A friend asked why am I here on MDB

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’m just wondering why you would lie about this friend, and to a larger extent, why so many Christians are such goddamned liars. There always seems to be an undercurrent of deceit in order to evangelize their faith. From little white lies like yours, to megawhoppers like *insert name of latest megapreacher here*. Truth is such a funny and slippery word when discussing anything with faithful types. And because truth and deceit become so intertwined in your worldview we get this weird, and frankly creepy, transition to the concept of love. The fact that you can’t see how bizarre what you just did was, well, I don’t know what to say other than it’s creepy. And weird. And bizarre.

All of this because you lied.

- Doc

[_Dr Exiled]

I think the lie comes from a false sense of superiority that Christians get because they claim to have had a feeling that cannot be supported objectively. They are going to heaven and the poor non-believers will have to suffer until they confess Christ, a la the Spanish Inquisition. Msnobody probably doesn't even realize this as it has been ingrained in Christians for centuries by their leaders. Falsely, Christians put themselves on this pedestal so they can look down on the poor souls, inauthentically claiming love for people they don't even know. Perhaps Msnobody needs to review the literature on passive aggressiveness and spend some corona virus time looking into her soul to see the real reason as to why she needs to condescend to this site to give us of her wisdom?

Maybe a start could be having an attitude of wanting to actually discuss issues instead of just wanting to witness? In any event, the witnessing was done and now you may retreat to your rejoicing because of your invented, supposed moral superiority. You publicly sacrificed by taking precious time out of your day to come here and spread your fake good news, and let us know about it (the real purpose of why you made up your friend).

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

You make some good points, Dr. Exiled. What saddens me most about Christianity is how defeated they feel, and how much they hate, on a fundamental level, their own humanity. To think they're dirty, or unworthy, or flawed, or corrupted, or evil is just so sad to me. There's literally nothing wrong with recognizing the design flaws in our programming, so to speak, without inventing a sort of coping mechanism where simple belief in the existence of a figure is a catalyst to a programming upgrade. Why not just be better? Do better? Act better? There's no need for a god-patch to our code. We're the programmers. We got this.

- Doc

[_msnobody]

I’m just wondering why you would lie about this friend, and to a larger extent, why so many Christians are such goddamned liars. There always seems to be an undercurrent of deceit in order to evangelize their faith. From little white lies like yours, to megawhoppers like *insert name of latest megapreacher here*. Truth is such a funny and slippery word when discussing anything with faithful types. And because truth and deceit become so intertwined in your worldview we get this weird, and frankly creepy, transition to the concept of love. The fact that you can’t see how bizarre what you just did was, well, I don’t know what to say other than it’s creepy. And weird. And bizarre.

All of this because you lied.

- Doc

Because I would not give you the name of my friend that makes me a liar?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Did I ask for your friend’s name? Now that you’ve had enough time, you could at least flesh out the character a bit with a passable background story. Careful, though. Tangled webs n’ all that.

With the deepest love possible,

Dr. Cam

[_msnobody]

Did I ask for your friend’s name? Now that you’ve had enough time, you could at least flesh out the character a bit with a passable background story. Careful, though. Tangled webs n’ all that.

With the deepest love possible,

Dr. Cam

Well, since you asked with the deepest love possible, my friend is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has struggled with belief in TCoLDS and in belief in God/a God, yet has an appreciation for the culture in which he/she was raised. A very lovingly, genuine person.

I was beginning to think I had wandered out of the trailer park or lost the lease on my lot in Shady Acres, and wandered off into RfM. :o)

[_Jersey Girl]

All of this because you lied.

- Doc

No. She didn't lie. I've known her for at least 15 years. I know her name, I know where she lives, I know details about her family life and profession, going back go ZLMB before this board ever saw daylight and have never once known her to lie. She doesn't have a deceptive bone in her body.

Your problem is you don't know her. She comes on here when she has time like she does now because she's in lock down like the rest of us, puts up a message from her heart filled with love and hope and you...you can't pass up a chance to crap all over a sweet person's heart felt message?

Stop it. Get out of my face with that stuff.

