Christianity needs a resurrection according to 'intellectual atheism'

Alegrias1 wrote:
"Some people think that Christianity will make the word a better place. I think that we each can make the world a better place without any religion at all."'

Liberal democracies are post-Christian: liberal democratic moral principles are historically founded when literally everyone was a Christian believer. It is unimaginable how the Christian moral code would have thrived if both the Roman and the Celtic cultures had never existed.

Baggs, it's best to separate supernaturalism from Christian morality.

It may be useful to some here to regard God , not as a person, but as personification of the basic and transcendental virtues of goodness, truth, and beauty.

Liberal democracies are post-Christian: liberal democratic moral principles are historically founded when literally everyone was a Christian believer.

Correlation is not causation.

And not everybody was a Christian believer; some of them just said they were to avoid being burnt at the stake.

I found the concept that Christianity has always valued human life very narrow. Of course it hasn't. The value of life depended entirely on you holding the correct views. Other religions and Christians not holding the ideas acceptable for the time were completely expendable. Indeed killing them was a duty and the cruellest and most painful way it could be carried out was desirable. Because suffering in this world reduced your punishment in the next. Have they never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, Christian atrocities in Asia andAfrica?
The concept of a loving God is a comparitively recent one.

Trisher I think we should differentiate between the church and Christianity. Churches over time have indeed acted in most unchristian ways which Jesus would definitely not have endorsed. Indeed he was hated and persecuted by the Jewish religious authorities himself. I remember reading once that a true follower of Christ would not take his cross into battle, and I thought that’s true. But then do we not try to stop people doing bad things? Difficult.

25Avalon but how do you seperate the two? The Christianity we have today has largely been the product of the churches which have promoted it. I fully agree that original Christianity was probably unlike anything being practised today and some versions would be less authoritarian, more democratic and equal. The fact remains that Christianity, as it has been practised, has not been the civilising and restraining force the writer of the article imagines and there is no proof that should it return, as is suggested, it would be any less violent and abusive than it has been in the past.

You can be a Christian without going to church or any other organised religion. Christianity is often not Christian if that makes sense. We need to follow the teachings of Jesus to be Christian, so do unto others as you would be done by, love your neighbour as yourself (whoever that neighbour may be) etc but we are human and often fail. To be a Christian rather than say a humanist you need to believe in God which I doubt these intellectuals will do.

I don't need to be a Christian to care about others or to treat people as I would want to be treated Charles Kingsley's Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by probably influenced me more as a child than the prayers I heard.

Exactly Trisher. But if you are a Christian then you definitely need to.

25Avalon

Exactly Trisher. But if you are a Christian then you definitely need to.

Can we start a list here of people who claim to be Christian (other cults are available) and who don't care about others?

Petera

25Avalon

Exactly Trisher. But if you are a Christian then you definitely need to.

Can we start a list here of people who claim to be Christian (other cults are available) and who don't care about others?

This may be a long list. The ONS survey of 2011 found nearly 60% of the population of England and Wales saw themselves ad Christian. 25% -30% as having no faith

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/exploringreligioninenglandandwales/february2020

The ONS didn't ask how many of these don't care about others but I would suggest that as a country as whole most people do as evidenced by our social welfare system, charities, etc.

I think the author of this essay was looking at other non-christian based countries and realised where our increasingly secular society could be heading.

Be interested to see the findings of the recent census.

I agree with you completely 25Avalon. Christianity and religion are two totally different things. Christianity is the following of and believing in Christ. Religion is everything else. That also incorporates’ Christian’ religions, which we see in the churches, and many ‘ Christian’ cults.

DiscoDancer1975

I agree with you completely 25Avalon. Christianity and religion are two totally different things. Christianity is the following of and believing in Christ. Religion is everything else. That also incorporates’ Christian’ religions, which we see in the churches, and many ‘ Christian’ cults.

?

So can I ask if you are a Christian who is following Christ do the rituals and beliefs of the church not apply to you? Do you take communion?
I've always thought the story of Christ was too closely connected with the ancient practices of creating a king for a year and then sacrificing him to ensure the crops grow.

Communion isn't a ritual and belief of the church, it is fundamental to Christianity. A re inaction of The Last Supper in which Jesus blessed the wine as symbolic of His blood which was to be shed, and the bread as symbolic of His body that was to be sacrificed.

I don't believe in the "rituals and beliefs of the church" I believe in Jesus.

Smileless2012

Communion isn't a ritual and belief of the church, it is fundamental to Christianity. A re inaction of The Last Supper in which Jesus blessed the wine as symbolic of His blood which was to be shed, and the bread as symbolic of His body that was to be sacrificed.

I don't believe in the "rituals and beliefs of the church" I believe in Jesus.

Yes, Jesus told us there’s only two things He’d like us to do.
1. Get baptised after making the decision for ourselves. Not talking about babies being Christened. This is the parents choice.
2. Take Communion, in remembrance of Him.
Everything else is manufactured by the churches, where man has taken over leadership. Whether it be High C of E, Catholic, or the many cults. That’s not to say there are no Christians in these institutions, but the doctrines are led by man.

Hello Trisher. Not sure if you’re question was for me, but yes, if I still went to church, I would take Communion. We no longer go because of how the churches seem to have lost the fact that Jesus is the Head of them. Really what Toad said.

I take it then that those who do take communion do so with the C of E concept that the wine and wafer are symbolic of the blood of Christ and not the Catholic one that the wine becomes the blood? I must confess if it isn't a ritual I'm not sure what it is.
Blood sacrifices were such a part of ancient religious practice that I have never understood how they came to be associated with Christianity.

I don’t understand the Catholic thinking at all. I’ve only ever taken bread and wine, what Jesus told us to take, in remembrance of Him.

Alegrias1 wrote:

"Correlation is not causation." No, but it is hard to imagine how Roman Xianity could have taken root and spread all over Europe without the work of Paul, Emperor Constantine, and the cultural- colonising force of the Roman empire.

Trisher wrote:

"I've always thought the story of Christ was too closely connected with the ancient practices of creating a king for a year and then sacrificing him to ensure the crops grow."

Human sacrifice is an uncomfortable adjunct of the Doctrine of the Atonement. However the difference between the sacrifice of Christ and that of the priest-king is that the latter were magic i.e attempts to get good things to happen; a sort of primitive science. (See 'Cargo Cults')

The sacrifice of Christ and Doctrine of the Atonement are not quid pro quo, but are proof that n can be s from sin.

Man can be free from sin (Keyboard problem)

It is only "proof" to those who believe in the first place.

Believers need no proof.

That sort of proof will never convince non-believers.

varian I think the proof is not so much that Jesus was a sacrifice but that He rose from the dead.

He is still alive today.

No more sacrifices.

If we all lived as Jesus advocated whether we believe He was the Son of God or not the world would be a nicer place. Too much I have sinned, 3 HailMary’s and you are redeemed and can carry on as you are.