God- Real Or Not?

[Stevie]

"If there is a God, he has a lot to answer for." - Robert De Niro

That's my view point. No 'all loving God' would allow all the suffering, pain and hatred in this world. If he can't stop it, why is he 'all powerful'? And if he chooses not to, how is he 'all loving'?

If I am wrong about the non existence of all seeing deity, then I will happily accept my fate in Hell. But until then, in my opinion, he doesn't exist.

Aliens on the other hand, there's another story...

 

[Dave]

No, give over.
The God Delusion is a good a start as any, its a book by the only and only Richard Dawkins. Watch anything with Christopher Hitchens opinions on the subjects. Or just the historical analysis of religion and the logical reasoning behind there reasoning.

Not delving too deep into the whole "is there a god" debate, i'm an open minded atheist but one thing i will say is never read a Richard Dawkins book without a questioning mind.... He is the Atheist equivalent of a religious zelot and never takes a balanced view point on any matter... He makes demons of those who disagree with him and gets the fires of Oblivion stoked for their punishment (dramatic license) better than an evangelical in a gay bar.

There are many better more balanced atheist writers than that man.

 

[BigT]

Well I'm starting to get on in years now so although I don't believe in God at the moment I think I may have to start edging my bets a little and visit a few churches. Lol

I think in an educated society religion causes more fiction than it solves but 1000 years ago it was possibly the only way to control a society.

 

[delta79]

What's the difference between a normal school and a Catholic school?

Catholic schools herd their children into church to be slowly brain washed in making females into baby making factories. The times i have been to a Catholic church with friends, the service (sorry) Mass was on the negative side.
I was told by one sister of the church, that i had to "repent and Convert from that horrid disgusting Methodism to us, right now or burn in hell FOREVER"

 

[DiogoJ42]

Delta beat me to it. Catholic schools force you to take part in cult ceremonies, guilt trip you in to feeling like everything that's wrong in the world is your personal fault, and only teach what fits in with papal doctrin in history and RE lessions. Frankly it amazes me that we had an sex education at all at my school. Thankfully at least the science teachers were open minded enough to tell us facts without opinion.

Oh, and our school chaplin was known as "Dirty Father [name]" (I won't name him as I have no evidence of anything dodgy, other than his like of hugging us). :S

 

[Dave]

The other thing i will say is as much as i enjoy attacking the various Churches, those who think all would be well without religion forget their main strand of the argument.... that religion is a human construct. You can rid this world of religion and nothing at all will change as it is humanity that is flawed.

Sometimes i think humanists like to forget that,

 

[Mike]

Seeing as we're now into page 3 of the topic and it hasn't hit chaos yet, I thought I'd offer my 2p

My views probably come closest to Agnostic, but with a lean towards Christianity as portrayed by evangelical churches... although I don't agree with the actual evangelism.... let me explain.

Essentially, my opinion is based on my view that there are certain things that cannot be explained by science, and as such, by consequence, there must be a higher power, or God. However, I also am a realist in the sense that science has its part to play also (e.g. my personal view is that whilst a god may have created the universe, they most likely caused the Big Bang, not created it The Sims style )

Why do I orientate myself to Christianity? Put simply, it's the modern religion that comes closest to my views. I believe a lot of the New Testament (I struggle to believe the Old Testament is anything other than total rubbish, sadly) may have happened, either literally as written or alternatively - and probably more likely - that the general sense of the stories is true (but translated over time a la Chinese whispers). I also don't deny that the fact my parents come from a Christian background also help this viewpoint. I think the modern, 'evangelical' (in big quotation marks - see below!) church is where my views fit in, sadly I feel Roman Catholic, & CoE churches haven't moved with the times, and the ceremony involved is extraneous in modern-day Britain, bar perhaps important life events such as weddings.

That being said, I'm not a fan of any religious organisation (Christianity is as bad as anyone else here sadly) teaching in a way that gets supporters to impose their worldview on others when they don't show an active interest in knowing. I also broadly agree with @Mankey (and others) that (even with me having a slightly more religious view) there are far more important things to worry about than religious viewpoint!

tl;dr: Agnostic, but with a (very slight) Christian bias.

