I doubt it. If people were willing to change, they would change, but people do not like change, so it would be painful to most if not all of us. Religion is about getting people to change because they want to, not because they have to.
Religion is about people working together and helping one another, which is what most people should want us to do. However, some people think that faith means they must give up their autonomy, so they are afraid of religion, just as some are afraid of marriage…
I had the same problem when I first received Jesus Christ in my heart. My wife asked, “oh, so you’re ‘saved’?” I’m like, “uh, I don’t know, I believe in Him, I repent of my sins, I quit rebelling and I submit to Him, but I haven’t even thought about the afterlife’”.
What helped was learning that salvation is about the present, at least as much as it is about the future. It’s about being rescued from your own tendency to sin, and the consequences of that (immediate, future and eternal). “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Sin being understood as rebelling from God.
Needing to be saved from God is really weird! And there may be some Christian theology that still retains that traditional view of God. To me it’s not compelling, and (in it’s most caricatured form) not even philosophically coherent (thankfully!)
If God was an evil God that we need to be saved from, then we’re just screwed. Every one of us. Period. Plain and simple. Full stop. In that case we just pray to … well … just pray that you atheists are right. Better nothing at all than an evil God.
No. What we need to be saved from is ourselves and our own sin. Or as one of Nadia Bolz Weber’s theologian friends more colorfully put it (in a way that I can’t fully write out here) … HPFTU (Human propensity to …)
[content here removed … and re-summarized in (hopefully) less hurtful ways.]
Basically - there are many Muslims (and Christians) who do have a traditional view of God that might be caricatured in that way. Some may delight in that characterization (i.e. - it may not be a caricature of their view at all), while others may find ways to maintain both a belief in a merciful God and yet at the same time also an eternally retributive hell. There are scriptures that make such beliefs understandable, which I should acknowledge even if I am persuaded away from that view.
When that is understood as abnegating personal agency by ‘turning the wheel over to Jesus’, I’d say it was weird too.
But Christianity is not the only culture within which transcendence requires more than what personal agency alone can accomplish. Zen monks who strive for it by trying to figure it out discover all they accomplish is more turbulence in the water, not stillness. Rationality is enough when combined with careful measurement and peer review in empirical matters but not for transcendence, if that means anything at all. If one begins by insisting on an empirical level of evidence for all declarations regarding the phenomenology of human experience, a great deal will be missed. Can I back that up with irrefutable evidence within the reality of objects? No, subjects are not completely explainable on that level. But those who insist on it are certainly able to carve out a life on that level if they wish.
Same. But I’ve been asking myself, what has made God/gods belief so compelling for so many for so long and has that helped shape the way we are. I’m trying to steelman the answer rather than straw man it. I’ll feel like I’ll have a good enough answer when I can make a case for belief which meets all my objections even if that case doesn’t sway me. I’ve decided there is something real and important that supports that belief - it just isn’t an extra powerful and wise class of humanoid(s). And it/they/He didn’t create anything from nothing.
Then we are not much the same.
I dont thimk ee are muvh the same.
Have you thought about why othrr things like superstitions, mythical worrier heros etc are so everywhere?
As for strawmen, the "something from nothing " bit is a good one to eliminate.
Completely agree. Goes to show that non belief is no more monolithic than is Christianity or theism generally. But there are some atheists with whom I’m completely simpatico. You’re just not one of them. No reason you should be of course.