And one would think that a God that is so engaged in human affairs would leave some sort of footprint. And yet not one bit of evidence, no miracles, no nothing. And the evidence one would expect, changed hearts, insight, honor, etc. are well below average as well as giving free reign to any number of negative features: bigotry, cruelty, perversion, etc. Believers set all that aside, lying to themselves and the rest of us, saying atheists, LBGTQ, minorities and scientists are the problem.

@racocn8 Well said!

That was my one word answer too!

@Garban
No, in my view, that’s not right. There is no single “right” definition of a “Christian”. There are lots of folks who call themselves Christians, and who are welcomed into the church, but who have very different beliefs.

I don’t know how to say it delicately, but the truth is… the great majority of humans have not developed deep philosophical skills. They don’t need to. They’re busy raising children and doing the work that keeps the gears of civilization turning. They don’t have the time or inclination to study everybody from Plato to Wittgenstein in order to make their day work. They legitimately need a “canned” worldview, that they can pop in the microwave and get on down the road.

For them, a fundamentalist mythology is quickly and intuitively absorbed, and keeps them out of the worst of trouble with their fellow citizens, and gives them a sense of purpose and affordable generic psychological relief.

But most ministers, and the better informed members understand that what it’s really all about is just being mindful of our fellow travelers. Faith, hope, and love.

The church I grew up in taught that “God is love.” I’m pretty sure a lot of people take THAT literally.

It seems to me that the people who are such sticklers for the rules and formalities of religion are the ones who understand it the least. All of their judging and condemning and coercing other people is the exact opposite of what their founding member taught. He taught tolerance, forgiveness, and charity. In my view, those who practice his teachings are more correctly described as Christians than those who stiffly follow all the dogma, and believe the mythology literally.

It's not that a Xian doesn't believe God is magic, it's that many Xians refuse to call him magic because they consider "magic" to be a thing of Satan. That's why fundamentalist Xians will condemn books like Harry Potter as evil. The fact that God's power as he supposedly wields it is the very definition of what magic is, is a contradiction lost on them. They decry magic as evil even though their God is magic.

@Garban
Agnostics and atheists are just like religious people - they come in all flavors. As I’ve said many times here, In my view, atheists, agnostics, and theists, are all literalists. As far as I’m concerned, the people who understand and practice religion most authentically are not literalists. To me, religion and theism are not synonymous. Theism is believing in a literal god. Religion is practicing genuine love, tolerance, charity, etc. It’s not about belief, but practice.

@Sgt_Spanky
The thing to keep in mind is that not all Christians are fundamentalist. There are progressive Christians who don’t believe in magic.

@skado That's my point, they're self deluded. If they believe in God, they believe in magic since God is magic. They just won't call it that. They'll call it "Power of God" or some other euphemism for magic. They're just kidding themselves. If they believe in a magical being (God) then they believe in magic.

@Garban Frankly, I think most non-evangelical Christians, as well as most Catholics, are what you call Sunday Christians. And if you scratch them deep enough, they are just there for community and social standing. Probably the same with a lot of Jews, at least the more liberally religious ones.

@Garban
Dictionaries are great for most common words, like bicycle or banana, but religion is an enormous field of study and practice which not even the academics can agree how to define. And of all dictionaries, Webster is the one which (proudly) goes with the most popular current understanding of a word.

And this really does all come down to how we define the word religion. I’m not saying there is only one correct way. I’m saying, in fact, the opposite - that there are many viable understandings of that word.

Where you say one doesn’t have to be religious to practice love and tolerance, I would say that if you are practicing love and tolerance you are by virtue of that practice religious.

I’m not talking about love and tolerance of your own children, although that’s good too, but it comes naturally. What doesn’t come naturally is love and tolerance of the new neighbor who came from a different culture and does things that offend your sensibilities, etc.

That kind of tolerance comes only with intention and practice. And if you are holding yourself to those standards, in my book, you are practicing religion. And I agree that does not require belonging to any organization.

Being a good neighbor to strangers of different political leanings, and of different heritage etc. does not come naturally to the average Homo sapiens. We all have to work at that, and none of us are perfect.

That type of work, whether we belong to an organization or not, was made the cultural norm by religious institutions. We believe it is the right thing to do because many generations of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, standardized that otherwise unnatural sentiment into our universal culture centuries before we were born. In the West, we are all cultural Christians.

“Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.”

[en.wikipedia.org]

.

@Sgt_Spanky
My point is that your definition of God isn’t the only one out there. You define God as magic because you are a literalist like the fundamentalists. Not all religious people are literalists. Many understand God to be a metaphor, which requires no self-delusion.

The God of Spinoza and Einstein was not magic. There is a long history of religious philosophy that does not hold God to be a magical being, but just a metaphor for the entirety of reality, as in pantheism.

@Garban Unitarians are like that. They are solely there just for community and to have a place for their kids to learn about world religions or find a peer group outside of school, because membership in a Unitarian church is usually not much of a community standing builder in Christian America. If anything, it would raise suspicion about a person...

@skado I didn't realize you were referencing the metaphorical god of Einstein and other critical thinkers. I stand corrected.

@Garban
The latter. Anyone who suppresses any of their natural animal impulses to accommodate smoother social functioning among non-kin and total strangers, particularly obnoxious strangers, are, in my view, engaged in a religious practice. Biologically. Historically. Also anyone who practices any mind management discipline, like meditation. It’s all about managing the unruly human animal for the sake of social cohesion. Preferably self-management.

And I realize that’s not the only way to look at it, but it’s not just something I made up to terrorize the local atheists! I came to that view late in life as the result of a years-long independent study of the relevant science and history. I believe it is in sync with the best scholarship on the subject.

@skado I agree that many people on this site do consider themselves atheists and agnostics and they also do their best to practice human kindness.

I don't understand your insistence that those actions in themselves are a religion. Why can't you just let people call it whatever they want to?

@Lorajay
It doesn’t matter to me what people call it. I’m just sharing my view like everyone else is.

I think being able to look at it from multiple angles is good.