4chan archive /r9k/ (index)
2013-03-09 11:40 6003642 Anonymous (130740198646.png 1130x846 1774kB)
Why do so many people in the West choose to believe in the major religions, particularly Christianity? I can understand cases where you are brainwashed at an early age or if you live your life in some kind of cult which never really explores other possibilities, but what about everyone else? If you look at Christianity, there are quite a lot of ethical problems such as gender and race equality issues, slavery, homosexuality, bloodshed, etc. I also find the idea that an all loving father has created a plane of torture for people he doesn't like pretty uncomfortable and I can imagine the fear of going to hell having a negative effect on some people's lives, like it did on mine back when I still believed in all that. If you don't fall into any of the aforementioned groups and you are educated enough to know about other religions, why settle on Christianity? It's not like there's more evidence for that than there is for any other religion and if you can't base your decisions on evidence, then you'll have to base them on feelings and choose the most comfortable option. I think everyone who is not satisfied with the explanations provided by science should just make up their own religion. I'm an atheist myself but sometimes I entertain myself with the idea of some sort of Lifestream-like mass-consciousness where everyone can be at peace but can choose to be reborn and live as an individual again or somehow opt out and cease to exist if that's their thing. Everyone is equal and there is no need to fear Hell or any other kind of punishment. I'm aware that ideas largely similar to mine have been around for who knows how long, but mine is not strictly based on anything concrete and I can make changes to it. So why would anyone choose to adopt a pre-existing explantion instead of coming up with their own? This is especially weird when some people already do this in a sense, by only choosing to believe certain parts of the Bible instead of the whole thing.

2 min later 6003673 Anonymous
>brainwashed >cult Atheist here. Whatever stupid point you're trying to make, you're not doing anything but making everyone else look bad. Just shut the fuck up, please.

12 min later 6003825 Anonymous
>>6003673 Did you even read the entire thing? Those were used as extreme examples of people who can't be expected to ever be able to consider other possibilities besides their own. Nowhere in the text did I claim that those would apply to all Christians.

47 min later 6004369 Anonymous
>>6003825 >the entire thing HA! You think I'm gonna waste my time reading some whiny 3edgy5me teenage "atheist" kid's post on /r9k/? Yeah, how about no. I'm too busy wasting my time doing things I actually enjoy.

1 hours later 6004615 Anonymous
>>6004369 And yet you're wasting time every time you post in this thread. Also, the text was in no way whiny or "edgy", nor was I trying to drive a point home or anything like that. I just thought this board could use something other than greentext stories and feels for a change.

1 hours later 6004644 Anonymous
religion is also about a sense of community and fellowship

1 hours later 6004674 Anonymous
>>6004369 >ADD I partially agree with your initial point, but your behaviour decreases the quality of the board. If you can't read something bigger than a greentexted mini-paragraph maybe you should stop posting alltogether.

1 hours later 6004679 Anonymous
>but what about everyone else? I'm pretty sure Christianity is the most-converted-to religion currently out there. There is like 10,000 new converts in China a day or something. And no, it's not Islam. But it too is rapidly growing, but that's by birth.

1 hours later 6004707 Anonymous
>>6003642 >Implying it matters.

1 hours later 6004737 Wizard
> So why would anyone choose to adopt a pre-existing explantion instead of coming up with their own? What is more likely to happen, A or B? A) Hundreds of guys thought about the subject for centuries and came to the same conclusion so it must be closer to the truth than my own conclusion on the subject. B) what I think must be true. Of course I could give you a lot of reasons about why A is still a bad choice. But thinking B is just pretentious. For a simple example, I hardly ever convinced any robot to change his opinion about women. Compare this to the number of persons moved by Jesus or Buddha's teachings. > But I'm right anyway because fuck everything, I'm a Wizard > Actually, I fuck nothing > My point still stand

1 hours later 6004768 Anonymous
>>6004674 And maybe OP shouldn't drop essays on people under the assumption that people want to read every precious little word he types.

1 hours later 6004806 Anonymous
>>6004768 Essays are much better than shitposting. If you can't or don't want to read it, you're not obliged to. But more information is not a bad thing quality-wise.

1 hours later 6004828 Anonymous
>>6004806 I'm not gonna argue with solid logic. I just don't like reading essays when it isn't necessary. Internet's fucked my attention-span to high hell.

