Dont confuse Christianity with religion

[Nibble]

It's interesting that Rupert Sheldrake, author of The Science Delusion (the unofficial reply to The God Delusion) said he would like to have a healthy debate over the material in both books and has invited Richard Dawkins many times.

Richard Dawkins refuses to meet him and actually is quoted as saying he will never even read his book. Now that's a really open mind!

I didn't know that. I can'tsay I'm a huge fan of Dawkins, my main point was that I find it faintly ridiculous that any Christian can critisise anyone's interpretation/expertise/experience of religion/God. But this is an age old debate and I'm a bit tired of it. I don't believe in God. I really have nothing else to add to that.

 

[One Love]

I didn't know that. I can'tsay I'm a huge fan of Dawkins, my main point was that I find it faintly ridiculous that any Christian can critisise anyone's interpretation/expertise/experience of religion/God. But this is an age old debate and I'm a bit tired of it. I don't believe in God. I really have nothing else to add to that.

I know the feeling. Having got drawn into debate on here many times in the past I've got fed up with it.

Then you go and post "God doesn't exist" and it was like a red flag to a bull.

 

[HovaGirl]

So the fact that I have explained that I am 'in love' with my wife means that I have explained the concept of sex to them?

I have explained that they are in love. I have explained that they are not allowed to get married and all without mentioning anything to do with sex or many of the other things about being in a relationship that they are too young to understand.

So no you are wrong, I don't have to do anything.

I would still appreciate an apology for insinuating that I have abused my children by discussing these things with them.

If you feel insulted, then I apologise, but that was certainly not my intent.

 

[El Presidente]

Then you go and post "God doesn't exist" and it was like a red flag to a bull.

Even Dawkins does not go that far. He just points out that there is zero evidence to support the existence of God.

 

[T soprano]

See this is how Wars break out over religion now it's happening on NSC war breaking out over religious beliefs
( keep it up it's fun reading )

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I didn't know that. I can'tsay I'm a huge fan of Dawkins, my main point was that I find it faintly ridiculous that any Christian can critisise anyone's interpretation/expertise/experience of religion/God. But this is an age old debate and I'm a bit tired of it. I don't believe in God. I really have nothing else to add to that.

The main thing that rankles with me about Richard Dawkins is his seeming total intolerance of any view which goes against his own on this. Does that make him a fundamentalist? And fundamentalism has the possibility of being dangerous wherever it is.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Even Dawkins does not go that far. He just points out that there is zero evidence to support the existence of God.

Very good point. A scientist has no reason to proclaim something doesn't exist when there is no evidence to support it does.

 

[Bhafcman]

There is no such thing as "sin". Some actions are good, some actions are bad, but "sin" is an imaginary concept used as a scare-tactic by the religious.

So I don't need to accept a saviour into my life, eat his body and drink his blood and pray to him on how much I love him In all seriousness though, I want a Christian to tell me what sin is and how it came about being....

 

[Bold Seagull]

The main thing that rankles with me about Richard Dawkins is his seeming total intolerance of any view which goes against his own on this. Does that make him a fundamentalist? And fundamentalism has the possibility of being dangerous wherever it is.

That is not strictly true, what rankles with him is anyone who believes in God.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

That is not strictly true, what rankles with him is anyone who believes in God.

I hear whaat you say, but does that not just make it targeted intolerance, and possibly as bad as those who believe strongly that other people believe in the wrong God. I guess at least with mr Dawkins he is unlikely to get violent about it - and that is not meant to be an anti Muslim dig, because there are fundamentalists across just about all faiths.

 

[HovaGirl]

HovaGirl is quite old fashioned and thankfuly her views do not reflect those of a society that is changing for teh better. Of course it's healthy to explain to your child, at the right time that two men/women can love each other. It's not Hovagirls fault, just an older generation combined with a heightened ignorance. Child abuse, ha! What rot!

I'm not so sure I'm all that old-fashioned! It is currently fashionable (especially here in Brighton) to think that same-sex love is commonplace, and it is currently fashionable to be gay, especially among the young who do love to experiment during those years when one's sexuality is still developing. (We are all, intrinsically, bisexual, though psychologists debate this.) Those fashions could change, just as other fashions do. What will not change or revert, thankfully, is society's attitude to homosexuality which, while I was a young teenager, was actually still a crime. In Scotland, that law changed as late as 1980 so times and attitudes have changed a great deal. (I just wonder how far we should involve little children in this process.)

 

[One Love]

I want a Christian to tell me what sin is and how it came about being....

That's pretty deep stuff. To be fair I believe there is less than a handful of people alive who could tell you that one and they probably wouldn't be a Christian.

 

[Bhafcman]

That's pretty deep stuff. To be fair I believe there is less than a handful of people alive who could tell you that one and they probably wouldn't be a Christian.

But does their religious book (which is written by their God himself) not say how sin came about being?

