What is the Christian Church good for?

[DeistPaladin]

(Sung to the tune of "War")

CHURCH!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing!

(sorry, the song's in my head. I'll read the thread later).

[coffeeveritas]

Although I do like your answer, it does delve into tangents a bit.

There is a simple reason for this, it was 3AM and I kept losing track of what I wanted to say. I noticed that it was a bit unpolished when I posted it, but I thought I'd get the first draft out and then workshop it.

You go more into the fact that you distinguish fact from fantasy, but you never really explain how. You talk about the wealth of knowledge you have at your disposal to make an informed decision, but don't elaborate on exactly how that is done. I didn't ask you anything of certainty, nor did I imply that I held all the answers, I merely asked what method you use to determine and evaluate phenomena in reality.

I certainly wasn't trying to imply that you think you have all the answers, I was saying that that is a human tendency and pointing out that it is counterproductive. I would agree that I didn't get very specific, but for me, answering your question first necessitated an explanation of how I see reality. Also, I was tired and I forgot how I was going to bring all of it together. I remember thinking, "I was going to make some kind of point here at the end, what was it?" Ha! I amuse myself with my tired rambling.

Basically what I was trying to say is that all the typical ways we "know" something are flawed and they all have some value. We know things based on the data we can collect personally, the influence of our culture, and our own subject personal experience. Under each of these are many subcategories like logic, science, emotion, intuition, etc. I argued that they are all limited, but taken together they give us the best possible chance of knowing what is real. So for something to be real, it has to be the most real on every level. If I can't see something as being scientifically true and subjectively true and a bunch of other kinds of trues, than I would suspect that thing of being less than real.

I'll give you an example:

If I told you you are the indebted to a great celestial leprechaun for subconsciously stealing his invisible gold, by what standard would you assess the validity of that statement?

Well let's try out the method I outlined. First of all I have no sensory data on this leprechaun, and the logic here seems iffy to me personally. Highly suspect, but to be fair I must look at all my sources. In human history I see no tradition of the celestial leprechaun, no society seems to know of him. The story of mankind does not make sense when told through the view of this leprechaun, he doesn't seem to have any logical role in the order of the universe. Scientifically speaking, there is no evidence that points to a cosmic leprechaun whose gold can be stolen. From what I've heard so far he's just a banker of sorts, and he has no role in shaping creation in a way that could suggest his presence. Logically speaking there is no great reason to expect that a leprechaun, whose role I can trace in mythology and whose origin in fable I can see quite clearly, would be a cosmic force. How would one subconsciously steal gold and why would we value an invisible commodity that serves no purpose? Subjectively speaking I don't feel indebted to the cosmic leprechaun. I've never had an experience of him, the story doesn't make any sense in the context of my life, so he's not subjectively true to me. If I were seriously troubled over this question I could directly consult my community about it by reading up on leprechauns in scientific and religious context. I could also ask someone for help refuting or proving the leprechaun, and weighing the arguments against each other. These are just some of the ways I get the total picture of whether or not something's real, but the point is that reality has to be established on every level we can experience as humans. It has to fit the big picture of the world as we see it, it has to explain something.

Still a big question to answer, but I gave it a shot. Great stuff my friend!

[Loki_999]

(Sung to the tune of "War")

CHURCH!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing!

(sorry, the song's in my head. I'll read the thread later).

Amazing, was just listening to that yesterday along with some of their other classic hits.

[Anomalocaris]

Christian church is good for serving as warning to posterity of the evil of religion.

[coffeeveritas]

So which sense did you use to determine god is real?

I have to figure out how to put different quotes from different people into the same reply, anyway.

For me, something as big as God has to work on every level. God would have to be real to me personally, be present throughout history, be suggested in science, be of a superior character that I don't fully understand, and for Christianity to be true, the version of Him put forth (or Gospel) has to be totally Good in very deep ways. So when I saw that the church I was in taught nothing but how not to sin, and an amazing amount of guilt over the sins you do commit, while at the same time doing nothing of any real benefit to the world, I was skeptical. I saw that they taught that God was angry at sinners, but loving, that He was going to destroy the world in flames, but wants us to do good deeds, and that He was concerned about "justice" in the sense of condemning people to hell, but didn't seem to care about the suffering of children. No one was permitted to question this or raise objections. So using this sense of reality I was talking about I decided their "god" was a lie, and I said, "screw this" and walked away from that church. Now I'm a disciple of Christ, which is a term I use for clarity's sake, but it just means "Christian."

So it may seem weird that I thought the Christian church sucked so I left it for the Christian church, but there's a reason. It turns out there are many traditions in the church, and some of them just made up a bunch of stuff on their own, and some of them only occasionally refer to the Bible, and some of them say one thing in theory, but don't really believe it. (I don't want to sound too hard on them though, I was in the same place once, and I still consider them family. They'll get there, we're all growing.) Then there are some churches that teach this radical theory, "if you want to call yourself a 'Christian' you should find out what Christ taught and did, and follow that." That sounded pretty logical to me, so I looked into it. The view of God that I found in the Bible actually made better sense of the world for me, and it gave me a clear idea of how I could live in this world, and it answered a lot of big questions I had, and it made me see how all of it could be good, so that gave me hope. It made sense to my senses, it made sense logically, it fit together the big picture, it made sense scientifically, it made sense in the story of man, it made sense in my culture, it made sense to my personal experience, it worked on every level. So I used all of my sense of reality to see how God was telling a bigger story than I had been led to believe.

I tried to limit this to how I determined the reality of God, and do it succinctly, so I intentionally left out a lot. Needless to say I was surprised about how pretty much everything that I hear commonly said about Christianity is wrong. You can ask about any details you want to know, there is a lot to it. I hope his answers your question, let me know if anything else in unclear. Thanks for asking!

[Loki_999]

So it may seem weird that I thought the Christian church sucked so I left it for the Christian church,

Actually I find that quite cool. You didn't just accept the dogma of your church and left to find one that more suited you. Now, if only you can take the next step....