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Kyrie eleison posted:The reason Christ matters more than anything else, and is in fact the only thing that matters, is that he is the only hope for your salvation. Any attempt to save yourself which involves ignoring or bypassing or otherwise denying Christ is going to fail, and is in truth the work of the Devil, designed to condemn men's souls to the eternal fires of Hell. Prove it. Claims of salvation and damnation without sufficient supporting evidence make little sense. How is Jesus our only salvation versus, say, the flying spaghetti monster? Why is his claims to deity-ship more valid than any other religions claims? Your personal feelings do not count as proof that these claims are correct. You've never seen hell. You've never seen heaven, either.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:29
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CommieGIR posted:You've never seen hell. You've never seen heaven, either. But they'll you black is really white, the moon is just the sun at a night!
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Nov 16, 2014 19:31
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Captain_Maclaine posted:But they'll you black is really white, the moon is just the sun at a night! Then how am I supposed to know the dream world from reality! 
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Nov 16, 2014 19:32
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CommieGIR posted:Then how am I supposed to know the dream world from reality! The figure of jesus in christianity is one of tribal mythology, merged together as an attempt to explain the destruction of the Jewish state without damning one's ancestors to an unsavory afterlife. From there, it went Byzantine.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:36
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Wait why is we taken the Roman word on the issue before all others? We should at least give equal voice to Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Also the Armenians and Georgians of course.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:36
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My Imaginary GF posted:The figure of jesus in christianity is one of tribal mythology, merged together as an attempt to explain the destruction of the Jewish state without damning one's ancestors to an unsavory afterlife. Naturally. My point being: If we are going to cling to the claims of one guy regardless of any evidence, Kyrie's claims are no more valid than say the Muslims or the Jews or any other religious group or subgroup. I hate it when these guys show up and make grand claims about their religion, and then simply stomp their feet when someone asks 'Why'
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Nov 16, 2014 19:38
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Ardennes posted:Wait why is we taken the Roman word on the issue before all others? We should at least give equal voice to Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Also the Armenians and Georgians of course. Why not use the method of islam, and declare that the earlier a revelation from jesus was received, the more weight it holds and less corrupted it was by human interests? CommieGIR posted:Naturally. My point being: If we are going to cling to the claims of one guy regardless of any evidence, Kyrie's claims are no more valid than say the Muslims or the Jews or any other religious group or subgroup. I hold that Judaism isn't like islam or christianity. Judaism is a legal tradition with a religious practice, while christianity and islam are religions with grand traditions and narrower methodologies allowed for critique under legal traditions. Claims must be judged upon the methodology used to reach them; to turn away when someone asks 'why' is to prove your methodology suspect. If your oral tradition is codified to promote a state agenda that enhances your transition from tribal organized ethnicity to state organized ethnicity, that's perfectly acceptable, all I say is that folks have to admit this reality in order for every else to not have to worry about them going gently caress'n nutso in an attempt to 'purify the world' of state corruption. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 19:38
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I bet a lot of 4th century Romans would be pretty amazed that somebody would be flaunting an unshakable belief in all that Christian stuff here 1600 years later. (They'd probably be more impressed with TV or microwave popcorn I guess.) A thing that for serious puzzles me is how a non-Christian normal person undergoes "conversion" nowadays. I mean, to just decide to start believing a bunch of stuff that somebody explains, no matter how weird it sounds, and then to just accept it as real, well it seems odd and I honestly wonder what sort of experience that would be.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:40
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My Imaginary GF posted:Why not use the method of islam, and declare that the earlier a revelation from jesus was received, the more weight it holds and less corrupted it was by human interests? I am okay with that part of Islamic jurisprudence. I think the Roman Bishop needs to stand back in the line, but Francis seems pretty easy going.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:43
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Ardennes posted:Wait why is we taken the Roman word on the issue before all others? We should at least give equal voice to Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Also the Armenians and Georgians of course. Kyrie, why should I believe in your established religion, when I could instead get in on the ground floor of a more compelling religion - say, Crowley's stuff, which was founded just last century and could presumably be considered more "up to the minute," a new law that supercedes the old, much like the one Jesus brought? Can you structure an argument in this favor that does not rest on either mystical experience (though I feel that that experience can be valid) or on the implicit threat of punishment? Buddhism manages it. On a lighter note, what do you think of the parallel growth of monasteries in Buddhism and Christianity?
