Which leads to my biggest issue with Christianity. It's ALL about the afterlife. Earthly life is entirely unimportant. We're just biding our time until Rapture when all of this horrible life on earth can end anyway, so it doesn't really matter what goes on here, as long as you find your path to heaven, yuo're good. Considering that I'm pretty well convinced that this is all I get, it bums me out that there are such a large number of people treating this place like an airport boarding terminal rather than focusing on improving this life for themselves and others.

I don't really understand why you think that way.

True Christianity is all about helping others. If you refer to my earlier posting which I referenced the book of Acts, the focus goes onto those who don't consider service and meeting real needs as below them.

Someone please just tell me how many steering wheels I need to grab when the time comes.

I don't mind - it has grown legs of its own.

GD, I can easily relate to your post. If I were starting a family, I would be dealing with many of the same issues. I loved half of my religious upbringing (the episcopal half) - In the Episcopal church, I felt very accepted and valued, and there my early interests in music and the arts were encouraged and nourished. I loved the traditional music and liturgy, and I'm really happy I had that experience. I would want to share that kind of thing with my children, but, it would be so tough, since much of the the content of that liturgy now makes me grit my teeth. (I know some who can treat the whole thing as metaphor and smile happily throughout - as I myself did for a while.)

I am intrigued by the Celebrant movement - people who create non-religious ceremonies to commemorate significant life passages. Celebrants customize their ceremonies to include their clients favorite music, verse and so on, and the result is a means of creating community and significance for those who can't get on board with traditional religious observances.

Last year, I lost an aunt (a really cool aunt, I should add) to breast cancer. She got married just a few months before her passing to a man who himself is a celebrant, and their wedding was just such a ceremony. I saw a video of it, and I was knocked out by how beautiful and open-hearted it was. Ever since I saw this, I have been wanting to learn more about it, perhaps even get involved. (There are several foundations that train for this, including one run by the Institute for Secular Humanism). At this point in my life, I have been feeling a pull toward finding some way of filling the gap left by my lack of communal ritual and shared observance. Is this the way? I don't know, but I'm looking into it.

Your interpretation of true Christianity. But when heaven is the reward, and forgiveness is the only qualification for the reward, it's not hard to see where that leads. Sure, the workers may stop grumbling for the day since they were given what they were promised. But if that same vineyard comes by the next day, what motivation do they have to work with him again if they can instead just work the short evening shift and get the same pay?

Suicide was a regular occurrence for Christian sects. It took until the 6th century to realize that there was a nasty loophole in the whole "heaven is the ultimate reward" thing, that too many people were taking the shortcut and Christians were killing themselves out of existence. Thus suicide was declared to be a sin punishable by hell.

In modern times you have to look no further than the success of the 700 Club to see that the view of the afterlife as the only real goal is alive and well. They're friends of Israel not out of a great love of Jews, but because they want the temple reestablished to bring the end times. They have millions of followers, all doing whatever they can to bring trigger the destruction of earth as we know it.

I should recant a bit and include pretty much all religion in this. Judaism is not exempt from elevating the reward of afterlife over this life. The difference being that the price of entry according to Judaism is directly related to your actions in this life, no shortcuts allowed.

My interpretation? I would argue it would have to be the definition of anyone who has studied the life of Jesus. His was a life (or at least a ministry once he began his ministry) of service. He taught, but he also fed and healed and met real physical needs. Christianity by definition is the desire to be like Christ.

Christians do stupid things all the time. Back in the 70s, when so many evangelicals were convinced they were going to be raptured by a certain date (don't recall what the date was), many went out and ran up HUGE credit bills, thinking they would never have to pay. Well, that's stupid. Stupid like the whole suicide thing. And there are plenty of stupid Christians.

The biggest obstacle to my personal faith was always the people who professed to beleive it, including certain close relatives. What I realized in my life was that Christianity wasn't about those who professed to believe, it was about what was being believed in. That being said, Christians are the face of Christianity, and doing stupid stuff sure make what they profess to believe in look bad.

GD,

I'm with you down the line. I think that if I were to raise a child now, I'd probably be teaching him or her about Ethical Culture, a la Felix Adler. The Los Angeles group is here.

I'm so confused. Was this thread created as a spin off of the off color thread?

Yes, it started there, presumably as Gn2Dlnd considered the topic of psalm 109 fitting the "random off color" theme. But with 60+ posts of level headed discourse regarding belief, I thought it deserved to be pulled out of there.

Whew! I'm glad to have another angry atheist on board. Now I can go back to being contrarian and believing in god. And homeopathy. And Andrew Weil.