The virus...why?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Xelasnave.1947, Apr 14, 2020.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, but then I did return to answer X's question...well, as best as I can.

    If I knew all the answers, I'd be a goddess.
     
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  3. Neddy Bate Valued Senior Member

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    Do you ever wonder what motivates theists to be inquisitive about somethings they disbelieve, such as evolution, sex education, or science in general? Not that you owe me an explanation.

    Carry on, I'm just passing through.
     
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  5. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    It's not a rabbit hole, in the non literal way, if you choose not to engage

    Brown excrement happens - physics

    No matter the colour of the event physics is the cause

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    Voice in head - GO FOR COFFEE
     
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  7. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I don't disbelieve in those things. Not all theists think alike. Likewise, not all atheists believe in evolution, sex education, etc.
     
  8. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    I don't. Honest. I have lived by the code of...if you help others get what they want you will never have to worry about getting what you want.

    My biggest joy is to help people who have not been as fortunate..I have given away approx 15 guitars to kids that showed promise but could not get their hands on a guitar. I took a kid in for work experience who everyone else rejected and he is now one of the biggest players in Commercial Real Estate in Australia...if I told him I need a new car he would buy it and I don't expect that but it's nice to know you made a difference. That's why I loved Law and Real Estate because I really did help people...not so much now because I have isolated myself for many years once I could not mention that I wanted something because of the people who wanted to somehow repay me.
    My first two telescopes were gifts simply because I mentioned casually I would like to do astronomy.
    Sometimes I think I am not like other people as I don't carry a grudge but become concerned why that person was driven to do whatever...although I did hold a grudge on one guy, I planned to leave him chained to the train track with an axe so if he wanted to avoid death he would have to chop off his leg or arm..I held that in my mind for years...well can you imagine how I felt when another mate told me that he had a bike accident and lost his leg...I never have though anything nasty since then...

    So true. I would be too soft and probably this God is a...you would think a few more floods would be in order.

    I think God makes a good imaginary friend that allows closure on many things..the dog go run over..that's ok all part of gods plan and he is in a better place...I just won the lottery..thank god cause I certainly did not deserve it...I killed 20 enemy soldiers today...that's ok you are doing gods work.

    And what a better thing to cry out in moments of sheer pleasure...or sheer pain.

    So I can see how it works.

    But to me it's not the truth and that's why I can't go along even though I can see the selfish benefits.

    You are such a thoughtful person in fact I would say inspirational if that does not make you feel uncomfortable..but I say what I think...and it has been a pleasure reading your posts.

    Well as I said there is no sense in it...probably like getting revved by a flatearther...why should I care..but we'll I do.

    In Jan's case I think it was more from respect for his ability to handle questions that intrigued me and the desire to beat him at his game. I think I would enjoy each of us taking opposite positions just for the argument.

    That's what law gives you..one day you act for say a vendor the next a purchaser so what you reject one day as representing your vendor you demand when you act for a purchaser.

    Drop by anytime you are refreshing and I am more your speed as I do not like seeing folk get upset with each other just because they hold a different idea.

    Alex
     
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  9. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I believe you just won the internet. I really love this post. I too don't care to ''argue'' about faith topics. I respect people's right to choose - and I hope they respect mine. I left faith for a while, and returned. I'll never fully ''understand'' God, and to me, I like it that way. If I could make sense of the Creator of the universe, either I'm amazingly smart, or he's just not all that. lol

    Thanks for sharing some kindness...it can be hard to come by on the internet.

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  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    This was a folk song out of Minneapolis, last century. You're at least one plague late.

    "God is good, and God is great, and God's a big Invertebrate. God made the river change it's route, but won't pull the microorganism out."

     
  11. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    How do you know?
    True: the only comprehensive definition of 'atheist' is 'one who does not believe in any god(s)' But I have honestly never heard a self-styled atheist express disbelief regarding sex education or evolution. Granted, they tend to believe and doubt specific propositions, rather than believe or disbelieve in entire concepts.
     
  12. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    9,253
    I’m friends with a few of them? Not everyone fits nice and neat in the boxes we want them in.
     
  13. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    There are only two boxes for most...us and them and them are always made of straw.
    Alex
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Click to not accept the blame.

    I might have forgotten about the segment, otherwise, but, oh, hey, here we are.

    Last week, via msnbc, The 11th Hour with Brian Williams:

    (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)​

    REV. MICHAEL CURRY, EPISCOPAL CHURCH PRESIDING BISHOP: As a Christian, Jesus taught me that the supreme law of God is to love God and to love my neighbor as myself. In this moment of a pandemic, in this moment when my being in a crowd of people might well hurt someone else, might spread this virus, in this moment, to love your neighbor means to stay home and to physically distance yourself. That's what love looks like in this moment.

    (END VIDEO CLIP)​

    WILLIAMS: If that man, that man of faith, Reverend Curry, looks familiar, it's because he presided at the wedding of Harry and Meghan. On this holiest day of the Christian calendar, Pope Francis led Good Friday mass inside a mostly empty St. Peter's Basilica and observed the Stations of the Cross in a deserted St. Peter's Square. And in keeping with our new global necessity, those who could around the world watched from their computers. Earlier this week, families took part in virtual seders all over our country, all over the world, leading into messages of hope during uncertain times. Back with us tonight, speaking of which, presidential historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham. His newest work, which is now available is “The Hope of Glory, Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross”. And, Jon, in that spirit and because it's so often your role on our broadcast, what's good about this time right now?

