Professing to be Christian without believing in God

[JoeMorgue]

Point of order.

"Christian" is a self applied label.

Self applied labels are functionally useless.

 

[smartcooky]

Interesting recent poll results in the UK. Looks like God has had his chips. Not before time.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/02/12/third-british-adults-dont-believe-higher-power/

"Well, That About Wraps it up for God"
- Oolon Colluphid: date unknown

 

[catsmate]

You think it was tough to come to a consensus on defining Athiest/Thiest - Good luck finding a consensus on what constitutes being a Christian.

Isn't believing in the reality of Jesus Christ a prerequisite?

 

[Tony99]

Point of order.

"Christian" is a self applied label.

Self applied labels are functionally useless.

Exactly.

I'm happy to call myself a Christian if it furthers my evil atheist goals.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Indeed. And we pretty much perpetually have at any given time going on in the cutural psyche a dozen or so random debates that the end of the day their root cause really does boil down to nothing more than a sorta looped back in on itself "Me Too I Wanna Be in the Club / One True Scotsman" death spiral and the sum total of it all is we have dozens of terms now that are so wildly and variably self applied by people as to be meaningless.

And most religious, sociological, and cultural terms are getting there if they aren't already.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Indeed. And we pretty much perpetually have at any given time going on in the cutural psyche a dozen or so random debates that the end of the day their root cause really does boil down to nothing more than a sorta looped back in on itself "Me Too I Wanna Be in the Club / One True Scotsman" death spiral and the sum total of it all is we have dozens of terms now that are so wildly and variably self applied by people as to be meaningless.

And most religious, sociological, and cultural terms are getting there if they aren't already.

Does that also apply in some sense to words like "atheist", "skeptic", "logical", "rational", "I understand science" and so on?
Are we also subject to "Me Too I Wanna Be in the Club / One True Scotsman" and the cultural psyche as a sort of sub-culture with its own psyche?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

The statistics suggest that a lot more people say they are Christian than actually are Christian. I didn't have this material at hand when I started the thread about the usefulness of the terms theism and atheism. That thread is now useless. Perhaps this can be discussed here without falling into meaningless semantics.

Daniel Dennett - How To Tell Youre An Atheist (Full)
This was talk was quite interesting because it suggested that far less of the population in the UK are actually religious than say that they are religious. Church attendance in the UK is only about 6% with the average attendee being 51 years old. Yet, 54% claim to be Christian.

...

In the video mark 18:46 - 19:10 ish. "Better ways to leave better lives" - so what are those better ways?
Beyond all the marks and labels we put on each other, what are better lives?

ETA: He actually answered in several ways, well sort off and one of them was at the end: 43:38 - 44:34. Watch it.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

Christians are rather big on Christ and hardly mention god at all really if you go to church. Some might refer to Christ as God but really God has been more or less relegated to background duties in the Christain faith. The church I was going to before I got kick out believed that Christ predated all religions and planned everything himself from the beginning.

 

[Mojo]

Many Brits identify with a particular church simply because they were born into it...

And there is an established church, so "Church of England" tends to be a sort of default position.

 

[Leumas]

Christians are rather big on Christ and hardly mention god at all really if you go to church. Some might refer to Christ as God but really God has been more or less relegated to background duties in the Christain faith. The church I was going to before I got kick out believed that Christ predated all religions and planned everything himself from the beginning.

They are right.... have a look at this post and this post for evidence.

I have always wondered how can a four pointed symbol with a four-positioned gesture to accompany it be the sign of a trinity.

Then I realized the mystery hidden behind the Trinity.

I realized that there is a secret that only the highest echelons of the initiated in the mystery can ever appreciate and be allowed to know.

It is not a Trinity.... it is a Quaternity... it is not The Father the Son and the Holy Casper... It is The Father The Son the Holy Spook and.... and... The Luminescent One (Lucifer) The all powerful.

That also shows that the Pharisees were right all along.

Matthew 12:22-24

12:22 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.
12:23 And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?
12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.​

The mystery of the Quaternity is truly fabulous. Rest assured that Satan and the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are all the SAME but DIFFERENT and despite being 4 they are actually one. Four in One and One in Four joined but separate.

