Are you religious?

[Davidc]

[QUOTE 2373840, member: 45"]
You'd be the first to pull up a believer who claimed that they had it all sorted at 8. And I'd be the second, so don't take it personally.[/quote]

No, I wouldn't, and you'd have no justification for doing so either.

Nearly everyone (including me) is subjected to a barrage of religious education, which in any other field of life would be called indoctrination, from a much earlier than age 8. All of us accept this initially, after all it comes from adults we trust and know, and our early experience informs us that we can take their word as it stands. Most 8 year olds have religion sorted, and it's exactly as presented to them to that point because they've never questioned it.

Children start to question received ideas at some stage. My teacher wife tells me it's what defines what we now call key stage 2 in school, age 7 to 11. Some early developers, same source says usually girls, start this process early, some later. That's just variability in development.

Having religion or anything else sorted at 8 has to be taken as sorted at the level of knowledge, thinking and understanding of the individual 8 year old, but to suggest as you have that you would challenge their having anything sorted is frankly gross arrogance on your part.

 

[User169]

Seriously? You're going with an archaic form which is subsidiary to the main definition anyway?

Yes. I believe (!) they give a better sense of how Christians have customarily thought about their religion over a period of many hundreds of years. Until very recently religion was something you did, not something you particularly thought about.

 

[clarion]

If it is just a cultural practice, rather than a belief, it doesn't qualify as a religion, any more than queueing for a bus or a kebab on a Friday night do.

Or maybe they do...

 

[clarion]

If you're saying that most professed followers of a particular religion do not believe in it, I'd be very prepared to accept that. After all, even with the most comprehensive child indoctrination systems in place, surely not everyone can be duped in such a way. It means that the 1.1bn 'Catholics' figure might need to be revised down rather.

 

[clarion]

Checking the Vatican website, I see the first heading in the Catechism is:

I. The life of man - to know and love God

Seems to be a bit of a basic there. Let's go see what the Anglican Communion think.

 

[clarion]

Here we are: In 'Being A Christian' on their website. First sentence:

Christian life is lived in relationship with God through Jesus Christ and, in common with other Christians, seeking to deepen that relationship and to follow the way that Jesus taught.

 

[clarion]

Shall we look at Methodists and Baptists next? That'd make the vast majority of Christians worldwide...

First para of 'Doctrine of the Methodist Church':

The Methodist Church claims and cherishes its place in the Holy Catholic Church which is the Body of Christ. It rejoices in the inheritance of the apostolic faith and loyally accepts the fundamental principles of the historic creeds and of the Protestant Reformation. It ever remembers that in the providence of God Methodism was raised up to spread scriptural holiness through the land by the proclamation of the evangelical faith and declares its unfaltering resolve to be true to its divinely appointed mission.

Baptists

Although the website does say 'Baptists do not have one distinctive Baptist belief.', the first point of 'What Makes A Baptist' is:

The Lordship of Christ
followed by the Authority of the Bible as the Word of God

American Baptist Churches, on the other hand, say:

Foremost among beliefs firmly held by American Baptists is the acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is our Redeemer and our Lord, and that through belief in Him we are assured of eternal fellowship with a loving God.

The Evangelical Church

We value God's revelation to us through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, prayer and the church.

What of Pentecostalists? We are told that:

members believe they are driven by the power of God moving within them.

Lot of God going on there, ain't there?

 

[clarion]

Even Unitarians, the most self-confessed religious 'liberals', explain they are calle Unitarians because:

Because of our traditional insistence on divine unity, the oneness of God.

 

[clarion]

[QUOTE 2373930, member: 45"]I wouldn't have said most. Those who come into it later don't, and a proportion of those who are brought up in it recognise (or should do) what the three of us are now saying, which is that 8 isn't really an age to be able to speak with that level of conviction.[/quote]

8 is certainly old enough to know you are being told lies, or to read on a bit and realise that there are inconsistencies in the Biblical record.

 

[clarion]

Quakers, of course, are a bit more mixed:

There is a great diversity within the Quakers on conceptions of God, and we use different kinds of language to describe religious experience. Some Quakers have a conception of God which is similar to that of orthodox Christians, and would use similar language. Others are happy to use God-centred language, but would conceive of God in very different terms to the traditional Christian trinity. Some describe themselves as agnostics, or humanists, or non-theists and describe their experiences in ways that avoid the use of the word God entirely. Quaker faith is built on experience and Quakers would generally hold that it is the spiritual experience which is central to Quaker worship, and not the use of a particular form of words (whether that be “God” or anything else).

However, the Quakers who do not believe in God (and some of those who do) do not describe ourselves as Christian, and quite a few would avoid the word 'religion' for our feelings and belief.

 

[User169]

Whilst vaguely impressed at your google-fu, I'm struck by your lack of curiousity. Perhaps you should try to rediscover your inner 8 year old.

 

[clarion]

[QUOTE 2373947, member: 45"]...and it's also an age of awareness and experience. Let's not role-play a couple of 8-year-olds, eh?[/quote]

I know what I was doing at seven years old onwards, and it involved a lot of Bible study (and, later, reading about other religious experience and to adherents of various religious traditions). You may have had a different experience, but the only thing I regret about what happened to me spiritually at that age (other than being dragged to church) was that I had had to find this all out for myself, rather than being allowed to explore and discover in the first place.

 

[clarion]

Whilst vaguely impressed at your google-fu, I'm struck by your lack of curiousity. Perhaps you should try to rediscover your inner 8 year old.

I thought it was worth finding out what the vast majority of Christians believe, and it seems that there is more consensus about the definition than you will find here. Which is just as well, since, if you don't assign a meaning to a word, it has no use whatsoever.

Lack of curiosity? When my mum told me that 'Curiosity killed the cat', I thought about it for a moment, and asked 'What did the cat want to know?'. I haven't changed.

 

[swansonj]

Clarion, where is this getting us? We start with a problem that different people understand "religious" and specifically "Christian" in different ways, and some of them insist that theirs is the only correct definition. You are pointing out that most "Christian" churches describe their defining beliefs in terms of "belief" in "God" and "Jesus". But doesn't that just re-present us with exactly the same problem, because different people will understand belief, God and Jesus in different ways?

 

[clarion]

An atheist would be unlikely to hide their children from any knowledge, but encourage them to find out about it.

A home-schooled child of an Evangelical family I knew told me Muhammed was the Devil. What can you do with that sort of closed mindedness?