 

[Jonathan]

Religion's a bit of a touchy subject for me. As many of you will know, I've been brought up in a church-going family. I've never really had an option to not go to church - it's always been expected that I'll go every week, apart from when I'm on holiday abroad, and finding a church may not be as easy. My parents are currently on holiday in Majorca (they return tomorrow), and even though they weren't around, I still went. Why? Well, the answer's simple. I knew full well that if I didn't go, they'd find out very quickly, and they wouldn't be very happy with me at all. There's also the fact that not long after moving to Biddulph and attending this new church, I was roped into helping sing with the worship group at every service, and I can't really get out of it. In hindsight, I could've used work as an excuse, seeing as I'm currently contracted to work on Sundays, but I just didn't think of it at the time.

I should probably mention at this point that my dad is a Minister in the Methodist Church, and currently has five churches to look after in Staffordshire and Cheshire. He's had up to eight before, and temporary charge of many more while colleagues have been on holiday.

My main issue with the church is its attitude towards homosexuality. I'm fully aware that there are some Christians out there who have no issue with people who identify as LGBT (the theologian, Vicky Beeching, is one of the more prominent of those), but it seems to me that a lot of Christians don't agree with homosexuality at all. The Coalition for Marriage (C4M) was set up by Christian organisations in opposition to the proposal to allow same-sex marriage in the UK, and their petition attracted 650,000 signatures. There were some issues with these figures, namely that apparently, some of the signatures were duplicated, and there was no real way of verifying if each signatory was unique. Even so, 650,000 people actively opposing gay marriage is a frightening number. And I suspect that my parents are two of those people. My dad has preached against homosexuality and gay marriage on several occasions in the past, and a few months ago, he made me feel so uncomfortable (my parents still have no idea that I'm gay), that I seriously considered walking out of church part of the way through a service. Also, in 2012, I went to Spring Harvest, which is a big Christian festival held at Butlins in Minehead (it's also held at Butlins in Skegness), and this was not long after I realised that I was gay. I didn't want to be there, but I still went, as I knew my parents wouldn't be happy if I pulled out of it at the last minute. I just felt so uncomfortable the whole time I was there, and was so relieved to just get back home. From what I remember, there was no homophobic preaching at all - I just didn't want to be there.

Then there was New Wine 2013. New Wine is another Christian conference, and is held at the Royal Bath & West Showground near Shepton Mallet in Somerset. (There have also been conferences held at the Newark Showground in Nottinghamshire.) Once again, I didn't want to go to this, but still went anyway. What really peeved me was that I never explicitly said to my parents that I didn't want to go. I just said to them that I'd think about it, and they assumed that because I said nothing to them, I wanted to go. As well as this, we'd got back from a holiday to Europa-Park and Saint-Nazaire less than 48 hours before we left for New Wine, so I didn't think it was a good idea to go, but I was unsurprisingly ignored. Also, we were due to be moving house from St Dennis to Biddulph a couple of weeks later, and I wanted to crack on with packing my things up into boxes. Anyway, we got there, and things didn't get off to a good start for me, as I was made to feel like a spare wheel while we were setting up the caravan, awning and tent. As the week went on, things got better, save for a bit of sexism and racism in some of the main sessions. There was a little bit of homophobia as well, but nothing compared to what was said by the main speaker in the final session on the Saturday night. He was speaking about a flight he was on in the US, and essentially bragging about how he'd managed to convert several people on that flight to Christianity, coming across as rather irritating in the process. One of the people he allegedly converted was one of the flight attendants, who was gay. (The speaker claimed he cured this person of his homosexuality, but I know full damn well that sexuality is not something you can just turn off like a light switch.) This flight attendant had been in training to become a priest, but eventually realised that he was gay. He was given a choice - to marry a woman, or be kicked out of the training process. He chose the latter, and went into the gay community, eventually getting this job as a flight attendant. The speaker then prayed with this man, and was then 'cured' of his homosexuality. The speaker then went on a bit of a rant about how ANY form of sexual relationship outside of marriage was completely unacceptable. And what happened? He got applause from so many people in the marquee. I was so infuriated by this that I nearly walked out, but I didn't. There was a bit of time later on in the session where people were more free to move about, so I went outside to go to the toilet and to just get some fresh air to calm down. I'm so thankful that it happened on the last night, as I don't think I could've coped with it for much longer.

Anyway, that's set my background out. Apologies for it being lengthy, but I felt it necessary. Now onto my actual views on religion.