Only The Devil would think of impregnating his mother to give birth to himself as a bastard son of a god who was really himself pretending to be his own son 30 years after having committed adultery with his own mother and 9 month later slithered out of her insides and still not VANISH IN A PUFF OF LOGIC.

 

[jhunter1163]

I would guess that it is more common than any of us would believe.

*raises hand* I've been going to church for 13 years, even though I'm an atheist, because Mrs. JHunter1163 is a cradle Catholic and it would make her very unhappy indeed to learn of my atheism.

 

[xterra]

Finally, a chance to yuse one of my favorite quotes:

In a novel by Lee Child (pseudonym of Jim Grant) Jack Reacher, the protagonist, in talking to a fanatic Christian who accuses him of being an atheist, says,

"We're all atheists. You don't believe in Zeus or Thor or Neptune or Augustus Caesar or Mars or Venus or Sun Ra. You reject a thousand gods. Why should it bother you if someone else rejects a thousand and one?"

 

[Minoosh]

Finally, a chance to yuse one of my favorite quotes:

OMG, I love Jack Reacher!!!

SPOILERS ahead!!!

One must admit: He comes close to having superpowers, without technically being required to exhibit superpowers. He can take a .38 round to the head, be blown up by a Lebanese car bomb, assassinate generals he deems unfit and disappear like smoke no one can catch up with. Yet he is mortal. One of these days he will die, but I hope Lee Child takes his time about it ...

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I have posted this in similar threads but it amuses me to post it again.

My mother, born 1913 in England, had a male cousin she was quite close to. One day, somewhere around 1933 I would guess, he told her intended to become a Church of England minister. She replied, "But you don't believe all that nonsense do you?" "No, of course not," he said and went on to explain that the job seemed rather easy as you only had to work one day a week and he was sure he could handle it.

She did not keep in touch with him in her later years but the cousin did become a minister and the last report I heard of him (1960ish) was that he had written an opera that had been performed in the local cathedral.

I tend to think there have been huge numbers of rational, non-believing folks down through the centuries who have kept up the pretense.

 

[tsig]

I have posted this in similar threads but it amuses me to post it again.

My mother, born 1913 in England, had a male cousin she was quite close to. One day, somewhere around 1933 I would guess, he told her intended to become a Church of England minister. She replied, "But you don't believe all that nonsense do you?" "No, of course not," he said and went on to explain that the job seemed rather easy as you only had to work one day a week and he was sure he could handle it.

She did not keep in touch with him in her later years but the cousin did become a minister and the last report I heard of him (1960ish) was that he had written an opera that had been performed in the local cathedral.

I tend to think there have been huge numbers of rational, non-believing folks down through the centuries who have kept up the pretense.

Maybe there's a monstrous regiment of atheists who have kept the church going.

 

[Cainkane1]

The statistics suggest that a lot more people say they are Christian than actually are Christian. I didn't have this material at hand when I started the thread about the usefulness of the terms theism and atheism. That thread is now useless. Perhaps this can be discussed here without falling into meaningless semantics.

Daniel Dennett - How To Tell Youre An Atheist (Full)

This was talk was quite interesting because it suggested that far less of the population in the UK are actually religious than say that they are religious. Church attendance in the UK is only about 6% with the average attendee being 51 years old. Yet, 54% claim to be Christian.

With this in mind, I decided to check on figures for the US. I wanted to do this because evangelical conservatives tend to claim that something like 90% of the world is religious. Gallup polls suggest that 40% of the population regularly attend church. If this were true then maybe most Americans would be religious. But I found another study from some people who acutally care about the practice of religion rather than public relations:

An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America

The conclusion in this article matches Dennett's talk:

What Hadaway and Marler, along with Mark Chaves, author of the “National Congregations Study,” discovered was at play is what researchers call “the halo effect” — the difference between what people tell pollsters and what people actually do. Americans tend to over-report socially desirable behavior like voting and attending church and under-report socially undesirable behavior like drinking.

Regular church attendance in the US is less than 20%. It is projected to be down to 15.4% in 2020 and further down to 11.7% by 2050.

