Back when I was a trainee nurse they showed a few videos from the Moody Institute Doubtful they do now. Religious as all hell One part stood out from one video where they were talking about hell I think - long time ago - but the talk went on about how a convicted killer was granted a pardon but refused to accept the pardon, and was executed Something about you have free will and if you reject god fine, you go to hell I looked up Moody Institute for something else awhile back. Think it was to do with the composition of the body. One of the videos talked about that and had assembled all the components of the body and talked about- even if you were clever enough to make a body it would not be alive without the "spark of life being breathed into it from our lord" Thanks for keeping my memory active Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It's worth noting that while no society fails to control and ritualize sexual behavior, several well-functioning societies have managed to provide for children without making a big deal about who the father was or seeing to it women's lives were wrecked by anything other than virginity leading to monogamy. Breaking up into nuclear families with child-raising burdens resting on one ostensible father is not some kind of inevitable or primal human setup.
I don't disagree. I was just offering a hypothesis for the origin of it all. In Christianity I think St Paul has a lot to answer for. Seems to me a lot of denigration of sexuality comes from his writings, e.g. "It is better to marry than to burn" etc. Ridiculous and damaging.
Undoubtedly. But then Jesus lived in the same epoch and you do not find such negative language about sexuality in his teaching. So that does not seem to me to account for St Paul's attitude very satisfactorily.
Thing is with Jesus, and what he said; it's all relevant now just as it was then. He is God after all. Paul never claimed to be more than a man, he knew he had his shortcomings, and admitted such. Pretty rare these days.
It is ironic that Jesus never mentioned anything about homosexuality, but he did say very clearly that if you divorce your wife and remarry, then you are committing adultery. There is a fairly high rate of divorce among the evangelicals. That means that remarried evangelicals are openly committing sin every day but are still welcomed with open arms into the evangelical churches but homosexuals who are never even mentioned by Jesus are viewed as the 'real' sinners. Like I said it is rather ironic.
It could be argued that Jesus was standing up for women's rights when he said that. Women were treated as little more than possessions in that society. It was not they who initiated divorce, it was their husbands who wanted to get rid of them, leaving them destitute. Not only did he not comment on homosexuality, he also shamed the people stoning the woman caught in adultery into stopping. (The man, who she was caught having sex with, would have got off scot-free of course). And he consorted with people such as Mary Magdalen, who is thought by many to have been a prostitute. The attitude of suspicion and fear towards sexuality in Christianity comes from St Paul and was then entrenched in the Middle Ages by a celibate priesthood who, in trying (in good faith) to practise self-denial of this natural urge, resorted to negative language and ideas to help convince themselves. The rest, they say, is history. I would be intrigued to know whether the Orthodox church has the same hangups, given that they have always had married clergy.
Religion is probably number 1 on Gods shit list. This criminal said something that is key regarding God the Father(to Jesus' left). Luke 23:39-43.
I suspect there was some guy named "Jesus" around back then, but he would be utterly irrelevant. THE SON OF GOD never walked on the Earth. Get over it. You believers have been lied to your entire life, primarily by the voices in your head.
I think a known historian (Josephus ??) made a reference to Jesus, which would be documentation of his existence external to the Bible. I do not think he included much data about Jesus.