Okay. So um hey guys i just need some help with this assignment i have for a world religion class and i am to ask the opinions of atheists/ agnostics or whoever and i dont know where else to go. so i just need yalls insightful and helpful responses to these questions. THANK YOU SO MUCH PLEASE KNOW YOU ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED!
1. How would you (the non-Christian) describe your religious background and church involvement?
2. To you, what is God like? Describe God.
3. What do you think is important and unimportant to God?
4. What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?
5. Describe what the term Jesus Christ means to you.
6. From your perspective, what are the major problems of churches today?
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1. How would you (the non-Christian) describe your religious background and church involvement?
I went to church pretty much every Sunday until I was 14.
2. To you, what is God like? Describe God.
God is a fictitious character.
3. What do you think is important and unimportant to God?
God is a fictitious character.
4. What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?
God is a fictitious character.
5. Describe what the term Jesus Christ means to you.
Jesus Christ is---at least for the most part---a fictitious character.
6. From your perspective, what are the major problems of churches today?
Belief in fictitious characters comes to mind.
1. How would you (the non-Christian) describe your religious background and church involvement?
I was raised in a non-religious family, but in an extremely LDS community. Most of my friends were LDS, and I occasionally went to church services and church activities, including religious summer camps, but I have never believed in God.
2. To you, what is God like? Describe God.
To me, "God" is the universe. I mean, there is no creator in my mind, so if that is your definition of God, there isn't one. There is just the universe, and all the atoms in the universe.
3. What do you think is important and unimportant to God?
I do not think that anything is important or unimportant to God, because I do not believe that the universe, which I have recently defined as being as close to a god as anything can be, has conceptions of importance and unimportance. Perhaps scientific laws, if anything.
4. What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?
Nothing... because we live and we die. It is only other living things that you need to be straightened out with. God doesn't exist in the traditional sense, so it doesn't take anything at all.
5. Describe what the term Jesus Christ means to you.
Jesus Christ, at this point in time, is a character that many people in the world use as a symbol of love and morality. He is a symbol of faith. He is portrayed as the ultimate sacrifice and viewed by many as a model to live by, in addition to being the Son in the Holy Trinity. He is a symbol that draws many people together in the commonality of their belief that he is more than a symbol. It is debatable whether he was an actual person or not, and I have no opinion on that topic.
6. From your perspective, what are the major problems of churches today?
Churches tend to ostracize people who do not believe in what they do. They tend to be cliquey, in spite of the majority of them having doctrine that commands "thou shalt not judge". It causes divides between people. They also do not allow much freedom of thought, encouraging people to blindly believe, which is ultimately detrimental. This is a generalization though.
Hope this helps!
Good luck with your class! Do you just not know any atheists/agnostics?
YES IT DOES ALOT! THANKS! NO NOT REALLY BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU HAVE HELPED ME ALOT BY YOUR INPUT
"1. How would you (the non-Christian) describe your religious background and church involvement?"
I, personally, was never very religious. I never had any "religious" experiences or miracles. My mother made me go to church when I was young, and used writing chapters of the bible as a punishment. Neither really helped, to be sure, but I don't hold any aggression or hostility to churches. I am mostly ambivalent to church and religion, unless they attempt to insert themselves into my life.
"2. To you, what is God like? Describe God."
I don't know. As far as I am aware, no such thing exists to describe. How does one describe something that they don't think exists? I know how dozens of different gods are described in history and modern theology, but as to any actual god, who the hell REALLY knows what it would be like. Even most modern theologies utterly fail to meaningfully describe what it is, it attempts to describe it by comparison, which would probably be the WORST method of describing something utterly foreign to our frame of reference. That is part of what makes theoretical physics so damn difficult, there is no analogues on our scale, making it impossible to understand instinctively.
If, and I mean IF, a "god" existed; that existence would be so fundamentally foreign to our frame of reference for anyone to be able to cognitively comprehend it. Some would consider my position to be noncognitivist, and they are probably correct.
"3. What do you think is important and unimportant to God?"
If such a being even existed, I am fairly certain no one could honestly claim to know.
"4. What do you think it takes to be straightened out with God?"
This assumes that one starts out not "straightened out" with it, and must make effort to become so. Why would anyone assume that?
"5. Describe what the term Jesus Christ means to you."
It doesn't mean much at all to me. Merely one of the many supposed deities people seem to believe in.
"6. From your perspective, what are the major problems of churches today?"
Keeping themselves relevant in a society with changing morals and values. Unless they stay up-to-date with what society finds favorable, they tend to hemorrhage people. For instance, the harder they fight against gay marriage, the more people they will lose as a result. Especially young people that they absolutely NEED to carry them into the future. Unless they start to change their tune, we may be looking at the last days of churches as an institution.