Why believe in Christianity???

[Qlip]

Tell that to Spartacus.

Spartacus didn't believe in slavery. In fact Spartacus and tens of thousands of his followers attacked the Roman Legions and defeated them time and time again in order to free the slaves.

And Jesus was not a follower of Spartacus. In fact Jesus supported slavery, saying out of one side of his mouth, "Render unto Caesar the things (slaves) that are Caesar's"; and out of the other side of his mouth, "Render unto God the things that are God's".

It's still not the same animal. I didn't say it was a good state of existence. I imagine there were not many good states of existence. To mention slavery is not to support it, it's just to relate to the reality those people whom the stories are being told to.

Note, this is not an endorsement of Jesus as divine. But, even if he were, then it's still really not a valid point. Christianity was a minority religion, it never was meant to or expected to be a religion of the ruling class.

You're internal references are very coarse.

 

[Mole]

it never was meant to or expected to be a religion of the ruling class.

Oh please, the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the ruling class.

And look, nothing has changed in 2,000 years, as Christianity is the religion of choice of the greatest and most powerful Empire the world has ever seen, the United States of America, an Empire based on slavery.

 

[Qlip]

Oh please, the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the ruling class.
.

Exactly.. and Christianity hasn't really quite made sense since, except to maybe certain people.. the minority.

 

[Mole]

You're internal references are very coarse.

Of course the Roman slave owners regarded Spartacus as coarse, and Jesus as meek and mild.

 

[Qlip]

Of course the Roman slave owners regarded Spartacus as coarse, and Jesus as meek and mild.

Okay. EDIT: G'night.

 

[Mole]

Exactly.. and Christianity hasn't really quite made sense since, except to maybe certain people.. the minority.

What! You are saying for 2,000 years Christianity hasn't made sense, yet it was Christianity that founded the great Universities.

You are saying Christianity only makes sense to the minority while Christianity is the religion of the most powerful civilization the world has ever seen, the civilization of the West.

 

[CreativeCait]

I can only quote the Bible, Matthew 27:25, "Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children".
This is called the blood libel against the Jews, and for 2,000 years the Jews were called deicides, that is, the killers of the deity.
And the holocaust was justified by ordinary christians, who said of the Jews that, "They are Christ killers".
[MENTION=15744]CreativeCait[/MENTION]

You are using that quote out of Matthew, out of its original context and applying C20th historical events and contexts onto it.
You need to interpret the bible in the context it was written in and the purpose it was written for. If you read the rest of the passage in whole, you will understand it is not about followers of Christ hating Jews for killing Jesus. It is about the fact that given the chance almost all of us would kill God. Many Christians attest that if they were in the crowd, in the context of that time and place not knowing what they know now, that there is a great possibility that they would call for Jesus to be crucified too. And that passage relates to the rest of Matthew 27, contrasting with the end, when after Jesus dies the temple is torn, the earth shakes, the rocks split, tombs were open, saints were raised from the dead and people realised, uh, he actually is the Son of God, ooops. Matthew 27:54 “When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
The holocaust was initiated by Hitler, not any Christian church. Yes, some of the perpetrators of the holocaust and Nazism were Christians and some didn’t believe in God. Nazi-ism was a racist and ideological war not a “cruisaide” to avenge Christ’s death. DUH. As for the fact that there were some Christians who supported the holocaust saying that Jews were ‘the Christ Killers’ all I can say is there are crazies everywhere...some of them happen to be religious and use religion for their own agendas.

A) Why would any Christian logically be anti-Semitic when Jesus was Jewish??
B) Why would any Christian logically be anti-Semitic when they are God’s chosen people??
C) Why would any Christian logically hate Judaism, when half our Bible is from the Torah and we have great reverence for so many of the same people, stories and values??

