But that is the thing.
How do we choose which ones we believe and which once we don't? If we say that Jesus was an extraordinary man who spread love and peace, which is fine by me.But, what about other things in these religious books? The son of God, virgin birth? Well, you probably know them all.
How do we choose?
I never have problem people believing in god, but I do think the way majority does is pretty rediculous and makes no sense at all.
What about children being born with deadly diseases ? What is the big plan there? Why only 1% of people owns 99% of wealth?
If all of these killings were done in my name I would start to feel ashamed of myself, regardless wether I have anything to to with it.

You are addressing different questions here, one of them is the Theodizee problem: How can terrible events and suffering be explained if God was almighty. There is no simple answer, this is why I think most members of my church at least are in a certain doubt whether God exists but still try to hold on to their faith and at least listen to the message of the New Testament. So in fact, there is no black and white in terms of naive believers versus atheists, but many people use their brain and still want to be reminded of the values conveyed by the New Testament.
About killings, of course I'm not responsible for any crime of an extremist just because he/she claims to commit it based on a certain interpretation of a religion. No peaceful muslim is responsible for crimes of extremists, and he/she should of course NOT feel ashamed just because the terrorists claim to refer to the Koran. I think this is so self-evident it is not even worth mentioning.

Rosetree, let me just say that you are interesting guy to talk to, wether we agree or not.

Yes, I agree with that. Rosetree, I agree that there are many universally accepted 'values' that can be found in the New Testament, but I think those values have evolved from the crystallization of centuries of human experience, ie. 'you're much less likely to kill me if I'm not trying to kill you', etc. 'Faith' to me means, blindly believing or accepting something with absolutely no justification, rationalization, of basis in fact or reason.

Examples of 'Fairytales' (Christian mostly, but equally ludicrous ones can be found in most religions):

TB (True Believer) - We are all born in sin (and therefore must be "saved".
Atheist - "What? I'm just a baby, I haven't done anything yet except eat, cry, and poop. At least wait until I become a teenager".

TB - Christ died for your sins.
Atheist - What? I wasn't even born yet. What does that even mean?

TB - Afterlife-where you go when you die. Heaven (if you're good) - Hell (if you're bad....or an atheist ).

Atheist - Afterlife - Oblivion (followed closely by decomposition)

TB - Virgin birth

Atheist - Uhhh, right.

Tons more, but you get the idea.

chas

Well, thank you both for finding my posts interesting instead of just being shocked about me defending the more open-minded, non-fundamental type of churches.

The 'fairy-tales' you listed up, well, I guess a lot of the churchgoers I know, me included, have a lot of difficulties firmly believing in them. I for my part, e.g. I don't exclude the possibility of an after-life in an unknown form, and you could even find arguments from physics thinking of atoms, elementary particles, quarks and pure energy as the final component of everything. Science actually has to state that we humans don't really know everything, we can't grasp what infinity of space actually means etc. So personally, as a principle, I don't exclude things 100%. I don't think that makes me superstitious, I like watching scientific TV programs like a well-known astrophysics series by a German physicist, and all in all I'm quite a scientific-thinking type myself, having spent some time on theory of science in my studies, too. Actually, I'm a pretty bad 'believer' (don't tell my employer, the Protestant Church of Westphalia, for which I play the organ), but as I said, I try to hold on to a certain level of faith and listen to the sermons. And the Protestant church tends to take some of these "fairy-tale" elements as "symbols", not as pure facts, so there is a certain degree of decomposition of concrete faith going on, too. I've heard many protestant theology students say: "The university studies of theology made me lose my faith - and get it back on a much less concrete, more intellectual level".
Anyway, the original point why I got involved here has to do with this:



I have to defend my church against being suspected of endorsing, supporting or whitewashing the historic cruelties committed in the name of various religions. All I hear in church, the attitudes conveyed, the interpretations of Bible verses, everything contributes to making the members more peaceful, more caring instead of more hostile and aggressive.
So, at least when considering the attitude of several open-minded present day church organizations, I regard a large part of your thread as extremely one-sided, overgeneralizing and full of hate against religion in general, much more emotional than rational. (I can understand your rage regarding the aspect of hypocrisy, I share that with respect to some church members and also politicians).

There are roughly 4200 religions in the world. How does one choose? It has nothing to do with hating religion but about what one claims to know which one is true without knowing an inkling about all the other religions. How can that be? Let's not go into the geographic or upbringing. All I want to know is how and why one chooses a belief from all those thousands. If religion is such an important part to so many -if not the most important- then why is it so easy to disregard all other beliefs without understanding or even knowing about their existence. Heck, most spend more time on which keyboard to buy.

Are we true believers because we choose to be, or is it just good old brainwashing as a child and pretty much not learning anything else??

Is there a difference between Jesus son of God and Perseus son of Zeus ??How do we choose ?

I'm going with Erik son of chas (HE gets to pick my nursing home ).

chas

With regard to the really dangerous people: They get the brainwashing later in life...
I just watched an in-depth documentary about how some persons who grew up in Germany and France turned towards radical Islamism around the age of 20-25. One of them had been raised Christian, another one had atheist parents. Both were insecure about their own position in life and got caught in the clutches of cunning, rhethorically trained Salafists as young adults.
Their parent's what you call "brainwashing" wasn't the problem...