What's so irritating about Christians?

[Ilovestrawberry]

Hello everyone!  To be honest I am a Pastor who loves God with my whole heart.   However,  I am not here to preach or condemn anyone!!!!!  I wanted to pose this question and see if anyone would be willing to interact with me: What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?  What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today? 

[Goon]

There is absolutely zero evidence for the life of Christ..
No evidence of a flood..
Science community says young earth Christians are wrong..
Noah's Ark?

Christians are annoying because they try to act like intellectuals.. and all you can see is how their parents destroyed their brains.

[stromboli]

Try this
http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=9917.0

How long a list do you want? Planned Parenthood murders? North Carolina and Mississippi attacking the right of LGBT people? the fact that people like Ted Cruz are pushing to make america a theocracy after 230 years as a nation based on secular law? People in African countries murdered by Christians because they are believed to be witches?

Christianity is a rape culture. Read your Old Testament. Rape and slavery aren't mentioned in the 10 Commandments. Rape is a property crime and slavery is allowed in certain circumstances.

As mentioned, Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, Exodus- none of it happened. You can't prove your god exists and there is no good evidence a divine Jesus ever existed. The only way you can be a Christian is by reading only select parts of the bible and ignoring every other objective proof to the contrary.

Oh and as far as an individual level, the blatant hypocrisy they show by choosing to attack and condemn certain segments of society and ignoring teachings that specify other sinful acts as written in the bible. Like tattooing, piercing and so on.

Oh and I used to be a Christian.

[Mike Cl]

Hello everyone!  To be honest I am a Pastor who loves God with my whole heart.   However,  I am not here to preach or condemn anyone!!!!!  I wanted to pose this question and see if anyone would be willing to interact with me: What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?  What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today?

Welcome, pastor.  I am so relieved that you are not here to preach.  Or even condemn!  How very noble!  Gosh, I really, really like that; and am so relieved!  Hmmmmm....but I do wonder what it would be you would find to condemn????  And is that one of the biggest jobs of a pastor??  Yeah, I guess it is.  christian/judgmental---ah, yes, I do see a match there.  So, I guess it really is hard for you to post on a forum and be nonjudgmental................wow, you are really, really showing restraint!  I am so proud of you!

You ask, "What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today? "  Well, what makes you think they (christians) were ever credible?  Your religion was invented from myth and legend.  There is not substance to the 'history' of your book or your hero.  Faith was the blinding factor then and now.  So, I would say that your religion is just as credible then as now.  Which means it has no credibility for anybody who has eyes to do research with or ears to hear the result of asking real questions.  Or a brain to think.

I would criticize your religion for being fact free; based on belief and faith, not reasoning or evidence.  And for condemning the progress of science.  And......................well, you get the idea, for I could go on and on.   

[reasonist]

Hello everyone!  To be honest I am a Pastor who loves God with my whole heart.   However,  I am not here to preach or condemn anyone!!!!!  I wanted to pose this question and see if anyone would be willing to interact with me: What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?  What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today? 

What makes Christians less credible is the surrender of their minds. To cede the only thing that makes us higher primates: the faculty of logical, skeptical thinking and reasoning for the believe without evidence: faith.
That goes for ANY superstition/religion.
But let me ask you a couple of questions since you are here on our turf. As a Christian pastor you must belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of a omnipotent, omni-benevolent deity. You must also believe that laws of physics can be suspended in favor of the supernatural.

A) When did you stop taking the good book literally? You obviously don't stone people anymore for working on Sabbaths, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth and we can be openly secular without you hurling rocks at us. And don't forget the Jewish Bible has to be followed to the T (Matthew 5:17,18) according to Jesus.
B) As a pastor you surely must know that the Christian Bible is a mishmash of Babylonian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Roman and Greek fables and myths. There is absolutely nothing new in the Bible, so it cannot be possibly the word of a God, unless he is lazy or dumb. If you know this by being honest to yourself, how can you live with selling ancient Pagan mythology as the truth?

[Ilovestrawberry]

I want to thank everyone who took the time out to respond to my question and especially everyone who directly answered the question.  I apologize if my question was mis-worded - I know that often time in such conversations Christians have been seen as judgmental and I wanted to express that this was not my intention from the beginning.  Again thank you to all who took my original post for what it was.  A good response to many of the questions raised can be found in Lee Strobel's, "The Case for Christ and Faith" series without me going on for pages myself.  He too was once an atheist.  It's a good read no matter what one believes.  Again, I appreciate the responses, each post gave me a lot to think about.

[stromboli]

Maybe you better read this. We have other perspectives as well.

https://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-case-against-lee-strobel/

Like I said, I used to be a Christian.

Oh, and Jesus was either a messianic figure upgraded by Romans or a total myth. There is no concrete evidence that proves his existence.

