Oh my, I post this thread, leave for a short period and it has already expanded to 4 pages.
What appears disturbing is that 30,000 people together swallow this shit on the same day (I think Olsteen's church has 3 services to fit everyone in. I could be wrong about this). It's mass indoctrination....at least on the surface. Under the surface things are a bit different. I'm close enough location wise to know people who are members of that church. Consistently I see a dichotomy between what they say they believe and their behavior. It's like sucking but not swallowing. Other fundamentalists follow the pattern as well.
Still many other's are attending church for some reason known (or not known) only to them and are just going along with everything else because they really don't care. It's like opening a Ramen noodle package just for the flavor packet and throwing out everything else. Life is too stressful to give time to question too much.
I hung on for years and years (many of those years were so stressful it's amazing that I remembered to breathe). I thought that if I just hung on long enough I would finally find the answers to all my questions.....and I did, which is why I am an atheist (for those who don't know, I have been struggling with this label but it's getting easier to say as time goes by).
It would be interesting to break up lay Christian theology and then test Christians on what parts of the doctrine they actually believed in. Or did some sort of test that measured how much they believed in it. I.e. it's easy to say you believe in something but would you take action on the thing you say you believe in. Am I being kind by saying that I think that only the minority of Christians (perhaps 10 or 20 percent) both such and swallow the whole doctrine?
What appears disturbing is that 30,000 people together swallow this shit on the same day (I think Olsteen's church has 3 services to fit everyone in. I could be wrong about this). It's mass indoctrination....at least on the surface. Under the surface things are a bit different. I'm close enough location wise to know people who are members of that church. Consistently I see a dichotomy between what they say they believe and their behavior. It's like sucking but not swallowing. Other fundamentalists follow the pattern as well.
Still many other's are attending church for some reason known (or not known) only to them and are just going along with everything else because they really don't care. It's like opening a Ramen noodle package just for the flavor packet and throwing out everything else. Life is too stressful to give time to question too much.
I hung on for years and years (many of those years were so stressful it's amazing that I remembered to breathe). I thought that if I just hung on long enough I would finally find the answers to all my questions.....and I did, which is why I am an atheist (for those who don't know, I have been struggling with this label but it's getting easier to say as time goes by).
It would be interesting to break up lay Christian theology and then test Christians on what parts of the doctrine they actually believed in. Or did some sort of test that measured how much they believed in it. I.e. it's easy to say you believe in something but would you take action on the thing you say you believe in. Am I being kind by saying that I think that only the minority of Christians (perhaps 10 or 20 percent) both such and swallow the whole doctrine?
I have studied the Bible and the theology behind Christianity for many years. I have been to many churches. I have walked the depth and the breadth of the religion and, as a result of this, I have a lot of bullshit to scrape off the bottom of my shoes. ~Ziploc Surprise
