I’ve always said that I envied people who can just believe in a religion without immediately being disillusioned. I’m out here just rawdogging existential dread. Lol
Meh, that’s the whole rub, though, you can’t have proof, it’s antithetical to faith. If you have proof then true faith is unattainable, and if you don’t have true faith then you’re not a true believer and thus you can’t be rewarded as one of the faithful. It’s a hell of a grift.
Same man. I don’t want to believe in physicalism but… where’s God. I would worship him if he showed himself. I’d lick his feet clean. Anything to be saved via spiritual immortality
I dunno man. That guy murdered a bunch of babies via plague, killed some kids via siccing a bear on them to maul them to death, wiped out almost all life on the planet because he didn’t like how the humans—a very small sect of life on the planet—was acting, slaughtered a city, denied man knowledge, and loves songs about babies’ heads getting dashed on rocks.
Oh, and if he really is responsible for everything, then he’s responsible for creating a world where living beings have to kill other living beings to survive in the first place.
Even if he’s real, I don’t think he’s worthy of worship. They claim he’s all-loving, but that love seems pretty darn limited and conditional.
I much prefer Sir Terry Pratchett’s take: if there is a god, then it is up to us to become his moral superior.
Sure, doesn’t even have to be physical. But if the entity isn’t capable of interacting with my day-to-day life then there’s no difference whether I believe in them or not. Might as well just default to empirical evidence.
I liked the idea that god has a perfect plan and its all going to work out in the end and he’s got it all under control. Then one day I sat down to try and read the bible. Within 5 minutes of reading god makes everything from nothing, then basically says “whoops” and nukes everything and starts again.
No, that is absolutely NOT what Christians believe. Certainly all protestants believe the salvation comes 100% through grace, not works. Catholic and Orthodox is more complicated, but even they believe works are a symptom of grace, not the other way around.
Protestants believe you need to have faith in Christ to be saved, and that will lead you to wanting to do good works. They’re basically Catholics, but without the church institutions being central to salvation.
For Catholics and many other churches, you need to be baptised to be saved. For Catholicism specifically, this is done by your parents while a child, but it is also required for converts to be saved.
Born again Christians require a profession of faith and repentence. That’s not a high bar there, but it’s still a thing you need to do.
Calvinists believe in predestination, meaning your salvation is already determined, believe that those who will be saved will demonstrate certain behaviours, thus encouraging people to do things to convince themselves they’re part of that elite group.
So generally speaking, Christians believe you need to do something to be saved.
I think the idea of grace is - there are no good works good enough to warrant eternal salvation, right? No human person is really that good, and we live in a temporal world, our works are temporary. So only by grace can you get something so out of proportion to what you can do.
Like, you can’t do something here that really would earn you eternal damnation, even blowing up the earth isn’t as bad as sentencing someone to ETERNAL damnation. But still it is threatened for human level failings.
Yes, grace is to cover for natural human failings (Romans 3: 23-24). But we also need to do our part to show our faith (James 2:14-26). It is the faith that saves you, but it is works that keep that faith alive. Works alone (going through the motions) isn’t sufficient, nor is faith alone, though we are judged based on our faith and not our works, that much seems clear.
you can’t do something here that really would earn you eternal damnation
I don’t think that’s consistent with the majority of religious thought. For example, Judas Iscariot is commonly accepted as having been damned, so surely there is something you can do to earn eternal damnation, according to Protestantism. In fact, the rule here seems to be pretty simple, to earn damnation, you need to not accept Jesus as your savior, and it seems that, given 1 Peter 3:19-20, you have a chance at that after this life (i.e. if you would’ve accepted Jesus in life, you receive salvation even if you didn’t have the opportunity in life). You don’t get damnation for regular sin, only for that denial.
My personal belief here is a bit different than the protestant one. I don’t think the Bible really supports there being one heaven and one hell, but instead something like this:
damnation/hell - completely cut off from God because you never accepted him in the first place
spirit prison - some kind of holding place where you await judgement and are given a chance to accept Jesus if you didn’t have it in life
heaven - reward for your faith in life, and the reward likely includes some form of additional progression/learning (God is truth, so life with God means life w/ truth, i.e. learning)
The Bible isn’t clear on what the next life is actually like, but it does seem to imply there’s something comparable to this life after we die, provided we exercise faith in Jesus (else why would we need a resurrection?). I think the top priority for God is to ensure we’re comfortable in the next life, so putting someone who denied Jesus in his presence for eternity wouldn’t really fit, they’d instead feel more comfortable away from God’s presence, and the “suffering” is probably largely based on knowing what they could have had (i.e. guilt).