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Nov 16, 2014 19:43
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Kyrie eleison posted:Christ, in the fullness of his wisdom, will treat all people fairly and justly in the final judgment. God is fully aware of relative circumstance, and may judge a loyal believer more harshly for a small crime, whereas a great sinner may be loved for his small good works. Those who know of Christ, but spread evil lies about him, such as denying his crucifixion, insult him; but perhaps in his mercy he might forgive them, as he forgave his killers on the cross, saying, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." I believe it is wisest that those who know of Christ be baptized and live Christian lives rather than simply hope for mercy, which abuses God's good will, and may be viewed by him as undeserving of forgiveness. Personally, I am concerned about the safekeeping of my soul. Wow, less than a page and you're contradicting yourself. Here is what you said in your OP: quote:The reason Christ matters more than anything else, and is in fact the only thing that matters, is that he is the only hope for your salvation. Any attempt to save yourself which involves ignoring or bypassing or otherwise denying Christ is going to fail, and is in truth the work of the Devil, designed to condemn men's souls to the eternal fires of Hell. I've bolded the important part in each post. The suggestion in your reply is that if I am a good man then you believe I can still end up in heaven by virtue of the forgiveness of god. Your initial post however clearly states that if I attempt to save myself by any method that ignores, bypasses or otherwise denies christ it is going to fail. So if I am a muslim who lives a good, pious life but still deny that Christ is the child of god, according to you I am going to end up in hell, but I am also likely to be forgiven by god. So I'm confused. More important to this I think is the arbitrary nature of god as you're discussing him. Will I end up in heaven? Maybe, depends on what god's mood is that day I suppose. I personally like to think I live a decent life. I'm not a great man, I'm not a bad man. If god thinks that this life, which I am destined to live by virtue of his omnipotence, is worth of sending me to hell then I guess I'm going to hell. I certainly have no desire to worship some great creator who thinks that eternal damnation is an appropriate punishment for quirks of personality or fate.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:44
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emfive posted:A thing that for serious puzzles me is how a non-Christian normal person undergoes "conversion" nowadays. I mean, to just decide to start believing a bunch of stuff that somebody explains, no matter how weird it sounds, and then to just accept it as real, well it seems odd and I honestly wonder what sort of experience that would be. A mental protective instinct has been proposed as a reason for that. There are a couple studies going around showing that it allows people with high anxiety and stress levels about self-purpose and existence to cope. Caros posted:I personally like to think I live a decent life. I'm not a great man, I'm not a bad man. If god thinks that this life, which I am destined to live by virtue of his omnipotence, is worth of sending me to hell then I guess I'm going to hell. I certainly have no desire to worship some great creator who thinks that eternal damnation is an appropriate punishment for quirks of personality or fate. Nothing like a creator that damns you to hell for the very choices he presents you. But he loves you. 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 19:44
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Caros posted:Wow, less than a page and you're contradicting yourself. Here is what you said in your OP: However, if you are a good Catholic and stay in harmony with their teachings, or at least bust rear end and show effort in trying, you WILL DEFINITELY go to Heaven.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:46
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emfive posted:
Some people have literal visions. See, for example http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/09/a-question-i-never-tire-of-answering/
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Nov 16, 2014 19:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Some people have literal visions. See, for example http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/09/a-question-i-never-tire-of-answering/ The question arises: How do you deduce the difference between a 'vision' and simple self-induced hallucinations?
