| Author |
|
Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3269
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | 1
|
post reply
|
|
Ugh. Can we not have a he killed/she killed conversation about Israel/Palestine, here? It's a Rorschach blot that can be argued about literally anywhere else on the internet.
Edited by Dave Kopperman on 14 May 2024 at 3:35pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12598
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | 2
|
post reply
|
|
Yes, please -- let's not.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | 3
|
post reply
|
|
The 'problem' with rejecting/blaming a religion/all religion, is that a ton of other people are not going to be on that same page at the same time. It's still out there, figment of imaginations or otherwise and still motivating people. As to the purported good from, or connected to, it being worth the bad... that's always going to be a perspective of subjective will. That weighing of a balance might be equally unreal, at least if you don't believe in some ultimate accounting or reckoning, and thus meaningless. It all 'is'... has happened and will always have happened minus any humans trying to make sense or value assignments of it. And of course will continue to happen, something that comes with human beings.
The Hindu Upanishads are a collection of writings about a higher self, how to sense and eve connect with such; an ultimate, minus judgements in the Western sense although judgements all the same. An Atman in a purer ineffable realm of which we are all mere shadows and reflections. The cow is sacred to them, a spiritual center representing life in general, where for 'us' cows are a center economically only. The Japanese Shintoism claims to recognize divine God-ness or 'kami' in everything almost including rocks and dolls, another 'chosen' people of a sun goddess (Amaterasu). Like Joseph Campbell wrote so long ago, along with C.G. Jung and Mark Twain; it all rhymes. It is us, from us, about us, the timber in all our eyes. Do we reject part of ourselves in removing such a timber? I guess I am still looking at mine. Different pages, different books, and yet in some way all the same ultimately perhaps?
"Nobody's right if everybody's wrong."
"I think it's time we stop... Everybody look what's going down"
- '60s song lyrics by Stephen Stills.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 14 May 2024 at 4:28pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15890
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | 4
|
post reply
|
|
QUOTE:
| All the paintings of Jesus aren't even accurate: He didn't look like a white guy hippie from the 60's with a tan. |
|
|
If we trust the art, he may have been a homunculus. I'm not trusting the art...
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | 5
|
post reply
|
|
I've known some LGBTQ people who were understandably very anti-religion/anti-Christian. I wouldn't tell them they should not shun/reject/blacklist based on their experience, or even bring up the subject at all. As a general principal though if you are against what people who write off or condemn entire groups of people think and do, then in writing off an entire group yourself you could be doing a thing you detest. But sure, if you see swastikas on people and you had family killed in Europe in 1938-45, right there is an obvious exception.
Someone saying that 'Jesus' or God/Allah/a creator agrees with them is effectively saying they don't believe in what they are saying enough to really defend it I figure; they're not confident enough to say that is what they are saying and defend it just on that basis. Some people also seem to have a problem saying when they don't know something, or that even if they really dislike parsnips there might be people who genuinely enjoys them. Parsnip eaters will burn for ever in Hades? That's no different than the left-handed or who have relationships different from your own will... and what Heaven is it where someplace there are so many condemned to suffering anyway? Sounds like some gated affluent neighborhood next to a slum of the 'third world' both of which we have now. In other words, where's the progress to that anyway? Hell is a metaphorical state we can create for ourselves pretty well though, I can believe in that.
So back where I started; the door open a crack, not writing the whole thing off yet not real interested in fighting for or against.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6329
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | 6
|
post reply
|
|
Looking at Google, I see that the earliest date for an image of Jesus tends
to be agreed upon as dating from about 238 A.D..
Imagine if someone took pen to paper today and created what was the first
known image of George Washington.
I can find no corner of Christianity worth propping up. It’s such a thoroughly
rotten project.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3269
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | 7
|
post reply
|
|
The bits about charity, empathy, and forgiveness are worth preserving, but (perhaps not coincidentally), those seem to be the things that modern American Christianity has completely elided.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | 8
|
post reply
|
|
I think I just hate seeing needless waste of hate, it does seem to be something that harms the hater as well as hatee, so I dunno; hate the sin and not the sinner? That's a kind of Christian think right there isn't it? As a substance abuser might 'find the Lord' so even a stereotypical bible-thumper know-it-all might find they've been a plain old hateful jerk to many people in it's name and progress out of that. Like the acknowledging and playing along with an invisible friend for a child, it could be that societal respect in general for 'religions' is long overdue for a big downgrade. I think the founders of the U.S. had a pretty good balance in mind via a fairly strict separation of church and state (do not inflict or impose your stuff on others who may have other stuff of their own different from yours or nothing at all). Won't eat corn on every third Wednesday; welcome, now don't condemn those who do but not fish for one week every February. Jack Spratt and all that...
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6329
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | 9
|
post reply
|
|
Dave: The bits about charity, empathy, and forgiveness are worth preserving, but (perhaps not coincidentally), those seem to be the things that modern American Christianity has completely elided.
**
I think the point of this thread, or at least a point that I will go on making until I'm dead, is that no humanitarian value was invented for Christianity or requires the slightest whiff of Christianity in order to continue.
In fact, as history continues to prove, religion only erodes and dilutes the humanitarian motives of its followers. "Sure, I'd love to help build houses with you and bring you improved water-supply-- but my religion has asked me to ask you to repay me by receiving indoctrination and propaganda for my sect of the great Christ cult."
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6329
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | 10
|
post reply
|
|
Rebecca: I think the founders of the U.S. had a pretty good balance in mind via a fairly strict separation of church and state (do not inflict or impose your stuff on others who may have other stuff of their own different from yours or nothing at all).
**
I think the greatness of our greatest leaders has something to do with their ability to weild religion as a political tool. Knowing the leverage points of American faith helped some of them achieve big things with the American people.
But I think the separation of Church and State was a special piece of wisdom that tended toward an awareness that humans created God and that trying to deny this is what fucks us up.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
|
| Posted: 14 May 2024 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | 11
|
post reply
|
|
I agree that Christianity shouldn't claim any copyright of sorts on charity any more than ownership of the word marriage. These things existed and were recorded as existing long before Christ and in places that had not heard of him. People cared for the poor and ill as distant in the past as perhaps the stone age going by burial care and evidence of things done to help with broken bones. Same-sex couples had monogamous relationships that were known and accepted by others in Ancient Greece.
There is something though of 'that which is hidden will be revealed' in Christianity... so you should do good deeds quietly (and pray quietly), not for worldly acclaim... or, actions speak louder than words. Another major point is 'turning the other cheek' something incredibly easier to say than to actually do.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 1932
|
| Posted: 15 May 2024 at 12:24am | IP Logged | 12
|
post reply
|
|
I find the hostility towards Christianity on this message board to be both surprising and disappointing. I don’t see these message boards bashing Jews, Muslims, Hindis, Buddhists, or heck even Scientologists. But mention Christianity and the poison dipped arrows fly.
I wish I could say it’s because most people on here are Americans, and the loudest part of Christians in the US have tied themselves to the Republican Party, and jettisoned most of Christ’s teachings to fall in line with right wing policies.
But it’s more than that. There are folks on here who make the effort to quote biblical verses, and point out contradictions, and insist every believer must accept every single word of the Bible without exception, despite being written over the course of thousands of years, during very different cultures, and borrowing some material from pre-existing societies.
And I don’t see anyone on here putting in that kind of effort to pick apart other faiths. Can you quote the Quran and tell me about its contradictions? The Tripitaka? The Vedas?
If you’re anti all religions, fine. But why do some of you despise Christianity above all else? Was it a personal hurt from your local church?
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
