Your views on Christianity?

[Target]

Christianity, Let's see where can I start from.
About me: I was, but I've lost my Faith for several reasons.

Talking about Christianity we must take a look to the social background.
Living in Italy, I can tell you that religion is something very important here. Italy host Vatican City, where Pope lives and reign.
Since Kindergarten, kids starts to learn Religion and from RD grade they start to attend Catechism (in my case, once a week after school) till Th grade to prepare you to the 2 most important sacraments: Communion and Confirmation. After the Th grade they can choose if continue to follow it or not.
I've received both.

Kids usually goes to oratory on Sunday afternoons, places linked to the church where priest and other people organize activities for them, like football or other sports.

Plus Italians citizens donate a lot of money to the churches via taxes (on their decision) or other ways.

I don't know how your laws are, but if you insult god or priest or any religion, here you can be fined or send in jail.

Now let's start to talk about my view on church.
First of all there his a lot of Hypocrisy.
One thing that I can't stand is this person called Pope that every Sundays, from his windows in San Pietro square, talk about Poverty, asking to people for actions to try to reduce it when The pope himself, every day, wear expensive clothes and a lot of gold and jewels that, if donated to poor people, can give food to an entire poor nation.
Isn't Hypocrisy talk about Poverty and being in the meantime one of the richest men on Earth?

Another thing is that all this gold is Bought with OUR money.
when people must do their tax declaration they must decide where to donate money and on TV appears spot about give this money to the church (is something called 8x1000= 8/1000 of your taxes goes to the church) for missions in Africa but what they didn't say is that the 80% and over of money received by taxes goes to improve and beautify churches and less than 20% goes to people who really need it.

Other thing is that church always has word in any political decision; since Policy and religions are 2 separate things I don't see why we must hear them. They have their own state where they can do what they want.

One last thing, they always attack Muslims and other middle east religions because they use war as a tools for expanding religions, but I think they forgot when they started crusades, wars in god's name.

Plus all this pedo priest and other priest accused of sexual harassment.... They are not fired or sent in Jail, simply moved to another place because they are untouchable.

One last thing, but this is about people who believe in god. If you believe in god, you must believe in Him as the creator of Earth and Heaven, Universe, Animal and all other things, so you can't say that you believe id Darwin's evolution theory, this will be Hypocrisy. If you are against stem cells research you can't take medicines obtained thank to this kind of research because they killed a life-form for obtaining these stem cells, this will be Hypocrisy
If you believe in God you can have only 1 wife/husband, you can't Divorce from him if you don't like it anymore and re-marry and after this being an activist during the Family day (This happens here).
If you Believe in god you must be against abortion, no matters what are your social conditions or what are the fetus conditions.
All this Hypocrisy Sucks!

[Chillhouse]

At the moment I am between religions. I have been a Roman Catholic all my life up untill one moment last year. I realised I never actualy sat down and thought about the ideals and beliefs of the religion I belonged to. I had been listening and accepting everything Christianity throws at me without questioning it or even giving it a thought. There are many things in Christianity that I don't agree with.

I still believe in God, but I can't believe in the bible. For the moment I've adopted eastern religions such as Buddhism and Daoism as philosophies to live by.

Originally Posted by Baby_Lizzie

I think Christians are just a bunch of hypocrits!! No offense
They say one thing but they do another
It pisses me off!!

Not all Christians are. Like in all religions, you have the radicals and you also have the good people. Sometimes one side gets more attention than the other, like the Shi'ites over the Sunni in the Muslim religion.

Originally Posted by Diapernicky

As a Buddhist, I think that Christianity is a crock religion built on hate and bigotry.

Does know one else see the irony?...

[whitefox]

The thing is, serious people who honestly believe all of this are offended when what they believe is attacked, and respond as such. As for you, Happy Lurker, that is kinda funny. I must admit I lol'ed at that.

[Lukie]

Originally Posted by Diapernicky

As a Buddhist, I think that Christianity is a crock religion built on hate and bigotry.

You clearly don't understand the fundamentals of Buddhism. Are you even a Buddhist?

[Princess_Mandy]

I've been in church all my life, I'm a Christan and I'm a Baptist. Yes, I believe in Christianity. I believe in God and I have been saved. I'm glad I am because I know what he has done for me in my life. I'm even going to a Christan College next year. There is a lot of hypocrites who do say they are but do the wrong thing all the time. There's also a lot of people who are only christians when they are sitting in church. I want people to beleive what I do and have the hope and faith that I do but I don't push it on them and jam it down their throats. Its different for everyone though.

[Akira]

Originally Posted by Happy Lurker

Does know one else see the irony?...

I did.

[avery]

there are people who are generally trying to be good and get along with one another, and then there are people who hate and antagonize others (and everything in between). i think it has little, if anything, to do with your religious beliefs. i think there are about the same number of nasty people who are christians as there are nasty people who are non-chirstians.

people who say hateful demeaning things about christianity fall into the second category. :P

as for me, i don't belong to any religion, although at one time or another i've considered joining several jewish congregations, a quaker church, the russian orthodox church, and a zen buddhist temple.

[Fire2box]

Originally Posted by Target_0

Christianity, Let's see where can I start from.
About me: I was, but I've lost my Faith for several reasons.

Talking about Christianity we must take a look to the social background.
Living in Italy, I can tell you that religion is something very important here. Italy host Vatican City, where Pope lives and reign.
Since Kindergarten, kids starts to learn Religion and from RD grade they start to attend Catechism (in my case, once a week after school) till Th grade to prepare you to the 2 most important sacraments: Communion and Confirmation. After the Th grade they can choose if continue to follow it or not.
I've received both.

