Greetings From The Bible Belt

Asshole.

Moderators: Please remove me from this shithole.

 

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It seems that many self styled atheists are really anti religious.

Alternately one can be without a recognized religion(areligious?)without being an atheist.

 

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Indeed. Interesting. That hadn't occurred to me. Perhaps I typically apply the term in a strictly religious sense, but then again, I was no militant atheist. I wouldn't have included myself in any group, nor would have paraded through the boulevard. I simply didn't believe in any god. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, DMOE.

 

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You need only ask, and stop engaging me.

 

I always liked the term popularized by Christopher Hitchens' - antitheist. To me it seems more intellectually honest and applicable. Atheist, by definition to me, is, not surprisingly I suppose, a misnomer. I consider myself irreligious, and anti religious, though not in a militant fashion. I am theist, though.

 

Cite?

That excludes Paul from all of ancient "Christendom" then since Hebrew and/or Christian doctrines were outside teachings in his homeland of Tarsus.

That's good, since the cults you will call pagan are re-invented in the myths, legends and fables of Christianity, as opposed to the usage among non-Christian cults, most notably non-Christian Roman cults.

You mean like when they were living in the Sumerian city-state of Ur, as they claim, before they left for the arid hellhole that was supposed to be a Promised Land? Of course that commits another anachronism, since it now requires us to force the camel of Pre-Roman Babylon through the needle of a Roman era idiom.

The purpose of my post was to remind you that labeling your enemies as pagans commits an anachronism. What you intended to say is that these other cultures are/were your enemies. Or you may prefer to call them superstitious. But whatever you call them, if it disparages them, it disparages your modern version of the myth, legend and fable they invented, which was the basis for the myth, legend and fable your parent cults handed down to you, most notably those dastardly Catholics, who invented this nonsense to begin with (before the schism; noting that you haven't accounted for the history of the Ethipian, Coptic, Sryiac, Greek and Russian sects of the main line of early Christian orthodoxy).

As for the calendar . . . that's a distinct issue, involving the recognition in more than one culture (and across many religious cults) that there were difficulties in standardizing to any system of time that did not account for the non-integer number of days it takes the Earth to complete one orbit, together with the irregularity of mixing lunar and solar cycles. Of course some modern religions still are stuck in the era when scientists could be exterminated for merely reporting facts which controverted their superstitious beliefs . . . which makes the idea that there is a pagan influence in the calendar a little more than ironic. There is some evidence to suggest that the mystical interpretations of the Sun and Moon probably was brought out of Persian and into Egypt, the Levant and esp Syria/Anatolia by the movements of Greek and Persian armies across that natural bridge.

There is no historical evidence about the origin of this or any other early Christian ritual. It's a Greek word, as is all of the Christian text. Greek culture and tradition had already fused itself into cultures of Northeastern Africa, the Levant and Anatolia long before the sect that became Christianity established itself. Jesus of the Bible (as opposed to the Agnostic versions of him) more closely resembles Socrates and the principles of Stoicism than anything remotely related to Hebrew culture. There is some speculation that ritual washing established itself among the Essenes, whose quarrying activities led to the construction of a number of underground bath houses. But it makes no sense that they preserved this in connection with the Plato's icon of Greek virtue, just as no one has any idea if this legend was created in the Levant, or in Alexandria or Tarsus, where children of the Hebrew refugees of the Roman War of ca 70 AD had fled to safety, and/or been taken there as captives of legionnaires, esp. as captive brides of Roman soldiers, which appears to be the legacy which influenced Paul of Tarsus. That's assuming Paul is a real person, which is impossible to say. All we know for sure is that some of the extant text which purports to be Pauline is forgery. And it remains unclear how the synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, the Pauline Epistles and the remaining texts preserved for all of Protestantism by those dastardly Catholics, relate to one another canonically, geographically or otherwise. It's all just a blur of wild imagination.

Here you appear to be conflating early Christianity with not-so early Christianity. In any case there is no evidence other than than the influence of Hellenism, syncretism with distant cults, and the likelihood of bathing rituals among the Essenes.

That is the way it might have been cast among various Christian heretics of the Medieval through Victorian periods which creates another bizarre conflation of historical nonsense with another anachronism. But you will not find any scholarly work of recent publication that labels non-Christian sources as pagan. Again, by the implied definition of the term as you are using it, all of Christianity, and all of Judaism are pagan in origin. All religion is superstition, myth, legend and fable invented to explain phenomena for which there was no science. "Pagan" is no more valid a term of disparagement than "Gentile".

You mean with your personal interpretation of the Bible. The majority of Christians believe differently than you do. And the majority of the world discounts the Bible altogether.

 

As I suspected this was some rather overt attempt to flame the members at large. So much for not putting the Bible on display in public places.

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While we're at it, let's throw in our personal interpretation of it, and of all of the history of that family of religions.

 

No, he is attempting to flame atheists, orthodox Christians and fundamentalists alike, in what appears to be a mutation of "Messianic" Judaism.

Nope. I'm the one who picked up the gauntlet and shot the entire basis of the OP our of the arena. Try making a fact-based post which is responsive to mine. Can't do it, can you? QED.

Except for the position that all religion is absurd, which neither takes a ideological standpoint nor involves preaching. Now see if you can respond to me factually without falling into the hole he just dug for himself.

 

That speaks to the support of the worst elements of fundamentalism which are dedicated to the destruction of science and academia, the aims of Right Wing politics and the return to Victorian era social taboos.

Yes. People invent their own versions of fundamentalism all the time, to shore up their Right Wing politics and their desire to regress society back to Victorian-era taboos. This is seen the self-styled Messianic Judaism which thus far appears to be the religion being promoted in the OP.

 

Okay, well... this seems to have gone off the rails pretty quick... gonna lock this one before people start really digging themselves in deep...