judge

Probably the biggest flaw INHO of the christian religion/s is the exclusion of people becasue they rejected certain dogma.

Chastity

I've read all your posts but I think we are missing the point here. What I had in mind was a list of every possible flaw concerning christianity. From what I've read you mainly focus on some aspects and various impacts that the christian dogma made on you. Talking about how we feel or percieve christianity is not the issue here. What I had in mind was a thorough and straightforward list of what christians do not talk or can't or maybe ignore about their religion. Well? :huh:

Alethias

The Problem of Evil -- Sometimes shortened to POE in discussions. You are probably familiar with the terminology, but for those that aren't, here's a short definition that sums it up for me:

Christianity demands that god be omnibenevolent, all-good. Most christians also proclaim god all-powerful(omnipotent) and all-knowing(omniscient). If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he can abolish evil, but must not want to, therefore god is not all-good, which contradicts christian doctrine. If god is truly all-good, he must not be either all-powerful or all-knowing, because there indeed is evil. If god is not either all-powerful or all-knowing, how can it be considered god?

Of course, this is only a problem for those that consider that god exists.

Alethias

dettus

The flaw is that it's based on the supernatural.

TautologicalAxiom

The only practically relevant flaw as I see it is that they insist on trying to find "morality" by guessing at what they think God wants, no matter how useless and horrible the "morals" they conjure up this way are in reality.

Beyond that, I really don't have any complaints. I don't care what how silly or logically incoherent their personal beliefs are as long as they behave themselves.

Rational BAC

This is also a "problem" for some us liberal Christians.

I, as a most excellent Christian, do not believe that God is all benevelent.

What, at least in the OT, would make anyone think that God was benevelent?

I doubt that many liberal Christians consider the Christian God to be necessarily benevelent. Au contraire---the Christian God can many times come across as a very BAD dude.

Omniscient?? I doubt that also.

All powerful?? NAH. Why would anyone think He was all powerful? Just a lot more powerful than you or I.

Just the best God we got and the only one we have, (my personal opinion) in spite of His faults.

The essence of Christianity is the belief in the sanctity of forgiveness.

That also includes forgiving God.

Splarnst

Here's the main flaw with Christianity: it's false. It's that simple.

Thank you for yet another non-sensical comment.

Biff the unclean

A major flaw with Christianity is that it is a savior cult superimposed on monotheism.
While these work fairly well in polytheism they worked because you had good gods vs. bad gods with a hero demigod (half man/half god) sacrificing himself to save mankind from the baddies.

Lacking multiple gods Christianity paints mankind– the very ones being saved– as the bad guys. Instead of being saved from evil, we are now saved from God’s righteousness. But it doesn’t end there. Monotheism can’t have demigods. Which leaves you with God, battling the evil humankind, sacrifices Himself to Himself to save evil humanity from Himself.

It would be difficult to squeeze more psychosis in, but somehow they manage by torturing the Dionysian Trinity and ritualized cannibalism of earlier agricultural savior cults until they make them their own.

JLK

Ha. While I was composing this, Biff's "He sacrificed an aspect of His triune self to save us from Himself" encapsulation stole one of my two choices.
Rewriting my screed to lay out the odd implications of this (after all, this is one of the most very central xian concepts: salvation.)
God's currency is suffering -- the acceptable way payment is made. Weird. The Father technically isn't forgiving the debt so much as merely agreeing to accept a substitute payment. In fact it's Christ who we now owe, and somehow all he requires is our acknowledgement which is sufficient for him to forgive us. So the new xian Cosmic Rule says Suffering must be generated to balance the debt of sin, and once that happens The Sufferer can forgive the debtors - but not righteous G the Father in the first place. Christians fixate on Father&Christ's love in doing this, which masks their recognition of the underlying strangeness.

