Anonymous wrote:How long are we going to let MAGAs pretend to be Christians???? Today Trump said he ordered strikes on militants in Nigeria on Christmas day -- "Not the day before" (otherwise known as Christmas eve you dolt) "and not the day after, but Christmas day, so they would know what it was about." Yes, let's let them know what the Prince of Peace is all about by bombing them on Christmas day. JFC -- no pun intended -- how long can we swallow this?? SPEAK UP TRUMPERS. If you know Christ, you should be vomiting in your mouth every time you hear him speak like that. This is a test and you are failing.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Actually, I’m not sure this is true. There is a major difference between hearing about Jesus in a church where your parents dragged you there and truly understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both your mind and heart in a way that changes you.

I know first-hand.

I grew up in a Catholic Church — 18 years, mass every week, all the other “Catholic” stuff. None of it made any impression on me. I heard the readings from the Bible but didn’t understand what any of it meant. My only take away was “do good, be good” and that type of religion became a major burden after awhile. I very much thought that the premise of Christianity was — basically be a good person - go to church etc — and maybe one day when you die, your cosmic positives outweigh your cosmic negatives and you make it to heaven. Or at least purgatory. After awhile, in my early 20s, I gave up on it all, became an atheist, and lived a life for the world — focused on career, work, money, travel, having fun, and getting laid, not always in that order.

In my early 40s, after a personal crisis, I very unexpectedly started to give religion a second look. I found the sermons of Tim Keller and they completely changed my life. The Jesus that Tim Keller talks about is NOT the same Jesus I heard about growing up. The fundamental message is different. Christianity is not trying to follow a bunch of strict rules so you can go to heaven. Rather, it is about our innate inability to follow the rules — and the need for a savior who followed the rules for us and us receiving a gift of righteousness from him purely on the basis of our faith in him. That’s a radically different motivation structure. I stopped doing a lot of crappy things in my life not because I was white knuckling it, but because I actively wanted to reflect back the love of Christ after seeing and believing what he had done for me and realizing how beautiful it was.

Also, there are many Christian hypocrites don’t get me wrong, but God truly blessed me by putting into my life a bunch of serious Christians who are living out their faith and are truly different from the other people I see in my life, mainly at work, but also in my Catholic family too. Those years of Catholic masses never rubbed off very much on my parents who constantly fought and my some of my grandparents who harbored a lot of racial animosity. My church is beautiful and diverse and seeing a group of people like this come together in the body of Christ every week truly is wonderful.

Maybe I am an outlier, but I feel like most Christians who leave the faith never truly understand the Gospel, nor are they around other Christians really living out their faith. I certainly didn’t and wasn’t. But the real Gospel and a true faith community changed my life.

Unfortunately you are an outlier because you are trying to live the faith. Most Christians in America are not. It's a lot of lip service. They LIVE their life in a way that is antithetical to the teachings of Christ while crowing loud and long about what faithful Christians they are and how much the looooooooove Jesus. Honestly they make me sick to my stomach. They use Jesus' name to justify hatred and cruelty. It's outright evil. They do not understand the first thing about grace or forgiveness. They are all talk. And they are part of why so many people turn away from Christianity in this country. Let's face it, we, people, are the Church. If the flock behaves like a bunch of nasty hypocrites, what decent person isn't going to say this is BS and go elsewhere for community?

I am genuinely glad for you that you have found a community where people try to follow the teachings of Jesus. But yes, you are an exception.

And I would add, I found a lot of meaning in going to the Catholic Church as a child and teen. The service and the readings were not hollow to me, I felt them deeply, maybe because of my mother, who is a very kind, accepting, and spiritual person who lives Christ's teachings. But as I got older and looked around me, reconciling what has been done by clergy and what some supposed Catholics do has been hard to deal with for me. The dissonance between the teachings and the behavior of people is, frankly, infuriating.

I was the long poster. I understand the sentiment about corrupt church leaders. It’s hurtful and wrong and leaves many people disillusioned with church.

But ….

Christianity comes down to one issue — did Jesus rise from the dead? If the answer is yes, then he is the son of god and everything he says mattered. If the answer is no, then nothing he said matters at all. Everything turns on that question.

