The Good Book

[Reiwa]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And all of the Christian slave-owners, both before and after that (maybe you forgot that slavery was still widespread in America ... by Christian slave-owners ... for centuries after?) just don't matter?

Talk to the Lutherists about it?

Here's a meme.

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[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And you know what? So were literally thousands of other religious/ethnographic groups at the time! But we never hear about them because the Jews were the lucky ones that happened to survive when those other ones (that no one knows/cares about now) didn't.

There's even a term for this failure in logical thinking: survivorship bias. Both Juidaism and Christianity survived, when hundreds of other groups didn't, but you don't hear about those groups so you make incorrect assumptions about the survivors.

This is wrong. You need to read some history. If you think everything you disagree with only survived due to luck, that is just nonsense. There is obviously something people liked about the Bible that transcends luck, otherwise civilizations for over a thousand years wouldn't have based their entire culture around it. Or are you suggesting all cultures are purely created by luck, and people have no agency in determining the worth of something?

[starkind]

Originally Posted by Reiwa [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Talk to the Lutherists about it?

Here's a meme.

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that is an unfair meme to use on someone like loruman

[Gustoo]

If you're going to try to add up the accomplishments for "Good" accomplished by "Christians" you will first need to come up with a way to determine what a "Christian" is and also you will need to define what "Good" is since as you well know, "Good" is something the United States is having a really hard time deciding on, whether it be for killing unborn children or exactly what we should indoctrinate young children who made it through the gauntlet with.

Christianity is not designed to be a powerful organization for creating heaven on earth by following a set of rules or enforcing right conduct or morals. Efforts to instrumentalize Christianity in this way have had dubious outcomes, the Catholic church and it's long history being a major example.

When you go into a human organization whether it is a church or an office building you're going to get a random mashup of people that for some reason or another happen to participate in that scenario, whether to pick up a pay check, or to be involved in a community, or to feel a bit less guilty, or actually to learn to be like Jesus.

Finding glaring examples of "Christians" being evil says nothing about the merits of following Jesus, failure is a fact in human endeavor. In much of church history, a lot has been said about what you need to -believe- in order to be considered a Christian. This is not a biblical concept as Christ himself actually asks people to practice specific things, and do specific things. Struggling with your own consciousness to actually love guys like Horza when he's flaming like a maniac is a big part of Christianity, showing up to sit in a chair on Sundays and smiling at people and projecting a positive affect for a couple hours is totally inconsequential. Jesus is concerned with matters of the heart and not really anything else.

Walking around with an intellectual acceptance of the teachings of the Bible while sneering at the grimey people taking advantage of some public space to pile trash and tents up is probably the worst place a human spirit can be. By worst I mean least prepared to actually become Christ like and by that I mean, getting aligned with the sole source of creativity, love, passion, joy, creation and whatever other positive things that exist.



For anyone interested in digging through hard mode, sound but challenging Christian philosophy I would point you towards George Macdonald maybe "Unspoken Sermons" for straight up lecturing or "Thomas Wingfold, Curate" to see a fictional example of someone elses journey (A minister in the church of england) to becoming an actual Christian. He's from about 1870's and everything in england at that time is basically the same as present day USA it's pretty startling.

For easier slightly more modern writing that is more technical and better for internet debates and generally the way we speak in present day, G.K. Chesterton's "Heretics" and "Orthodoxy" are a lot easier to digest but significantly less deep, being more in line with the kinda fighting we usually do about what is right and what is wrong which is generally kinda surface level. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/80

Both of these guys are public domain and written and audio versions of their works are available for free from gutenberg, just by putting them in a podcast, or by going to libravox where public domain audio recordings are compiled.

And reading George MacDonald with no personal context or history may be a bit like picking up a calculus book when you're struggling with times tables. I just wanted to point towards some real stuff for anyone wondering, not joel oldstein trash.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is wrong. You need to read some history. If you think everything you disagree with only survived due to luck, that is just nonsense. There is obviously something people liked about the Bible that transcends luck, otherwise civilizations for over a thousand years wouldn't have based their entire culture around it. Or are you suggesting all cultures are purely created by luck, and people have no agency in determining the worth of something?

Obviously/logically there is ... or completely illogically you have a belief in "your team" (the one you happened to be born into), and you're starting from that illogical basis?

And to a certain extent, yes: human history is the story of who was lucky and who wasn't.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Obviously/logically there is ... or completely illogically you have a belief in "your team" (the one you happened to be born into), and you're starting from that illogical basis?

And to a certain extent, yes: human history is the story of who was lucky and who wasn't.

Its irrelevant whether or not you were born into a specific culture. I am not Chinese, but I can recognize the basic logic that their culture was durable enough to survive thousands of years. That transcends luck, regardless of how much you like or dislike the culture.

The Bible likewise has something that transcends luck, or it wouldn't have been the cornerstone of multiple highly successful cultures over a thousand years.

Your opinion of the Bible is irrelevant. Factually it is a good story, and history proves it. You don't have to be a Christian or religious to recognize this.

[robayon]

Can we talk about the Book of Urantia? I used to know about a half dozen Urantians

https://www.urantia.org/

[MrSparkle001]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And all of the Christian slave-owners, both before and after that (maybe you forgot that slavery was still widespread in America ... by Christian slave-owners ... for centuries after?) just don't matter?

Slavery was widespread in the entire world, not just America. It still exists in Africa and other areas today.

You just don't hear about it.

Slavery has been around probably as long as humanity has been around, on every continent. It was not considered evil or immoral or just plain wrong until the renaissance, and that new viewpoint was largely ignored because it was an accepted practice around the world.

Not good to judge history through a 21st century lens.

[MrSparkle001]

Originally Posted by starkind [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

100% agree with this. And I'm one of the "quote" weak men "/unquote". If you are grasping for labels because you are defective.

Let that sink in folks.

And if you are wont or inclined to call me strong... because despite being a weak man I have learned and grown past that weakness, you got another thing coming to you.

Because, if you think or feel I'm strong. You are a fucking fool.

No, the weak men are the ones that are living easy off the hard work of their ancestors, turning to hedonism and creature comforts and petty conflicts instead of focusing on hard work and bettering their country/empire/whatever. It doesn't mean physically weak (if that's what you are).

We are in that stage right now in the west, and in the U.S. in particular, and it's going to crush us. Thankfully I'll be dead by then as I'm middle-aged now, but little kids growing up right now are in for a world of shit when they get old.

[starkind]

Originally Posted by MrSparkle001 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No, the weak men are the ones that are living easy off the hard work of their ancestors, turning to hedonism and creature comforts and petty conflicts instead of focusing on hard work and bettering their country/empire/whatever. It doesn't mean physically weak (if that's what you are).

We are in that stage right now in the west, and in the U.S. in particular, and it's going to crush us. Thankfully I'll be dead by then as I'm middle-aged now, but little kids growing up right now are in for a world of shit when they get old.

Thanks for the clarification.

Yeah I'm a little bit of both right now. Mostly physically weak tho. If I was strong I would take my small pocket change and buy some land and forge a kingdom.