The bible

Cypress said:
It's just not Everyday you see someone denigrating religion, when in fact their life has benefited and been enriched by ancient religious tradition, in this case Daoism.


At least in western civilization, the reason religion gets so readily conflated with violence and war is largely because of the wars of religion in the 17th century, and the crusades and inquisition, of the late Middle Ages.

That was 500 years ago or more.

Lenin, Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were responsible for the most mass death in the modern era.

Today, as a general rule, nobody is going to war for Catholicism, nobody is dying for Protestantism. Ukrainians are dying for Ukranian nationalism, not for the Ukranian Orthodox Church. People in northern Ireland were willing to die, first and foremost, for Irish or British nationalism. Wars since the 17th century have been fought largely because of nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, land, and resources.

I would say one of the few examples in the west where religious motivation played a significant role was the wars of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

But even taking that Into account, the amount of mass death and destruction caused directly by religion in the last 500 years is minor, compared to the other economic, political, and ideological motivations I alluded to.
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It's clear to me that religion has helped shape you, and in a positive way. We can agree to disagree around the edges, but I have no doubt you are sincere in your faith. The problem, of course is the people like PMP have co-opted your religion for their own purposes. It is almost never the basic philosophic tenants of religion that cause problems, it's the dogma. They think they know God's rules, and they refuse to accept the beliefs of others.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
dude.....if you've been thrown out of the Christian church you aren't "another Christian sect"........that's axiomatic.....

as well it should be obvious that if you deny the divinity of Jesus it's not logical to call yourself "Christ"ian, since the Christ IS divine by definition.....settle for Jesonian and stop pretending you are something you aren't......
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You need to respond to what I actually wrote, not to what you wish I wrote.

I very specifically and explicitly pointed to how Jesus was portrayed in the gospel of John as coequal and coeternal with God, both fully God and fully human.

That is not the same understanding of divinity as was practiced by the Arians, the Nestorians, the Gnostics, or the Marcionite Christians.

Are you even aware of why the council of Niccea was held?
 
Perry Phimosis said:
When you think of it that way it makes more sense. We are mere humans. We are flawed and we are all of us capable of evil and good. We make mistakes and sometimes we even do things WILLFULLY that are evil. We do good, sure but we are also prone to bad. It comes with the territory of being an imperfect being.
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that is in fact what original sin means......it is not original as in "the first".......it is the sin we engage in because of our origin, as human beings..........
 
Perry Phimosis said:
Some Christians DIDN'T deny the divinity of Jesus but still held him SEPARATE FROM GOD. That's the point you seem to be missing. You seem to think the concept of the Trinity as three co-equal and homoiousious is the only version of Christianity that has ever existed. You couldn't be more wrong.

You act as if there was some original founding of Christianity that happened 3 days after Jesus was crucified that codified everything you believe today. That isn't even rational. It took CENTURIES. LITERALLY CENTURIES for the Christian faith to look even MARGINALLY like what it is you mouth on Sunday morning.

You know why you recite those endless CREEDS?

When you recite ("mouth") the Nicene Creed what do you think is behind that? Care to enlighten us with your own version of Church history?
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Unitarian Universalists do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, and generally consider Jesus a human moral prophet.
 
Cypress said:
It's just not Everyday you see someone denigrating religion, when in fact their life has benefited and been enriched by ancient religious tradition, in this case Daoism.
.
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OK, I’ll spell it out for you. Slowly.
Religion is fine if it works for you (or anybody else).
The Bible is mostly myth. But that’s ok, if that’s what works for you. Geez.
 
Cypress said:
That is not the same understanding of divinity as was practiced by the Arians, the Nestorians, the Gnostics, or the Marcionites
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of course it is not the same......it is the understanding of Christianity, not that of the excluded heretics who were not Christians......

Are you even aware of why the council of Niccea was held?
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I am......it was held to determine if those who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ would be excluded from the Christian church........they were.....
 
Concart said:
It is almost never the basic philosophic tenants of religion that cause problems, it's the dogma. They think they know God's rules, and they refuse to accept the beliefs of others.
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Correct. . He can’t seem to get through his hatred of me.
Maybe he’ll listen to you.
 
Cypress said:
Obviously, proto-orthodoxy managed to suppress the other Christian sects.

You live two thousand years after Jesus, and all you can know about his intentions and the activities and events of his life are strictly in the realm of speculation and conjecture.

Even the ecumenical council of Niccea met three centuries after Jesus' execution, and couldn't have been directly privy to his nature and intentions.

The people who lived within one to three generations of Jesus can be presumed to have a better grasp on the events surrounding his life, and it is clear from the historical record there was no widespread agreement about how to interpret the life of Jesus in the first centuries of Christianity.
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FYI the Holy Spirit that was available 2000years ago is available to you today.
 
Cypress said:
My two cents:

There haven't been devastating religious wars or openly violent inquisitions in western Christianity in 500 years. Obviously, bad christians did bad things in the intervening years.

In the last five centuries, I would peg nationalism, colonialism, fascism, communism, capitalism as the main sources of mass death and human suffering.

Modern Conservative Christian fundamentalists can and do represent a threat to civil rights and pluralism.
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As always you confuse organized religion with true Christians filled with the Holy Spirit
 
Cypress said:
You need to respond to what I actually wrote, not to what you wish I wrote.

I very specifically and explicitly pointed to how Jesus was portrayed in the gospel of John as coequal and coeternal with God, both fully God and fully human.

That is not the same understanding of divinity as was practiced by the Arians, the Nestorians, the Gnostics, or the Marcionite Christians.

Are you even aware of why the council of Niccea was held?
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Again you confuse organized religion with a personal relationship with God.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
of course it is not the same......it is the understanding of Christianity, not that of the excluded heretics who were not Christians......



I am......it was held to determine if those who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ would be excluded from the Christian church........they were.....
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Okay, so this is your tacit confession that you don't actually know what the council of Niccea was about, nor understand that Christianity was debating both the nature of Jesus' divinity and his humanity at that time.
 
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