If you believe the answer is yes — then corrupt church leaders don’t really matter too much. They have nothing to do with whether Jesus was the son of God.

Also, when you truly grasp the concept of sin, you can recognize that everyone is a sinner. Some people use religion as a way to cover up their sinful lives. Or they do religious “things” as a way to try to show the rest of the world how “holy” they are. But when you do that, you are being your own savior as opposed to looking to Jesus as your savior.

Framing it this way has helped me get past the hurt that comes from flawed church leaders.

Not only did Jesus not rise from the dead, he wasnt ever a real person, just like Harry Potter or Iron Man.

Don't be ridiculous. Of course Jesus was a real person. No one disputes that.

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Anonymous wrote:I haven't studied Dawkins but my impression from watching his lectures is that he thinks Christianity is an evolved cultural response teaching how to live better compared to other religions but still understands the absurdity of it and how its not true. He understands the need for some people to have religion in life to give them something to aim towards and follow as a leader and how teaching people how to live well when they are surrounded by bad actors is good thing for society. I think he also hoped we would evolve into something better than religion for society.

And yet he seems to have abandoned any “hope to evolve into something better than religion” and now openly espouses the benefits of Christianity.

Like Dawkins, I, an atheist, am cognizant of the benefits of Christianity - the beautiful art and music that was commissioned (i.e., paid for) by the Vatican and the gorgeous Cathedrals all over Europe. The Roman Catholics of the era could get the very best composers and artists to do its work for them because they paid well. They were also pretty much the only game in town.

I love good Christian music - not the modern stuff, but the work of the masters - Bethoven, Bach, Palestrina, etc.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Knowing Christ and knowing about Christ is not the same thing. To know Christ is to have a relationship with Christ. Again, you cannot be an atheist and know Christ. I know about Donald Trump, but I don’t know Trump. I was taught about Obama in school, but I don’t know him.

You are still 100% incorrect. Many of us did "know" christ. I was raised in an evangelical community and once was an avid crusader for christ. I used to claim I had the feeling of Jesus in my heart.

I also grew up and learned the real truth. It is all BS.

Sounds like you can know Christ and then un-know him. Pp knew Christ and then un-knew him and became an atheist.

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Anonymous wrote:I haven't studied Dawkins but my impression from watching his lectures is that he thinks Christianity is an evolved cultural response teaching how to live better compared to other religions but still understands the absurdity of it and how its not true. He understands the need for some people to have religion in life to give them something to aim towards and follow as a leader and how teaching people how to live well when they are surrounded by bad actors is good thing for society. I think he also hoped we would evolve into something better than religion for society.

And yet he seems to have abandoned any “hope to evolve into something better than religion” and now openly espouses the benefits of Christianity.

Dawkins does not openly espouse the benefits of Christianity. Dawkins is an atheist.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Actually, I’m not sure this is true. There is a major difference between hearing about Jesus in a church where your parents dragged you there and truly understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both your mind and heart in a way that changes you.

I know first-hand.

I grew up in a Catholic Church — 18 years, mass every week, all the other “Catholic” stuff. None of it made any impression on me. I heard the readings from the Bible but didn’t understand what any of it meant. My only take away was “do good, be good” and that type of religion became a major burden after awhile. I very much thought that the premise of Christianity was — basically be a good person - go to church etc — and maybe one day when you die, your cosmic positives outweigh your cosmic negatives and you make it to heaven. Or at least purgatory. After awhile, in my early 20s, I gave up on it all, became an atheist, and lived a life for the world — focused on career, work, money, travel, having fun, and getting laid, not always in that order.

In my early 40s, after a personal crisis, I very unexpectedly started to give religion a second look. I found the sermons of Tim Keller and they completely changed my life. The Jesus that Tim Keller talks about is NOT the same Jesus I heard about growing up. The fundamental message is different. Christianity is not trying to follow a bunch of strict rules so you can go to heaven. Rather, it is about our innate inability to follow the rules — and the need for a savior who followed the rules for us and us receiving a gift of righteousness from him purely on the basis of our faith in him. That’s a radically different motivation structure. I stopped doing a lot of crappy things in my life not because I was white knuckling it, but because I actively wanted to reflect back the love of Christ after seeing and believing what he had done for me and realizing how beautiful it was.