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Nov 16, 2014 19:48
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CommieGIR posted:The question arises: How do you deduce the difference between a 'vision' and simple self-induced hallucinations? I'm skeptical of the details the guy laid out but it certainly sounds like he had a genuine vision of SOMETHING.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:52
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Ardennes posted:I am okay with that part of Islamic jurisprudence. Its one method of jurisprudence. It does, however, incentivize the destruction of any potential for evidence which precedes the practices of current power structures, and you wind up with wholesale destruction of culture and antiquity which doesn't fit your current narrative agenda. That's why its an inappropriate method of jurisprudence, because it assumes everything is known and acticely seeks to repress evidence of potential unknowns. E: One thing which rakes me is that the OP holds, "Christ is before everything else." That puts the christ figure before god, and violates the second commandment.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:52
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CommieGIR posted:Nothing like a creator that damns you to hell for the very choices he presents you. Yeah, that is basically my view on it. When I was young a friend of mine committed suicide after she had a miscarriage. If you would say that an unwed pregnant teenager who killed herself would probably end up in hell, then I'd simply say that god is some malicious force no different from an abusive parent on a universal scale. I can appreciate talk of religion, but the idea of hell is so absurd next to the idea of a loving god that I can't take someone like Kyrie as anything more than a delusional lunatic.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:54
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Nessus posted:Well if you scrape deep enough, everything's a hallucination. You're reading squiggles on a screen of light which, by mutual agreement, we have determined represent certain words and statements in a particular language, which we both know (if perhaps not in exactly the same way). Does this make reading a forum a self-induced hallucination? No, that's oversimplifying it a little too much. Regardless of my state of mind, the text and words and electronics and coding still work. Even if I myself could not deduce meaning from it due to an altered mental state, someone else could. That is like saying "My invisible friend is just as real as your physical friend" His state of mind can change whether or not he sees visions, hears voices, and assumes he was visited. Calling his vision genuine makes too many assumption about his mental state and his personal health at the time the visions occurred. Its another faith lesson: "It was real, you just have to trust me on it." The tangible remains tangible no matter what your state or your ability to deduce it. I feel a Carl Sagan's 'Dragon in my Garage' moment coming on. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 19:55
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God is real. Deal with it DnD.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Some people have literal visions. See, for example http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/09/a-question-i-never-tire-of-answering/ I also find it interesting that so many similar stories arise directly out of some sort of critical life-threatening experience. All my aging high-school "friends" on Facebook are constantly posting hand-wringing (ha ha I guess literally) pleas for prayer for some health crisis in a loved one or acquaintance. There's a consistent tone of fear, which of course is understandable since existence kind-of sucks and Death Is CertainTM. It's easy to imagine how it's possible to get swallowed up in that sort of pervasive fear, and to cling to mystical beliefs as a sort of psychological shield. I don't like to think that it's a form of mental illness because that seems uncomfortably  and obnoxious.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:58
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Caros posted:Yeah, that is basically my view on it. When I was young a friend of mine committed suicide after she had a miscarriage. If you would say that an unwed pregnant teenager who killed herself would probably end up in hell, then I'd simply say that god is some malicious force no different from an abusive parent on a universal scale. The idea of hell exists as an attempt to explain statistics and probability in an age before the appropriate mathematic concepts were developed. Get a fever and die? You'll go to a good afterlife as long as you have the appropriate cultural rituals conducted. Don't have anyone to conduct the rituals? Clearly, you're evil and did something to deserve it, so you won't go to a good afterlife and the whole community gets whatever property you had without need to send for extended family or potential heirs. Its an effective method to force homogeneity amongst a geographic region before the political development of state institutions independent from patrilineal practices. drilldo squirt posted:God is real. Deal with it DnD. When you make it one god, you make it an argument over which understanding of that god is acceptable. Monotheism requires developed state institutions beholden to an independent judicial code in order to remain stable as a belief and not descend into paganistic practices. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 19:59
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CommieGIR posted:No, that's oversimplifying it a little too much. Regardless of my state of mind, the text and words and electronics and coding still work. Even if I myself could not deduce meaning from it, someone else could. When I say his vision is "genuine," I don't mean "his literal faith confession was actually objectively literally true and Christianity as he defines it is real and so on and so forth," I mean that he did probably see some poo poo and wrote down a more or less honest account of his subjective experience. To me the question here is "what fruits has this brought forth," and it seems to have brought forth a web post and random miracles, so perceived. This implies that God is capricious and likes a good joke on an ex-atheist, if God was in fact involved.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:59
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The best analysis of Christianity is the final scene of "There Will Be Blood".
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Nov 16, 2014 20:00
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Nessus posted:When I say his vision is "genuine," I don't mean "his literal faith confession was actually objectively literally true and Christianity as he defines it is real and so on and so forth," I mean that he did probably see some poo poo and wrote down a more or less honest account of his subjective experience. To me the question here is "what fruits has this brought forth," and it seems to have brought forth a web post and random miracles, so perceived. This implies that God is capricious and likes a good joke on an ex-atheist, if God was in fact involved. Ok, fair enough. At the same time, its no more valid that me writing down every dream and nightmare I ever had and then putting stock into those images as inspired by a deity. It would be far more valid to say "I saw something, but it did not actually manifest as a physical thing, so I must assume it was a hallucination or a dream" Versus "I saw something that fit into pre-defined socially pushed religious influences, therefore I had a vision of the Virgin Mary." Its too provincial. Too defined by culture he is exposed to daily. It sounds far more like internal guilt being manifest in a dream. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 20:00
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Jesus the person was a cool hippie, but the only "christian" that I've ever known to actually follow his teaching was Fred Rogers, who was also cool.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:02
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Also it seems a little lazy to think "whelp I guess all that stuff about Jesus and the Virgin must be true because there they were chatting with me" and ignore the fact that those ideas pervade Western life in one way or another. I mean, who's grown up in a Western country (or maybe anywhere) and can't mentally picture an image of Jesus or the Virgin?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:04
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emfive posted:Also it seems a little lazy to think "whelp I guess all that stuff about Jesus and the Virgin must be true because there they were chatting with me" and ignore the fact that those ideas pervade Western life in one way or another. I mean, who's grown up in a Western country (or maybe anywhere) and can't mentally picture an image of Jesus or the Virgin? White guy, looks a little like Ted Nugent? Yeah, I know Jesus. 