That’s my take reading between the lines. But the important part is generally agreeing that faith is the most import and works are merely there to reinforce that faith, and that we’ll be rewarded based on our faith, not our works.
Well protestant can mean anything from high Anglican to happy clappy Pentecostal.
The big realisation by Martin Luther that led to Protestantism was that it was all about grace and nothing else matters. There are other things (fruits, works, call them what you will), but none of them lead to salvation - only grace. That is the very core of Protestant Christianity in all its forms.
My point is that faith is still something you need to cultivate, and that’s what leads to salvation. According to Protestants, Joe Blow who has never heard about Jesus isn’t saved because he hasn’t attained the faith needed to receive that grace. Maybe you don’t need a baptismal service or other ritual to be saved, but you do need faith.
If grace truly was all that was needed, what’s the point of these churches existing, and who doesn’t get salvation? Protestants certainly have a concept of hell, so there’s certainly something you need to do to avoid it (believe in Jesus and that he has saved you).
Absolutely true, but faith and grace is apart from works.
Remember the 2 guys crucified next to Jesus. One had faith in Jesus and was told he would be with him in paradise. He had no chance to exercise works, no chance to be baptised or anything of the like, but he is in heaven anyway.
Church, in it’s true sense, becomes a natural (and perhaps unavoidable) extension of being saved by grace. It is not the means by which you are saved, but just something that happens as a result.
I really wish Jesus was legit
If I could just let God take care of everything and be assured there’s a plan and the plan leads me to eternal Paradise…
God what a way to live…
I’ve always said that I envied people who can just believe in a religion without immediately being disillusioned. I’m out here just rawdogging existential dread. Lol
Right? Like people wonder why atheists are angry all the time. I have an answer because we are mortal because we are mortal.
If anyone who believes they have an immortal soul suddenly realized they were mortal they’d be pissed too.
All I’m waiting for is one singular shred of evidence. Something explicit and undeniable.
You’d think that someone all powerful who could read my thoughts and intentions would understand that but apparently not…
Meh, that’s the whole rub, though, you can’t have proof, it’s antithetical to faith. If you have proof then true faith is unattainable, and if you don’t have true faith then you’re not a true believer and thus you can’t be rewarded as one of the faithful. It’s a hell of a grift.
Same man. I don’t want to believe in physicalism but… where’s God. I would worship him if he showed himself. I’d lick his feet clean. Anything to be saved via spiritual immortality
But first he has to be real
I dunno man. That guy murdered a bunch of babies via plague, killed some kids via siccing a bear on them to maul them to death, wiped out almost all life on the planet because he didn’t like how the humans—a very small sect of life on the planet—was acting, slaughtered a city, denied man knowledge, and loves songs about babies’ heads getting dashed on rocks.
Oh, and if he really is responsible for everything, then he’s responsible for creating a world where living beings have to kill other living beings to survive in the first place.
Even if he’s real, I don’t think he’s worthy of worship. They claim he’s all-loving, but that love seems pretty darn limited and conditional.
I much prefer Sir Terry Pratchett’s take: if there is a god, then it is up to us to become his moral superior.
Sure, doesn’t even have to be physical. But if the entity isn’t capable of interacting with my day-to-day life then there’s no difference whether I believe in them or not. Might as well just default to empirical evidence.
Well, that’s not what Jesus taught though. Jesus taught that there’s a plan and you need to work at it to fulfill your part of it.
That’s pretty much the same thing every religion and most philosophies teach.
I think that’s only true if you use the word ‘plan’ incredibly loosely
I liked the idea that god has a perfect plan and its all going to work out in the end and he’s got it all under control. Then one day I sat down to try and read the bible. Within 5 minutes of reading god makes everything from nothing, then basically says “whoops” and nukes everything and starts again.
Sorta makes me a little nervous.
That was just a rough draft.