Also, there are many Christian hypocrites don’t get me wrong, but God truly blessed me by putting into my life a bunch of serious Christians who are living out their faith and are truly different from the other people I see in my life, mainly at work, but also in my Catholic family too. Those years of Catholic masses never rubbed off very much on my parents who constantly fought and my some of my grandparents who harbored a lot of racial animosity. My church is beautiful and diverse and seeing a group of people like this come together in the body of Christ every week truly is wonderful.

Maybe I am an outlier, but I feel like most Christians who leave the faith never truly understand the Gospel, nor are they around other Christians really living out their faith. I certainly didn’t and wasn’t. But the real Gospel and a true faith community changed my life.

Unfortunately you are an outlier because you are trying to live the faith. Most Christians in America are not. It's a lot of lip service. They LIVE their life in a way that is antithetical to the teachings of Christ while crowing loud and long about what faithful Christians they are and how much the looooooooove Jesus. Honestly they make me sick to my stomach. They use Jesus' name to justify hatred and cruelty. It's outright evil. They do not understand the first thing about grace or forgiveness. They are all talk. And they are part of why so many people turn away from Christianity in this country. Let's face it, we, people, are the Church. If the flock behaves like a bunch of nasty hypocrites, what decent person isn't going to say this is BS and go elsewhere for community?

I am genuinely glad for you that you have found a community where people try to follow the teachings of Jesus. But yes, you are an exception.

And I would add, I found a lot of meaning in going to the Catholic Church as a child and teen. The service and the readings were not hollow to me, I felt them deeply, maybe because of my mother, who is a very kind, accepting, and spiritual person who lives Christ's teachings. But as I got older and looked around me, reconciling what has been done by clergy and what some supposed Catholics do has been hard to deal with for me. The dissonance between the teachings and the behavior of people is, frankly, infuriating.

I was the long poster. I understand the sentiment about corrupt church leaders. It’s hurtful and wrong and leaves many people disillusioned with church.

But ….

Christianity comes down to one issue — did Jesus rise from the dead? If the answer is yes, then he is the son of god and everything he says mattered. If the answer is no, then nothing he said matters at all. Everything turns on that question.

If you believe the answer is yes — then corrupt church leaders don’t really matter too much. They have nothing to do with whether Jesus was the son of God.

Also, when you truly grasp the concept of sin, you can recognize that everyone is a sinner. Some people use religion as a way to cover up their sinful lives. Or they do religious “things” as a way to try to show the rest of the world how “holy” they are. But when you do that, you are being your own savior as opposed to looking to Jesus as your savior.

Framing it this way has helped me get past the hurt that comes from flawed church leaders.

Not only did Jesus not rise from the dead, he wasnt ever a real person, just like Harry Potter or Iron Man.

Anonymous wrote:The dissonances I noticed as a grade schooler in choir listening to sermons about money led me to avoid organized religion. I believe in God but am not part of any denomination.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Actually, I’m not sure this is true. There is a major difference between hearing about Jesus in a church where your parents dragged you there and truly understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both your mind and heart in a way that changes you.

I know first-hand.

I grew up in a Catholic Church — 18 years, mass every week, all the other “Catholic” stuff. None of it made any impression on me. I heard the readings from the Bible but didn’t understand what any of it meant. My only take away was “do good, be good” and that type of religion became a major burden after awhile. I very much thought that the premise of Christianity was — basically be a good person - go to church etc — and maybe one day when you die, your cosmic positives outweigh your cosmic negatives and you make it to heaven. Or at least purgatory. After awhile, in my early 20s, I gave up on it all, became an atheist, and lived a life for the world — focused on career, work, money, travel, having fun, and getting laid, not always in that order.