[Mr.Obvious]

Hello father, Welcome to our band of heathens. Don't worry, everyone is a heathen to Some.
I can't speak for anyone else, but what makes them 'not credible' to me is simply The lack of evidence supporting their beliefs.
As i live in a country in which The Church doesn't have all that relevance and influence anymore, my personal beef doesn't stem from them superimposing their ideals on me. But my boffer criticism of them, as a whole, is that around The world they claim to have truth and proof, where they do nor. Same for any religion really.

[Shukhov]

What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?

I criticize them for: Forcing their religious taboos onto others. Being for religion taught in public schools. Being whiny wimps who cry about oppression when they don't get everything they want.

[Hydra009]

What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?

I criticize them for: Forcing their religious taboos onto others. Being for religion taught in public schools. Being whiny wimps who cry about oppression when they don't get everything they want.

Yeah.  And it's not just acting really shitty to other people.  It's acting really shitty to other people and pretending that it's this virtuous, righteous thing - all while condemning everyone who doesn't believe what they believe as deviants, fools, and "god-haters".  It's no wonder they get a bad rep.

And to preempt the inevitable fatwa envy, being an asshole or a bigot (or both) and trying to pass it off as the height of morality is not an exclusively Christian domain.  Lots of other religious people do the same thing.  In some cases, they're even worse.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hello everyone!  To be honest I am a Pastor who loves God with my whole heart.   However,  I am not here to preach or condemn anyone!!!!!  I wanted to pose this question and see if anyone would be willing to interact with me: What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?  What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today? 

Well, I'm only 65 years old, so there's still a chance I'll actually meet a Christian. So far, however, I haven't met even one. NOBODY who has claimed to be a Christian has, insofar as I can tell, lead a life that Christ would recognize as being according to the cherry-picked versions of his teachings that people say are the core of Christianity.

[marom1963]

Hello everyone!  To be honest I am a Pastor who loves God with my whole heart.   However,  I am not here to preach or condemn anyone!!!!!  I wanted to pose this question and see if anyone would be willing to interact with me: What is the biggest criticism of modern Christians?  What makes them less credible or heard in society and on an individual level today?

How many Christian men are uncircumcised, cut their hair, eat pork (rabbit, shell-fish), and work on the Sabbath - and, yet, foam at the mouth against "Sodomites"? God's laws do not apply to them but apply to others, it seems ... The Bible means what it means, except when it's inconvenient to us personally. "I have not come to change the law but to fulfill it" - Jesus Christ ...

[doorknob]

The biggest thing for me is the lack of evidence and science contradicting religion. I trust science over some ancient desert people any day of the week. Not to insult the desert people it's just they didn't have science to explain the world so they made a religion. As some one else stated Christianity has a mishmash of beliefs from other religion/cultures. That plus combined the fact that there are no records any where in history of an actually Jesus existing. And the Romans kept extensive records of things so not one writing of him appearing any where tells me he never existed.

That alone is enough to tell me that Christianity is no different than any other religion. Nothing more than a mere superstition.

BTW I also once was a christian. Catholic in fact so I do know quite a bit. I was a devout christian (trust me when I say I was a real believer who was very kind and followed the teachings of jesus with maybe a touch of errogants.  but after having to do lots of research during college I soon realized that all the facts pointed to the contrary of christian teachings. It wasn't too long after that, that I started to think really hard. I came to the conclusion that I had been indoctrinated into believing a huge superstition.

There were other life events after that, that helped transition me away from Christianity. But the above is the main factor in me deciding to leave Christianity behind.

[Munch]

Its because seeing someone who is completely dedicated to a religion, they become someone that is very hard to take seriously because of the way they dedicate themselves to something they have no proof of even existing.

Its not just irritating, its often scary the way certain religious people follow their beliefs that have been indoctrinated onto them, and how they don't question it, just 'it must be true because this book and another preacher told me it was true'.

When you see news reports of muslim terrorists killing people, not just in their own countries but in countries their their faith isn't the mainstream religion, that is what religion does to people. Your same religion was doing the same shit centuries ago in the 'name of god', and even today, you read horror stories of people attacking others 'in the name of god' for not being what you consider an acceptable standard, like against gays, transgendered, those with physical and mental deformities, even other faiths.


Modern Christians, well their might be some who are just overall nice people, who just want to pray to their god and nothing else, while being decent to others, you are still dedicating yourself to a faith that has done nothing to give others the idea of it being a good thing to follow.

[SGOS]

I hate having people try to foist silly beliefs and codes on me, and act all self righteous about it.  Christians as a group, are the worst offenders I have to deal with where I live.  Generally, I think of Christians as mean people.  Also, they have not a bit of evidence to support what they believe, but the ultimate arrogance to claim that it's truth.  Such self righteous presumption of knowledge is the mark of the stupid.  I don't have a lot of patience for stupid.