ITT: church n shit

in church right now. being an atheist i feel like such an outsider. i know nobody notices (obviously) but i feel like i've been exiled from the party.

Observing the last guy who went up to talk and sing, and watching how he got people to clap, sing, and turn around in circles (literally told them to turn around 3 times when he counted to three and said that god would turn around our misfortunes) it's just surreal.

What is it about religion that makes it so influential?

is it the promise for a better life if you follow the rules and regulations of the Greater Good?

is it the communities that are formed and relationships that come with it?

is it just an idea that's passed from generation to generation?

what do you, believer or not, think keeps religion alive the MOST?

pic unrelated

>Observing the last guy who went up to talk and sing, and watching how he got people to clap, sing, and turn around in circles (literally told them to turn around 3 times when he counted to three and said that god would turn around our misfortunes)
That sounds like a Pentecostal cult, not a church

>what do you, believer or not, think keeps religion alive the MOST?
fear of death

Most people just follow the religion their parents practice and most are happy doing so because religion does offer comfort in the fact that you feel as if you are truly never alone, it gives you a code of ethics and conduct to live by and it is nice to believe that you won't just enter back into nonexistence when you die and you'll get to see your grandma again.

Christianity, I believe has gone through several changes in which it adapted to the want of the potential theist.

It first started at Judea, practiced by the poor, whose life was work and yield to a higher class. Christianity gave those men and women a sense of purpose, an enteral kingdom which a meaner and suffered peasant could rest forever in luxury.

These people were often treated as outcasts, by the administration.

However as time passed on, Christianity is now one of the most dominant religion in the world. With most of the western world living well off, they need a new attraction to keep the slowly outdated religion fresh. People are no longer put under a life of harsh labour and poverty.

So, I think in my experience churches often aim for a gathering, leaisurly meetings and in the extreme, the sins you have committed, and must repent for.

I guess now days it's kind an outlet for something you can express your heavy coscience to.

You went to a batshit insane evangelical church and think it's representative of all Christianity

Literally put into words my thoughts. i was a Christian (i think baptist, not entirely sure of all the branches) until i was a freshmen in high school and it was entirely because i thought that's what everybody did since it was how i was brought up.

My grandfather owns a church, and it's not in the richest part of the country so some of the people have lived there their entire lives, and you can tell they simply have never left the town and therefore never heard of atheism (obviously they had but i mean they haven't heard of anything other than living a life under God)

I just think all of these things are interesting. there's people who grow up absent of religion their whole life, and others who can't go a day without praying before bed, and each group thinks the other is wrong.

What is this conflict in America holding us back from advancing in?

It's not batshit crazy, it was mostly a one time thing. this guy has actually never preached here but some sundays they bring guests. I've been to PLENTY of churches, and in retrospect i see that maybe i came off saying that all christians are slaves to the pastor. not what i meant

i meant that even the idea of getting a church full of people (my church is huge so like ~500) is amazing, impressive, and i wanted to understand how he could influence so many people so quickly and so powerfully.

>i was a Christian
No, you weren't.

>I was a Christian
>I did it because I thought that's what I thought everyone else did.

Being a Christian is you having faith that Jesus is your savior and Son of God, not doing what everyone else does.

>conflict

It's the media and education system pushing that science and God are incompatible which then causes people to pick two sides: Pro-God or Pro-science.

If people stopped thinking they are incompatible then some of the conflict would go away.

>If people stopped thinking then the conflict would go away
Fixed that for you. The system Christianity has set up for itself has rendered compatibility impossible. You either take things literally or you are not a "proper" Christian, as these fellows demonstrate:

What you're actually advocating is we just bury our head's in the sand.

People that say this typically only have a surface understanding of select western religions considering the entire goal of Buddhism is to die forever.

None of those posts you linked have anything to do with Biblical literalism, though.
Not that a pseud like you cares, of course.

