is pretty much how my faith in a God is. He isn't here to prove himself but if enough people act upon the belief it helps to instill "faith".

Christianity is not the only religion that people grow up with. A person's family and friends are way more important to a person's spirituality and "faith" than having a religion. If a person has no companions that act upon their spiritual values, then wouldn't it be harder to conceive faith in anything? I feel I am biting off more than I can chew in writing this but I would like to think that all religions in the world should share a common truth. We should look back on all things we have done and ask our self "is it good?"

I thought it would be a good place to share our testimonies maybe I am wrong for opening a can of worms. I don't want it to be evangelical thread as there is a place for that. We have a responsibility in being humans with the knowledge of good and evil. God was right when trying to protect us from eating that forbidden fruit, but now the deed is done.

Charming:
As you may have noticed in ontwopi's post there are people who fall away and come back because it is what they want. What you are missing, although I tend to agree with your ideology of free choice, is the developmental nature of human beings. A child will acquire a basic sense of self and the ideals that go along with that well before s/he even has the capability to think rationally. This is the biological cause (not that its the only cause) of teen rebellion. Humans do not have full cognitive power to weight consquences before the rough age of 17. if the parents aren't instilling whatever values the parents instill, someone will, because the child's mind absorbs things especially from authority figures.

So unless we want a species of smart chimpanzees our children will be indoctrinated somehow

I am a Christian because it is the religion I grew up with. : out of context

baptists.

You can't touch or prove that the giving spirit exists but when enough people act upon it, it manifests itself. This is pretty much how my faith in a God is.

A person's family and friends are way more important to a person's spirituality and "faith" than having a religion. If a person has no companions that act upon their spiritual values, then wouldn't it be harder to conceive faith in anything? I feel I am biting off more than I can chew in writing this but I would like to think that all religions in the world should share a common truth. We should look back on all things we have done and ask our self "is it good?".

I thought it would be a good place to share our testimonies maybe I am wrong for opening a can of worms. I don't want it to be evangelical thread as there is a place for that. We have a responsibility in being humans with the knowledge of good and evil. God was right when trying to protect us from eating that forbidden fruit, but now the deed is done.

Just a few quotes for you supposed "Christians"

"God is dead and we have killed him"

"I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!"

"Every Church is a stone rolled in front of the tomb of the man-god, it tries to prevent the resurrection by force."

The majority of Christianis are not true Christians. They do not base their decisions on what Jesus would do. They are still well meaning people, just misguided.

My view on Christianity is that it from a shallow appearance well-meaning and loving. While in fact the deeper more subtle messages breed much darker values such as Nihilism and Misanthropy. Christianity's values are based on what Nietzsche called "Life-Denying" values, while I believe that our values should be "life-affirming".

If you really look at it Christianity and religion for that matter can be blamed for nearly all of the world's problems.

Values should be taught to young children I agree but at some point that child must become a man and destroy those values only to become a child again and thus creating of new values.

I can hear the Nietzschean influence in your post. What, though, is to be installed in any child? More so, what is the value of any installed values if the child is to be encouraged to shatter and stray from said values? One of Nietzsche's biggest problems was the lack of sight. Granted, he took atheism and, to a lesser extent, anti-theism to its logical and honest conclusion, but he could not accept that there was more - even the possibility! - beyond what was seen; this brought him to make assessments like what was seen in The Gay Science, wherein he proclaims that man is ultimately and finally fueled by an avaricious lust for possession. On a side note, I seem to remember, though it has been some time since reading it, that he explained Christianity as a cure against a form of Nihilism in The Twilight of the Idols and the progression beyond the faith led to another, for it results in a loss of identity.

I wonder, though, can one take Nietzsche seriously in discussing anything "life affirming," when even he writes of life, beginning with the dying words of Socrates ("To live - that means to be a long time sick: I owe a ROOSTER to the saviour Asclepius")? He is an entertaining writer, certainly, but suffered a great deal from his own perceived impossibilities.

