mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (10/03/86)
[heavily edited and re-ordered to reduce whitespace] Dave Trissel writes: >>Main point of this posting. What do non-Christians think that >>Christians believe in God for?: >> 1) 'Just because the Bible tells us.' > Obviously true. How many times on this very newsgroup have you seen > "the Bible is God's word and says (blah blah)". QED. Doesn't follow, since they are referring to a particular aspect or doctrine, not to the thing as a whole. >> 2) 'Because we need a crutch to hold are lives up.' > More complicated but face it, we all have some kind of belief system. > Many Christians would 'feel lost' without their religion, and they > will readily admit it. Perhaps because they would indeed be lost. >> 3) 'Our parents told us.' > True for many who simply grew up being told what to believe. The > irony is that most Christians if they had been born in Iran would > be Islamic. Which of course doesn't explain the many many people who convert back and forth. And you believe most of history because people tell you, let me remind you. >> 4) 'Not very bright. No science in our education.' > My parents have no idea what psychology is all about. They couldn't > begin to take apart their belief system and see why they believe the > way they do. In fact, THEY WOULD TAKE THIS TO BE A THREAT, since > they feel their religion is simply a given. My father was told by > my grandmother that horse hairs in mud puddles become insects. > And he says he doesn't know if that's true but his mother never > lied to him and so it may be. I don't see that this proves anything. I don't believe you can understand religion in terms of psychology because, in my opinion, psychology is not sophisticated enough to comprehend it, and because of the strong tendency towards atheistic assumptions-- which is why most people correctly understand most attempts at psychological understandings of their religions as attacks upon their religion. >> 5) 'There is a sucker born every minute.' > Well, sucker is too strong a word. I would prefer saying that it's > the nature of a human being to hang on to any belief system which > seems to fulfill deep psychological needs. Including, of course, a faith in scientific "explanations". >In my opinion what most people miss in the entire discussion of religion is >that there is a 'feel good' effect that one gets from following religious >tenents. We all know we have flaws. And so being told that if we do X >then all of our guilt will be forgiven by the creater of the universe makes >a powerful draw. Of course X in the Christian religion is "ask God for >forgiveness of your sins." This is potent psychological stuff. Except that the writings of the christian authors don't support such a reading. You therefore can only postulate that this happens, since the external evidence is against the hypothesis-- especially when the church father write that Jesus must be followed even when there is a deep lack of satisfaction in so doing. >As a kid our church had 'alter calls' where at the end of the service >people would be asked to go up front and 'give their lives to the Lord' to >'get saved'. I saw some people go through an apparent transformation in >their lives. But it varied from individual to individual. Some people had >to go back to the alter time after time before they would 'get saved'. They >were told that they just weren't being honest with God, that they were >holding something back and just need to come totally clean and beg >forgiveness. Sometimes a person would give up trying to 'get saved' and >never come back. Well, my response is that they were lied to. The gospels do not say that one must stand before a piece of furniture (or a person, for that matter) to receive the Spirit; nor do they say that it presence must be revealed so dramatically. >It wasn't until I grew older and learned how to analyze things deeper that >I began to realize what was going on. First, there was the setting up of the >world view during the preaching (the guilt trip, the all-powerful God who >wants to forgive, 'fallen' man, etc.) Then the climax where the 'alter call' >was given to allow individuals to 'have your sins washed away.' THis is an indictment, however, of only one ritual form of christianity. In a liberal mainline church, this kind of emotional browbeating is strongly discouraged. Yet we still have a high rate of adult converts. >Once I saw what was going on I realized the guilt trip was for the most part >artificial and slowly but surely Christianity lost it's hold on me. For then >I knew that I was a decent person who could love others whether I prayed to >God or not. I found that I could have this 'spritual high' feeling without >attending church or thinking of God. But it does have something to do with >loving oneself and the beings around you. And so, oddly enough, you have been led to follow Christ while avoiding all this emotional claptrap. (I mean, in the manner of your living, not in worship.) Did it ever occur to you that this is what was wanted all along? >Now to the rare case where someone who supposedly hasn't been fed on the >Christianity 'world view' still has this 'conversion' experience. There was >one thing common among all the cases I knew of and that was this-there had >been a tremendous amount of 'evil' done by such persons. Thus, they have >a much greater pressure of guilt to be relieved even though it may have been >hidden deeply under the surface. Examples here are Saul of Tarsis, or a >hardened criminal. (This is simplified of course. For even a person just >stealing a newspaper may be of such a disposition that they feel heavy guilt >over it-and thus they too would be eligible for this type of conversion.) But there's an even more important class-- those people who never have a dramatic conversion experience. The rest of this is too personal to be discussed on the net. C. Wingate