The fact that Jewish people killed Christ has not really been a big issue for Christian Churches since it happened. And if you read into the blood libel thing further, you will see that it in its first instances it was some weird mythology that happened in a few isolated places, unconnected to each other, where people mistakenly thought Jewish people were killing Christians. The Nazis created all kinds of hype and hysteria in their propaganda using whatever was at their means of disposal and so it makes sense they would pounce on some ideas of ‘blood libel’ previously heard of and spin them up into a big slight against Jewish people, to further their campaign. They were just using Christianity as an instrument for their own Puritanic agendas, which obviously spun out of control. Nazi-ism and the Holocaust was about racial Puritanism, anti-Semitism and Hitler’s power-hungry thirst for power and the creation of his personal utopia not about the fact that Jewish people killed Jesus. To link someone like Jesus who cared for some of the most disadvantaged people in society with genocide committed almost two centuries later by an Authoritarian Regime without any real affiliation to Christianity is offensive to Christians as well as just plain ridiculous when you take into account the evidence.

Since WW II and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Christians have not accused the Jews of being Christ killers.
The only ones accusing Jews of being Christ killers today are Islamists.
And so it is no wonder that 57 Islamic States have openly and publicly rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

You are getting terribly off-topic from the OP. If you want to debate stuff like this start a new thread instead of derailing this one by bringing up The Holocaust.

 

[CreativeCait]

[MENTION=15744]CreativeCait[/MENTION] imo the benefits of christianity can be found in other faith systems with much less social costs. Buddhism is a great example, however it has its own problems. My philosophy is more or less "it's silly to have A philosophy." Different mentalities exist to operate on different tasks. The most useful mentality is the one that creates a vision for yourself so that you can have lifelong goals that you pursue that make you, family, friends, and others live better lives. If you do it right, you even get the chance to make a permanent positive long term impact on society, the world, and all the universes that could ever be. To me Christianity is too human-centric/geo-centric to truly be applicable for all. Worse than this (imo) it denies the divinity of the human spirit. WE are beautiful gestalts of body, environment, sensation and affect. You would have me give that up for a STUPID BACKWARDS CULT that could never accept me? Go **** yourself

That’s an interesting philosophy. I’ve never come across anyone like you before.

As an aside, why are you acting so angry at me? Seems unnecessary...

Jesus came from a spoken culture - in other words Jesus was illiterate.
And Jesus was single in a Judaic culture based on marriage.
And Jesus chose only men to be his disciples.

I don’t really understand what your point is.

And rather than choosing to be crucified, Jesus, in Matthew 26:39, falls on his face praying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus did not choose to be crucified, he was tortured to death by his father.

No. Jesus chose to be crucified, but he didn’t want to be crucified. He asked his father to relieve him of what he had to do. Being the Son of God, Jesus could have released himself from suffering and death at any point, but chose not to because he loved humankind. Jesus was not tortured by his father but by humans.

 

[Mole]

Gott mit uns

You are using that quote out of Matthew, out of its original context and applying C20th historical events and contexts onto it.

Christianity blamed the death of Jesus on the Jews from the very beginning. And this was preached every easter in Christian churches and afterwards the congregation would go out and commit a pogrom against the Jews.

This went on for two thousand years preparing Christians for the great pogrom, the holocaust of the Jews.

As the Jews were forced to kneel before the German soldiers during the holocaust, the Jews could read the Christian motto on German belt buckle. It read, "Gott mit uns". And the God was the Christian God.

 

[onemoretime]

Christianity blamed the death of Jesus on the Jews from the very beginning. And this was preached every easter in Christian churches and afterwards the congregation would go out and commit a pogrom against the Jews.

This went on for two thousand years preparing Christians for the great pogrom, the holocaust of the Jews.

As the Jews were forced to kneel before the German soldiers during the holocaust, the Jews could read the Christian motto on German belt buckle. It read, "Gott mit uns". And the God was the Christian God.

Which, incidentally, was also the Hebrew God. Weird stuff, this religion.

 

[Mole]

Which, incidentally, was also the Hebrew God. Weird stuff, this religion.

The Judaic God and the Christian God are quite distinct.

The Judaic God is monotheistic and unnamable, while the Christian God is the Trinity consisting of the God the Father, God the Son called Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit.

 

[onemoretime]

The Judaic God and the Christian God are quite distinct.

The Judaic God is monotheistic and unnamable, while the Christian God is the Trinity consisting of the God the Father, God the Son called Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit.

Depends on how you look at the thing.