>What is it about religion that makes it so influential?
Religion, specifically Abrahamic faiths, are accessible to all and promise everything for a handful of prayers. It gives people purpose in life and a reason to not fear death.
>is it the promise for a better life if you follow the rules and regulations of the Greater Good?
>is it the communities that are formed and relationships that come with it?
It's both of those combined with everyone's personal reasons to follow a religion. Everyone wants to belong somewhere. An atheistic homeless man visited my church before he went back to alcoholism simply because he liked the friendly company.
>is it just an idea that's passed from generation to generation?
For me it was. I'm agnostic. For others, maybe not.
>what do you, believer or not, think keeps religion alive the MOST?
Fear. Death is scary to most people. The unknown can drive some insane. Religion relieves that fear, promising something after your time here on earth. Unlike previous cultures (like egyptian hell), there's a promise of a benevolent afterlife.

Religion has its place in this world. However its not for everyone. Believe what you want to believe and let orher believe. Dont be the asshole atheist who feels the need to disagree with everything religious folk say. It's not just a dumb concept to them, it's a way of life.

Chase girls while you're at church, OP. Most are friendly by default and make great girlfriends. Dont expet the religious ones to put out though. my first gf was a church girl. She was great albeit childish.

pic also unrelated

Biblical literalism is a new concept. Many people throughout time have understood that it's easy look at the Bible can clearly show you which parts are literal, parables, poetic, etc.

>inb4 cherry-picking

>tfw the seeds parable still resonates with me

it hyjacks our primate social instincts by mixing in magic and imagination

People love religion, specially Christian, due to the reasoning that's in the Bible. There a hole in each person that only God fills. That's why people drink, hook up, take risks, do drugs, etc. in order to fill this hole only to never fill it.

>imagination

You forgot the part where a majority of the characters and locations from the Bible are believed to have existed by scholars.

>It's the media and education system pushing that science and God are incompatible
fake news
you only ever hear this from creationists trying to push their agenda and drive their culture war wedge of confusion
real scientists make it a professional protocol not to deliberately address religious beliefs, since it's usually unproductive and irrelevant to whatever field they are working in

also pillars of fire, demons, resurrections, etc.

>in church right now. being an atheist i feel like such an outsider. i know nobody notices (obviously) but i feel like i've been exiled from the party.
If you're not old enough to decide not to go to church you shouldn't be posting here.

kek this

I stopped going to church when I was 16 and my dad realized I was taller and stronger than him and he couldnt drag me to church like he could when I was a kid. Felt good man. Used that time to smoke weed and watch movies alone in peace and quiet

No, especially with younger people, you'll find them thinking it's either the Big Bang or Creation, Physicists or Christians, Scientists or Bible-humpers.

I know many atheist "pro-science" people who consider anyone who has any interest in Christianity as an uneducated person who doesn't know biology, physics, history, or cosmology.

It's a highly ironic pre-assumption due to the history and relationship between these fields of study and Christianity. They didn't have any conflict, and the findings in the studies of both didn't have conflict, until people were told they should have conflict.

Even if you think "perhaps the Big Bang could be part of creation" you will be looked down upon by intellectual elitists who feel that the lack of a Creator is the only way creation could be achieved.

A majority of people on both sides probably think the Bible mentions the universe being created in 6 24-hour says which would then show how ignorant they are in the topic.

>resurrections

Using a supernatural event that can only be done throughout supernatural means in an attempt to discredit any existence of the supernatural.

Wew.

People who believe the earth was made in six modern days IS a fucking idiot. In fact, everyone who takes the old testament 100% literally is a fuckin moron. Even pastors/reverands/etc know that 6 days in God's time is not the same as ours.

And they would be unaware that the Ancient Hebrew word that is translate into "day" is Yom.

Yom is already translated into
>A unspecific amount of time
>years
>seasons
>eons

So yes, both young-creationists and atheists who try to discredit any idea of creation by saying it happened in 6 literal days would be a doofus.

Does God predate the universe?

Where did he get all that fucking light?
why would he create 9(?) planets with nothing on them? Failed attempts at earth? Cant destroy what's been made so he just left them there? Why are there a seemingly infinite amount of stars and galaxies if there's only one planet with life on it? Why not just stop at the one star?