1 hours later 6004858 Anonymous
>>6003642 >Why do so many people in the West choose to believe in the major religions, particularly Christianity? force of habit, by force. say something long enough and eventually someone will believe it.

1 hours later 6004891 Anonymous
>>6004644 True. I'm a Eurofag myself so I don't know if that plays a large part in the US, but over here it doesn't seem that significant. You could always try to organize a similar kind of community out of people who each believe in their own religion, though it could be a bit challenging. >>6004679 No, you misunderstood me. That part was about the Christians outside of the few cultists and brainwashed idiots. The Christians that are aware of other religions as well and might at some point in their lives consider converting to one. I was wondering why everyone would choose the most popular ones even if they didn't necessarily suit them as much as a tailor-made one. >>6004707 But it does. If everyone adopted their own personal religion they would probably be happier and we could also eliminate the need for any religious institutions and political entities. Basically it's all the good things about religion without the bad ones, from an individual's point of view at least. For society as a whole the matter is a bit more complicated.

1 hours later 6004914 Anonymous (Markion.jpg 159x200 13kB)
You must be thinking of a different Christianity, OP.

1 hours later 6004981 Anonymous
>>6004737 That's borderline argumentum ad populum. The amount of people claiming something to be true does not make any difference at all on the factual matter of things. Evidence is what matters, and all religions have an equal amount of it. Also, I never mentioned anything about converting. I might have left it a bit vague in my first post but I believe we could benefit from a system where everyone could make his own interpretation of the world around him, without having to worry about what others believe in. >>6004768 I'm not forcing anyone to read my posts, but at least stay out of the thread if you're not interested.

1 hours later 6005058 Anonymous
On a slightly related topic I believe Jesus was a real person but a conman. Just like people go around to tribes in Africa and perform miracles in front of them and take all their gold. This is what Jesus did. Think about it. If you wanted to start up a cult or religion you can't just say there is a prophet that has done miracles. You actually need a man to stand up in front of the crowd. Now what I don't understand is how Jesus managed to fake his death. His body was apparently dragged through the streets and beaten by the public. Maybe he really did die. Or maybe that never even happened... the bible was written after these events took place right?

1 hours later 6005137 Anonymous
>>6004914 I'd never even heard of Marcionism before. It does seem a lot better than the largely similar version practiced by the major branches, but I still think a system with no organized religion at all would be better. People could still believe in whatever they wanted to, but it would be more personalized and there would be no taxes or specific rules, just faith. >>6005058 Can't say I've done any research on the topic so I'd rather not make any baseless assumptions. I guess that's one possible explanation.

2 hours later 6005264 Anonymous
I'm conflicted between Islam and Christianity. Islam makes alot of sense to me. The Koran is clear and precise and doesn't contradict itself as much as the bible. The only thing about Islam that throws me off is the fact that they believe that Jesus was a prophet and nothing more, like Peter, Paul, Timothy, etc. And that you pray to Allah (God) and no one else. Christianity on the other hand has you praying to Jesus. And that you cannot get into Heaven if you don't believe in Jesus. Christians treat Jesus like a God, even though Jesus said himself not to worship him, but to worship God. But then again, Christians also believe in the whole holy trinity thing as well. Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit being all one. All in all, shit is pretty confusing. Especially for me as a black anon. I know my ancestors weren't Christians before they came to the US. They had this religion beaten into them. I'm kinda lost as to what to believe in wholeheartedly. I'm tetering more towards Islam.

2 hours later 6005457 Anonymous
>>6005264 Why do you feel the need to choose either one or the other? Just believe in whatever makes sense to you, it doesn't matter whether that is Christianity, Islam, the Force or an acid tripper's wet dream. Conflicting statements don't matter to you, it's not like those increase or decrease your chances of being correct anyway.

3 hours later 6006102 Anonymous
>>6005264 i used to think like that. things like heritage and what life would be like if i knew where i came from and what lineage i had used to really bother me. around that time i was reading the autobiography of malcolm x, and that introduced me to the possibility of islam. but i stopped caring about that kind of stuff. it kind of reminded me of frats when i started college, it was reviewing which 'group' to join. i'm not saying you should go the same route, but you arent alone. also, i figure that if god does exist, he'll understand our struggle.

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