 

[HovaGirl]

Good grief - here we go again !

I have three children - 11, 9 and 6 - the 11 year old understands about where babies come from and about sex, the 9 year old has an idea but not the in's and out's of sex ( pardon the pun ! ) and the 6 year old understands about boyfriends and girlfriends.

ALL of them understand that boys can have girlfriends and boyfriends and the same for girls. It hasn't effected them in a negative way at all as we've ensured they see same sex relationships as normal as heterosexual relationships. It's made them accepting of this and hopefully, once the older bigoted generation die off, it will make the city a nicer place to live for everyone.

We're not bigoted. We were brought up under a different kind of society when the law was not so enlightened as it is now. In my parents' generation it was even more unenlightened than my own, and it was very difficult for my mother-in-law to discover, in her 70s, that her adult son (married with two children) was actually gay. But she has accepted it and so have we all.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

So I don't need to accept a saviour into my life, eat his body and drink his blood and pray to him on how much I love him In all seriousness though, I want a Christian to tell me what sin is and how it came about being....

I can't say i am an expert on sin - it does not occupy my thoughts a great deal.

But the original sin was Adam and Eve eating the apple which they were told not to eat. I am not a creationist, so accept that this is - wait for it - a fairy tale.

But for me, and I think many others, sin is just about not being - or rather behaving - perfectly. So if you do something you shouldn't have done, or don't do something you should have done, then that is a sin. I don't think that necessarily means you have sinned if you do 35mph in a 30mph limit, but it might if the roads were icy, it was foggy and so it became dangerous to do 35mph and you were risking killing someone, if you get my drift.

But as i said, I am not an expert, different christians will have different ideas of what constitutes a sin, and I am just a wishy-washy liberal, which in itself is probably a sin.

 

[Bhafcman]

I can't say i am an expert on sin - it does not occupy my thoughts a great deal.

But the original sin was Adam and Eve eating the apple which they were told not to eat. I am not a creationist, so accept that this is - wait for it - a fairy tale.

But for me, and I think many others, sin is just about not being - or rather behaving - perfectly. So if you do something you shouldn't have done, or don't do something you should have done, then that is a sin. I don't think that necessarily means you have sinned if you do 35mph in a 30mph limit, but it might if the roads were icy, it was foggy and so it became dangerous to do 35mph and you were risking killing someone, if you get my drift.

But as i said, I am not an expert, different christians will have different ideas of what constitutes a sin, and I am just a wishy-washy liberal, which in itself is probably a sin.

Thank you, that's an interesting point and one that makes a lot of sense. I do have a problem with that though in that we therefore would have been created sinful and being sinful is something that is within our nature so I don't see how God dying redeems us from that sin, just saying like.

 

[HovaGirl]

As one of the Older supposedly bigoted generation, I suspect that we think the City or Borough of Brighton and Hove was a much nicer place to live before say, the University was built, as a purely random date. It seems to have gone downhill since then, from my point of view. But then I'm probably a bigot simply because of my age.

Do you mean Sussex University? In my student days, it was an exciting, new, modern place to go, for concerts and whatnot. But I agree, since it appeared, the whole nature of Brighton changed from a friendly large town with a bubbly personality into a cesspit.

 

[HovaGirl]

God doesn't exist.

It depends what you think God could be. As a religious concept, perhaps God doesn't exist. As a spiritual concept, it's debatable.

 

[Bold Seagull]

I hear whaat you say, but does that not just make it targeted intolerance, and possibly as bad as those who believe strongly that other people believe in the wrong God. I guess at least with mr Dawkins he is unlikely to get violent about it - and that is not meant to be an anti Muslim dig, because there are fundamentalists across just about all faiths.

I do get your point. As an atheist, and as a friend of an atheist who puts Dawkins on a bit of a pedestal, I have on numerous occasions commented on his almost cult, or religious like following. There is an inflexibility to his thinking that I find difficult to accept, even though many of his concepts I agree with. He just doesn't need to be so religious about it!

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

We're not bigoted. We were brought up under a different kind of society when the law was not so enlightened as it is now. In my parents' generation it was even more unenlightened than my own, and it was very difficult for my mother-in-law to discover, in her 70s, that her adult son (married with two children) was actually gay. But she has accepted it and so have we all.

What a very sensible post. My sentiments entirely. I have a close family member (daughter) who is gay. Even though I consider myself to be very open-minded and tolerant about such things, it still made me feel a bit strange when she told, even though I knew it was going to happen. I am 59. I have an Uncle aged 79, with whom I have spoken about this - not because I was troubled about it - and he and his wife are totally accepting of it, but because they are from an earlier generation found it harder again. it is not about being bigoted or not, it is about having been brought up in an age when "it" was wrong - indeed illegal

Now some purist will point out that the illegal bit was just certain sexual acts, but you know what I mean. We have a gay male couple as neighbours, and have had for about 25 years. We couldn't have better neighbours.