Are you an ex Christian?

But if you're secure in your beliefs and faith, which you are, why should it matter what anyone else thinks or says about them, Annie?

I can't understand why you're behaving as though some sort of apology is due to you because someone said they thought some aspects of Christianity were rubbish/garbage/whatever.

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him,Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it*, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:36-40 KJC

All the other stuff ...priests to be celibate , Mary the Mother of God, the Holy Trinity and much more were all decided up at the 7 Council that took place between 325CE and 787CE. These Councils decided what the Church teachings were to be and what were to be heretical beliefs. I would never disrespect anyone's belief in the Word of God or JC but the rest (the garbage) was put together by men and often just fitted the purposes of Church and Empire or, in the case of heresy, was the result of Church leaders in fighting. Those who won the argument set the laws and those who lost became the heretics. Had things gone the other way then we wouldn't believe that Mary was ever virgin or the Holy Trinity because JC would have just been a man. These Councils also decided which Books should form part of the Bible. There is evidence that there were far more than the four Gospels that most people know about but these didn't tell the Jesus story the way the Church decided it should be told so they were left out and some even declared blasphemous.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/emergence.html explains more about the other Gospels and why they were deemed unsuitable to be in the finished version of the Bible.

As I have tried to make clear in all my posts I do not criticise anyone for having or not having faith in one God or many Gods. Questioning or disputing a series of beliefs is not the same as disrespecting the believer.

And persisting in saying that you feel hurt and insulted by what has been said when it was not an attack is self-centred and dwells on imagined sensibilities.

It hurts also to be accused of mocking and scoffing, because I posted that I cook food suitable for my daughter-in-law to eat, but also that I did not think that eating or not eating certain foods ought to be an essential part of a religion. There was a hint that I was hypocritical. Should I refuse to cook it, and give her only what is forbidden to her? Never! Tell lies on here and pretend that I believe it essential when I don't? Just as bad.

Maybe I should throw a tantrum about how I was hurt by that attack on my ethics - how would that go down?

I think you feel threatened insulted and hurt by the views of some who have read extensively on and around the subject, who know as much of the Bible as you do, and who have come to different conclusions from others about what in the church belongs to Christ and his immediate disciples and what was tacked on or crossed out by generations of religious leaders and interpreters with axes to grind.

All of us have the ability to read and comprehend, to put things into a historical sequence and see the changes that have taken place and what prompted them.

It does not take an atheist or an agnostic to do that. You don't know who is an atheist, who an agnostic, who believes, unless that have posted that publicly. Don't make too many assumptions.

You provide suitable food for your DIL as a mark of respect for her views just as you would provide suitable food for a vegetarian or vegan. You don't have to agree with someone to respect their beliefs.

Because Ana, so many have been and still are being persecuted for the faith dismissed as garbage

My dad was a Christian with a strong faith. He argued with, disagreed with, and thought of some church doctrine as garbage all the time, as have many prominent Christians (and no doubt Hindus, Muslims, Jews, etc) through the ages.

No, I don't have a problem with disagreement, ab. I have a problem with lack of understanding when something seems clear enough. It bothers me that I and others who usually (in some cases, not including me, I'd say always) try to explain things very reasonably, intelligibly, lucidly, are apparently not being understood. It's weird and, yes, problematic.

Elegran, well I admit I doubt you are a Christian as you brought FGM into a discussion on Christianity, wrong faith

Plenty have been persecuted just for believing something slightly different from someone else. Plenty still are being thus persecuted right now, as we speak, in the current wars between different factions of Islam.

Religious persecution is against the law in this country. Feeling persecuted and being persecuted aren't necessarily the same thing.

thatbags, so speaking of women covering their faces, people not switching on a light on the Sabath , sacred cows, FGM, and some book about seagulls is reasonable in a discussion on the Christian faith?

The discussion has broadened to include other religions as well, ab. If you haven't noticed then you certainly are missing quite a lot of the discussion so it's no wonder you don't understand what's being said. roastchicken

Oops!