Everyone knows that SimCity is much more fun with disasters turned on
for the Reformed folks that believe in TULIP, salvation is through God’s grace alone
That’s a pretty small group through. Most Christians believe you need to do something to get to heaven.
No, that is absolutely NOT what Christians believe. Certainly all protestants believe the salvation comes 100% through grace, not works. Catholic and Orthodox is more complicated, but even they believe works are a symptom of grace, not the other way around.
Protestants believe you need to have faith in Christ to be saved, and that will lead you to wanting to do good works. They’re basically Catholics, but without the church institutions being central to salvation.
For Catholics and many other churches, you need to be baptised to be saved. For Catholicism specifically, this is done by your parents while a child, but it is also required for converts to be saved.
Born again Christians require a profession of faith and repentence. That’s not a high bar there, but it’s still a thing you need to do.
Calvinists believe in predestination, meaning your salvation is already determined, believe that those who will be saved will demonstrate certain behaviours, thus encouraging people to do things to convince themselves they’re part of that elite group.
So generally speaking, Christians believe you need to do something to be saved.
I think the idea of grace is - there are no good works good enough to warrant eternal salvation, right? No human person is really that good, and we live in a temporal world, our works are temporary. So only by grace can you get something so out of proportion to what you can do.
Like, you can’t do something here that really would earn you eternal damnation, even blowing up the earth isn’t as bad as sentencing someone to ETERNAL damnation. But still it is threatened for human level failings.
Yes, grace is to cover for natural human failings (Romans 3: 23-24). But we also need to do our part to show our faith (James 2:14-26). It is the faith that saves you, but it is works that keep that faith alive. Works alone (going through the motions) isn’t sufficient, nor is faith alone, though we are judged based on our faith and not our works, that much seems clear.
I don’t think that’s consistent with the majority of religious thought. For example, Judas Iscariot is commonly accepted as having been damned, so surely there is something you can do to earn eternal damnation, according to Protestantism. In fact, the rule here seems to be pretty simple, to earn damnation, you need to not accept Jesus as your savior, and it seems that, given 1 Peter 3:19-20, you have a chance at that after this life (i.e. if you would’ve accepted Jesus in life, you receive salvation even if you didn’t have the opportunity in life). You don’t get damnation for regular sin, only for that denial.
My personal belief here is a bit different than the protestant one. I don’t think the Bible really supports there being one heaven and one hell, but instead something like this:
The Bible isn’t clear on what the next life is actually like, but it does seem to imply there’s something comparable to this life after we die, provided we exercise faith in Jesus (else why would we need a resurrection?). I think the top priority for God is to ensure we’re comfortable in the next life, so putting someone who denied Jesus in his presence for eternity wouldn’t really fit, they’d instead feel more comfortable away from God’s presence, and the “suffering” is probably largely based on knowing what they could have had (i.e. guilt).
That’s my take reading between the lines. But the important part is generally agreeing that faith is the most import and works are merely there to reinforce that faith, and that we’ll be rewarded based on our faith, not our works.
Well protestant can mean anything from high Anglican to happy clappy Pentecostal.
The big realisation by Martin Luther that led to Protestantism was that it was all about grace and nothing else matters. There are other things (fruits, works, call them what you will), but none of them lead to salvation - only grace. That is the very core of Protestant Christianity in all its forms.
Sure.
My point is that faith is still something you need to cultivate, and that’s what leads to salvation. According to Protestants, Joe Blow who has never heard about Jesus isn’t saved because he hasn’t attained the faith needed to receive that grace. Maybe you don’t need a baptismal service or other ritual to be saved, but you do need faith.
If grace truly was all that was needed, what’s the point of these churches existing, and who doesn’t get salvation? Protestants certainly have a concept of hell, so there’s certainly something you need to do to avoid it (believe in Jesus and that he has saved you).
Absolutely true, but faith and grace is apart from works.
Remember the 2 guys crucified next to Jesus. One had faith in Jesus and was told he would be with him in paradise. He had no chance to exercise works, no chance to be baptised or anything of the like, but he is in heaven anyway.
Church, in it’s true sense, becomes a natural (and perhaps unavoidable) extension of being saved by grace. It is not the means by which you are saved, but just something that happens as a result.