To accuse people like OBL and Teeside of "sheep like thinking" is unfair and hardly mature debate, is it? I hate getting involved with these threads because, IMHO, the anti-religion stance is defended as blindly and with as little regard to the evidence as they accuse the pro stance of adopting. But three points you have raised:
1. Come off it, no one is saying that Christmas is Jesus real birthday, and yes it is matched to an old pagan festival. So what? Even Christians can be pragmatists, you know.
2. Evidence? I am not going to produce evidence for all faiths, but there is amazingly strong evidence for Jesus as a real historical person. And the prophecies in the Bible concerning him, and the very way his Disciples and Paul behaved after his death, raise questions that need proper debate, not facile dismissal as "sheep like thinking".
3. This is the one that always amazes me. What evidence for Millions of deaths in the name of Religion? More people have died in the last 120 years in wars than in the whole history of humanity. The leaders behind the vast majority of those deaths? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein (who only entered a Mosque when he realised he needed to portray himself as a Martyr) and more, and all of them not only not religious, but actually avowed aetheists who tried to wipe out religion. The danger is not religion, but people's hunger for power. And of course a sweeping statement about the dangers of religion ignores the fantastic work done by the Church of England, Sally Army and others for the poor and homeless, by Tearfund, Christian Aid, and many many others for the Third World.
If you are going to argue against religion, please find out what they DO believe in, and study the evidence for that (because it does exist).
ACU - you've been on great posting form, recently!
:clap:
+ve rep for that. As for me, I'm very much in OBL's camp - a traditional C of E Christian, who doesn't go to church as often as I should, but who believes in the Christian faith because I feel in my bones and my marrow that it is true.
I'm probably pretty low church in my beliefs, to be fair, in that I've always felt that a good deal of the Old Testament was bunkum. But, as a Protestant, the essence of my faith is the New Testament, and the teachings of Jesus. And those I believe in.
I'm well aware that your average agnostic or atheist always asks for hard, physical proof of God, and of the tenets of Christianity. Those can be difficult to come by, sometimes. But the way I see it is:
a) in my job, I constantly have to search for proof. Evidence is the bed-rock of my practice. So, in the way that there is always an exception that proves the rule, I have space in my life to believe in something where that proof may not necessarily be tangible - but where you simply have to believe in it because you feel it.
b) In any event, there are a few things in life that we rely on, and that we believe in, without necessarily any phyiscal or tangible evidence of that thing. How do you
prove that your mother loves you, for instance? You can't say that it was because she fed you - she may have been doing that to stop herself being jailed for neglect. You can't say it was because she bought presents for you - she may have been doing that to impress the neighbours. You know your mother loves you because... well, simply because you know it.
c) finally, and this will seem odd to non-believers, I have felt God's presence, and his guidance, whenever I have prayed to Him in my hour of need. Things have always turned out right whenever I've prayed to Him. And that's all the evidence that I need that God exists.
Matt