In my early 40s, after a personal crisis, I very unexpectedly started to give religion a second look. I found the sermons of Tim Keller and they completely changed my life. The Jesus that Tim Keller talks about is NOT the same Jesus I heard about growing up. The fundamental message is different. Christianity is not trying to follow a bunch of strict rules so you can go to heaven. Rather, it is about our innate inability to follow the rules — and the need for a savior who followed the rules for us and us receiving a gift of righteousness from him purely on the basis of our faith in him. That’s a radically different motivation structure. I stopped doing a lot of crappy things in my life not because I was white knuckling it, but because I actively wanted to reflect back the love of Christ after seeing and believing what he had done for me and realizing how beautiful it was.

Also, there are many Christian hypocrites don’t get me wrong, but God truly blessed me by putting into my life a bunch of serious Christians who are living out their faith and are truly different from the other people I see in my life, mainly at work, but also in my Catholic family too. Those years of Catholic masses never rubbed off very much on my parents who constantly fought and my some of my grandparents who harbored a lot of racial animosity. My church is beautiful and diverse and seeing a group of people like this come together in the body of Christ every week truly is wonderful.

Maybe I am an outlier, but I feel like most Christians who leave the faith never truly understand the Gospel, nor are they around other Christians really living out their faith. I certainly didn’t and wasn’t. But the real Gospel and a true faith community changed my life.

Unfortunately you are an outlier because you are trying to live the faith. Most Christians in America are not. It's a lot of lip service. They LIVE their life in a way that is antithetical to the teachings of Christ while crowing loud and long about what faithful Christians they are and how much the looooooooove Jesus. Honestly they make me sick to my stomach. They use Jesus' name to justify hatred and cruelty. It's outright evil. They do not understand the first thing about grace or forgiveness. They are all talk. And they are part of why so many people turn away from Christianity in this country. Let's face it, we, people, are the Church. If the flock behaves like a bunch of nasty hypocrites, what decent person isn't going to say this is BS and go elsewhere for community?

I am genuinely glad for you that you have found a community where people try to follow the teachings of Jesus. But yes, you are an exception.

And I would add, I found a lot of meaning in going to the Catholic Church as a child and teen. The service and the readings were not hollow to me, I felt them deeply, maybe because of my mother, who is a very kind, accepting, and spiritual person who lives Christ's teachings. But as I got older and looked around me, reconciling what has been done by clergy and what some supposed Catholics do has been hard to deal with for me. The dissonance between the teachings and the behavior of people is, frankly, infuriating.

Anonymous wrote:People will say anything to get followers, attention, money, prestige, power. They may even offer government money in exchange for having airports and train stations named after them, as well as seeking religious cred by bombing people.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Actually, I’m not sure this is true. There is a major difference between hearing about Jesus in a church where your parents dragged you there and truly understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both your mind and heart in a way that changes you.

I know first-hand.

I grew up in a Catholic Church — 18 years, mass every week, all the other “Catholic” stuff. None of it made any impression on me. I heard the readings from the Bible but didn’t understand what any of it meant. My only take away was “do good, be good” and that type of religion became a major burden after awhile. I very much thought that the premise of Christianity was — basically be a good person - go to church etc — and maybe one day when you die, your cosmic positives outweigh your cosmic negatives and you make it to heaven. Or at least purgatory. After awhile, in my early 20s, I gave up on it all, became an atheist, and lived a life for the world — focused on career, work, money, travel, having fun, and getting laid, not always in that order.

In my early 40s, after a personal crisis, I very unexpectedly started to give religion a second look. I found the sermons of Tim Keller and they completely changed my life. The Jesus that Tim Keller talks about is NOT the same Jesus I heard about growing up. The fundamental message is different. Christianity is not trying to follow a bunch of strict rules so you can go to heaven. Rather, it is about our innate inability to follow the rules — and the need for a savior who followed the rules for us and us receiving a gift of righteousness from him purely on the basis of our faith in him. That’s a radically different motivation structure. I stopped doing a lot of crappy things in my life not because I was white knuckling it, but because I actively wanted to reflect back the love of Christ after seeing and believing what he had done for me and realizing how beautiful it was.

Also, there are many Christian hypocrites don’t get me wrong, but God truly blessed me by putting into my life a bunch of serious Christians who are living out their faith and are truly different from the other people I see in my life, mainly at work, but also in my Catholic family too. Those years of Catholic masses never rubbed off very much on my parents who constantly fought and my some of my grandparents who harbored a lot of racial animosity. My church is beautiful and diverse and seeing a group of people like this come together in the body of Christ every week truly is wonderful.

