posted
Organized religon boils down to two principals:
Their viewpoint is right and all others are wrong.
Anyone not of their viewpoint is damned and should be converted.
Christianity, Islam and MAYBE Judaism could be said to boil down to that, if you care to look at it that cynically. There are a lot of other religions out there. Does Hindu even have a concept of damnation?
Oh, and for what it's worth, Christianity doesn't say "You're damned unless you believe what we believe," at least not as such. It's closer to "Everyone's damned until they believe what we believe." Small but important distinction.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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Christianity, Islam and MAYBE Judaism could be said to boil down to that, if you care to look at it that cynically. There are a lot of other religions out there. Does Hindu even have a concept of damnation?
Oh, and for what it's worth, Christianity doesn't say "You're damned unless you believe what we believe," at least not as such. It's closer to "Everyone's damned until they believe what we believe." Small but important distinction.
BY "Everyone's damned unless they believe what we believe" they justify two thousand years of violence, political, spiritual and physical oppresion and just being dicks to whoever does'nt pay their dues and bend their knee.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
quote:Originally posted by Lee: So why should it creep you out? Shouldn't you be revelling in your universal attractiveness? Or would it be because no women ever bother to hit on you?
No, it's just that when the women see my friend they usually start hitting on him instead.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Solutions: Get ugly freinds Maim your attractive freind. Discreetly imform women intrested in your freind that he is gay.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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This is for the episcopal church, but I think it still has some relevance to this topic. It just shows that other churchs are more tolerant and foreward thinking than the catholic church.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
quote:Hmm... okay, since most people here believe we evolved from small tree-dwelling furry things, something that supposedly happened millions of years ago and thus can't be observed...
It's called DNA. And evolution has been observed. OTOH, no Gods have ever been observed. Neither have the effects of any Gods.
quote: or that the speed of light is an impassable barrier for anything with matter, which is a negative and thus impossible to prove...
It's a very likely assumption that c is the universal speed limit. But not 100% sure. Unlike your Church, which accepts the Bible as the absolute Truth. And a mea culpa centuries after murdering innocents isn't going to change that.
posted
This, unfortunately, is the result of a Pope who is very old, has Parkinson's disease, and is not quite "all there." When a new pope comes around, maybe things will be different.
And, what's all this "join us or be damned" crap? Do you people really believe that all Christians are like Pat Robertson and those evangelists you see on TV? Do you actually believe that? Or do you not know that most Christians preach the fact that you can get salvation no matter what belief you have? You can be a Muslim, a Jew, or a Hindu and all is well, provided you believe in God and you follow the Ten Commandments.
Believe me, the Church is not a society driven by money-loving Bishops and Cardinals and Popes like it was hundreds of years ago. We have become reformed and more intent on preaching the word of God then on converting the "savages" and "Pagans." Conversion still goes on but does not happen at the point of a sword, like it used to. In Yemen last year, three Baptist missionaries were gunned down at their church by an Islamic militant, and one of them was from my home town. The militant thought they were trying to convert the people. They were not. They were running the hospital to help the local people. An unfortunate side affect of the belief that all Christians are trying to convert others.
Unless you study the church, or still go to church, don't ramble about it's flaws. If you haven't ever been to church or listened to a minister or hear everything you complain abut on the news or from some evangelist's mouth, then don't complain about it. The Church is not perfect, but it's not a greedy, always covering-up institution.
posted
BY "Everyone's damned unless they believe what we believe" they justify two thousand years of violence, political, spiritual and physical oppresion and just being dicks to whoever does'nt pay their dues and bend their knee.
No we don't. I have yet to meet a Christian who wants to justify any of that. Yes, it was used to justify things like the crusades WHEN THEY WERE HAPPENING, but, newsflash: all those people are DEAD! Blaming modern Christians for what their predecessors may have done is like blaming modern white people in America for slavery, i.e. stupid.
And evolution has been observed.
You MIGHT make an argument that speciation has been observed, for very loose definitions of "species", but that's hardly the same as observing that humanity itself evolved all the way from bacteria.
And a mea culpa centuries after murdering innocents isn't going to change that.
Which is why most of us know better than to offer one. I have enough sin of my own to worry about without claiming responsibility for sins committed centuries before I was born by people who happened to call themselves the same thing I call myself. If you've got a problem with what _I_ believe, then point it out.
no Gods have ever been observed. Neither have the effects of any Gods.
Nor did I claim they had. However, I can create a fine logical framework indicating that they must exist given certain basic assumptions. Which was the point of what I said.
Or do you not know that most Christians preach the fact that you can get salvation no matter what belief you have?
Um.... no. What Christians have you been talking to? No one who believes the teachings of Christ as represented in the Bible can possibly claim what you just said most of us do. "No man comes to the father except through me."
The rest of what you said, however, is quite correct. We don't always run around with a Bible yelling at people about how they're damned, because we know that doesn't work all that well. If you ask, yeah, we'll tell ya, but it can be a lot more effective to simply show our love, rather than hitting people over the head with it. And even if we don't think conversion is even possible, well, we'll be Christians anyway.
But why does anyone need to be "saved?" Why is there a need for "salvation?"
Because everyone's sinned. If you sin, you die (however you define spiritual death), because God can not be in the presence of sin. Thus to survive we all need some way for God to overlook our sin.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
God says you've sinned. I consider his word to be a bit more reliable on the matter than yours. As to your not believing it, well, the statement wasn't intended to convince you. It was a statement of Christian beliefs.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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