Most Christians have an Infantile view of god / religion

[Zhavric]

There was an interesting article in Salon.com recently. It was an interview with an author who joined a convent at 17 and then left 7 years later as an atheist... only to find religion later on in life. I don't agree with about half of what she says, but the other half is fascinating. A few blurbs...

... or not. My computer is having issues.

The part of her article that I wanted to focus on was the philosophers of what she calls the Axial age. Confuscious, Socrates, and others who all believed in the golden rule: treat others as you would be treated. No. It's not unique to Christianity. She also goes on to state that most fundamentalist Christians have an infantile view of god. God is not a person the way santa clause is a person and if you read the teachings of the mythic Christ you'll see that his actions aren't so different from Buddha or other similar axial age individuals.The big idea isn't about getting into heaven, but getting away from ego to experience somethinig greater.

I don't believe there is anything greater to experience, but I like a lot of her ideas... namely that the Christian view of god as a person-thing that feeds / justifies the ego is infantile.

Discuss.

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: Zhavric There was an interesting article in Salon.com recently. It was an interview with an author who joined a convent at 17 and then left 7 years later as an atheist... only to find religion later on in life. I don't agree with about half of what she says, but the other half is fascinating. A few blurbs... ... or not. My computer is having issues. The part of her article that I wanted to focus on was the philosophers of what she calls the Axial age. Confuscious, Socrates, and others who all believed in the golden rule: treat others as you would be treated. No. It's not unique to Christianity. She also goes on to state that most fundamentalist Christians have an infantile view of god. God is not a person the way santa clause is a person and if you read the teachings of the mythic Christ you'll see that his actions aren't so different from Buddha or other similar axial age individuals.The big idea isn't about getting into heaven, but getting away from ego to experience somethinig greater. I don't believe there is anything greater to experience, but I like a lot of her ideas... namely that the Christian view of god as a person-thing that feeds/justifies the ego is infantile. Discuss.

Actually yes the command that you treat others as you would have them treat you IS entirely a Bible-based command, for everything else is to the glorification of humans and thus the selfish individual. That is what it always comes down to when some "new" philosophy or way of life comes along purporting to be "different": it is Satan come yet again in "sheep's clothing". And there is not any "mythic Christ". The Messiah of the Bible is real in everything He said/did in the Gospels and the entirety of the Word of God, and as such He needs no one's approval. "Buddha" is entirely different from that, because as I said above, it is all about humanism and trying to find one's own way to what can be had only by reaching Father God through the Son.

The only thing infantile is for God-haters to accuse us saints of something that is entirely characteristic of the other belief sets and truth claims that dominate the world via Satan's deception. And that, my friend, is the height of egoism.

[Zhavric]

It always amazes me how you preacher types will talk big in threads like this but never even SHOW UP to threads where the basis of your faith is challenged.

Did you even bother to read the article?

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: Zhavric It always amazes me how you preacher types will talk big in threads like this but never even SHOW UP to threads where the basis of your faith is challenged. Did you even bother to read the article?

What "preacher types"? And no I did not follow your link; I trust you to have meant what you asked. Oh...and I am not averse to addressing any and all supposed "challenges" to my faith in the proven God.

[Jack]

God-haters

While this may be your impression of Zhavric's attitude toward the christian religion, I hope you also realize that for many of us your god simply does not exist. We don't hate the object you venerate, we don't believe in it's reality.

the proven God

A good example of the hyperbole inherent in christianity. God, or rather the concept of god, has never been proven. In fact, the faith that is the foundation of many religions requires no proof, indeed it celebrates the lack of physical evidence.

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: Isherwood While this may be your impression of Zhavric's attitude toward the christian religion, I hope you also realize that for many of us your god simply does not exist. We don't hate the object you venerate, we don't believe in it's reality.

I do not "venerate" any "object". To the contrary, God is more real than you or I. (No apostrophe in "its".)

A good example of the hyperbole inherent in christianity. God, or rather the concept of god, has never been proven. In fact, the faith that is the foundation of many religions requires no proof, indeed it celebrates the lack of physical evidence.

We are not discussing "religion" so your latter comment is out of place here. But the fact is Jesus's life on earth is documented, as is His working of miracles through saints like me today. So keep on hating Messiah, but that is not going to change the fact that He is who He is. Meanwhile you are just a created being with a grapefruit-sized brain crippled by deception and stubbornness and unable to "reason out" these questions that are far beyond the reach of human minds stuck in the physical realm. How sad.

[Rave7pt0]

Z, I totally agree with that woman. When I start disucussions with atheists, 99% of the time I have to begin by saying that I'm not one of "those" theists -- I have to explain to them that the average theist view is extremely infantile and simplistic.

Take Vern here, for example. With nothing but culture and antiquated tradition to anchor his views, he believes he represents some kind of higher power, under whose watchful gaze he spews hate, and unfounded rhetoric. In between judgemental, myopic diatribes, he claims himself to be a saint. And for questioning his iron grip on an infinite God, I will be accused by him of being duped by Satan into believing all this "new age, pagan" clap trap.

Clearly ironic, but also quite infantile. It's not really an honest discussion most of the time... just psychological defense mechanisms on both sides of the debate.

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: Rave7pt0 Z, I totally agree with that woman. When I start disucussions with atheists, 99% of the time I have to begin by saying that I'm not one of "those" theists -- I have to explain to them that the average theist view is extremely infantile and simplistic. Take Vern here, for example. With nothing but culture and antiquated tradition to anchor his views, he believes he represents some kind of higher power, under whose watchful gaze he spews hate, and unfounded rhetoric. In between judgemental, myopic diatribes, he claims himself to be a saint. And for questioning his iron grip on an infinite God, I will be accused by him of being duped by Satan into believing all this "new age, pagan" clap trap. Clearly ironic, but also quite infantile. It's not really an honest discussion most of the time... just psychological defense mechanisms on both sides of the debate.