I'll be honest - I never really feel like I've had much of a faith in Christianity. When I was younger, I suppose I did, but as I've got older, I've just lost interest. I've tried to gain more of an understanding of Christianity, but I just don't really identify with what I've looked at. I attend a bible study every week with some people of my age (it's actually nice to have this for a change, if only for the social aspect), and it's OK, but I just don't gain much in theological terms. I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm agnostic. I've come from a Christian background, but I don't have much of a Christian faith. I only really go to church these days for the social aspect of it, so I do sometimes wonder why I'm still going, and the answer's clear every single time - it's my parents. I don't really want to go to church any more, as I fail to see the point of carrying on going when I don't gain much knowledge and understanding of Christianity, but I know full well that my parents would be very disappointed if I told them this. I think the only way I can get out of it is by moving out and waiting until my parents have moved away from the area before leaving church, but that's going to be several years away. I also generally agree with @Mike's post, with particular regard to churches not moving with the times. With regard to religion and sexuality, I get the impression that a substantial proportion of people believe something along the lines of 'Everyone's welcome, apart from if you're gay, in which case, we don't want you here at all', which I find upsetting. If the church were more accepting of those who are gay - and more accepting of minorities in society in general - and was more willing to change its views in order to become more relevant to society, then maybe church attendances wouldn't be getting lower and lower.

The majority of religious people I've met are really nice people, but I don't agree with some of their views on controversial issues, like abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the like. But I actually like that. I like that we have different views, as if we all agreed on everything, then there'd be no reason to have any discussion at all on the big issues, and life would be incredibly boring!

TL;DR - Gay agnostic from a Christian background, feel frustrated with the views of the church on homosexuality

EDIT: Just a little extra thing that I remembered. It was New Year's Day 2012, and I was going through a very tough time. I was questioning my sexuality, and was a bit emotionally volatile. We had family visiting, and I got a bit bored, so I went into my bedroom for a bit to have some time to myself on my laptop. Dad realised that I'd gone off somewhere, and he unplugged the WiFi router, and essentially forced me into spending more time with my family, even though I didn't want to. I know it sounds pathetic, but it actually got me rather angry, and that night, I just ended up listening to a lot of Adele (don't ask why!), gradually becoming more and more of an emotional wreck. I ended up getting to the point where I just wanted to smash anything in sight to pieces, and practically broke down in tears! I was so glad to get back to uni a few days later, just to have a bit of breathing space. Not long after, I faced problems again, and was persuaded by a couple of people on here to go to London for the weekend. I booked my train tickets at about 3am on the Wednesday, went to Truro to pick them up (didn't want to risk them not arriving at my accommodation in time) on the Wednesday afternoon, left for London on the Saturday morning, and arrived back in Cornwall late on the Sunday evening! I really needed that weekend away, even if I did manage to spend all night awake at Diogo's playing Rock Band and Trivial Pursuit.

 

[SomeCrazyPerson]

Thank you so much Jonathan, your post is really heartfelt, and actually moved me quite a bit.

I'm really sorry that your parents aren't more accepting of your views, and that you don't feel that they understand you enough for you to tell them about your sexual orientation. You sound like a very compassionate and accepting person, and it honestly saddens me to think about everything you must have been through; the frustration, the anger and the confusion must have been overwhelming.

Your reaction to this amazes me. How you haven't rebelled against your parents, or become an Atheist, I do not know. If I was in that position, I don't know what I would have done. Probably something really stupid.

You seem to understand this very well already, but one thing you need to note is that Christians are not perfect. We are just people, like anyone else, and will sometimes (or even often) hurt or offend people. Another thing is that there is a difference between actual homophobia, and just being opposed to gay marriage. I am utterly against the former, and have no real views on the latter, although at the moment I am definitely leaning towards the 'gay marriage is OK' side. I'm not going to give any details, but there is a gay person at my church who as far as I can tell is accepted by others in the church. Your actual orientation does not affect how you are with God, and should not affect how you are with others.

Finally, I'm really sorry if I came across as intolerant, or insincere or anything in this post. I really and truly mean everything I said, but please note that there is a very good chance that some of the things I said are wrong. Like I said, nobody is perfect, and that includes me.

Again, thank you!

 

[Rose Of Dawn]

Another thing is that there is a difference between actual homophobia, and just being opposed to gay marriage.

Whilst being opposed to equal marriage isn't the same as beating up someone for their sexuality, I'd still consider being against it as homophobic. The reason is that by opposing the rights of a group of people which are afforded to yourself, you are considering them lesser beings. And that, in itself, is still bigotry.