Maybe I am an outlier, but I feel like most Christians who leave the faith never truly understand the Gospel, nor are they around other Christians really living out their faith. I certainly didn’t and wasn’t. But the real Gospel and a true faith community changed my life.

Blah, blah, blah... at the end of the day, you are following a fictional story. Its like dedicating yourself to Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. 🙃🫠☺️

Anonymous wrote:

Christianity comes down to one issue — did Jesus rise from the dead? If the answer is yes, then he is the son of god and everything he says mattered. If the answer is no, then nothing he said matters at all. Everything turns on that question.

If you believe the answer is yes — then corrupt church leaders don’t really matter too much. They have nothing to do with whether Jesus was the son of God.

Also, when you truly grasp the concept of sin, you can recognize that everyone is a sinner. Some people use religion as a way to cover up their sinful lives. Or they do religious “things” as a way to try to show the rest of the world how “holy” they are. But when you do that, you are being your own savior as opposed to looking to Jesus as your savior.

Framing it this way has helped me get past the hurt that comes from flawed church leaders.

You’re a really an awful sophist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't studied Dawkins but my impression from watching his lectures is that he thinks Christianity is an evolved cultural response teaching how to live better compared to other religions but still understands the absurdity of it and how its not true. He understands the need for some people to have religion in life to give them something to aim towards and follow as a leader and how teaching people how to live well when they are surrounded by bad actors is good thing for society. I think he also hoped we would evolve into something better than religion for society.

And yet he seems to have abandoned any “hope to evolve into something better than religion” and now openly espouses the benefits of Christianity.

Christianity comes down to one issue — did Jesus rise from the dead? If the answer is yes, then he is the son of god and everything he says mattered. If the answer is no, then nothing he said matters at all. Everything turns on that question.

If you believe the answer is yes — then corrupt church leaders don’t really matter too much. They have nothing to do with whether Jesus was the son of God.

Also, when you truly grasp the concept of sin, you can recognize that everyone is a sinner. Some people use religion as a way to cover up their sinful lives. Or they do religious “things” as a way to try to show the rest of the world how “holy” they are. But when you do that, you are being your own savior as opposed to looking to Jesus as your savior.

Framing it this way has helped me get past the hurt that comes from flawed church leaders.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't studied Dawkins but my impression from watching his lectures is that he thinks Christianity is an evolved cultural response teaching how to live better compared to other religions but still understands the absurdity of it and how its not true. He understands the need for some people to have religion in life to give them something to aim towards and follow as a leader and how teaching people how to live well when they are surrounded by bad actors is good thing for society. I think he also hoped we would evolve into something better than religion for society.

And yet he seems to have abandoned any “hope to evolve into something better than religion” and now openly espouses the benefits of Christianity.

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Anonymous wrote:I am an atheist but without my judgement being clouded by god can see that OP is a naive idiot.

Christians are not required to allow themselves to be massacred by Islamic terrorists without fighting back.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS DAY. We fight back by showing them why Christianity is the best religion in the world. We exemplify the word of God. I said for anyone who knows Christ -- not you in other words.

Atheists often know Christ - many even believed in him once.

How can you be an atheist and know Christ? Sincere question.

Easily, as a pp said, many atheists were once Christians. So we know all about Christ. We were taught it, like any other Christian.

Plus, you don't even need to be a Christian to know Christ. He's famous. He has a religion named after him. People learn about him in school.

Knowing Christ and knowing about Christ is not the same thing. To know Christ is to have a relationship with Christ. Again, you cannot be an atheist and know Christ. I know about Donald Trump, but I don’t know Trump. I was taught about Obama in school, but I don’t know him.

You are still 100% incorrect. Many of us did "know" christ. I was raised in an evangelical community and once was an avid crusader for christ. I used to claim I had the feeling of Jesus in my heart.

I also grew up and learned the real truth. It is all BS.

Just like people who find God later in life, the zeal of the converts to atheism is particularly dogmatic and fervent.

It is better to have zeal and dogmatism for truth than millenia old fairytales.