Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

[SteveRiley]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

So why is it that oral traditon is GOOD when talking about tribal chieftans and NOT good when talking about Jesus?

Oh, that's easy: people infused with liberal white guilt are obsessed with purging themselves of said guilt. By holding up the fading oral traditions of an inconsequential tribe of powerless brown people marooned on some worthless spit of land, guilt is assuaged. There exists no concerted effort to develop real scholarship with regards to their stories. Where years of intense study actually have taken place, such as with those of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Mormonism, oral traditions are found to be largely mythological.

Right here you have captured an essential (i.e. scientifically provable) characteristic of human behavior.

Sam Harris's writings on the science behind human flourishing are amazing. He's creating a system by which we can measure, scientifically, whether a particular decision about morality is good without any appeal to supernatural authority. Great stuff.

Religion is a personal thing. No one should criticize someone for their spiritual beliefs. However, a spiritual belief is not scientific evidence. Belief is a powerful thing.

And dangerous, especially when what ought to be a personal thing (as you correctly write) becomes the principal source of influence in public policy.

If we [priests] served up the real stuff during Mass/homily, that little old lady flipping through her beads [rosary] in the front row would have a heart attack!

A collection of my favorites. The Old Testament is truly a curious piece of literature!

[GreyGeek]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

.....
I would also like to study the Bible as it was written in the original language, however I can't read Hebrew and Greek. But the good thing is that we live in a world where there is nothing stopping me from learning it myself. I don't have to depend on what the priest says.

I never studied Hebrew or Aramaic, but I did take two years of Koine Greek so that I could learn to read most of the New Testament in its original language. I was raised in a classic legalist tradition. Being a bright boy with an honest heart I thought that the plain reading of the NT, as I read it, was exactly what the NT writers meant. However, since I was taught that the "New Testament" was a continuation of the "Old Testament", it was a new set of laws which replaced the old set. So, there was "book, chapter and verse" proof for every command that I was expected to follow, and that I expected everyone else (who was going to be saved) had to follow as well. I also thought that I could be more forceful in my arguments by quoting the Greek, and interpreting it as well.

What I learned changed my view of the NT and indirectly, the OT, forever.

Koine Greek was the "street", or vernacular, Greek of the First Century. Hellenic Greek was used by scholars and Intellectuals. For hundreds of years people thought that certain words were "Holy Ghost" words because they had no equivalents in Hellenic Greek, which had been the form of Greek used by scholars for centuries. Then, some tombs in Egypt were uncovered and in them were papyri that contained ordinary everyday documents that common people wrote. Letters to lovers and letters to friends, lists of household goods, etc... In those documents were all the "holly ghost" words ... and they had ordinary meanings. They had nothing to do at all with "religion" or special interpretations. Indeed, the "books" of the NT were merely letters written and passed among friends exhorting each other to "keep the Faith", or the collected works written while in moments of inspiration. It wasn't till decades later that some began keeping copies of the various letters together for study and reference. The oldest piece of NT writing known is the Rylands Library Papyrus, which contains a few lines from the Gospel of John. It has been dated as somewhere between 100 AD and 150 AD, with most settling on 125 AD, nearly 100 years after the death of Christ.

The church I was a member of felt that the "King James" was God's preferred text. After studying K. Greek and how the books of the NT came into being, what I once thought was "sacred text" was nothing more than a collection of writings translated into what is now a 400 year old unused language, eventually from Latin copies of a 4th Century codex, which was created when a pagan dictator settled ecclesiastical arguments of authenticity which bogged down the Council of Nice in 325 AD by selecting what are now the 66 "books" of the NT. The rest were thrown into a pile called "The Apocrypha", mainly because they seemed "out of tune" with the rest, or they contained absurdities like references to the Phoenix as though it were a real creature, or they taught ideas which were not popular at the time. They make interesting reading

I realized that when I resorted to the Greek I was merely changing the language in which the argument was taking place. Nothing more. Even that language has its problems. For example, I learned that "eis" (is) could be spoken as "Ace" or "Ice", and which pronunciation you chose depended on which school you (or your professor) attended. But, the pronunciation was just for pigeon holing purposes. Those who held to one translation interpreted it to mean one way and those who held to the other pronunciation interpreted it in another way. "Eis" is used in 2 Tim 3:16. Here are the two different translations:

American King James Version
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

American Standard Version
Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.