    JON MEACHAM, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, in the – these are the holiest days of the Christian year. The story was supposed to be over at this point in the year 33 Common Era. The disciples had expected the messiah to throw the Romans out, to restore Israel, to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. This was going to be a triumphant moment when he came to Jerusalem, and then he's arrested. He's tried. He's scourged. He's crucified. He's killed, and he's buried as of tonight, as of early evening. And this created enormous confusion, enormous chaos, enormous fear forthose disciples, which put them in the great tradition of the tradition of which they were a part, ancient Israel. The story of Israel – the word Israel itself means he who struggles. It's a story of trying to find faith amid fear, of trying to find hope amid the vicissitudes of history. And I think that's what, in my tradition, Christianity has done now going on two millennia and never more relevant, as you're saying, than right now.

    WILLIAMS: And fast forward to Good Friday 2020. We have a leader of our country who today said, I have great authority if I want to use it. Jon, it's hardly wording that we are used to hearing from our presidents.

    MEACHAM: It is, and it's – you know, our greatest presidents have been – you know, Franklin Roosevelt actually said, I'm a Democrat and a Christian. That's all, when he was asked once to define his faith. He said that there's never been a better statement of ethics than the Sermon on the Mount. And I think that's largely true. The commandment we're all supposed to follow, supposed to, we don't, it's much more observed in the breach than in the observance, is to love one another as we love ourselves. It is the most radical of commandments because who wants to do that, right? I think it's fascinating actually that the golden rule is not love one another or do unto each other because it's the right thing to do, right? The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's more of a covenant. And that's the kind of spirit that FDR represented, particularly in the great depression, particularly when we had to reach out. We couldn't clench our fists, so many of our countrymen as at this hour were suffering economically, were losing faith in the system. And it seemed to be this force that you couldn't see but Lord knows you could feel, right? John Maynard Keynes was once asked, was there anything like the depression? And he said, yes, it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years. So, we need a president who is going to be empathetic and put ourselves – put himself in our shoes and not simply expect perpetual gratitude from the press corps.

    WILLIAMS: And finally, Jon, it being a holy weekend, give us 60 seconds on how worship by oneself and just among a family unit has changed this year.

    MEACHAM: We're back to the primitive church, right? And this is something that Christians can learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters. This is very much part of the Jewish tradition. What was Passover, right? It was a moment of chaos and the families gathered to protect themselves from external forces. The first Easter, the first Good Friday, the first Easter Vigil was commemorated in private, in small gatherings of, you know, family units, the family of the disciples in that case. And so there's an opportunity here to have a very authentic and primitive Christian experience. Go to, you know, livestream your services. If you want to encounter some of the greatest language ever put forth, Google “The Daily Office” and the Episcopal Church which Bishop Curry is the primate. We have Elizabethan English that is the Elizabethan gloss on the great Hebrew and Greek. Read the prayers with your family. Stay – keep to a small unit here. Love those close to you so that we can get healthy and expand that next year.


    (10 April 2020↱)

    There is a video excerpt↱ for part of it, from the Trump question onward.

    To translate the segment: Presidential historian Jon Meacham has apparently written a book about faith, and what better time to promote it than Good Friday. For Meacham as an NBC News figure, it's an interesting segment. As Christian witness, he did better than many preaching clergy. In our terms, here, comparatively, this is what it sounds like when grown-ups pretend to put their faery tale to some decent use.

    Questions of Christianist usurpation, or even political institutionalism, are not unfair; they are, however, distinct aspects not necessarily relevant to this particular discussion about covid.

    More relevant to Meacham's consideration of primitive experience, Mark Noll (p. 4) explained, earlier this century:

    Theological changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also involved a shift in meaning for key concepts that operated in both religious and political life, for example, “freedom”, “justice”, “virtue”, and “vice”. For theology, the process at work was the same as Gordon Wood once described for intellectual developments more generally: “Although words and concepts may remain outwardly the same for centuries, their particular functions and meanings do not and could not remain static—not as long as individuals attempt to use them to explain new social circumstances and make meaningful new social behavior.” In America as much was happening in theology from new meanings given to old words as from the introduction of new vocabularies.

    And if the quote within the quote wasn't meta enough, we might recall Riesebrodt (p. 17), because we are seeing, in these United States, accelerating social change, with people perceiving and responding to crisis:

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    And while I tend to mention Riesebrodt when considering fundamentalism, we can also look toward that other branch. In a hypercompressed expression of societal transformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, sure, Meacham's reflection on primitivism can be described as a part of a search for authenticity that will, as revitalization, actually appear to trigger regress toward a post-primitivist revival of closely-drawn satellite faith. The historical-evolutionary thinking, and the reform it should trigger, is not beyond possibility.

    The irony of that seventeenth century Americanist tang is hardly lost to the observant.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    The 11th Hour with Brian Williams. msnbc, New York. 10 April 2020. msnbc.com. 14 April 2020.


    Noll, Mark. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

    Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Oakland: University of California Press, 1993.
     
  15. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    The video was not available.
    Here is a question.
    Was JC a real person or myth?
    Was he invented by the Romans based on other human gods around the Mediterranean drawing heavily upon astrology?..in your view.

    Would the Pope think JC was a god or would he know the history as I believe it to be...would he care?
    Alex
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Yeah, I'm watching it, right now.
     
  17. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    I will try later tonight. I am in the bush and reception is not always up to the task.
    Alex
     
  18. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    Still unavailable but this time of day is always a problem.
    Alex
     
  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Never even bought a ticket

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  20. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I know a guy who has won the lottery twice...lucky? He is five foot two and is still a virgin at 35 and worse still is too timid to buy one.
    Alex
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    god smiles on some people more than others

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  22. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I guess he creates fools to have something to laugh at.
    I would rather get laid than paid.
    Well in the old days these days I just want peace and quiet.
    Alex
     
  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Are you asking me or telling me?
    Okay, so can you summarize how your atheist friends explain their disbelief regarding evolution?

    Nobody does. So why do you insist on arguing, over and over, against a claim that has not been made?
     

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