My second choice:
The Bible says almost nothing about systematically investigating nature - science. Biblical "wisdom" refers to moral abilities + practical/social/political understandings. The world was partly magical and no one expected it could be fully understood. The "wisdom of the world" (largely Greek philosophy including incipient science) is disparaged by Paul, and Man's Fallen State extends to his mind which can't be trusted if it inconveniently conflicts with dogma. Today in order to take credit for it, apologists will claim the biblical/xian "reverence for creation" is what greatly inspired western science, but encouraging awe is not the same as commanding motivation/encouraging confidence in understanding. A simplistic idea of unrelenting xian warfare with science (See Andrew White, 19th century etc) is a false/exaggerated characature but that doesn't mean "God's Direct Revelation" wasn't derilect.

ziffel

Here's a list of bizarre oddities regarding Christianity that I posted a month or so back:



1. Lucifer rebelled against God, despite knowing the full glory of heaven, and seeing God face to face.

2. Lucifer was able to convince a third of God's own angels that he was a better choice than Yahweh.

3. After his rebellion, Lucifer was not sent directly to hell. He was given reign over God's creation, Earth, and the license to have strong influence over God's most precious creation, mankind. According to Christians, he is still here, greatly influencing world affairs, even 2000 years after Jesus supposedly defeated "death & hell".

4. the sacred text, the holy bible, is hard to understand, and open to many different interpretations. Surely no one Christian will admit that it's hard to understand, but the big picture says otherwise. There are tens of thousands of branches and divisions of Christianity, because they are unable to agree on the text. This text was allegedly inspired by God himself, who is supposed to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

5. God cursed the entire earth and all living things on it, for the single disobedience of one man. This disobedience took place before he knew right from wrong (before he had knowledge of good & evil). How does one sin when one has no knowledge of good & evil, and why would a "loving" god curse the entire creation for one mistake. The curse was extreme too, and includes death, suffering, and eternal damnation for every living human that will ever be born.

6. Man alledgedly has complete free will, and at the same time God alledgedly has an immutable plan which he devised "before the foundation of the earth" that will be worked out to the letter. Both things cannot be true.

7. God has chosen to allow extreme violence, evil, destruction, disease, and famine on his "beloved" earth. Rather than take measures to eradicate it as quickly as possible, he has chosen to remain hidden and silent and watch the suffering instead. He has the power to stop evil, but has chosen not to. One could even argue that it was God himself that set evil in motion, when he cursed the earth and mankind.

8. God condones and even sets guidelines for human slavery. An abominable act under any circumstances. The apostle Paul also is comfortable (not outraged at all) with human slavery. See Colossians 3:22.

9. God has no need of human companionship, as he is omnimax perfect. Being omniscient, he had foreknowledge that many billions of humans would not (for whatever reason) find or accept his 'plan of salvation'. Despite not needing humans for any reason, and despite having a self-ordained law that those who failed his test would have to burn in a lake of fire eternally, he went ahead with the plan anyway. With this foreknowledge, it is beyond question that he actively chose to execute and punish billions of sentient human beings for an unneeded purpose. When there was nothing in existance, it was his choice, not man's -- to begin and carry out this process.

10. God has alledgedly provided mankind an escape from his damnation, but for whatever reason, has strongly put forth this plan in some regions of the earth, and almost completely ignored other regions. There were American Indians living (and dying) at the time of Christ, and had no way of knowing about Christ's existance or sacrifice. Yet, at the same time, Christ was making appearances and doing miraculous works in front of people in his home region. Here is the key question: if god loves all men equally, why not present the evidence of this love equally?

Bonus: For the last 2000 years, God has chosen to remain utterly silent and hidden, and has devised a peculiar plan to put forth his "saving message" by way of a book that contains many errors and contradictions, and through human ambassadors, called Christians. For the first 1400 years of this period, there were no printing presses, and the very reading of the bible was heavily discouraged by the church itself. With no other way for people to receive the word, he has elected to use 'his church'. Sadly, this church is splintered beyond recognition, and is rife with in-fighting, bickering and a horrendously mixed message for the non-believer.