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Nov 16, 2014 20:04
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My Imaginary GF posted:The idea of hell exists as an attempt to explain statistics and probability in an age before the appropriate mathematic concepts were developed. It's funny how in every thread you post in you don't know what you're talking about.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:05
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CommieGIR posted:Ok, fair enough. Ah, I see you've begun to develop the tradition of djinn. Correlation often implied causation before the modern era, and the just world fallacy was just as widespread. There does remain something to be said about the ability to 'prime' the immune system by having a patient focus upon something else, and how that relates to the need for religious tradition in order to increase a population's survival rates versus no tradition.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:05
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 Here, let me tell you what's happening in this thread.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:05
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I don't think it's beyond reason to believe in a creator entity or that it would try to reveal it self to us.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:06
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Jesus is whoever you want xhe to be in your heart.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:07
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drilldo squirt posted:I don't think it's beyond reason to believe in a creator entity or that it would try to reveal it self to us. Through things that cannot be reproduced or confirmed via evidence. Obviously, god is just an alien. We have just as much evidence for them as we do gods and demons. Bip Roberts posted:Jesus is whoever you want zhe to be in your heart. Joe Pesci?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:07
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My Imaginary GF posted:Its one method of jurisprudence. It does, however, incentivize the destruction of any potential for evidence which precedes the practices of current power structures, and you wind up with wholesale destruction of culture and antiquity which doesn't fit your current narrative agenda. That's why its an inappropriate method of jurisprudence, because it assumes everything is known and acticely seeks to repress evidence of potential unknowns. Depends government, era and school of thought, and to be honest there is always differing interpretations of already established Islamic precedent. Either way, a government can always choose to suppress culture or history regardless of if there is a precedent or not. If you want to establish your own history, it probably makes more sense to destroy everything to begin with and then move on.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:08
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CommieGIR posted:Through things that cannot be reproduced or confirmed via evidence. Yeah how would it be a miracle if it was a natural process? That's the whole point dude.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:12
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drilldo squirt posted:It's funny how in every thread you post in you don't know what you're talking about. drilldo squirt posted:I don't think it's beyond reason to believe in a creator entity or that it would try to reveal it self to us. Tell me more about how incorrect I am without presenting an alternative methodology to explain incremental development in cultural practices. When you hold that its within reason that a creator entity would try to reveal itself to humans, you assign several anthropomorphic aspects to such an entity and lower it from 'divine' to 'human' and invite that anyone else who claims to have revelations must be taken at face value. An appropriate structure is necessary to channel just claims of revelation in order to avoid a, 'Cleanse the unbeliever' movement. drilldo squirt posted:Yeah how would it be a miracle if it was a natural process? That's the whole point dude. The line between 'miracle' and 'concept I don't understand' is extremely narrow, if it exists at all.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:12
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drilldo squirt posted:Yeah how would it be a miracle if it was a natural process? That's the whole point dude. Because everything in this world, so far as we can tell, obeys a natural process. Everything. The thing about miracles, is that they either tend not to exist, or have an actual natural explanation. This has happened time and time again, there has never been a 'verified' miracle. Its about as bad as getting a hearth transplant and claiming that all the work of all the surgeons and nurses was simply a miracle of god. My Imaginary GF posted:The line between 'miracle' and 'concept I don't understand' is extremely narrow, if it exists at all. What's the saying: Anything too advanced simply becomes magic? Why not on a personal level? Someone doesn't understand how something works, therefore, miracle. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 20:13
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CommieGIR posted:Joe Pesci? I'd worship Joe Peschi. I'd crucify Joe Peschi. Works for me.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:13
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I don't think this thread is good for Debate and Discussion, OP. But I disagree strongly with any Earthly church being the one true faith. True Christianity is about rejecting the material and embracing selflessness to the mortal extreme. Any church that encourages people to live a full life on Earth is serving Earthly interests, not celestial. I'll let the most recent incarnation of the being you know as Jesus Christ explain further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDa2rwwZHeE
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Nov 16, 2014 20:15
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