Playing Christian's advocate to help Christan friends make better decisions.

My buddy told me had some girlfriend all of a sudden. The guy can't maintain girl friends for any length of time, so i thought it was bizarre. Mostly, he is obsessed with sexual encounters. Anyway, hes telling me a story where he is fooling around with some other girl in his car all the while telling me he has some girl friend in the distant land of Texas. I tried to explain to him Jesus wouldn't approve of his actions. Then he says to me, "I've been praying a lot lately and god doesn't seem to be giving me what i want." 

So i tell him, "from what i understand about how god responds to prayer, is that he isn't supposed to give you what you want the way you want it."

Just curious if anyone else out there reverse engineers Christan morality in order to positively push the christan friend back on track to making good decisiions. 

Views: 4

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on February 7, 2010 at 3:55pm
Christians, in my experience, don't practice religion to make themselves better people or to make better decisions. They practice religion as a tool to get other people to do what they want or to get what they want.

My newly married brother is recently way more religious to make his new bride happy, and consequently himself as well. My mother never seemed to enjoy going to church, preferring to get her religiosity on from afar, but she felt strongly that when she dropped me and my siblings off there that we should stay. If Christians seem hypocritical in their religion it is because they are.
Permalink Reply by William on February 7, 2010 at 4:33pm
Maybe, religion is a big hindrance on the religious persons interpretation of good and bad choices. Under ideal situations i'd like to think that the non-theist knows better, and knows what to say and when to curb the religious friend away from bad choices using religion. Because it seems my religious friends don't respond well to anything but religious instructions on matters of ethics. Which of course is silly, we all know this. But, Me knowing better, knowing what the silly religious person needs to hear, i think at least helps in curbing the decision away from bad choices.
Permalink Reply by Greywolf on February 8, 2010 at 4:03pm
Do it very frequently. Or, rather, I use to.

I've been knocked out of commission, so to speak, by events and the powers that be out my way. (Needs a ton of explaining.) Should just scare the beejeebees out of every atheist across the land. It's absolutely frightful. Just mind-numbing. Will just have to leave to leave it there, however. There's nothing any atheist or atheist organization can do about it, unfortunately.

Anyway, Christian fundamentalists are hamstrung because of what they definitively say about the bible and Jesus-God. What they declare to be fact, can easily be shown to be unfounded or untrue.

How about the claim that the original books of the bible contain no errors whatsoever - not so much as even a textual one - only to find that there's not even one "original" bible document in existence! None have survived the ravages of time. Not a single one. (Guess that means an imagainary supernatural Being - whose name escapes me at the moment - didn't feel the documents worth preserving for posterity, eh'?)

Problem for us, however, is that they believe because they want to believe that stuff - for the most part. And they've got oceans and oceans of fellow Christians providing them the psychological support enabling them to cling to their beliefs in the absurd and the preposterous. Not much you can do about it but let each Christian find their own way to the truth - providing them with as much reasoned and rational arguments we non-theists can provide - in as respectful a manner as we can when we're confronted by them.

But they are entitled to believe what they want to believe - so long that belief doesn't impinge upon the disbelief of the atheist in any manterial way. Just leaves you scratching your head as to why someone would believe some of the stuff that is as so dang preposterous as they do, is all. Doesn't it?

By the by: I replied to your reply to my blog: "God's Divine Plan?" for what it's worth.
Permalink Reply by William on February 8, 2010 at 5:49pm
Let me establish two categories:

The silly pile: Religion, dogma, metaphysical gibberish, oppressing other people with my ways of viewing the world

The important pile: Friends, knowing that what I say to my friends is positive and constructive, using the means that have the right voice for the right ears

Me and this friend, have reached the point of tolerance of each others ways of looking at the world. We both thing each others way of viewing the world is detrimentally wrong from the ground up. but we are friends, so we push the gibberish aside.

To me it seems the best way to steer my towards something productive and away from something counter productive is to use the language he knows and push him in the constructive direction.

RSS

© 2013   Atheist Nexus. All rights reserved. Admin: Richard Haynes.

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service