How would atheists / agnostics / non-Christians explain these Christian happenstances? (disciples, doctrine, preach)

[trobesmom]

[quote=RomaniGypsy;35955776]Okay, let's rock. I have asked Christians to explain certain happenstances that contradict the Bible, and now I'm going to get stories from the other side of the fence.

If you are providing an answer to this question, I expect that you will not identify as Christian.

So how would you explain:

1) People speaking in tongues at church? (I've seen this happen.)


I can still speak in tongues (or whatever it is) like I did 30-40 years ago, and I do not ascribe to Christianity or religion at all.

Can't speak to the other things you listed.

[trobesmom]

Actually, I think I can speak to the one about the staying power of Christianity. IMO, most people need the security and comfort of a "God" who will take care of them. It's tough being out in the world without that safety net. I think people don't want to take the time to research or think for themselves. I believe there is a lot of fear that if one questions "God" one will be sent to burn in hell. Lastly, I think it is a fear of loss of control. It's hard to imagine that life is filled with random happenings. If we pray or say or do the "right" things, "God" will take care of us and protect us so that nothing bad will happen. Not how it works, unfortunately. Believe me, I tried that way for YEARS!

[TRANSPONDER]

As to the staying power of Christianity. Essentially, we don't know for sure, but there are some feasible explanations.

It has something specific to promise - not just assisted existence in this life but one as good as the gods ever got - and for everyone from slaves to saints. And it was so easy - just Faith in Jesus.

It had a real person who lived in their lifetimes. Not a remote Olypian God. or a homeric hero. He lived in times they could recognize.

It had all the exclusivity of Judaism. The Greco Roman giods could accommodate all kinds of beliefs, but Judaeo -Christianity kept itself aloof. It was the exclusivity that kept Judaism alive and doing nicely thank you despite determined attempts to eradicate it. The same exclusivity of Christianity, plus the eager recruitment of everyone willing to join pretty much guaranteed that it was going to be a winner.

Even then Isis worship and Mithaism gave it a run for its money and it simply because Contantine's old mum was a Christian that he made it the state religion (though he seems to have had a liking for the helios -cult himself) and in fact he was politically astute enough to see that legalizing a major group of the Roman world had to come.

The suppression of other religions began at once, with Helena demolishing a temple of Venus in Judea though she was after the supposed site of Jesus' burial. But, soon after Constantine's death, the bishop of Rome was after the emperor to abolish all the other religions. Add to that the determined evangelism of the religion and it was only the barrier of Islam that kept Christianity from over-running India and China.

The question thus to me looks less the explanation of the staying power of Christianity but the question of the astonishing failure of it as anything but a flawed and corrupt theocratic authority - hegemony.

[rdflk]

If we pray or say or do the "right" things, "God" will take care of us and protect us so that nothing bad will happen.

It's amazing all the ways certain religions are taught. Not by you trobesmom, but apparently by those who taught you.
I never heard that teaching above. As a matter of fact the preachers/teachers I hear say the exact opposite. None of them say nothing bad will ever happen. What they say is that sometimes you'll face challenges because you are a Christian and/or that when bad things DO happen, God can turn them around and use them for our good, or we can come out the better for it. That's no where near saying we're protected so bad things won't happen.

Just that nuanced difference, makes a difference....to me anyway.

[Shirina]

[quote=RomaniGypsy;35955776]Okay, let's rock. I have asked Christians to explain certain happenstances that contradict the Bible, and now I'm going to get stories from the other side of the fence.

If you are providing an answer to this question, I expect that you will not identify as Christian.

So how would you explain:

Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy

1) People speaking in tongues at church? (I've seen this happen.)

They're not speaking in Tongues. They're babbling ... often due to peer pressure and encouragement from the pastor. Enough people have admitted to faking Tongues to be able to say it just isn't a real phenomenon. One of the great things about Tongues is that no one can understand it ... so it's a babblefest free-for-all.

Besides, anthropologists have studied the speaking of Tongues and it's not a language of any kind. All languages have often-repeated words. In English, words like "and," "a," "but," "the," and various pronouns come up frequently. But in Tongues, there is no distinguishable pattern of speech nor is there repetition of any specific sound combinations that would indicate what a real language would sound like.

Oh yeah, and they also found out that Tongues sounds exactly the same whether it was a Christian church, some weird cult, or even pagan ritual ... they all sound identical.

Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy

2) "Heaven Is For Real" - Colton Burpo's near-death experience as a 4-year-old, having "gone to heaven"? (A 4-year-old won't concoct a story like that for personal gain, he didn't even come out with the story until his father asked him about it, and the vivid nature of his story is not typical of what a 4-year-old's mind can create and what a 4-year-old's memory can recall.)