[_Jersey Girl]

I have always appreciated that posters here often share the deep things of their lives here on MDB. I too, am willing to share these things here, even when it isn't popular, or to be the odd girl out, or to share my life's many struggles. A friend recently asked me why I participate on MDB {although, I sort of took a hiatus with going back to work and school]. The answer was easy. The simple answer is this:

"I am speaking the truth in Christ--I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit-- 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen..." Rom. 9:1-3

There is only one thing that compels a person to feel this way. Only one thing that would bring a person to the place of spending years holding out the most valuable, precious gift someone could ever want and need to possess, knowing that this gift of Life will be pushed aside or rejected more often than not, and to people I will likely not meet in this lifetime, most who live some 1700 miles away. I am just so awestruck, overcome, and humbled by this grace and love God gives to be poured out to others. This means that I too am loved with this same unfathomable, immeasurable agape love. So, if you're reading, my dear friend, I chose to more fully expound on my reason for being on MDB-- that the world may know. Agape, my friend, Agape.

You know what? Someone here said that when I write similar types of posts that I display "candid vulnerability". Thank you for doing the same.

Welcome back, nobody!

:-)

[_Physics Guy]

There's literally nothing wrong with recognizing the design flaws in our programming, so to speak, without inventing a sort of coping mechanism where simple belief in the existence of a figure is a catalyst to a programming upgrade. Why not just be better? Do better? Act better? There's no need for a god-patch to our code. We're the programmers. We got this.

Perhaps some of us have got this, but a lot of people really do find that they want to be different people, yet we somehow can't do it. For us the old words of Paul still ring true:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that I do.

It's not even a specifically Christian sensation. What I understand to be the standard allegorical interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita is that on the battlefield of life we all find that we are fighting on both sides. How do we then go on fighting?

And then, on the other hand, "our programming" includes religious belief as one of the features that the language supports. Humans have been using religious belief to modify our behavior for many thousands of years. It might not work for everyone, and it might not work for the reasons that people think, but it's just implausible to suppose that such a basic feature of human psychology has persisted so long without being effective at all. The god-patch works, for some value of "works", at least some of the time.

Twelve Step programs still like to use it, in suitably generalized language, and up to a point that makes some obvious sense. If I've had a lot of trouble with something for years, then even if I am now in a position where I will finally be able to change it, the fear that I will once again fail is a reasonable one, and that reasonable fear may very well be self-fulfilling because the fear itself brings an added measure of stress that will actually derail me once more after all. Belief in a higher power can be an effective patch for that bug.

Perhaps not everyone needs that patch, not everyone needs that crutch. Speaking for myself, though, I feel I'm like one of those bistable images that's either a vase or two faces, or the ballerina GIF that's turning either to left or to right. I can be someone who has it all pretty damn well together and I can be a total wreck, and it's only a matter of how I look at myself.

There's an old tradition of accusatory preaching that tries to make the complacent see their own flaws. I guess that might in principle be a useful service but I reckon that the industry attracts at least a hundred hypocritical psychopaths for every genuine helper. It's safer to focus on the people who have already decided for themselves that they need some kind of help. If religion is a patch that they need in their code, or even a nicotine patch on their arms to get them through the hard days without falling back on bad ways, well then God bless religion.

[_Lemmie]

then, on the other hand, "our programming" includes religious belief as one of the features that the language supports.

Disagree completely that it is included in “our programming.” See any of DrW’s posts on the science behind this idea.

If religion is a patch that they need in their code, or even a nicotine patch on their arms to get them through the hard days without falling back on bad ways, well then God bless religion.

And what if that patch contains the bad ways? I have a sibling who blesses his religion for getting him through his hard days, and I will note it does personally seem to do him good, but his version of religion also requires him to righteously shun me and my family, because we don’t practice his exact religion. Whether we are good, decent, honest people is irrelevant to him. God bless religion? Sure, it helps him a lot. At the expense of those his religion asks him to hate. So, no. NOT god bless religion. In my opinion, go to damned hell, “religion.”

Just because religion has been around and used for a long time doesn’t necessarily make it the best, better, or even good as a patch. Plenty of patches are available that don’t contain the hatred for fellow men that religion has the capacity to spawn.