you are a massive hyporcrit. why don't you start being tolerant of protestants and stop telling them what you think they must do. After all, isn't it on God's shoulders to judge protestants, not on yours.
It would not appear so since God is by definition not a creature. Although Christians consider Jesus a man, knowing that he is also divine, it seems that you have that statement in reverse. It should be "without God man is nothing."
some advice to the two new people that i read quotes from, dont waste any good ideas by posting them yet send about 50 posts basically saying blah blah, many people dont take others seriously if they have under 50 posts "it's because of Protestant morality that in some states teenagers can buy guns, but not violent video games." yes, and its also Protestants and Catholics fault that teenagers went around Ireland shooting each other. Religion doesnt seem to promote harmony
Christians aren't as scary as you think. Maybe you should come to church sometime. Now, if these guys knew Christ for who He is, they would be 'fighting' similarly to that one scene in Braveheart where they go up and shake each others' hands. Jesus doesn't need a heirarchy, why should we? If they would stop bitching about authority and power (excuse my French) then they would realize that they should be loving each other.
Revival of a discussion two years old, hm? Oh gods! A Christian suggesting openmindedness? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This is the classic double-bind of psychology, we are commanded to do something that is not in our power. You can pretend to love, but you can't make yourself love.
Simply put, this is the most naive statement I have read on this forum in quite a while. I wont get into a long depth discussion with you - after all, it appears you have much to learn first, but suffice it to say, I would advise you leave such a fallacious and ignorant comment out of any future posts you might make.
While it was said that without society, man's experience of God is nothing, this does not seem to have any matter to God. In fact, since God is not a creature, there exist a time or place when none of God's creations existed, yet God existed. Thus, God does not need his creations to exist.
The problem is not that Protestantism is worse than Catholicism, or that Islam is worse than Christianity, or that Christianity is worse than Judaism, or any permutation of those comparisons. The problem is the basic premise that defines all of the monotheistic, patriarchal religions that keep popping up in the Mideast -- the "religions of Abraham." Their model of the human spirit is one-dimensional. Everything falls on a linear scale between "good" at one end and "evil" at the other. Life and human beings are more complicated than that. You cannot reduce everything that people do and everything that happens to a one-dimensional measurement and judge it by saying, "that was very good," or "that was a bit evil," or "that person is a saint," or "that person does the work of Satan." The polytheistic faiths, which the Abrahamists have done their best to stamp out, had a much better model. We all have multiple "spirits" inside us that vie for control of our consciousness and for dominance of our personality. Each of them can be a force for good in the right circumstances, and a force for evil if allowed to guide us at the inappropriate time. There is a Warrior inside each of us. If someone is attacking your family with a machete, it is really handy if the Warrior can seize control of you and give you the focus and courage to overpower the attacker or even kill him if that is the only way to save your family. But it is a disaster if the Warrior takes control and seduces you into going over and overthrowing the government of a sovereign state and destroying its infrastructure, just because the people who live there happen to speak the same language and practice a similar religion to the people from a different country who crashed airliners into your skyscrapers. There is a Reveler inside each of us. At the end of a long hard week of work, it is healthy for the Reveler to help put that week behind us and have some fun, without ruining ourselves with worry that we'll just have to go back and continue the work on Monday. But it is unhealthy if the Reveler is still in control on Monday morning and guides our hand to turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep. The same can be said for the Hunter, the King, the Lover, the Healer, and all the other archetypes inside us (in Jung's language) or all the other gods who influence us (to use the language of an older but equally valid model). The Judeo-Christian-Islamic model of our spirit is so oversimplified that it is useless at guiding us through life. Life's choices rarely are a matter of good versus evil, but simply of figuring out a complicated situation and looking for a resolution with maximum benefits and minimum drawbacks. Offshore outsourcing, giving two Indians the job of one American: Good or evil? Driving an SUV because it's easier to buckle your child into a car seat, even though the vehicle itself is more likely to cause an accident and harm another driver: Good or evil? But philosophy aside, it's also possible to judge a movement by its results. What have the Abrahamic religions contributed to humanity? Every time one of them reaches its zenith, it seems to coincide with a period of abject humiliation for its practitioners. The period when Catholicism was the universal religion of virtually all of Europe is the same era of unbelievable ignorance and sqaulor known as the Dark Ages. For Protestantism it was the half millennium that saw the extermination of the native civilizations of the New World and the repopulation of the hemisphere with slaves brought from Africa -- an era that also added the terms "World War" and "Holocaust" to our lexicon. The golden age of Islam was a time when "infidels" could be summarily slaughtered merely for being "infidels." If the modern state of Israel represents the culmination of several millennia of Judaism, its inability to make peace with the Muslims in its midst -- no matter how admittedly difficult a task that may be -- does not distinguish it as an honorable faith. Jung summed it up well and concisely: "The wars among the Christian nations have been the bloodiest in human history." If the war that many predict between Christianity and Islam comes to pass, we will surely see that statement trumped, with both sides fighting to impose their version of a montheistic, patriarchal culture on the whole world. I have never understood what motivated so many people to join the various movements preaching the existence of only one god -- who just happens to be male. But the results of the ascendence of that model have proven their efforts to have not only been wasted, but, in their own terms, to have been works of "evil."
"To be atheist is to be devoid of spiritual life, and that's the worst thing that could happen to someone. Our love must go out to them because deep down, they're all terribly alone." yes, i am atheist, maybe i am alone, but i already have plenty of love from humans, if love from humans wont stop me being alone, then whats the point in you loving me? that comment also hit the nail onto the head as to why religion exists - to comfort people, and stop them being to afriad of various stuff to do anything
Just a few questions 1. Do you have anything to back this up spidergoat? 2. Alain, how does not spouting off regularly make your opinion any less valid?
Welcome, Luuk! from here, Translation is not the simple mechanical process some would like to believe, it fixed into place with iron nails, a theology that was still living and diverse. The Vulgate was then used as a tool of persecution... By what standards was the vulgate produced? Was Jerome divinely inspired?...doesn't sound like it to me.
So the bible was not written in 382AD, it was translated - that's hardly the same thing. Also there have been many translations from the original greek and hebrew since then along with interlinear bibles which contain both translations and the original greek and hebrew text.
It comes close to being the same thing when you decide which of many gospels you leave in and which you consider heretical. I should have been more clear, this seems to be the point at which the bible "as we know it" was compiled. On what basis were gnostic gospels left out?
The gnostic gospels postulated that anyone can have a direct relationship with God; the role of the church as the middle man was dismissed.
"Alain, how does not spouting off regularly make your opinion any less valid?" it doesnt, but many people look at how many posts you have sent, if its a low number they dismiss you as a newbie, naive, and not worth listening to
Right! The church would be removed as a tool of political power. So, the church was right back where it started, the same kind of scribes and tax collectors that Jesus kicked out of the temple were running the show, the fox was put in charge of the hen house.
