Clarification of "Faith"

[cardw]

JoeMo,

You have basically adapted the bible narrative to something that works for you. Most Christians that I choose to associate with pick and choose. People who interpret the bible literally tend to be pretty cruel because the bible is pretty cruel.

The gift the study of reason gives me is the ability to see that you have artificially limited your choices based on what you have been taught. You stated that you had to choose between the law and grace and grace has worked out a lot better for you. It appears that you can operate with a lot less shame and have more peace.

I step back and look at what caused you to feel shame in the first place. Christianity has this view point that everyone is born depraved and teaches that you are "evil" from the time you were born because of a poor choice Adam made 6000 years ago. And the source of bad behavior is because people are evil. And they hold up the 10 commandments as the standard for being "good."

Many Christians that I know are immature in this regard. They waste a lot of energy evaluating whether or not they are good people. And based on the idea that one can loose their eternal life because of being evil, I can understand why so much energy would be put into making sure one was good. I can completely understand why a grace view would bring relief. It would free up a lot of energy being wasted on a very self centered philosophy of life.

I looked at this and realized that Christianity was creating the shame in the first place. This is like a drug company creating a disease so they can sell the cure. If you don't create the disease in the first place you don't need the cure. And Christianity has absolutely no evidence that what they teach is what god wants if there even is a god.

And when you add the study of comparative religion and the parallel pagan sacrificial ideas taught in Egypt and in Palestine during the life of Jesus you begin to understand that Christianity is made up to deal with iron age ideas.

Being kind and loving never go out of style and we can easily see the benefits of these without the bible or religion. In my observation the bible and religion get in the way of the natural recognition that love is a great experience. That is why I much prefer to be a secular humanist. It has all the values that provide humans a great life without all the shame mental gymnastics religion brings to the table.

[JoeMo]

cardw et al,

check out:

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/06/dawkins-evolution-is-not-a-controversial-issue/?hpt=hp_c3