There are several possible explanations for this. The most likely is that the child was heavily coached by the parents. Yes, 4 year-olds are capable of this - because unfortunately children of that age have been coached by a vindictive parent to give a believable account of being molested by the other parent. So yeah, it can happen.

It could also be that the child was already steeped in religion so when he had his "near death" experience, his brain was merely providing him the imagery he expected to see - even if that expectation was buried in the subconscience.

Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy

3) "90 Minutes In Heaven" - Don Piper's experience where he was clinically dead for 1 1/2 hours after an automobile wreck and then automatically self-revived with no brain damage? (The elapsed time between the wreck and his auto-revival could surely be proven by reading the time stamps on the reports - the time of the first 911 call, the time of arrival of EMS personnel and/or police, the time of transport to the hospital, the time of transmission of any and all communication between EMS / police and their dispatchers, etc.)

He probably wasn't actually clinically dead. I mean, how would we really know? I mean, how long was it between the accident and the arrival of first responders? And how long after that was any kind of diagnosis made? After all, no hospital is going to keep a dead guy around for 1.5 hours. They would have called it long before then if all attempts at resuscitation failed. So we really don't know how long he was REALLY unconscious.

Even if it wasn't deliberate trickery - an opportunist taking advantage of his accident - it's not unheard of for people to self-revive and escape injury when there should have been wounds. Yet NONE of those events proves the existence of a god, and it is an even weaker argument when trying to prove the existence of a specific God and the truth of a specific religion.

Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy

4) People who claim to have had direct encounters with God?

People having delusions, people lying, people misidentifying natural phenomena, the brain misfiring (these encounters can be duplicated in a lab by zapping certain parts of the brain), people making mountains out of molehills, and people making wild leaps of logic (reading way too much into events).

Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy

5) The staying power of Christianity and the high concentration of churches in America even to this day?

The high concentration of churches in America is, IMO, a direct result of WWII. Europe shed a lot of its religiosity after WWII simply because of the horrors witnessed during the war. The sentiment was simply that how could such horrors occur if God really existed? Faith for many was shattered because of the sheer brutality that took place - especially in occupied nations. Also due to the war, Europe began to implement a solid welfare state - because the Europeans said that WWII was too big, too terrible, to just go back to business as usual. Things had to change. Giving people a proper safety net was one such change.

America, on the other hand, came out of the war riding high - the only major nation untouched by bombings, invading armies, or occupations. We also had the world's only fully functioning infrastructure and economy - not to mention America was the only nation with the atomic bomb. Everything was going America's way.

It's easy under those circumstances to start feeling truly "blessed" and hence there was a lot of "thanking God" going on. It actually made people MORE religious thinking that they had best start worshiping and praising so as to keep America's blessing intact - and we still see this kind of nonsense being said today. Every time a tragedy happens, there's someone around to blame it on sin and then lecture us about how we're turning our backs on God and thus he's going to revoke our blessing - our exceptionalism.

So while the rest of the world was going one way with religion, America was going the opposite direction.

In addition, America never really "got" the idea of a welfare state. Sure, FDR did his best but he was only partially successful. He actually had a second Bill of Rights that was never implemented in the US (but ironically, it was copied in Japan so they enjoy more rights than we do). But, because of the poor safety net in this nation, Americans are far more susceptible to fear. A poll several years ago, for instance, showed that a majority of Americans were more afraid of the financial cost of a life-threatening illness than they were of the illness itself. Now that's sad. But that's what happens in the only industrialized nation without universal health care.

We worry, fret, and wring our hands over what happens if we lose a job, get sick, become disabled, lose the breadwinner to an accident or illness ... because our system is wholly inadequate and not up to the task of providing real help.

This fear born of such an uncertain and often precarious future also drives people into the arms of religion. This is unique to America because everyone else has a nice solid safety net beneath them. It might not be luxury, but people won't lose their homes and end up sleeping in the car, and their health care will continue uninterrupted. In America .... who the hell knows what will happen? Because we're still saddled with that Puritanical-Protestant work ethic that says, "If you don't work, you don't eat" and it really doesn't matter the reason why you're not working. Europe ditched that crap after the war. America did not.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

I don'I think that the best we can show, in principle, is consciousness during a period of time when there are no measurable brain functions of the type that are seemingly necessary for consciousness.

Such data would indeed be a GREAT start. Alas we have literally none of it. What we have instead is a lot of ANECDOTAL stories of such experiences which people simply assume came during certain periods. And what compounds the silliness there is the "periods" in question are periods like "clinical brain death" which are not de facto periods when consciousness is not possible.