As for the church, that is, the universal and invisible church which consists of all true believers, we are not necessarily concerned with perceptions as we are with doing what God wants us to do (witnessing and leading people to Jesus). A rudimentary study of the Bible would yield the understanding that the church is to act on what is good and righteous, for it is Christ living in the heart of the Christian.

:lol:You Christians make me laugh. You claim to know that know what is righteous and what is good. But how do you know what is righteous and good?

My response to this is that each child and each new generation should not simply swallow the ideas given to them by a father/mother figure or by authority but instead should try and create their own ideals and values. And in this creation we find the ultimate affirmation of this world. We advance as human beings and set a path for a future brighter than one that anyone could ever imagine.

What do you use to determine what is good and what is evil?



Don't you think this is rather naive? Do you have any children? They're not like sea turtles -- you can't just bury them in the sand and say, "Good luck, I hope you don't get eaten by the pelican on your way back to the ocean," and swim off. They are sponges until they are AT LEAST 15 or 16 years old. So, something is going to influence them. They need something to form the basis of their beliefs and values. That's probably why 80%+ of American kids are Christian and 80%+ of Iranian kids are Muslim.

:lol:You Christians make me laugh. You claim to know that know what is righteous and what is good. But how do you know what is righteous and good? You sit up there in your ivory towers and think that you look down up the people who actually try and figure out what is good and what is righteous with disgust. While in fact we are the ones who are above you.

How does a Christian know what is right and what is wrong? Does it say so in the Bible? And do we know that the Bible is being truthful or that it is even Christ's message? The answer is the No we do not. It takes a leap of faith.

That Leap of Faith, that affirmation towards something that may not even exist is the very thing that Nietzsche hated with all of his will and strength. I will give you another quote "There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings." The Affirmation Nietzsche was toward what existed, and that is Life and this Earth.

Your response is well thought out and you have clearly studied Nietzsche, but still I don't think you grasped his message. I strongly disagree that Nietzsche thought that man lived for possession. If by possession you mean simply power, than by some means yes he did. But by power perhaps Nietzsche meant a sort of self-mastery and if you mean by simple material pleasures Nietzsche hated that as well "Man does not live for pleasure, the Englishman does."

As for the statement that Christianity is a response to Nihilism, Nietzsche also said that Christianity was nihilistic by presenting a unknownable meaning it prevented the discovery of the actual meaning.


"What, though, is to be installed in any child? More so, what is the value of any installed values if the child is to be encouraged to shatter and stray from said values?"

My response to this is that each child and each new generation should not simply swallow the ideas given to them by a father/mother figure or by authority but instead should try and create their own ideals and values. And in this creation we find the ultimate affirmation of this world. We advance as human beings and set a path for a future brighter than one that anyone could ever imagine.

Yes, Nietzsche is one of two philosophers that I have studied almost exclusively over the last two or three years (Soren Kierkegaard is the other and primary focus of said studies). Having possession of one thing is very equal to having power over it, but The Gay Science, in the later sections I believe, deals with this notion of humanity, which takes him as far as to deny that there is a sort of love which is not inherently just an appetite to possess another. As for pleasures, while Nietzsche spoke out against inebriation, he wrote of the benefits in The Twilight of the Idols where he explained that inebriants were necessary to living a satisfactory life. (I would post the pages where I got these ideas from, but my library will be about 600 miles away until Wednesday, so, for now, I have to leave my claims without providing complete references.)

I say again of Nietzsche that he suffered from a lack of sight, but this comes from what is presupposed. Interestingly enough, atheism itself derives from the presupposition that "there is no...", from which the atheist works and Nietzsche was no different, though he took it to a far more logical conclusion than most atheists are willing to go.

Regarding the Bible, the message you have given is not simply, "what if it is not the truth?", but instead, because the question can simply be asked, it [the Bible] is immediately held as false. This position gives one the license to deny both the possibility of Jesus' existence and His very message, but again we arrive at a conclusion which is founded in little more than the aforementioned presupposition. I will not mislead you by promoting the nonsense that reason will ever make you belief or accept any tenets of the Christian faith, for the mandate is that man will believe on the basis of faith alone or not at all. This is a bit of the leap you referred to, which, by the way, is an interesting reference considering that the source.