 

[UniqueMixture]

[MENTION=15744]CreativeCait[/MENTION]

Sorry, it's a sensitive subject for me and you don't deserve that. I hate the condescension of Christian thought. Oh, if only you could open your heart to God all your problems will be solved! (I know this is not what you're intending consciously.) The implication being that I am an immoral person or that I have yet to experience the light of day. As I said earlier in this thread I am not an atheist and I have very personal spiritual experiences.

Several years ago I was googling for correlations between phys, biochemistry, and affective states because I understood the process of emotion, but not why the affective states formed the way they did. I came across this article in the process:

http://www.6seconds.org/2007/01/26/the-physics-of-emotion-candace-pert-on-feeling-good/

It's an interview with Candace Pert who is a neuroscientist and pharmacologist. She discovered peptide T and other things. Anyhow, she wrote a book called Molecules of Emotion, was in What The Bleep Do We Know, and a book called Everything You Need To Know To Feel Go(o)d. In the last she argues that positive mood brought about by a sense of existential security which is our natural state as babies releases neuropeptides that alter out mood and as the electrochemical messages are spread to each cell in the body the magnetic polarity of a person if you will aligns and often they experience symbolic visual stimuli and affect that let's them "feel God."

I agree with her and have taught myself to trigger this experience and I wish I could explain it better. I'm curious if I had been raised atheist and learnt this how it would feel. Anyway, Christianity really fucked me up emotionally. It made me feel ashamed for loving science, math, and physics when that is a part of who I am. So, you'll forgive me if I don't give a damn about -religion- and hope it dies.

 

[Mole]

Depends on how you look at the thing.

Well, do you think the Judaic God is the Trinity?

 

[onemoretime]

Well, do you think the Judaic God is the Trinity?

I don't but some people do.

 

[Mole]

I don't but some people do.

All the Christians I know worship the Trinity, and no Jew I know worships the Trinity.

So who are these Jews who worship the Trinity?

 

[Coriolis]

The Judaic God and the Christian God are quite distinct.

The Judaic God is monotheistic and unnamable, while the Christian God is the Trinity consisting of the God the Father, God the Son called Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit.

A human being can be different things to different people. I would expect God to be at least as multifaceted.

 

[onemoretime]

All the Christians I know worship the Trinity, and no Jew I know worships the Trinity.

So who are these Jews who worship the Trinity?

The Christians would just say that they are all worshiping the Trinity, and just don't know it.

Who's to say that they're wrong? Who's to say that they're right?

On the other hand, Muslims believe that Jews do not worship the Trinity. At the same time, as you noted, 57 Islamic states have rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the right to religious self-determination. So, in Islamic states, Jews do not worship the Trinity, because Islamic law has decreed this for them.

Once, in European countries, Christian law also decreed that Jews secretly worship the Trinity, even as they denied its existence, even as they were blamed for the death of one of its components. Christian law also decreed that Jews be second-class citizens, a role that they would share with the Jewish man who they were blamed for killing, but worshiped as a matter of law. Christian law too decreed that when a time came to pass, as deemed necessary by those rulers put in place by this Trinity, that they would be sacrificed just like the Jewish man who they were blamed for killing, but worshiped as a matter of law, for the renewal of the nation, just as it was when the Jews worshiped the god whose name was YHWH as a matter of law. But this is no longer the case.

After the Enlightenment, Jews worshiped the god whose name is not to be pronounced as a matter of the law of their own choosing, and so it remains in Israel. However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares the right of religious self-determination for anyone, regardless of ethnic origin. So in the countries who have adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Jews worship any number of gods as their conscience guides them. They also do not have to live with the contradiction of worshiping a figure that they are culpable for killing, both as a matter of law. For as a matter of law, there are no second-class citizens, and no slaves.

 

[Totenkindly]

[MENTION=7330]onemoretime[/MENTION]: I always got a kick out of how Catholics would "save" dead babies into heaven, and how the Mormons (? Or was it the JW's?) basically convert people after their deaths (thus without their permission) so they still might get into heaven.

 

[Mole]

A human being can be different things to different people. I would expect God to be at least as multifaceted.

So God is so multifaceted as to embrace Zeus and Poseidon. And God is so multifaceted as to embrace child sacrifice, animal sacrifice, the sacrifice of His Son, and even the sacrifice of the psyche, not to mention the sacrifice of common sense and common decency.