Kids usually goes to oratory on Sunday afternoons, places linked to the church where priest and other people organize activities for them, like football or other sports.

Plus Italians citizens donate a lot of money to the churches via taxes (on their decision) or other ways.

I don't know how your laws are, but if you insult god or priest or any religion, here you can be fined or send in jail.

Now let's start to talk about my view on church.
First of all there his a lot of Hypocrisy.
One thing that I can't stand is this person called Pope that every Sundays, from his windows in San Pietro square, talk about Poverty, asking to people for actions to try to reduce it when The pope himself, every day, wear expensive clothes and a lot of gold and jewels that, if donated to poor people, can give food to an entire poor nation.
Isn't Hypocrisy talk about Poverty and being in the meantime one of the richest men on Earth?

Another thing is that all this gold is Bought with OUR money.
when people must do their tax declaration they must decide where to donate money and on TV appears spot about give this money to the church (is something called 8x1000= 8/1000 of your taxes goes to the church) for missions in Africa but what they didn't say is that the 80% and over of money received by taxes goes to improve and beautify churches and less than 20% goes to people who really need it.

Other thing is that church always has word in any political decision; since Policy and religions are 2 separate things I don't see why we must hear them. They have their own state where they can do what they want.

One last thing, they always attack Muslims and other middle east religions because they use war as a tools for expanding religions, but I think they forgot when they started crusades, wars in god's name.

Plus all this pedo priest and other priest accused of sexual harassment.... They are not fired or sent in Jail, simply moved to another place because they are untouchable.

One last thing, but this is about people who believe in god. If you believe in god, you must believe in Him as the creator of Earth and Heaven, Universe, Animal and all other things, so you can't say that you believe id Darwin's evolution theory, this will be Hypocrisy. If you are against stem cells research you can't take medicines obtained thank to this kind of research because they killed a life-form for obtaining these stem cells, this will be Hypocrisy
If you believe in God you can have only 1 wife/husband, you can't Divorce from him if you don't like it anymore and re-marry and after this being an activist during the Family day (This happens here).
If you Believe in god you must be against abortion, no matters what are your social conditions or what are the fetus conditions.
All this Hypocrisy Sucks!

First of all thats all Catholic. It is Christianity but its a extreme form of it. I am "modern" baptist.

Second. Most of the reasons you gave to why you hate the faith is due to the people in it. Not everyone is like that.

and lastly all I got to say is maybe evolution came from god. I think god did make the earth, the stars the other planets etc, but I also think humans did evolve. But this is my own personally theory and I seen nothing thats contradicted it yet. Plus I never seen anything thats ever disproved god yet.


I also think that its impossible to disprove god and its impossible to prove god. So no matter what it will always come down to faith. And Like John Locke from the tv show lost said..

Jack Shepard- "Why Do You find it so easy to believe!?"
John Locke- "Its NEVER been easy!!"

By the way they were talking about faith. Not about god but about something else that does require faith.

Oh and yes it in fact has never been easy for me but I view it all as a test of sorts.

[Jade]

I believe you have to believe in something. If Christianity is what gives people the right values and something to believe in then they have every right to follow it. I don't judge religions as they all promote a lot of good values.

I have a mixture of beliefs, many of which are pretty abstract. I wont go into it in detail because it tends to draw a lot of arguments. But yeah, Everyone should believe in something! Even if its Santa Claus

[Delta]

Originally Posted by Target_0

The pope himself, every day, wear expensive clothes and a lot of gold and jewels that, if donated to poor people, can give food to an entire poor nation.

He is the pope and has to look respectable but you're right. I assume you know about the financial situations given where you're from but money shouldn't be horded.

Originally Posted by Target_0

One last thing, they always attack Muslims and other middle east religions because they use war as a tools for expanding religions, but I think they forgot when they started crusades, wars in god's name.

Somehow, I don't think that the crusaders had God in mind and used it as an excuse to grab land and assets.

Originally Posted by Target_0

Plus all this pedo priest and other priest accused of sexual harassment.... They are not fired or sent in Jail, simply moved to another place because they are untouchable.

I agree. That is ridiculous. Just plain ridiculous. The bishops should have taken serious action instead of messing around. These people do not act in God's best interest but treat the Church as a business.

Originally Posted by Target_0

One last thing, but this is about people who believe in god. If you believe in god, you must believe in Him as the creator of Earth and Heaven, Universe, Animal and all other things, so you can't say that you believe id Darwin's evolution theory, this will be Hypocrisy.

No - I don't see the problem. The problem is that these people are relying upon the bible as being perfect. It isn't. Science and religion work together to attempt to explain WTF is going on.

Originally Posted by Happy Lurker

I still believe in God, but I can't believe in the bible. For the moment I've adopted eastern religions such as Buddhism and Daoism as philosophies to live by.

The bible is meant as a guideline. Not as fact. You can't expect a piece of writing to remain accurate after being passed down for thousands of years, much from word of mouth. Much is more like a history book that to do with God mixed with interpretation errors and exaggerations.

For me, I look out for how Jesus lived his life and the things he says. I then think about it and listen to what the church says about it and finally think about it again. Well that's on a good day.

You don't base your faith solely on the church or the bible. You take bits of each and look how it's affected other people. Science hasn't disproved religion or explained the miracles that are happening all the time.