What good is a term like "atheist" if people who have no belief in God don't admit to being atheist? How accurate is professing to be Christian if you don't actually believe in God? Dennett's talk included actual ministers who don't believe in God. The terms theist and atheist are probably far less useful and accurate than they appear to be outside of esoteric philosophical discussions.

Way back in the 60's there was a movement called the "Christian atheists" they claimed not to believe in god or Jesus but that they lived a fulfilling Christian like life. I haven't heard much about it in the last few decades.

 

[tsig]

Way back in the 60's there was a movement called the "Christian atheists" they claimed not to believe in god or Jesus but that they lived a fulfilling Christian like life. I haven't heard much about it in the last few decades.

Probably went the way of the Palestine? Suicide Squad.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

LEUMAS. I think you are playing "what shape is it?" The first recorded cross looked like a capital T, lets count points on various crosses, I got 4,8,or 12 depending on the cross. Maybe those are important numbers too. Also, who calls Lucifer the "Illumius and all powerful?" Damn maybe I should read the bible but I'm afraid to plus I don't have time. Hmm, you used the word Satan, Lucifer, and Beezelbuddy interchangeably to prove your point. Was this some kind of dream you were having

 

[Leumas]

LEUMAS. I think you are playing "what shape is it?" The first recorded cross looked like a capital T, lets count points on various crosses, I got 4,8,or 12 depending on the cross. Maybe those are important numbers too.
...

No... the original cross symbol was the Chi-Rho (χρ) notice the X.

[imgw=250]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Double_Centenionalis_Magnentius-XR-s4017.jpg[/imgw]

Have a look at these articles

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_Omega
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_symbolism#Early_Christian_symbols
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross#Exclusion

...
Also, who calls Lucifer the "Illumius and all powerful?" Damn maybe I should read the bible but I'm afraid to plus I don't have time. Hmm, you used the word Satan, Lucifer, and Beezelbuddy interchangeably to prove your point. Was this some kind of dream you were having

Regarding the highlighted bit have a look at this post.

It is not the Illumius... it is the Luminescent...
It is not Beezelbuddy ... it is BeelzeBob... oops I meant Beelzebub

Luminescent

Capable of, suitable for, or exhibiting luminescence.​

Luminescence

1. The emission of light that does not derive energy from the temperature of the emitting body, as in phosphorescence, fluorescence, and bioluminescence. Luminescence is caused by chemical, biochemical, or crystallographic changes, the motions of subatomic particles, or radiation-induced excitation of an atomic system.

2. The light so emitted.​

In other words another way to say Lucifer.

Isiah 14:12

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!​

Revelation 12:9

12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.​

Lucifer

1. Bible An angelic being who was cast from heaven as punishment for his rebellious pride. Lucifer is traditionally identified with Satan.

2. The planet Venus in its appearance as the morning star. Also called Phosphorus.
from Latin Lūcifer, from lūcifer, light-bringer​

Beelzebub

1. The Devil; Satan.
2. One of the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost. Beelzebub was next to Satan in power.
3. An evil spirit; a demon.​

 

[barehl]

Lucifer

1. Bible An angelic being who was cast from heaven as punishment for his rebellious pride. Lucifer is traditionally identified with Satan.

2. The planet Venus in its appearance as the morning star. Also called Phosphorus.

from Latin Lūcifer, from lūcifer, light-bringer
​

Lucifer as a Latin name clearly does not belong in a Hebrew manuscript. The original Hebrew used the name, Helal, son of Shahar, for a Babylonian king. This is translated as "Day star, son of the Dawn (which would be Venus). Unfortunately, St. Jerome mistranslated the name in the fourth century as Lucifer and that has not been corrected.

Beelzebub

1. The Devil; Satan.
2. One of the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost. Beelzebub was next to Satan in power.
3. An evil spirit; a demon.​

This was probably originally Baal zbl or Lord Prince which would be consistent with titles for Baal in the Ugarit Tablets. This was apparently altered to zebub meaning fly. The Baal mythology is much like that of Egyptian or Sumerian gods.