Actually I believe only what the Word of God tells us, with no help at all from any "tradition". Thanks for trying.

[phoenix_fire]

I would be satisfied merely if those who claimed to be Christian would crack a Bible every once in a while. Many, many people have not read it since Sunday School when they were children. You would be surprised (or maybe not) how many people think that "God helps those who help themselves" is in the Bible.

[PatrickHenry]

Zhavric, your "sophisticated" view of God has led you into a blind alley. I have hope for an eternal future. You have to face the end of your existence.

God is a person, since He made persons. His personality is the foundational one on which all functional personalities are modeled.

Anyway, the Bible has some choice words for us regarding your type. Romans 1:22

Professing to be wise, they became fools

I am sure in your sophistication, you think I am a fool. That doesn't bother me. For the sake of the eternal future I anticipate, the scorn of wise fools is no deterrent. But many have turned to God after disbelieving for a lifetime. There is still hope for you while you breathe...

[Zhavric]

Since Vern is apparently still chatting up Earnest, I took the liberty of posting some bits of the article he may find enlightening:

SALON: You say one of the common messages in all these religions was what we now call the Golden Rule. And Confucius was probably the first person who came up with this idea.

All these sages, with the exception of the Greeks, posited a counter-ideology to the violence of their time. The safest way to get rid of egotism was by means of compassion. The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. His disciples asked him, "What is the single thread that runs through all your teaching and pulls it all together?" And Confucius said, "Look into your own heart. Discover what it is that gives you pain. And then refuse to inflict that pain on anybody else." His disciples also asked, "Master, which one of your teachings can we put into practice every day?" And Confucius said, "Do not do to others as you would not have them do to you." The Buddha had his version of the Golden Rule. Jesus taught it much later. And Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said the Golden Rule was the essence of Judaism.

...

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm, a reality, that could not be defined in words. Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.

...

The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God.

...

SALON: You're saying these ancient sages really didn't care about big metaphysical systems. They didn't care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can't prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you're faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it's belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

Unreligious? Like talk about a personal God?

Yes, people very often talk about him as a kind of acquaintance, whom they can second-guess. People will say God loves that, God wills that, and God despises the other. And very often, the opinions of the deity are made to coincide exactly with those of the speaker.

Yet we certainly see a personal God in various sacred texts. People aren't just making that up.

No, but the great theologians in Judaism, Christianity and Islam say you begin with the idea of a god who is personal. But God transcends personality as God transcends every other human characteristic, such as gender. If we get stuck there, this is very immature. Very often people hear about God at about the same time as they're learning about Santa Claus. And their ideas about Santa Claus mature and change in time, but their idea of God remains infantile.

What about the supernatural, though? Do you need any sense of the miraculous or of things that cannot be explained by science?

I think religions hold us in an attitude of awe and wonder. People such as the Buddha thought miracles were rather vulgar -- you know, displays of power and ego. If you look at the healing miracles attributed to Jesus, they generally had some kind of symbolic aspect about healing the soul rather than showing off a supernatural power. Western people think the supernatural is the essence of religion, but that's rather like the idea of an external god. That's a minority view worldwide. I really get so distressed on behalf of Buddhists and Confucians and Hindus to have a few Western philosophers loftily dismissing their religion as not religious because it doesn't conform to Western norms. It seems the height of parochialism.

[PatrickHenry]

Some good stuff there, Zhavric. And I would agree that many of my friends (but not me, of course ) have a poorly developed perspective of God as a sort of super Santa Claus.

I like this:

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm, a reality, that could not be defined in words.

The unexplainable within ourselves, transformations of basic personality patterns under some spiritual influence, intimate to us that we aren't able to grasp fully our situation in the universe. Who are we, really?

This is good, too:

The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God.

Although I disagree about it being better to say God doesn't exist, simply because our finite minds can't encompass his boundless nature. But the real temptation for theists is to make God too small, and to attempt to put Him in a box and say what He can or can't do. And I think that is the thrust of that statement...

And this:

Jesus... went around doing good and being compassionate.

Is where Christians need to go. James 2:14-17

Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup--where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?

[phoenix_fire]

What translation is that? The Message?

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: phoenix_fire What translation is that? The Message?

Yes. Do you have e-sword? Powerful software for free. Not sure if The Message is still available as a module anymore...

[phoenix_fire]

No, but Bible Gateway is pretty good. It's the one I usually use for citing references online.

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: PatrickHenry Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm--a reality--that could not be defined in words.

You conveniently sidestep the reality that christianity is not "religion".

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Saint Vern You conveniently sidestep the reality that christianity is not "religion".

Semantics...

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: PatrickHenry Semantics...

Not quite, because you cannot load Bible christianity in with a heap of junk that you call "religion", and then dismiss my objection as mere "semantics". What I earlier responded is the reality of the matter, and that you either fail or refuse to acknowledge this inspires less than the greatest confidence in your competence on such issues.

[PatrickHenry]

You may think me incompetent. Hell, probably a lots of folks here do. But the statement that "christianity is not a religion" is playing word games...

[Saint Vern]

Quote by: PatrickHenry You may think me incompetent. Hell, probably a lots of folks here do. But the statement that "christianity is not a religion" is playing word games...

How so? I was careful to distinguish betwixt what purports to be "christianity" in the big "churches" and what actually IS christianity: Bible-believing saints not crippled by the presence of human-crafted evils such as traditions and "catechisms", to say nothing of non-Bible-authorized leaderships (popes, for example). So no it really is not a matter of word games, and that you reduce it to such tends to confirm that you do not know enough about the matter to criticize. I mean this in the friendliest way.

:-)