"All" does not equal "Every".

And, at the time Paul wrote to Timothy there was NO book called the "New Testament", so many assume that Paul was referring to the Old Testament when he used the term "scripture" and assume, by extension, that those verses now apply to themselves and every other book in context with them, i.e., the NT. However, the Hebrew Bible is the collection of "The Law", "The Writings" and "The Prophets". The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was made around the 3rd century BC at the request of King Ptolemy by 72 elders, hence the term "The Septuagint"., which means "the seventy". However, it contains books not in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh.

While most, if not all, English bibles are divided into books chapters and verses, which makes it nice for arguments, and to pull things out of context in support of those arguments, the Greek did not have such divisions. Papyri was expensive, and the writing surface was not wasted. The text was solid from top to bottom, left to right, with very narrow margins. Just words separated by spaces. That's not all bad, however. Unlike English, Greek is a very beautiful language, and VERY PRECISE in almost all of its meanings. We have "love". Greek has "agapa", "phileo" and "eros". You can't say "I love" someone when you actually mean "I lust after" someone, unless you lie. Even more than that, except for single vowel words, most Greek words have three parts, a prefix, a root and a suffix, and they combine to form very precise meanings.

Greek also changed my handwriting. It used to be block letters from my three years of drafting classes. For many years after I studied Greek my letters were more Greek than English. Now, its just scribble.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

GG wrote:


Now, its just scribble.

That's just sad GG, if you had become a medical doctor you could have made jillions scribbling...... "I got him for a couple of test, charge him what you want for some placebos!"

woodsmoke

[bsniadajewski]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

And then there is the New American Bible version of the same passage.

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
2 Tim 3:16-17

It's fuuny that we are about religion this close to a very important holiday (really a Holy Day, but not the most important) on the last Sunday of December, 2011.
Ja życzę wam <<Wesołych Świąt>> (Iwish you a Merry Christmas).

[GreyGeek]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

......
It's fuuny that we are about religion this close to a very important holiday (really a Holy Day, but not the most important) on the last Sunday of December, 2011.
Ja życzę wam <<Wesołych Świąt>> (Iwish you a Merry Christmas).

As a "Holy Day" it had very pagan origins:

Why December 25th?
...
Christmas celebrated on December 25 is a completely non-Biblical tradition, and realizing that, various Christians over the centuries have actively opposed its observance. The Puritans controlling the English Parliament in the 1650s outlawed it, ordering churches closed and shops open this day. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, a law passed in 1659 stated, "Whoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas and the like, either by forbearing labor, feasting, or any other way upon such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the country."

The use of Christmas trees to mark the occasion has often come under attack. What does a pine tree have to do with the birth of Jesus? Nothing, but it has a lot to do with Attis, into whose temple in Rome each March 22 a pine tree would be carried and decorated with flowers and carvings. Its entry into Christian practice probably comes from Celtic and Germanic pagan customs; the Druids in Britain, for example, used evergreens in connection with winter solstice rituals. The Norse god Odin hanged himself on the yew tree named Yggdrasil, pierced by his own spear, to acquire wisdom. There is a legend that in the eighth century St. Boniface, who converted the Germans to Christianity, found pagans worshipping an oak tree sacred to Thor, and when he had it cut down there sprouted in its place a fir tree that he took as a sign from God. But the practice of bringing such trees into the home only began in Germany during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, with encouragement, according to legend from Martin Luther. German Hessians brought the custom to America during the Revolution, but it did not become popular until the nineteenth century and even by 1900, only one in five U.S. families had one. The majority came to do so during the next two decades.

