AAFitz wrote:Well, I lived as much of my life never questioning it, and with plenty of education. I believe fully in the main message of the catholic religion and christianity, but have no problem adjusting it to modern society, and more importantly common sense.
I, from a logical stand point, know that any true God, any God of Good, devoid of evil, simply can not care about details. He can only logically care about His children. He can have no ego, so praise is wasted. He can have no ego, so thanks are unnecessary, and while you may pray for something, to do so, when realistically, you have so much more than many of His children is so absolutely selfish, as to logically induce punishment, and not any reward.
Further from a logical stand point, I simply stopped believing an actual creator existed. I find it far more likely, that He is a construct of men, and essentially a work of fiction, with the main goal of helping mankind. I believe the message is a good one, but if followed incorrectly, or misquoted, can and has been used for great crimes against humanity.
In the end, I know this. Any Good God, would never truly care about the small things that any religion seems to stress so much. Its so obvious, that its simply stunning that most cannot see it. More importantly, for 30 different religions with billions of different people believing in something different, some, vastly different, leads me to believe, that no real God ever existed. That this is a result of People telling stories, and those stories being changed. I simply find it hard to believe in a God, that would allow, a system, that rewarded those lucky enough to have been born in the correct religion, while punishing, or lesser rewarding those, that live their lives believing in what they were taught as children.
Sorry for butting in again here, but your comment caught my eye.
When you say that God cannot care about details, you hit on something that is both central to Christianity and a point of contention/disagreement.
I do believe God can and does intervene in our daily lives. However, there is the old connundrum -- you maybe praying that your team is winning, but the other team is praying just the opposite.
Prayer, talking to God really has more than one purpose. The idea of God as this great big "wish granter" (for lack of a better description) is pretty minor. Most Christians are taught to pray not for specific things, but that "God's will be done". The real purpose of prayer is not to "have our wishes granted". The real purpose is to communicate, to become closer to God, to open ourselves up to hear what God says.
It is not that God is incapable or is even "too busy" to attend to our daily needs. It is that he set up the universe, this Earth the way it is, with all its "rules" (that is, natural rules, etc. -- I don't really mean human religious rules in this context). Take something like Hurricane Katrina. Could God have stopped that? Of course! Were there plenty of people praying for just that? No doubt! Yet, it happened. God, in a sense
let it happen. Part of the answer for why might well lie in science, things ilke the "butterfly theory" (that a flap of a butterfly wing may well be the one factor that finally spawns a great storm up north). For God to have stopped Katrina, would require him to violate the rules
he set up here on Earth (or allowed to be set up... in this context the difference is irrelevant). That is, God knows all the ramifications of all actions and somehow decided that intervening in Katrina would cause more harm or would bring us further from his ultimate goals. Note that those are not necessarily the same in human terms, but are the same in Christianity. (that is, the Christian view is that not furthering God's ultimate goals would cause more harm than any physical or earthly significant event could possibly cause).
So far, I think you sort of agree. (though not perhaps with the Christian view part).
But, let's get back to that "why we pray" bit. As a Christian we trust that God does have some sort of plan that we simply cannot understand. As was said above, we can truly barely even really understand what God is. God does not demand true understanding of us, because it is impossible for humans. Prayer, however, gets us closer.
Some "new age" type religions "borrow" ( we would say) from this concept of prayer, but not completely. (that missing part --"God" is incredibly significant). That is, they talk of things like "centering oneself", etc. That is what real prayer is about, when you get down to the heart. People describe it in different ways, but essentially it means the same thing. Prayer gives peace, reconcillation, allows us to find truth and a "center" for our lives. BUT, and this is critical in a way that is hard to even explain to someone who does not/has not experienced it. The real center must always be God. Without God, there are many other influences that can come into play.
That is, I would say, the real and true purpose of both the Bible and most of the laws presented therein -- to give us rough guideposts to guide us in the "correct" ways to live -- the ways that will allow us to be closer to God OR, in some cases to allow societies to eventually become closer to God.
Anyway, this post is long enough. I am not sure I have really and truly expressed what I was trying to get at, but some things are just hard to explain.