When Christians Lose the Faith

Well Momma Angel, while I do disagree with your views on why animals are on this Earth, I can still respect your beliefs and opinions because you gave me room to do so. I do not have a problem with people believing what they wish to - it's when they start making me less of a person because of it.

I am always happy to meet people like yourself who are stable in whatever faith they follow, yet don't need to press it on others. I've always known that there are some out there like that, it's just nice to meet them occasionally.

Sanctuary- I think that it takes a lot of courage, to be true to yourself, especially when you are young, and your beliefs are counter to those of your family. I applaud you for taking a stand about what you believe!

"Losing one's faith" seems to imply an adoption of atheism or agnosticism, which often occurs, but that is not the only alternative for people who are reared in fundamental or literal beliefs and drop these beliefs as they get older and educated. Fundamentalists and literalists are closely related to atheists and agnostics because they all take a literal veiw of religion, that is, they think of religion as representing an objective reality. Atheists and agnostics are ripe targets for evangelists because being polar opposites they think very similarily even though the contents of their thoughts differ.

The true enemy of both literalists and atheists are the radically spiritual people or mystics. Radical in this sense does not mean extreme, as in the political spectrum, it means root, going inside to the inner root meaning and motivation.

Studying disparate worldwide myths, direct experience through meditation, or even using certain hallucinogenic drugs are some of the ways many people in the world educate themselves and evolve spiritually.

Mystics are very threatening to literalists and atheists because these two latter groups base their cosmology on thought, and thought is unable to examine itself. Mystics are not people with arcane practices in deep chambers keeping secrets within a secret organization away from the ordinary public; this is an image propagated by literalists as a defense mechanism. Mystics are everyday ordinary people who have found peace of mind outside and underneath the thought-based religious concepts.

All I'm saying is that there is an alternative to literalism and atheism, and that is questioning what we've been told to accept and experiencing first hand what literalists and atheists consider taboo: the nature of self or what we are. "Losing one's faith" is a chance for true spiritual growth and understanding.

Sanctuary, I'm proud of you for being true to yourself. When it comes to religion, most people follow their parent and family's relgion. I call it "an accident of birth." If religion is an accident of birth, the bigger question is "why does the christian religion become the only true religion?" It has nothing to do with "life after death" issues.

In the bigger scheme of things, our christian president started a preemptive attack on Iraq that have now claimed (by best estimates) 100,000 Iraqi lives. If he's a man of christ, there's something awfully wrong with this picture, but christians seem blind to this simple fact.

That you have love for animals speaks volumes about your primary love and ethics. I have a very simple philosophy of life; treat all livings things with respect and dignity. Nothing more is needed.
Man created gods and church dogma can't improve on it.

Pat Robertson recently said that we should kill the leader of Venezuela. He's a christian? Get the picture? He still has a huge christian following. Religion only muddles people's brains.

Sounded good...and made a reasonable amount of sense...

...but only after I mentally deleted "agnostic" from the introductory paragraphs.

What Bush supporters fail to understand is the difference between 1) being against this war, and 2) support for our troops. Two separate issues, but they can't separate the two in their brains. Christians seem to equate 1) god, and 2) a good person. Another misconception.

Momma, What you say is true, but the impression left by most Bush supporters doesn't exactly make that clear. When the right complain about Ms Sheehan, they most often say "her demonstration is not good for our troops" or something to that effect. Show us where we are wrong. Bush have said she has a right to demonstrate, but that's about the only support voiced from the right.

In the bigger scheme of things, our christian president started a preemptive attack on Iraq that have now claimed (by best estimates) 100,000 Iraqi lives. If he's a man of christ, there's something awfully wrong with this picture, but christians seem blind to this simple fact.