Holly? Used in Druid and Germanic winter solstice rituals. Yule log? More Druidism. Christmas stockings? Well, no paganism there. Legend is St. Nicholas (Santa Claus is from the Dutch Sint Niklaas), bishop of Myrna (in what's now Turkey) in the fourth century and a very kindly man, discretely dropped pouches of coins down the chimney of an impoverished nobleman's home. They miraculously dropped into stockings hung there to dry by his several daughters who needed dowries to marry. The point is, all these customs are the products of an explainable human history.

So too, the beliefs that produce the holiday. The babe born of a virgin, in a stable, heralded by an angelic host, visited by Magi (Persian Zoroastrian astrologers) following a star, targeted for death by an evil king. None of this would have struck the average Roman as entirely original, but the vague familiarity of the stories may have lent them credibility. It appears that the Christian movement, highly diverse in the first few centuries, was able to incorporate narratives and practices from other traditions into itself that gave it a comparative advantage by the early fourth century. In 313 Emperor Constantine legalized and patronized the faith. Soon thereafter an already formidable empire-wide administrative apparatus merged with state power, and heresies and paganisms were outlawed and largely suppressed. But Christianity continued to incorporate new influences such as the above-mentioned Christmas practices. Few Christians (or others) nowadays know of Mithras, but today much of the world unwittingly celebrates his birth.

[Mazal]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

So much going on in this topic that the Bible warns about. People living according to their own rules and changing rules as to how they like it. Changing and bending what is right and what is wrong as to fit into their own needs so that they can live how they want to. You can't change God's rules with your own conclusions. God's rules stays the same forever.

Proverbs 16:11, 2Timothy 3:16, Romans 12:2, Proverbs 21:30, 2 Timothy 4:3-4


The human race should stop living by their own standards and go back to God's standards. He won't judge according to human standards , but according to His own as He has given it to us.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

So much going on in this topic that the Bible warns about. People living according to their own rules and changing rules as to how they like it... You can't change God's rules with your own conclusions. God's rules stays the same forever.

The human race should stop living by their own standards and go back to God's standards. He won't judge according to human standards , but according to His own as He has given it to us.

You're missing a number of crucial elements to support your argument. You cannot rely on quotations from a self-proclaimed claimed source of authority to then in turn advocate for the authority of that same source. That's a logical fallacy from which there exists no escape.

Second, who is this "god" of whom you speak, a god who lays down the law "once for all the saints"? We have access to no source material, but instead only to copies of copies of copies of writings composed principally by scribes laboring under the demands of wealthy patrons, patrons for whom properly crafted treatises would support the political posturings of individuals maneuvering for power and influence. By what dispassionate mental process can you conclude that these tomes reflect contemporary understandings of biology, astronomy, physics, and neuroanatomy?

If "god" exists outside my capacity to fathom, and "god"'s plans are not my plans, then I see absolutely no reason to attempt to harmonize my plans with his/hers/its. Any divine entity that intentionally cloaks itself in an aura of inscrutability deserves to be dismissed as nothing more than a petulant jealous tyrant, dearly lusting for but falling woefully short of its own assumption of primary sense of importance.

[Qqmike]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

GG, a brief entry here, also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s#Christianity

The Frontline special on Christianity is interesting (see it on the PBS site, with interesting articles and interviews with university Biblical scholars-researchers). Basically, read it all and this remains: not much is known about Jesus or even what his central message often was (as he would skip around and mix things up), and even some of his teachings are not clear.

[Mazal]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

So much going on in this topic that the Bible warns about. People living according to their own rules and changing rules as to how they like it... You can't change God's rules with your own conclusions. God's rules stays the same forever.

The human race should stop living by their own standards and go back to God's standards. He won't judge according to human standards , but according to His own as He has given it to us.

You're missing a number of crucial elements to support your argument. You cannot rely on quotations from a self-proclaimed claimed source of authority to then in turn advocate for the authority of that same source. That's a logical fallacy from which there exists no escape.

