It tends to work wonders, yes, because you are usually dealing with people who consider religious belief subjective irrationality far beneath them. They react about the same way any other partisan does to accusations they are just as partisan as their opponents. Sometimes you get the minority who realize it is true, but whether they just look at you and shrug or get even madder is even money.


Good call; accepting a bunch of sensible preordained rules to live by is much better. Of course, you will still at least momentarily fail to adhere to at least one of them sooner or later and, while consequences to others vary, in terms of morality you will be every bit as immoral whether you swiped a candy bar or gunned down an orphange. Either way, a wholly PERFECT God can no more associate with you than with any other sinner without ceasing to be perfect, and, since that is among Gods defining attributes, ceasing to be God. Whatever poison you choose is pretty much infinitely intolerable, and God would be neither just nor perfect if He ignored that for loves sake. Worst of all, you can really offer nothing to "make it right" with Him, because you HAVE nothing He did not give you in the first place.

Enter grace, paying an infinite debt with an infinite price, namely God Himself. It does not let anyone off the hook physically; our bodies still die, but since they are what convince us to act immorally, that is just as well. SPIRITUALLY (which I agree is far more important than a series of laws; I read somewhere the law brings only death,) those who repent morality in for God rather than fear of death are offered redemption and forgiveness by grace, through faith in the worth and word of that Sacrifice. Spirituality, is what makes Communion such a big deal (and a Sacrament,) because our spirits partake of not only the death our immorality merits, but also resurrection in grace by the worth of the sinless Sacrifice. While we retain our bodies we remain vulnerable to the immorality they inherited with our DNA, but we are no longer spiritually prisoner to that. We receive the grace to resist and of forgiveness when sought in faith, with the assurance the vulnerability will ultimately perish with the bodies it taints, and our spirits will be fully perfected in eternal communion with God.

Understand, I am not trying to preach, only make clear Christian faith very much does NOT "invent a bunch of nonsensical rules to live by and then try to force other people to adopt [its] rules." It fundamentally and categorically rejects that premise, not because the law is inadequate (it delineates morality fully,) but because I am. Traveling to Vega is theoretically POSSIBLE, but in practice, if I left right now traveling at 10% of c I would be dead before half way there. Grace is infinitely better than law anyway, because if one perfectly adheres to law it is a credit to oneself; if one is immoral but redeemed despite unworth, by grace, it is a credit to God. I have a Pithy Pet Phrase addressing the subject: "Faith is God directing man; religion, the reverse."


Ah, I see this thread turned into a survey when I was not looking. To answer, no, it is not because I was raised that way, and I do not think it can be, because it involves a conscious mature choice. A child can no more choose their faith than they can choose their spouse, sexual partner, business partner, whether to drink, whom to vote for, whether to enlist in the military, etc. etc. They can express a perference, but true choice is impossible without understanding of what the choice involves and signifies. My personal belief is THAT is, in a very real sense, the downfall of man; without knowledge of immorality we could not knowingly choose morality in rejection of it. One might say the downfall of man is the cause of religion.


Yeah, but it is difficult to pinpoint, because of the hellish interval between when I believed in Christ and when I received FAITH in Christ. It is an unpleasant experience to believe something both precious and vital but be prevented by doubt from relying on it when one knows that is fatal.

Imagine you are holding a parachute aboard a burning crippled plane hurtling toward the ground, and BELIEVE the parachute will save you. You do not KNOW it, because the only way to test it is to jump out of the plane, but your parents always said it works, you have read books that say it works, your logic and reason say it works, and yet—what if you leap to the ground and it does not work? What if you refuse to leap even though you believe it works? Take all the time you need to make up your mind, but the ground is always getting closer....

Make no mistake though, knowing and believing are not the same. My mom borrows an old country example of a woman trying to explain the difference to a friend by saying, "See that kid out there playing? My husband BELIEVES that is his son; I KNOW he is mine." "Knowing" in this instance is something I "believe" only the Holy Spirit can accomplish, directly; without being in Gods Presence I see no way to completely eliminate rational doubt. I think that the meaning of Christs assertion that one must be "born again," (though the Greek text can also be understood as "born from above," which makes more sense to me.) Maybe other people are different; certainly they are, to some extent, but it seems inevitable that the rational mind requires a first hand, supernatural event unique to a faith to fully embrace that faith as a reality rather than probability.


Maybe. If agnosticism counts as a religion, definitely; despite devoutly Christian parents and six and a half years at two different parochial schools (with a couple years off in between,) I was fully agnostic by the time I was out of HS. I was pretty much pantheist, and likely would have wound up Wiccan before it was all over had not a series of naturally inexplicable incidents, considerable study and consultation with a good friend (not to mention God) altered my course.


No, because 1) I do not identify as "religious" and 2) because my doctrine is sparing, since I know my limitations in both capacity and perfection. I endorse many dogmata, but recognize them as such; it is entirely possible they are erroneous, but they are also all non-critical, so mainly valuable in terms of how well they do or do not improve understanding of God. In doctrine I try to keep to necessities, but they are non-negotiable, because vital (hence necessities.) Peter Meiderlins famous sentiment covers it well: "(In essentials unity, in doubtful things/non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." I generally trust the bible, the Gospels and OT virtually without exception, but to the extent I hang my hat on anything more than Christ Himself, it is the Nicene Creed, which is blessedly short and generally blessed.