Jesus Christ gave up his fame and fortune? Uuh, Jesus is god and he is one of the most famous figures ever and he gave rise to a religion that ammassed tremendous wealth.
As I implied in another post here, I'm far from certain that Jesus Christ was, or became, especially wealthy during his lifetime. As for the wealth amassed by certain sectors of the Christian Church, this is self-evidently something for which Jesus Christ can be expected to shoulder no responsibility whatsoever, since He did not found the business of the Christian Church even though He can be said to have founded the Church itself. This amassing of wealth has happened - to the extent that it has happened at all - over some twenty centuries and I'm not in any case all that convinced that it as great or as widespread as you might think, either, since, for example, the Church of England (the so-called "established" - i.e. "official" - Protestant Christian Church in UK) is now reckoned to be short of at least fifty million pounds purely to maintain proper upkeep of the major English cathedrals in which it conducts its business (and these places are important historical buildings in their own right, admired as such by Christians and non-Christians alike). There can be no doubt that, from a "wealth" standpoint, the Church of England has for some long time been a poorly run business and, were it not for the charitable support of many people, it would probably have had to call in either a heavy-duty business troubleshooter or the official receiver before now.
As for 'seeing god'. Accidentally, I was baptised.
How can you be baptised "accidentally"? Did someone in a Christian Church drop you in a font full of water by accident? I really don't mean to be facetious here, but I don't understand what you mean by the "accidental" aspect of your baptism.
Probably because my grandmother wished this. Yes, it's child abuse to try to band-mark a innocent child with a religion. But even my non-religious parents felt forced to have me abused by the church.
You do not say (and perhaps you prefer to keep it private, in which case I will respect that) in what ways either you were "abused" by the Church or your parents were "forced", against their own stance in such matters, knowingly to allow this to happen. Whether a simple baptism ceremony at an age when a child's consciousness of what is happening is in its infancy can reasonably be deemed to constitute "child abuse" as such is open to question; there are many aspects of human behaviour that would fall under a generally acceptable definition of "child abuse" in so-called "civilised" Western society, but I remain to be convinced that baptism itself is one of them. To "band-mark a(n) innocent child with a religion" may not necessarily constitute child abuse either, although I can see why it could in certain cases come to be thought of as rather nearer to that than would be merely subjecting one to a baptismal ceremony that in almost all cases will not even be remembered by that child; to force religion down a child's throat subsequently - especially if done in cetain ways beloved of the fundamentalists - is, however, quite a different matter.
Granted, after that I didn't have to put up with any more religion and as a result I am one of the few anti-theists that isn't angry.
I have no children of my own, but I nevertheless retain at least as much distaste for the entire business of "forcing" religion on children as you do; likewise, I have no patience with deliberately hiding the existence of religion from them either. However, just as you didn't have to end up within the Christian faith, you didn't necessarily have to end up as an atheist either (and I note your use of the more hard-line fundamentalist term "anti-theist" here, which appears to distinguish you from many other atheists who, whilst subscribing to no religious faith, are not actually opposed to others doing so); that has eventually been your own personal choice.
But I have been baptised and I don't 'see' god. Yes, you need to accept him on his terms. You need blind faith to have blind faith, bla bla.
This notion of "seeing" God is one promoted by certain Christians and simply does not admit of being taken literally, irrespective of whether or to what extent any individual Christian may him/herself choose to try to do so or to persuade others that he/she does so.
I just oppose human sacrifice
I imagine that most of us here would do that!
and blind faith. Now stop blabbering and give me a real reason to consider the existence of god.
Over to Susan here, since you are obviously not addressing this request to me.
I was not baptised, nor was I encouraged to have anything to do with religious activity or consort with religious-minded people; on the other hand, I was never DIScouraged from these things either - it was simply left up to me to decide what, if anything, I wanted to do about that. To that extent, then, no one ever coerced me to believe or disbelieve in anything. I see nothing essentially wrong with that. Not only can I not "see" God, I really cannot - like yourself - imagine how being baptised would have improved my eyesight in that respect. That said, I have never felt contempt for those who claim that they do "see" God; I merely do not understand the concept, nor am I able to identify with or respond to it as do those who do claim to be able to "see" God. Who knows? This could change. All I am determined to do is neither to encourage nor discourage any such change of stance.
The nearest I can get to grasping what's meant when people say that they "see God" is a desire to aspire to something greater and higher than those things of our temporal existence. Well, there's surely nothing wrong with that in and of itself - and it is, in any case, arguably a fairly basic human instinct; it could, for example, be reasonably argued that the Beethoven of the Op. 1 piano trios aspired to become the Beethoven of the C# minor quartet. Developing visionary qualities through exercising the creative imagination is one thing; "seeing God", however, seems to me to be quite another.
Susan - on the one hand you write about acquiring and maintaining faith as requiring effort (and you add that anything worth having is deserving of such effort), yet at other times you offer the impression that it's simply there (in the sense that "prometheus" calls it "blind faith" - i.e. not requiring any intellectual or other effort); this is clearly a contradiction in terms that seems not especially helpful to anyone who may genuinely be trying to understand why it is that you have faith in God.
Best,
Alistair
Poll
Topic: God poll