We simple have not one verifiable case, that I am aware of where we have simultaneously verified A) A period when a given patient simply could not have been experiencing consciousness and B) That such a patient did in fact during this time experience some.

IF you are aware of such a case or cases, by all means do not sit on them. Cite them. I am agog to read them.

You, for example, tenuously throw out the old adage of "Patient was able to report something they could not otherwise have known...". Cite such a case and explain HOW you have verified they could not have attained the information in question. So far any such cases I have read are vague at best. Like "how could the patient have known his surgeon was going on a date with some woman who was not his wife" yet half the staff are gossiping about it and there are a multitude of ways the patient might have consciously or subconsciously have attained such information.

NDE and the related topic of Reincarnation are generally supported by this "X knew Y and we do not know how X could have known Y" argument constructs. It is depressing to me to have to explain to otherwise seemingly intelligent people why this is NOT a valid argument. In summary however "I can not explain X therefore I can explain X" is an argument structure you, and your cohort interested in perpetuating such ideas, need to avoid as it just comes across as silly at best, and desperate at worst.

[TRANSPONDER]

Good points, both. And I do get that there is some claim that the assembly of experiences of cessation of any possibility of consciousness (in corporal terms) is seen as evidence of a Soul -a consciousness existing while the body (and brain) is dead. I can immediately think of several other explanations, but the claim demands investigation.

I want investigation of this stuff - I want more of it and soon - as it is fascinating and research can provide answers. I am not worried about the results. If there is a soul or 'Something more' or indeed an afterlife, I want to know. I am so sure that no one religion or its personal god can claim to be running the show that none of that worries me (an atheist) in the least.

If anything (casting nasturshums about) it is the Believers who do not like the research and prefer us to swalow the supernacheral claims based on taking the anecdotal evidence at face value right now.

There is this ongoing false logic of 'You must choose what you believe right now. If you can't produce a materialist explanation down to the last nanodot, you must accept the mystical claim.' This just wrong.

[Petunia 100]

Why would athiets/agnostics/non-Christians need to explain anything? Explain to whom?

[PegE]

Originally Posted by Petunia 100

Why would athiets/agnostics/non-Christians need to explain anything? Explain to whom?

Exactly. The claims of religion can never by reasonably explained.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Petunia 100

Why would athiets/agnostics/non-Christians need to explain anything? Explain to whom?

Explain to ourselves, explain to the questioners and explain to the readers. The rationale is the Christian Koan. something that supposedly knocks our confidence in materialism backed up by science sideways so we doubt 'everything we ever thought we knew'. The idea is to ...how shall I put it..it's a projection thing. The believers have a closed -minded mindset where faith is protected by a sort of force -screen that only lets stuff through that is compatible with what is believed, or can be fiddled to look like it is. (1)

They assume that we think the same way, and, superficially, it looks like it. The idea is to smash the field of faith -based confidence is science, evilooshun and the big bang so that all sorts of unsupported faith - claims can be fed in.

It is a pretty safe bet that the Faith that will be downloaded into the crashed memory will be the Christian one, since that is what we in the west are bombarded with year in, year out, even if the person pushing the mind- upsetting trick wasn't making sure that Christian faith was the only one being pushed.

Of course, they do not realize the atheist rationale is what can't be explained is simply unexplained -as yet - and is not to be regarded as evidence of anything in particular, and the faithful cannot realize this because to admit it would upset their faith - based rationale, which is that their faith based beliefs are actually logically and scientifically sound.

So our explanations are just looking at anything that might have a bearing on the subject, because of course, it might be explainable (eventually) in terms we understand, but it might lead to a whole shift in thinking. We are ready for that, but not to junk our rationalist position in favour of a faith based one just because we can only make vague suggestions and not explain everything in science -terms down to the last nano -particle (doesn't that sound familiar now? ).

So apart from academic and indeed lively interest, why explain anything and to whom?

Because, as explained above, failure, disinclination or inability to come up with an explanation, is a green light to the theist that our supposed mental shield is ready to collapse and they only need to complete the job and download the religious trojan horse virus into the defenceless bonce in order to produce another mindlessly -Bible - babbling believer.

They are mistaken, but then so are we, when we think (in our innocence) that all we need to do is to provide the faith - based believer with evidence and reasoning and they will simply deconvert on the basis of fact.

(1) I first discovered this astonishing thought -process when I found an opponent was not actually reading my case but mentally skittering over it and lighting on a keyword like 'bead' or 'storm' and making it the basis for a preachy little sermon, unrelated to the subject.