Elegran, I respect the fact that you cook kosher food for a family member but it doesn't cancel out you including authodox Jews not switching on lights on the Sabbeth when you should know this is practiced by observing a commandment

The obtuseness is actually quite funny now.

thatbags, I understand perfectly, a poster dismissed the teachings of Christ as garbage, I disagreed and in comes Elegran with her epistles bringing in other faiths which in my opinion - I am entitled to an opinion - is a distraction not a broadening of the discussion . The discussion being ? With the exception of loving one and other the teachings of Christ is garbage . If this had been answered honestly then no problem with discussions on the faith of Jews, Muslims,Hindus

One Bible quote is "blessed are ye when you suffer persecution for my sake" but I suspect that going out of your way to seek out imaginary evidence of persecution doesn't count towards a score. There is plenty of it around without finding it where it doesn't exist. Bit of a waste of time and indignation, really.

Elegran, do you consider the teachings of Christ - with the eception of loving each other - garbage?

For those of you who seem to feel they have been attacked for their faith....are you reading the threads or simply seeing what you want to see. I introduced the word 'garbage' into this thread. I made it clear in the first post and subsequent posts that I was not referring to faith but to the religious teachings and traditions that have been added by man.

If I or anyone else had said, "All people with faith are idiots" I could understand your responses but that has never been said.

The OP asked if any Christians had gradually lost their faith. This was bound to lead to a discussion on the nature of religious practice.

Simply because someone doesn't agree with you or describes an aspect of church practice as garbage doesn't mean that they are disrespecting you or mocking you for holding a faith.

No t so vampirequeen, you said - I still like the idea of the world would be a better place if we were nice to each other , the rest is garbage . Do you not see you are dismissing the teachings of Christ as garbage ?

Which of JC's teachings have I dismissed as garbage? If you don't like the way I paraphrased JC into being nicer to each other would make the world a better place then I'll quote the KJV again.

Over the course of this thread I have provided quotes from the KJV to support my discussion about what JC said and offered evidence to show that much of Church practice is man devised and therefore not directly from God.

I have also made it clear over and over that I am not disrespecting anyone's faith.

So here I go one more time.

JC taught we should love God and be nice to each other. I have never disrespected any aspect of this.

Jesus was a Jew so if we were going to follow his ways of worship we should all follow Jewish traditions but Christians wanted to be seen as separate to the Jews. The 7 Councils were man inspired. They decided that JC was divine, Mary was the Mother of God and the Nicene Creed. These councils were places of debate and argument as different church leaders put their own point of view. The winners declared church belief and the losers were declared to be heretics. Now if the arguments had gone the other way then church beliefs would be different. As these beliefs, doctrines and practices were designed by man and not divinely ordained I feel quite at liberty to call any parts or all of them garbage.

At no time have I describe the teachings of JC as garbage, only the teachings and machinations of man.

Don't dismiss that seagull story without reading it, Annie When I said you might like it, I was being serious. You do have to read as you would one of the parables in the New Testament to understand what I meant, but you are used to doing that.

Do you regard all the teachings of Christianity as being true Annie? Do you think any of those teachings (or indeed the bible) have man-made elements? If so how do you decide which to believe?

I am not getting at you here; I am trying to understand how people of faith reconcile these elements.

Vampire queen, sorry but you did say the rest is garbage, I could have agreed immediately if you had quoted christs teaching on caring and then spoken of the harm which has been done in his name but you did not, I disagreed and have taken much flack for disagreeing, now you post something completely different to the post which I found not only upsetting but a lie . The rest of his teachings are not garbage

I'm doing a crossword and I just thought: you don't have to agree with something to understand it. Yes, lack of understanding when there seems to be no reason for it is definitely troubling.

Bakc to the crossword.

Luckygirl, you ask a question to which there is no answer - unless one is a fundamentalist and I am not.

Personally I have always struggled with Paul, and Revelations I will leave to the JW's . The Old Testement I accept as the history of the Jews and cannot accept today all that was written , I respect it though

I base my faith on the teachings of Christ and so I do believe them to be true ,