Christianity. In the context of whether belief is actually necessary. Or not.

I agree with thatbags The same laws should always apply no matter what the religion or belief.

I am non-religious (probably atheist) but I am reduced to tears seeing DGC performing their school Nativity at Christmas.

gillybob

Please do not assume lilygran that those who are agnostic (or atheist) have not looked into what they are choosing not to subscribe to. Many of us have.

Don't anyone diss "gentle Jesus".

@granjua "As a child, I was led to believe that Jesus had been crucified- and that he was the only person in the world to have suffered that fate- when in fact (well there were 2 others on the day-"

The 'robbers' are an unlikely addition to the story - crucifixion was not a sentence for theft. In fact thousands of people were crucified - and Pilate was such a merciless cruel man that the Romans called him back to Rome and took away his givernorship. So coming to cosy agreements with the locals was unlikely!

@alex57currie - oh, yes - it sounds like Lennie now I think of it! Thank you...

@Mishap - You are right about that - for some reason atheists seem to know a good deal more about religion than the adherents of said religion!

Everyone knows crucifixion was common in those days. Don't see why there shouldn't have been two thieves crucified at the same time. You say yourself PP was exceptionally cruel. (to feetlebaum)

who is everyone jingl- maybe most adults now- but certainly not then, when I was a child. And I am pretty sure that my GCs at their CofE school are not told Jesus was cruxified just like lots of other people were then. Honest.

Anyone seen 'Spartacus'? Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons and a cast of thousands? It ends badly with hundreds of rebels crucified along the Appian Way. Cicero says it happened so it must be so! I don't think RE lessons for littlies stress crucifixion but it's usually there. You have to have Good Friday for Easter to happen. And I don't think anyone would deliberately say that only Jesus was executed in that way. It was a common punishment for dissidents.

Sweeping statement, feetle? Perhaps people of faith don't feel like debating with someone who is so dismissive of religion?

Not believing is not the saMe as dismissive - I think the agnostics and atheists on this site are extremely respectful of others' beliefs.

Indeed they have Mishap- very controlled imho.

granjura and mishap, you may both have hit on a fundamental and irreconcilable difference: you see respectful and I see dismissive. The whole 'I only have a go at the religion, not the people who believe' is nonsense on stilts. The faith is the people. Telling me my religion is nonsense is telling me I believe in nonsense. Pretty dismissive?

@Lilygran - Do you mean what I said about atheists etc knowing more about religions? All I can say is that in surveys it has been shown that the 'non-religious' score higher on, say, Bible-knowledge, than do the Christian believers.

Moving on... I also say that I respect the people, but not their beliefs.
'The faith is the people' - what does that mean? It's a slogan, no more.
I would rather say that the faith is the abdication of reason.

Sadly Lilygran, religious people are too often dismissive of the way I feel and how I got there.

I taught in UK schools for over 30 years- and my daughters went to UK schools. The RE teachers were all evangelical Christians, bar a couple- and although they were happy to teach about world religions- they knew just how to emphasize the superiority of the Christian faith. What really upset me, with all of them, bar 1, is that they were totally dismissive of himanism/agnosticism or atheism- which they generally described as a moral vacuum- which as said before, is on the contrary, nothing of the sort.

A large part of my family are Christians of one or other denomination- but many are Muslims too. So I try not to be dismissive on anybody- but I wish they'd extend the same courtesy to me, DH and family.

I am not having a go at your religion Lilygran but expressing my OWN doubts - that really is not having a go or being dismissive. I have never said it is nonsense. It is very deeply important and fundamental to those who believe - how can that not be important?

But I think you have hit on a very basic problem - and I have touched on this before. Because religions deal in fundamentals, then any suggestion that someone else might not share that belief is seen as threatening. Hence the sort of dangers that we see acted out before us on the world stage - as they have done over centuries.

If I were to say that I did not like pink roses for example, you might be happy to say you loved them without feeling that I was being dismissive of your love for pink roses or of you personally. If I say that I am not able to believe in the existence of god, and you say that you do, then the concern arises that I am being dismissive of your belief. But there is no reason to think that.