Aside from all of this, the matter of goodness and righteousness is irrelevant without the existence of a personal and intimate Creator. How could you propose to discover what is good without a foundation from which good can be understood and, furthermore, because moral goodness inherently defies human instinct (i.e. selflessness v. self-preservation), what could bind the two together? The separation of morality and instinct is an infinitesimal chasm that man cannot bind alone, but yet through God, we find this connection and, more so, possibility. Far more important, though, is not the question of goodness and righteousness, but the realization that man does not consistently follow established moral tenets. It is far more serious than this, however, for it is not merely ignoring moral tenets, but disobeying moral expectations and requirements, which is why it is often labeled "sin" and it is Christ Jesus who was given so that the disobedient and selfish man (generalized for humankind) might be saved from condemnation.

We do not look down from our "ivory towers" as if imbued with a false and hypocritical sense of piety, but call out lifestyles and ways which are wrong through our prior experiences with such lifestyles which taint the spirit and body, leading people to continue in their disobedience against the Creator of our very existence. We assess the same for those who do not believe as we do for those that do believe: all men have fallen short of the glory of God and are in desperate need of a Savior; this Savior is Jesus. The perception of hypocrisy definitely can hold merit, but often is fueled by dishonesty and baseless judgments.

First off I want to applaud you for your well thought out post. But I must state my arguement.

The very idea that perhaps the Bible is not accurate can in a sense be sort of an awakening and cause a paranoia about the idea that we cannot trust teachers for an extended period of time, eventually we have to become their equals.

I agree with the sense that reason cannot lead to faith, I would also say that it cannot lead to no faith. In my thought process I firmly believe that the idea of god, faith, and religion cannot be logical. Because no human or computer could ever logical say if there is a supreme being or not.

I also agree with the idea that a set moral values from something higher than a human being makes it much easier to set those values. However, by presenting these values, these absolutes you give a subtle undertone of misanthropy. By stating as you stated that humanity needs a savior you imply that humanity is inherently sinful in nature.

You also by applying these absolutes can prevent discovery of new, more naturalistic values. By removing all values placed by a Supreme Being, killing God so to speak, you force humanity to decide their own fate and values or to become sucked into the vacuum of Nihilism. In this day and age, very few people actually truly believe in a God. The majority of people still have religious values, they just take the final cause without the first cause. They want to become good without God.

Mankind does not need a Savior, they need to find the Savior within them.

One final note, I feel that our values should not be based on otherwordly hopes and an unknowable meaning beyond this earth. Instead we must throw ourselves into the bowels of the earth and our self to determine our own values. (Nietzschean echo)

We must use values that appreciate the life that is all around. That means that we stop damaging this earth, we start appreciating what we have, and we try and find a way to stop people killing each other.

One's contention, if one possesses faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, is that all other positions are false and pathways to eternal condemnation. There is no other way and there is nothing else of value, nor can one use beliefs like Buddhism or Islam to better understand Jesus, for it was He Himself who said that He alone is the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6).

My point about good and evil is that the majority of christian followers are not really that familar with the bible and therefore are told by the leaders of the church what the bible and therefore God wants them to do.

I base my idea of good and evil on the idea that nothing is eternal, nothing lasts forever. Everything that lives eventually dies and that after they die, nobody can possible know what happens. Now because of this mortality of everything we should hold life in the utmost sacredness. We must prepare and understand the possiblity that something does not exist after this life.

I would of course teach my kids, when I have them, some sort of values.

I'm not saying to throw them out in the middle of Harlem and tell them good luck. They need to make mistakes and they need to fail. That is something that I truly think is a problem nowadays, kids are too often spoon-feed and babyed essentially.

For example, I've been through problems in the past (I'm not going to get into them) but I've made my way through it. Someday that will benefit me too, because I will failed before. And I will know how to get back on my feet.