Discussing Religion with Kids

[CheshireExpat]

Are there no benefits to believing in religion?

The experiment has been ran in this country and the west as a whole.

You can see the life outcomes for people of all faiths and none.

If you think the collapse of the family, the birthrate collapse, the collapse of identity, how behaviour has changed, drug proliferation and how this doesn't seem to be stopping. Is positive or is happening to all groups, then you're being foolish.

I'm not religious but I'm also not daft or narrow minded. A noncontroversial case could be made that, if you're in a Hindu family, youre probably going to be better off than average.

 

[Cassandra]

I don't disavow your beliefs; they are personal to you, and I respect that. All I'm saying is you or anyone else for that matter can't prove the existence of a god.

There is no empirical evidence that proves the existence of a god, and by virtue you can't definitively say there must be a god because you can't prove there isn't one. It just doesn't wash. If someone decides that a faith in the existence of a higher being is good enough for them, then fair play. That is not for me.

Finally, What are 'Christian values' these days anyway? As far as I can see, people pick and choose the passages of the Bible to suit their narrative and ignore the ones that don't, interpreting them by using such guff as "well, it's not meant to be taken literally", or "What Jesus (or whoever) meant was...". If you take some of the passages of the Bible at face value, there are some pretty abhorrent beliefs in there which are soundly ignored.

Common human decency should be the minimum standard we live our lives by, not the teaching and contradictions of some dusty old story book.

I hope I have been careful enough with my words. I think I have been clear in saying that I can't prove or disprove the existence of some form of God.

There are things that make me think that there is more likely to be a creator than not - but accept that others might not see things that way.

I agree that the Bible can be contradictory in parts and subject to wide degrees of interpretation. For me the central message for us can be summed up in a few words 'Love God, Love your neighbour'. That again for me is the route for a better world. It is not unique to Christianity and indeed I think that if it were to be rewritten to 'Love nature, love your neighbour' perhaps even humanists could sign up to it. The Bible does in places elaborate on this - the beatitudes from the Sermon on the mount; the gifts and fruits of the spirit; the exposition of love in Paul's letter to the Corinthians and looking at the other side the seven deadly sins.

Which said, there are other parts of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, which are not in tune with what I see as the core message, and so, yes I admit I'm being selective. But at the end of the day the words have been transcribed, translated and selected by humans and we are all fallible and indeed I would say have free will.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

I hope I have been careful enough with my words. I think I have been clear in saying that I can't prove or disprove the existence of some form of God.

There are things that make me think that there is more likely to be a creator than not - but accept that others might not see things that way.

I agree that the Bible can be contradictory in parts and subject to wide degrees of interpretation. For me the central message for us can be summed up in a few words 'Love God, Love your neighbour'. That again for me is the route for a better world. It is not unique to Christianity and indeed I think that if it were to be rewritten to 'Love nature, love your neighbour' perhaps even humanists could sign up to it. The Bible does in places elaborate on this - the beatitudes from the Sermon on the mount; the gifts and fruits of the spirit; the exposition of love in Paul's letter to the Corinthians and looking at the other side the seven deadly sins.

Which said, there are other parts of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, which are not in tune with what I see as the core message, and so, yes I admit I'm being selective. But at the end of the day the words have been transcribed, translated and selected by humans and we are all fallible and indeed I would say have free will.

If that's what you take from the Bible, then fair play,

The way I see the Bible, particularly the King James version is that it is essentially a collection of stories, written many if not hundreds of years post any of the reported events from scraps of text and spoken word, often translated across multiple languages, produced into a single text in order to promote the legitamisation of the coercive control of the general populous through enforced religion. But that's just me.