Second, who is this "god" of whom you speak, a god who lays down the law "once for all the saints"? We have access to no source material, but instead only to copies of copies of copies of writings composed principally by scribes laboring under the demands of wealthy patrons, patrons for whom properly crafted treatises would support the political posturings of individuals maneuvering for power and influence. By what dispassionate mental process can you conclude that these tomes reflect contemporary understandings of biology, astronomy, physics, and neuroanatomy?

If "god" exists outside my capacity to fathom, and "god"'s plans are not my plans, then I see absolutely no reason to attempt to harmonize my plans with his/hers/its. Any divine entity that intentionally cloaks itself in an aura of inscrutability deserves to be dismissed as nothing more than a petulant jealous tyrant, dearly lusting for but falling woefully short of its own assumption of primary sense of importance.

Have you ever died ? I did , and all I can say is that I will pray for all who think like you do my friend that your eyes can open up and see and know the truth

[bsniadajewski]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

The problem here, Mazal, is that we have so many interpretations and translations of what God's standards are. A good example was one of the NT passages you allude to, which I and GG quoted above (2 Tim 3:16). God's laws stay the same, but how we interpret and understand them has changed a bit over the centuries. That's why we have Catholics, Orthodox, Copts (Egyptian Christians), Lutherans, Baptists, Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, etc., and even differences within those and other groups.

Hey GG, there's no doubting the origins of many of our Christmas customs. Even I knew that many were of non-Christian origin. Since many of the early converts were not from the Jewish faith, thanks to St. Paul, it was very easy for all those converts to incrporate some of their old pagan customs into their new faith without jeopardizing it.

Hey Mazal, sounds like you were "born again". Catholic? Evangelical?

[Qqmike]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

As I said above somewhere, there are many, many religions among the cultures on this planet, but ... "What makes Christianity different is that the mystic, the messenger, the teacher, the prophet--Jesus--claimed to also be the [son of] god [through the trinity]." Quite a claim, indeed.

Christianity must lead the way when it comes to killing and plundering in the name of Jesus, converting other cultures, religions, and people to Christianity. A horrible, violent history it has.

It is very sad to see the effects of this in the American Southwest--the Native Americans converted to Christianity/Catholicism. Shame, shame on those Spaniards for doing that. Sad because the families of most of the Indians I know (and I know a hundred or more on a first-name basis) made a sincere effort to include Catholicism in its Indian-spiritual practices, practicing each, side-by-side, even decorating half their church traditional Indian-style, half with Christian icons. They are open, loving, warm people, always inviting you to their homes, feasts, and religious ceremonies. Privately, though, many will tell you that their culture was doing just fine until the "White" guy screwed 'em all up with all their Christian silliness (many to this day are not the least fond of people of Spanish descent). Thankfully, most Indians I know have a great sense of balance and a healthy sense of humor. But this horrific Catholic-conversion thing is often a source of friction even to this day.

[Mazal]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

Hey Mazal, sounds like you were "born again". Catholic? Evangelical?

Christian. I physically died during a heart attack. And what I saw , horrible , I was on my way to hell. Only the grace of God saved me and brought me back.

[charles052]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

Hey Mazal, sounds like you were "born again". Catholic? Evangelical?

Christian. I physically died during a heart attack. And what I saw , horrible , I was on my way to hell. Only the grace of God saved me and brought me back.

Glad you made it back.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

.....
Have you ever died ?....

Obviously you have not, since you are still alive. Are you claiming that you died and then came back to life? If so, then your testimony refutes that ascribed to Jesus Christ for whom the claim is that He has been the only person in human history to return alive from an irrefutable death. Your only escape is that your death was as a sinner, but He was sinless, hence the "Lamb" sacrificed for the sins of all. But then, you have to explain how He who shows no partiality gave you a second chance at life.

Near-death experiences are common in all peoples and religions, and if it offers "proof" for any it offers proof for all.