I wanna know the universe secrets!

Do you personally believe that supernatural events are real?
To the degree that you confront people who are skeptical of the existence of supernatural events?

I mean you bring up the historicity of the bible as if it were an objecting to labeling the account as "imaginative", I want to nail down what you think is a reasonable position.

I feel that our views on "supernatural" will be different.

>Historical scholars agree on the life events, death, and birth of Jesus
>prophecies which detail the same events were made by numerous people centuries apart and they were all made hundreds of years before Jesus was even born
>calculate the odds that it was only coincidence.

Once you come to that realization then what someone describes as supernatural isn't exactly the same as what I would describe as supernatural. That fact that we are living creatures with a conscience while no other animals on Earth have a conscience is supernatural to me. The fact that we are alive and came from a beginning in which, at one point, nothing existed, is supernatural to me.

People tend to relate "supernatural" to only religion. To me, it's anything that is beyond Human understanding or thought.

Well then I think that our take on what constitutes a plausible event is different, I see nothing "super"natural about the evolution of an apex primate such as humans with our particular level of intellectual sophistication, I don't see anything magical about a religious text extolling the fulfillment of it's own prophecies. I think those are perfectly comprehensible and mundane (although important) facets of our natural world and human anthropology. I think you are arguing from incredulity, where the current situation seems amazing to you so you are insisting that only possible by supernatural and special means.

yom means both day and an unspecific time period, however, the text of genesis is very clear that the meaning of day is intended and that's why it's translated as day:
>3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
every "yom" has evening and morning specifically mentioned. what time period other than a day has evening and morning?

The conscience that humans have is something that science cannot explain or expect to ever appear in other animals. This would be something that is supernatural.

Having something come from a period in which there was nothing is in itself supernatural because by scientific means it shouldn't be plausible.

By scientific means I also am going by the limited knowledge that humans have in this universe. The scale that we hold everything to although we can't perceive most things unless we encounter or experience them.

>from a period in which there was nothing
>period
See this is where you're wrong. If you are referring to the "time" before the big bang, that is perfectly plausible. Here, I'll walk you through the process.

1. Causality applies to energy and matter in space-time.
2. "Before" the big bang, there wasn't a "time" when there was "nothing". As far as we can tell, there was NO SPACE and NO TIME.
3. Therefore, if there was no space and no time, all of space and time coming from "nothing" is entirely plausible, because there wouldn't have been any natural laws to dictate that it COULDN'T happen.

>The conscience that humans have is something that science cannot explain or expect to ever appear in other animals.
If that's your main objection then I encourage you to look into it, read up about cognizance from a scientific standpoint, find out exactly what the frontier of scientific theories say about it. Otherwise it's just a vague conclusion you reached to justify your own mysticism.

/ourgirl/

>posting on completely optional public broadcasting format
>LEAVE ME ALONE

>not making her twitter private
attention whores at their finest

I'm not using it to justify that it's not a coincidence for multiple people to make over 40 correct prophecies.

I'm using it as an example of a supernatural event (anything that shouldn't be possible by human standards).

You're also wrong about assuming that anything that doesn't conform to human standards is automatically miraculous. Humans are fallible, and reality doesn't care about our "standards". The best we can do is try to figure it out.

We're never gonna be rid of the New Atheists' influence, are we?

Recording a holy book isn't a miracle, it's a pretty common part of pretty much every civilization.

That's such a fucking handwave though and I see it in every one of these threads. I don't think saying specifically the Christian God did it doesn't make assumptions, but to say we existed despite the laws of physics and current science writing itself into a corner and logically concluding that we can't exist by natural means is dumb.

>But the Supervoid defies causality and the laws of physics and could make something from nothing!
Then how is it not God?
>Because the horseshit I just tried to pass off as science proves there isn't a god!
Fuck off. The same logic that posits the universe came into being supernaturally but secularly shouldn't be given some sort of credence just because atheists don't want to admit their best theory comes down to something beyond time and space but totally scientific guys.