Let me ad some more thoughts and questions.
I shall let you know that I have not only a philosophical interest in these kinds of debates but also interest in practical nature.
A friend of mine died yesterday and that brought me back to questions of faith and how I perceived the situation.
For it to sound completely different in my ears, God would have to be real to my mind. But He, or She, or It isn't, so it sounds the same as "May the wrath of Gandalf descend upon me if I break this promise!" See how that works? I really have no problem with it sounding completely different to you though, you're welcome to your beliefs, I mean that.
It seems to me that you are somewhat holding back your understanding. Let me give you another example that will hopefully make it clearer what I mean when I say something "sounds" different from something else. If you include the context, for example.
You have a congregation sitting in church and they are gathering "in spirit". So it sounds different than if I say people are gathering "in a certain mood". There is a difference between "mood" and "spirit". "Mood" is a term you can use in every day life in different situations. "Spirit" is more reserved for religious matters.
When I say "I will love and honour you until death do us part", it sounds different from when I say "I promise not to part from you". Especially as I asked whether anyone even says the latter these days. When I say, "I swear by God to be faithful to you", this is meant as a reinforcer, that I am not just referring to myself, but to a fortifying source, known by others.
How can it sound the same to your ears when "the wrath of Gandalf" is not based on a two-thousand-year history of Christianity, i.e. not even remotely connected to the existing faith of people? In the context of people coming together in situations that are real for them, where they pray and sing together, for example at funerals, they need a common vocabulary.
However you talk to yourself alone, whether in thought or in words, you can substitute anything for "God" and feel something meaningful for yourself. You even might not see the need to pray or contemplate.
But the moment several people come together and want to do this in a common spirit, they inevitably need a commonly accepted form of expression.
Birth, marriage and death are recognised as the most important milestones in people's lives.
An important aspect of all these real events is that people are witnesses to each other when a child is born and baptised, when two people make a marriage vow and when someone dies. Marriage is not just about an intimate act between a man and a woman, but also about them making their covenant in front of witnesses. The more people witness this and are present, the more difficult it will be for the couple to separate afterwards for reasons other than very serious ones.
However, if it is the case that these acts mean nothing to anyone and the gathering in spirit is accepted as something that can be dispensed with, I personally consider this to be problematic and at the heart of many personal as well as societal conflicts in result.
In one respect, for example, this is made clear by Buddhist doctrine, which divides itself into three parts: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
Buddha is the ideal guiding figure, Dharma is the complete teaching and Sangha is the practice of coming together.
My question would then be: Do you think that any religion is dispensable and not needed? Or do you say that it only is dispensable for you yourself and it is just you who don't need it? If so, how do you prepare yourself in the face of death and how would you organize a funeral and honor a diseased one?
What you're describing here are rituals, which can be based on and built around any belief. It's not clear to me why we should use the belief in a non-existent God, one that traditionally casts women in a submissive role. Furthermore, you're describing a difference between self-imposed discipline and discipline based on outside pressure, be it the command of God, or the witnesses at your marriage; self-imposed discipline works just fine for me and, I'd wager, for anyone who's sincere in their intent and relationships. I don't believe the divorce rate is much lower among couples married in Church than those married before a government clerk.
Also, historically marriage hasn't been a good thing, I would say. But I won't expand on its patriarchal origin and nature, or the fact that the woman was considered to be the man's property. I'll say, thank God (pun intended) that divorce has become so much easier throughout the years, as too many individuals, mainly women, have been stuck in an "unhappy ever after" marriage for far too long.
But that's all tangential; for me, there is no God, for you there is. I can't prove that God doesn't exist, for it's impossible to prove a negative. As a side note, that's how George W. Bush's administration painted Saddam Hussein a liar; they said "Prove that you don't have weapons of mass destruction"... Which is impossible of course. The burden of proof always sits with the one making a positive claim, in that case, it was America's burden to prove that Iraq did have WMDs. And in this case, as far as I'm concerned, the religious believer bears the burden of proving that their God exists. Since no one has ever been able to do that, not even William Lane Craig, it's more reasonable to believe that he or she doesn't exist.
Yes. Someone did indeed. So I ask again: what makes the Bible special? If it's not written through "Divine inspiration", what makes it better than The Lord of the Rings? If the Bible isn't the word of that special, infallible being you say you need to have your inner conversations with, what exactly makes it special then?
Is it the number of people who believe in it, as you suggest in this last response? Give it time, my friend; it may well be that in 10,000 years The Lord of the Rings has become that "special" book ;-)
Yet it didn't. What I am describing emerged from a historical context. There are archeological finds of religious scriptures and other relics, right. We have buildings like churches and we do still pray and practice.
Neither the pre-Christian practices nor the Christian faith had arbitrariness as the foundation of their faith, but principles. Arbitrariness - any belief - can be understood as a fashion, as a trend, even as a whim, for example. Which is something else.
You only allow me the interpretation that both the historical Christians and the contemporary Christians have not given important meaning to their phases of life. And yet that is what they actually did.
If a book like "Lord of the Rings" had been written in the ancient past and had had the potential to underpin the important stages in people's lives with an order, containing certain principles connected to birth, death/burial, conduct of life (do you consider those stations important enough to celebrate/honor in what context I gave ?), then perhaps a Bible would have emerged from it, a work that seeks to communicate a religion in language.
It would then have been interpreted and reinterpreted by a great many people over the course of time. That is what happened to the Bible. Arguing continues and I welcome that. Therefore I say that the ground on wich the ongoing argumentation takes place is not obsolete but wanted. It too, develops and changes over time.
The fact that Christianity, because of its spread beyond a local supra-tribal level, gave people a remarkable freedom of movement (traveling throughout Europe), so you didn't find a completely different culture just a few kilometres outside your village, comes to my mind. As modern people who like to look at the exceptions and evil methods of exploiters - who cunningly put their intentions under religion and its attendant authority - does this mean, as a consequence of that, to throw out the ideals of that religion? I wouldn't think so, I think it underpins them. To argue that such people who abuse religion for themselves is the opposite of Christianity is therefore all the more legitimate in my view.
Regarding to marriage and the role of women, I have a total different stance on it but I may publish something which, in case you are interested, touches upon this matter.
Of course and I am a Christian myself. I already spoke against extreme Christian notions and argued that the average Christian is nothing of an extreme kind. You seem to believe it otherwise. How could you possibly know if you aren't around practicing Christians or were raised so (which I assume you aren't)?
I gave you my answers on that. There is nothing more I can do about it, so I leave it.