Disclaimer: I'm not calling you a bigot.

 

[SomeCrazyPerson]

Whilst being opposed to equal marriage isn't the same as beating up someone for their sexuality, I'd still consider being against it as homophobic. The reason is that by opposing the rights of a group of people which are afforded to yourself, you are considering them lesser beings. And that, in itself, is still bigotry.

Disclaimer: I'm not calling you a bigot.

What I mean, is that a phobia is an irrational fear. Whilst opposition to gay marriage may be a symptom of this, it doesn't always mean you have an irrational and all-consuming hatred of gay people in general.

Again, I haven't got any real views on gay marriage, so I am probably not the right person to discuss this. Maybe you should ask someone else.

 

[Bench.addict]

Whenever homophobia in the church is brought up, I reference this video from The West Wing:


Even as a (very liberal) Christian, I find a fair amount of the Old Testament debatable, certainly for the modern day, and look back as to what sort of person it was written for originally (i.e. very immature humans who assumed the Earth was flat and the centre of the universe).

As for gay marriage in Christianity, even though the term in English is (or more WAS now) to bring a man and a woman together, in German to 'marry', as an example, is to merge any two parts together. I believe that, if a gay couple want to get married and are a part of the church wanting God to be bound into their relationship (i.e. not just atheists or agnostics wanting to get married in a church), then there is no logical reason in this era as to why not.

 

[AdamJ]

I'd say there is a god out there, I just personally choose not to follow.

And as for Wardley? Meh he's not a god, he's a mere coaster designer, that's all. Anton Schwarzkopf or Werner Stegnel would be more considered a 'God' of the Theme Park Industry.

 

[Poisson]

I'd say there is a god out there, I just personally choose not to follow.

And as for Wardley? Meh he's not a god, he's a mere coaster designer, that's all. Anton Schwarzkopf or Werner Stegnel would be more considered a 'God' of the Theme Park Industry.

They're all gods tbh

 

[Burbs]

I'd say there is a god out there, I just personally choose not to follow.

And as for Wardley? Meh he's not a god, he's a mere coaster designer, that's all. Anton Schwarzkopf or Werner Stegnel would be more considered a 'God' of the Theme Park Industry.

Someone had to take it seriously, didn't they.

 

[Rose Of Dawn]

What I mean, is that a phobia is an irrational fear. Whilst opposition to gay marriage may be a symptom of this, it doesn't always mean you have an irrational and all-consuming hatred of gay people in general.

Again, I haven't got any real views on gay marriage, so I am probably not the right person to discuss this. Maybe you should ask someone else.

The term 'homophobia' doesn't typically refer to an irrational fear of lesbian, gay or bisexual people. In a similar manner to 'transphobia', it's simply a phrase that describes anti-LGB feelings. Being against same-sex marriage is being anti-LGB, and therefore it's described as being homophobic.

I'd say there is a god out there, I just personally choose not to follow.

And as for Wardley? Meh he's not a god, he's a mere coaster designer, that's all. Anton Schwarzkopf or Werner Stegnel would be more considered a 'God' of the Theme Park Industry.

Pah, everyone knows there is only one God...

 

[Jonathan]

I like the bit where Roland.

 

[Martin]

Essentially, my opinion is based on my view that there are certain things that cannot be explained by science, and as such, by consequence, there must be a higher power, or God."

Without wanting to turn into Richard Dawkins, just because science hasn't worked something out yet, doesn't mean it won't in future. We never used to know where the sun went at night so we thought that was god. We'll probably never answer what caused the big bang, but we learn more all the time and there's likely to be a point where practically everything else has been answered by science, so we'll just have that question, what started the universe, god or no god, and if everything else can be explained scientifically, my bet is the big bang is also godless. That's my view anyway.

 

[smudge]

Can't remember where I read this, but it won't be long before a telescope is built, powerful enough to see other solar systems, other planets like earth, with life, thus finally rendering god a myth.

Isn't something like 40% of the bible already proven to be incorrect?

I guess it does no harm people believing, its no problem to me and I wish them well, I just dislike the conflict that arises because of it.

Science will eventually prevail, and the good thing about science, is that it's true wether you believe it or not.

 

[Burbs]

There are many things I dislike about religion, one of which is that science ALWAYS questions itself, whereas religion doesn't. It's just used as an excuse for things which we don't currently have answers for, or that we didn't many years ago.