Societies of all ages were faced with the problem of determining if people were really dead. That's why some people were buried with strings tied to their hands and running out of the grave to a bell stuck on a pole above the grave. If the bell started ringing the cemetery watchman would quickly dig up the "deceased". The Jews would entomb the deceased with coins on their eyes and check on them frequently for three days to see of they have moved in their position or if the coins had fallen away, an indication that the "deceased" blinked. There most reliable indication of death, however, was that within three days the body of the deceased began to smell of death. THAT is the only reliable indicator of death, except for when the blood is replaced with embalming fluid. NO one has come back to life after being embalmed.

Today, due to modern medical practices, people who "die" on the operating table with seeming regularity are often resuscitated. During their periods of anoxia, IF the lack isn't sufficient to cause death or retardation, they report "seeing" and "talking" with loved ones who are in the "light", but then are suddenly drawn back to the living. As I wrote before, this experience has occurred with people of all religious faiths and even with atheists. Even when people cardiac "flat-line" while on monitoring equipment and there is no measurable pulse or breathing, or brain waves show no activity, that doesn't mean that they are dead. It only means that their life indicators are below the level of sensitivity of the monitoring equipment, or the equipment is malfunctioning or was miscalibrated. There has been more than one person who was declared "dead" by medical authorities only to awake in the morgue.

IF the brain is with out Oxygen for more than 4 or 5 minutes, more or less depending on the metabolic rate at the time air or Oxygen was cut off, brain cells begin to die, and those cells are NOT coming back to life again. If the dead cells were responsible for controlling critical organs of the body (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys) then organ death results. That's why Jim Kick, who ran 5 miles a day for 20 years, fell over dead at the end of his morning run, while talking to reporters. He was already in anaerobic oxidation, which the muscles continue to use as a short term source of energy when the body's Oxygen levels drop to low levels during heavy exercise. When his heart attack occurred, blood supplying what little Oxygen it carried to the brain was cut off, and his brain began die more quickly. A boy who is not exercising vigorously falls through the ice into 4 degree water and drowns. BUT, during the 4 or 5 minutes his heart is still beating his core body temperature is drastically lowered, dramatically reducing his body's Oxygen requirements. FORTY minutes, or even more than an hour, later, he is brought to the surface and immediately given oxygen while messaging the hear to circulate Oxygen laden blood. He is kept cold, however, so that doctors can put him into a medical coma and slowly raise his body temperature. Slowly because not all part of the body warm up at the same rates. Some parts could become warm enough that its cells began metabolizing again, consuming local Oxygen and ATP (the "fuel" of the cell), and thus starve to death, similar to what happens with frostbite.

The is a fundamental Christian doctrine called "Faith". Were it possible to prove the existence of God or the resurrection of Christ (beyond that of a few "eye witnesses", the weakest evidence of all), then Christians would not need Faith. They would have knowledge. That would make the admonition found in both the Old (Habakkuk 2:4) and the New (Rom 1:17) Testament that "The Just shall live by Faith" pointless. And what is Faith? "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb.11:1)

By claiming to have returned to life from physical death you have destroyed your own Faith.

[charles052]

Re: Politics: How do they affect your personal life?

Arguing the bible is a very pointless task for both sides. You don't know what a person has experienced, you don't know what kind of knowledge an atheist, anti-theist, or a Christian possesses. As an apologetic, I've realized time and time again the fruitlessness of my task when trying to reason with an anti-theist. However, they often don't realize the pointlessness of their specific arguments with me.

It usually ends up in a disrespectful free-for-all with neither side getting headway.

I will say this: A true Christian knows that faith is the only reason he needs to believe in the bible and a true atheist sees the value of theism and respects it for what it is. Anti-theists and religious fanatics are the equivalent of thugs, having no respect or understanding for others beliefs and aren't deserving of any respect.

If you are an atheist, respect the theist. If you are a theist, respect the atheist. Because it is only by respecting each other that we can successfully co-exist. As Jesus said: "Agree with thine adversary quickly."