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I am very interested in history, and so, there is a lot about this or that about religion in history. I haven't studied religions per se, but a lot of it is woven into other subjects. For instance, I knew "the great awakening" was sometime well before Billy Graham's time. Etc.
I am very interested in history, and so, there is a lot about this or that about religion in history. I haven't studied religions per se, but a lot of it is woven into other subjects. For instance, I knew "the great awakening" was sometime well before Billy Graham's time. Etc.
We have had several “Great Awakenings” one was dated 1725-1750, another around 1800 to 1840, than 1880-1910, and the last was 1960 to 1970. It is sort of like the flu, about every 100 years we get a real killer strain and than it will die out. I keep watching the tea party movement and wonder if we are seeing another case trying to get started.
100%, I think a lot of us who study religion become non believers eventually. It's like shopping, if you do it enough you soon figure out that no one has the lowest prices, it's just advertisement. lol
Sure, with a certain amount of intelligence, education and common sense. I was raised in a sort of religious household. I don't think my old man really believed but my mother was hard into it. She made us do 'Sunday School', church, bible school, and even an overtly military-style youth group where we learned to shoot and participated in the junior NRA marksmanship program (I'm still trying to figure that one out, my mother hated guns).
All of us kids were fairly smart. We learned to read before we got into grade school, and were encouraged to read as much as we could. Parents weren't particularly well-educated but they provided us with encyclopedias and other reference material as well as the old classics. TV watching was extremely limited so we read, a lot, and became much more educated than our parents (and our schoolmates). We learned to learn on our own, find the answers to questions our parents couldn't answer because they weren't smart/educated enough.
Being encouraged to learn on our own sharpened our critical thinking skills. We also read "The Bible", and each of us (separately) came to the conclusion that it couldn't possibly be true. We all abandoned religion shortly after reaching our teen-years, much to my mother's dismay. I don't know about the others but in my quest for answers I looked at other religions too, with the same results- they couldn't possibly be true, they were ALL a bunch of malarky.
Religion just can't stand up to education and good critical thinking skills. What *I* can't comprehend, is how otherwise well-educated people can suspend rational thought in favor of obviously false and impossible mythology.
This quote stood out to me because of its truthfulness.
Quote:
"I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths. … That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith," he said.
Cliff's notes:
Religion shuts the mind down.
But one only has to spend time reading a nearby thread to validate this hypothesis.
13 of 15. No clue about Edwards and I gave the Catholic Church more credit than they deserve, aparantly. They actually think people believe that bit about the bread and the wine?
Here is an article from Fox News of all places on Atheist knowing more about religion than most Americans. I am still surprised Fox let it be published. "It's No Surprise That Atheists Know More About Religion Than Most Americans"
"I am pleased, but not surprised, that the new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that atheists know just as much -- if not quite a bit more – about religion than do religious people in general. The simple truth is this; the more someone knows about religion, the more likely they will reject it as mythology.
Consider the books of Leviticus, Job, or Revelations. These are not books of love, but rather of barbaric rules, ruthless torture, and threats from a petty and bloodthirsty god. Islam is no different, placing a pedophile on a pedestal of perfection."
I scored a 14/15. Psyched myself out on one question. My husband scored 15/15. Two recovering Christian atheists here (though he prefers the title a-religious).
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Agnostics vs. Believers Game Show (clip from Doc. 'Lord, Save Us From Your Followers')
