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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Arx]

I wouldn't say there's anything particularly unpalatable about that. If God designed the religion, of course he'd set it up to persist - which happens to be indistinguishable from the Christianity meme being well adapted to survive, from a certain viewpoint.

[TD1]

But did God design Buddhism? Hindu? Taoism? It treats all religions based not on truth, but its ability to survive. Did God want the religion to evolve for survival, not truth? Was he restricted by free will, and could only watch with anger as his religion changed, not to reflect His intent, but to be self sustaining?

In fact, perhaps the one true religion simply wasn't well enough evolved, and not related to Christianity at all. Perhaps it's dead and buried, because whilst it was truth, it wasn't the truth people wanted?

I'm speaking purely hypothetically here, of course, and postulating that there's a true religion at all.

[Arx]

Well, that would imply Christianity has at its core changed much since the time of Jesus. I don't see much evidence for it having actually evolved.

And perhaps God did design those other religions. I wouldn't pitch anything on it myself, but there's no reason to say he didn't.

Of course, The One True Faith (patent pending) might also have died. But I don't think so. Which is the crux (hehe) of most religous arguments.

[Graknorke]

Well I don't think you'd see any crusades happening nowadays, or inquisitions on behalf of any Christian church.

[Frumple]

... yeah, general church practice has changed pretty radically in the last two millennium. Hell, there's been fairly major shifts in living memory, nevermind the differences between any few centuries over the last couple thousand years. Texts themselves may not have changed much, but the emphasis and expression? The surrounding organizations? Those have experienced (and are experiencing) fairly serious flux.

[Arx]

You've both missed the point - the core tenet of constant prayerfulness and all that hasn't changed. You'll notice I specified 'at its core'.

[Frumple]

... what that means definitely has.

E: S'also a helluva' lot more core tenants to christianity that that one (and which ones have been the primary focus has most definitely shifted over the years), and more things beyond that that involve the whole memetic evolution concept. Christianity as a whole (nevermind how splintered it is) has changed pretty radically over the years.

[TD1]

You've both missed the point - the core tenet of constant prayerfulness and all that hasn't changed. You'll notice I specified 'at its core'.

Protestantism, whilst maybe not a fundamental change in tenants, is still a huge diversion from the old Catholicism. Then there's the change from Old to New Testament. There's the establishment of different branches (especially in the Protestant church) e.g. Westboro, Methodist, even Mormonism. Bits are added, altered, and reinterpreted all the time.

Another example is women clergy, gay marriage, etc. You could say that gay marriage isn't against the tenants, but there's at least a strong argument that it is. These are examples of things the Church evolved to include so it could survive in modern society.

Edit: Plus, even approaches to things like prayer has changed. I can't imagine Victorians jumping about in an ecstasy of God-worship and a social emotional feedback loop.

[Beast Tamer]

One of my biggest issues against most religions is that you must live a life of temperance and restraint so that you can go to an afterlife where all your wildest dreams come true and you live in bliss. It's like rewarding a child who ate their vegetables by shoving a cake down their throat.

[i2amroy]

One of my biggest issues against most religions is that you must live a life of temperance and restraint so that you can go to an afterlife where all your wildest dreams come true and you live in bliss. It's like rewarding a child who ate their vegetables by shoving a cake down their throat.

Honestly I have a problem with any religion that promises an eternal paradise after you die. It seems like if such a religion was composed of people who actually believed in it, then it would suicide itself out of existence pretty quickly (or barring that would have pretty much everyone struggling to take the riskiest jobs like firefighters to get life done with as fast as possible if suicide was expressly forbidden). I mean why linger in this place if all it takes is a single trigger pull to reach eternal paradise?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Could try Buddhism. You don't get eternal paradise at all, you just die and lose your whole self. And go around again and again, but that's not really a concern after the whole self-losing part.

[Orange Wizard]

One of my biggest issues against most religions is that you must live a life of temperance and restraint so that you can go to an afterlife where all your wildest dreams come true and you live in bliss. It's like rewarding a child who ate their vegetables by shoving a cake down their throat.

That's... missing the point entirely.

[origamiscienceguy]

The Bible hasn't changed since the new testament was organised. The "core" beliefs have not changed (Salvation is through faith in Jesus) but many of the changes you see don't have anything to do with that. For example: The bible does not mention any guidelines on what kind of music churches can and cannot play, baptism is probably the most controversial differences in churches because the bible is a bit vague on the details. So you get many different beliefs about what exactly it is. (my church doesn't have a building yet, and we do baptism in a bath tub)

[Descan]

There's two problems with the first sentence: First, when the bible was organized in what, 500 CE, it was a largely political move which books got in and which didn't.

Secondly, and more importantly regarding your point, the Bible HAS changed. The Catholics and the Protestants have whole different books in their bibles, not to mention the Assyrian, Coptic, Orthodox, and so forth. That's not even counting language differences, just in English alone the various translations have sometimes wildly different meanings depending on which word is chosen, and ACROSS languages whole meanings are spun out of whole cloth. Such as the origin of the "Virgin" Mary being an Aramaic/Hebrew word that didn't mean Virgin, but meant Young Maiden. It was translated to a Greek word that DID mean Virgin, and it wasn't a double meaning situation, because Hebrew/Aramaic (I honestly forget which, I think it was Aramaic because that's the language Jesus spoke, but it may have been Hebrew that the word was) did have a word for Virgin, and that wasn't the one used.

To a large extent, your Bible is a product of (continuous) bad translation and politics, not revelation or the work of wise men of God.

[origamiscienceguy]

The New Testament was made with strict guidelines. (I don't know the exact specifications, but I believe the authors had to know someone who knew Jesus) The Catholic Church included some books that were outside of those guidelines, as for the language thing, if you know how to read Greek and Hebrew, you can get a version that has not changed.
 
About the virgin thing, almah can mean virgin or young woman, but in hebrew culture, the two were almost synonymous.