Believe in God but not the Bible?

<p>it sounds like you might be interested in Islam… the basic foundation is that there is only one God. I suggest researching the religion a bit. </p>

<p>I hate to put it out there but please ignore the negative media/loonies who call themselves Muslims but are out there botching the religion with little to no understanding of what they are doing, if you decide to look into it. I’d say your best bet is reading the translation of the Quran itself.</p>

<p>Ok good luck wherever your spiritual travels take you!</p>

<p>I guess I do use the bible for moral decisions, but what I meant by that was more that I don’t take anything literally and I feel free to deviate when my heart just isn’t in what the book says. I prefer to just take it as an intellectual exercise and food for thought, and when I find wisdom I feel I can use, I use it. The rest I pretty much just ignore. I was raised a catholic and nobody ever told me I could do that, or that I could believe in god and not be a catholic, so I was an atheist from age 7 to like 19. Then I had some sort of spiritual reawakening and have been easing myself in ever since.</p>

<p>Are you interested in suggested reading?</p>

<p>I think some of us are missing the point. You aren’t a christian if you believe that Jesus was a good person or believe that he exists.</p>

<p>You are a Christian if you believe that we as humans were born imperfect but through Jesus’ death on the cross, we can be reconciled to God if we accept the sacrifice that he made.</p>

<p>Personally, I’m upset at the number of people who call themselves a Christian just because it’s what everybody is and they have no idea what they believe in or act like they know what they believe in. (note also that I believe that Jesus came to earth out of an act of love, not hate).</p>

<p>Just my personal opinion but it says in 1 Timothy somewhere that scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness. That’s my stance on the Bible.</p>

<p>You are a Christian if you believe in Christ.</p>

<p>But you are a TRUE Christian if you follow the principles and examples of Christ to the best of your abilities.</p>

<p>Its two different things IMO. I think the word Christian is abused in this society.</p>

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<p>Agreed .</p>

<p>Agreed with UFBARBIE. </p>

<p>This is a moronic thread to begin with. You might as well be asking if you’re a Christian because you’re Sikh.</p>

<p>OP, you’re a deist.</p>

<p>You don’t need a label to define you
My moral and religious beliefs involve aspects of Spinozism, Confucianism, Averroism, and the works of Pascal and William Blake. </p>

<p>Everyone should be able to form their own beliefs rather than worry about which mold they can be pressed into.</p>

<p>There is some value to a label, when there is a suitable one to be had, for the sake of a sense of community and having a group to explore your beliefs with.</p>

<p>I am not a Christian, but I do believe in a God/some higher power. </p>

<p>As one liberal Christian told it to me- “If you believe that Jesus died for you, and that you have Holy Spirit in you, then you are a Christian and the Holy Spirit will guide you better than a warped and translated and mismanaged book ever could.” As I said, I am not a Christian, but that always stuck with me and I tend to believe it.</p>

<p>Then again, I also like how Gandhi put it- “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Makes sense to me a lot of times, unfortunately :(.</p>

<p>^That’s a great quote by Gandhi. And for some childish reason, sometimes people think that your beliefs somehow dictate if you are a “good” or “bad” person. There’s good and bad people of every religion and of those without one.</p>

<p>Let’s say that you’re a Christian (and believe in the divinity of Jesus), yet hold the Bible (and other religious texts) as no more an authority than, say, the “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle. </p>

<p>Then where are you deriving your justification for believing in the divinity of Jesus? From an admittedly faulty text?</p>

<p>^As I said before, I am not a Christian. However, many people believe in the oral traditions of Jesus, or they just simply believe that he is divine, without any tangible proof. It is called faith and it is the same as believing in God without any tangible proof ;). </p>

<p>Just one opinion though.</p>

<p>OP, check out Unitarian-Universalism.</p>

<p>Appalachian Bible College offers a unique closeness that’s hard to find at other colleges. visit <a href=“http://www.abc.edu%5B/url%5D”>http://www.abc.edu</a> for a list of questions to discover if ABC is right for you.</p>

<p>Hey, amyamster. Yes, I’m talking to you. Are you dumb, or just too lazy to read? The OP said he DOESN’T believe in the Bible and ISN’T a Christian. Duh. Take your advertisement somewhere else.</p>

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Hello again romanijaweflkjjlkawkejfkl. I don’t think that faith in a god is the same as faith in certain sets of ethics and morals. Having a belief in a god means that you accept that you may not be able to understand the universe and how it came to be and why certain things are the way they are. The nature of this belief means that it’s essentially inarguable, so no one can say if it’s true or not. However, a set of ethics and morals is arguable. This isn’t faith I think, this is more along the lines of blindly following an entire collection of morals based off something that isn’t totally reasonable, like the fact that so many people believe in Jesus or that many of his lessons and teachings and accompanying texts provide very good moral lessons (which they do). Whatever the reason, I think it’s wrong to take the entire collection of morals simply based on faith because you actually can argue a few of them and see if they make any sense for us in modern society or not.</p>

<p>I hope that made some sense, my brain is feeling fuzzy today.</p>