This is the problem - for believers, their belief is so central to their life and who they are that any hint of a different view is threatening in a way that other differences of view would not be.

I am not telling you that your religion is nonsense, but simply that at this point in my life I do not share it.

This defensiveness is understandable because of the fundamental nature of belief to believers, but it is also very dangerous indeed in the minds of those who think in a rigid way and who do not have the education to deal with a difference of view without becoming violent. We are watching this unfold around us now.

To be honest, I always found the concept of religious tolerance difficult to fathom. As if anyone truly believes that THEIR God is the only way to salvation, and that following any other dog will lead to, at worse, hell, or at best, oblivion- how could anyone be tolerant?

Non believers on the other hand are quite sure they will die and that will be the end of it. It puts everything into perspective and makes tolerance, or respect, of others, much easier.

Good post, mishap. I would go a step further than you and say that I do dismiss beliefs that I don't share (just as I expect others to dismiss beliefs of mine that they don't share), but that still doesn't mean I'm dismissing their importance to someone else, only that they have no importance or relevance in my life.

I agree totally with that, jura. It was the unfairness of what I was taught about salvation when I was a child (such as that someone who wasn't baptised couldn't go to heaven) that seeded my first doubts.

There are some hugely intolerant atheists around though.

I am a non believer but I'm not absolutely sure that I will die and that will be the end of it.

Actually there are very few things I am absolutely 'sure' of and that is the way I like it to be.

our daughter was told exactly that by the old Vicar, when she was 5. So not that long ago in 78! It led to terrible nightmares- I was meek and mild then, but oh I wish I had made an official complaint to the education dpt and the Diocese. Shocking.

I'm neither defensive nor offended. For a bunch of people who think I'm illogical you aren't ever so good at admitting that it works the other way round. While you may believe you are simply expressing common sense views it doesn't appear so to everyone. Different points of view can exist without one of them being rubbish. An acknowledgement of that is all I'm hoping for. And feetle, the faith is the people. The church isn't the building or the paintings or even the music, it's the body of believers. Same with Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism.....one worshipping adherent constitutes a religion.

But Liliygran it was you who suggested that people were being dismissive and that they were "having a go" - that sounds like being "defensive and offended" since no-one was in fact being dismissive, just expressing a different point of view. No-one can be dismissive of religion - it has shaped cultures and lives throughout the ages. Not subscribing to it is not the same as being dismissive.

It is you who have said that the faith is the people so if you criticise the faith you criticise the person - that is what I am saying about the underlying dangers of religions; they are felt so deeply and personally that they become hard to discuss without risking giving offence - and for some that leads to violence.

Some of my best friends are female vicars and I love them dearly and we happily agree to differ - indeed one of them is married to an atheist - they are a shining example of live and let live, and of respect. She does not feel she is being got at by her husband, just that he has a different point of view.

I do not think you are illogical - you just have a different belief from me. Does that make me illogical in your eyes?

'Since no-one was being dismissive'? I've already pointed out that while some posters making comments like 'faith is the abdication of reason' (sorry, * feetle* but yours is the nearest!) seem not to be dismissive, that is one opinion. Members of faith communities on this forum have said, over and over, that the kind of comments often made on GN by those who are not, can be taken as unpleasant. I believe the cartoons in Charlie were very offensive and intended to be so. That doesn't mean they didn't have the right to publish them. But if their aim had been to avoid offence, they wouldn't have done so. And there is a tendency among the non-believers to spend a lot of keyboard time on matters of religion. If you were truly tolerant you would just leave it alone! And as jingl rightly says! why make so much fuss about what you think is nothing?

As I said in my previous post I do not think religion is nothing ....."No-one can be dismissive of religion - it has shaped cultures and lives throughout the ages.

Why would someone who is not a believer be excluded from an interest in something as profound in terms of culture, art, music, conflict, psychology etc.? It is important for everyone to try and understand what this is all about. The future of our world and our safety will probably hinge on that understanding.