The current understanding of Christianity seems to have absolutely no reflection of the lessons taught by your Christ…
First of all, your Christ taught the importance of everyone else, denying the individual, denying personal interest. Your Christ did not advocate individualism, infact he denied it, Your Christ was the antithesis of the individual.
And yet your whole Christianity is based around the individual. Weather or not YOU are going to get into heaven, and weather or NOT you are good or evil. Weather or not YOU believe or not.
Which brings me to the fact that You Christianity limits everything to an infinite struggle of punishment v. reward. Your whole life is an attempt to achieve the reward, and deny the punishment. You have reduced the lessons of your Christ to a perversion that is nothing more than the triumph of yourself, and the dismissal of everyone else.
YOUR CHRISTIANITY IS THE ANTITHESIS OF YOUR CHRIST.
have you been reading too much nietzsche? hehe. i agree with his (and perhaps yours so far) take on christianity. he saw christian self denial as a negation of life.
but i think as non christians, we should respect the choice of the christians. they view this mortal life as a preparation for eternal heavenly life with g-d.
yeah, i think that neitzsche made basically the same arguement but at least he had on some stylin’ facial hair…they arguments against christianity are universal, applicable to any system that denies the individual ‘authenticity’.
Why? I have no respect for ignorance, the very fact that the Bible was hijacked and turned into the vile organisation it is today is something so-called christians should be aware of and instead seem universally ignorant of. That was the point of my starting the thread Christianity and Homosexuality, it is to highlight that most Chrostians aren’t blatantly not Christians at all but heretics and should be dealt with in an according manner. The Spanish Inquisition! (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
what? the arguement only holds if you believe that there is One right way to read the bible and then use this to compare how different forms of christianity interpert the bible. there are many forms of christianity. as there are many interpertations of the bible. so long as the interpertation is internally coherent and valid, then the religion is not ignorant. any inconsistencies are invalid and ignorant. one would hope that a more exhaustive investigation on such matters would be carried out before reaching this conclusion, rather than as hasty post on an internet board.
So, basically, liberal Christians are denigrated by you, for being not conservative enough, while conservative Christians are denigrated for not being liberal enough?
Hmmm, I don’t think it was a hasty post, it’s something that’s been developing over here as I’ve heard various arguments about Gods and such on this board. The absolute rubbish that most Christians believe about their God patently doesn’t represent the teachings of the Bible.
There is no such thing as a liberal Christian, a liberal heretic masquerading as a Christian yes, but a liberal Christian is an oxymoron. I don’t have any faith and so I apply a rather cold rationalism to the whole religious program. Christianity was fixed from the time of Christ and with every new interpretation there’s only one way it can go and that is away from its original form.
The truth is that there is no justifiable reason for a Chrisitian to pick and choose which bits of the Bible he likes and which bits he should quietly forget. If he does he is a heretic and should admit so, there can be no internally coherent interpretation of the Bible that says that homosexuality is ok and that all Christians should be actively trying to make those sinners into better people by convincing them to turn straight, there can be no Catholic who says that the Pope is wrong about contraception and abortion. It’s impossible and anyone who professes to be such a person to have a coherent belief set, you can’t believe in Catholicism and then say there is such a thing as Papal fallibility.
Is this all a simplification? Maybe, but it highlights religion has been hijacked by Western individualism and all of a sudden anyone can believe what they want. If you wish to believe in a God, at least be honest about it. The Koran says it’s fine to beat your wife if she won’t shag you. The Bible says all homos will burn in hell. There’s no way of individually interpreting that no matter how you personally feel on the subject of physically abusing your wife or if homosexuals are sinners.
That’s more my gripe to be honest, all this touchy feely western individualistic spiritual bullshit where it’s ok to believe what you like because they’re your beliefs. Bullshit, on God you are right or you are wrong, and so utterly and obviously wrong if you believe in one of the big religions but then put your own spin on it. Either God gave his message or he didn’t, you can’t ignore what bits you want to.
yeah, i guess i do believe this bullshit. mainly because i also think God gave us a rational brian and not everything is forced feed like mindless idiots.
it’s hard for me to understand your position without taking an objective hardline i.e. this is what god really really meant. what i was trying to say was that to even make that statement would take, i think, a careers worth of books and articles. god says having homosexual sex is a sin. yes. people don’t do that, according to the bible. god also loves everyone. having homosexual sex is not, i think, the only quality that determines a human person. they can also be jugded on these qualities. can there be this difference between sexuality and indiviudality? maybe not. does God makes this difference? maybe not. a careers worth of study would have to go into answering this question.
Amen. Nietzsche said the same thing. He called Christ the noblest human being, but felt that Paul was full of ressentiment (Nietzsche used the French word for resentment).
Christ taught love, care for the poor and others, everything that Christianity is not today.
I just have an undirecgted anger against religion at the moment I think which is why I end up ranting about it all the time at the moment.
Trix, you’re absolutely right, I had a massive discussion about this subject with firends the other night and they all quite rightly pointed out exactly what you did, that I’m being very harsh on making people use the Bible as an objective absolute while it was in fact Jesus who was the important character who’s teaching are not objectively available to us as Pax said.
I also suppose that Paul could easily influence Christianity’s slant by what he left out of Christ’s teachings as well as what he put in.
Hmmm, interesting…is it wrong to even say, “I unquestioningly believe” in anything. Even if something is self-evident, it seems wrong to believe it without first questioning whether it is self-evident. That seems to be the fundamental flaw in any religious doctrine that teaches exclusive adherence. As far as human beings I admire, filled with what people are trying to get at when they say “God”, Jesus is #1 (closely followed by Buddha), but I could never call myself a Christrian because the church is so far from what he was getting at.
Just one for Matt, what about the Hindu teaching that there are infinite paths to the divine. If you accept that doctrine then all of a sudden it isn’t merely a case of reading the scripture. To say that you have to accept every word of the Bible as literal truth, or you are not a Christian, is to adopt the classic Protestant position. It’s part of Luther’s claim that each individual should be left to interpret the Bible, and the Bible, rather than the church, should be the ultimate religious authority. Fundamentalism is a new, and extremely western individualistic position. It bears no resemblence to any sort of Christianity before the Nicene conference in (I think) the 3rd or 4th century AD. This is where the composition of the Bible was decided. To say that fundamentalism was a characteristic of the spirit of early Christianity is a gross misrepresentation. It is very much the product of western individualism, as opposed to the communal discourse that characterised the creation of the Bible.
After much searching, I rejected the contemporary Christianity that your posts so accurately capture. However, if one is to be faithful to the principles of Jesus, the man, one must read the Bible as an allegory.
Along those lines, Joseph Campbell tells the story of a religious conference. The dalai Lama gets up and says that all religions are valid paths to enlightenment, the Catholic representative on the other hand says that his is the only correct path.
Thank you Matt for creating this room. I think I needed to read the posts in here. I am a theist (we argued a lot in other rooms) that has created my own version of Christianity, that I call: SUPERCHRISTIANITY that basically throws out some biblical doctrine while embracing others (as well as to throw out the concept of free will in the sense of “uncaused will”-holding that our choices and decisions are causally dependent on preexisting uncontrollable factors, such as how our neurons will fire before we make a choice or decision).
At any rate, I was “roasted over the coals” by conventional Christian thinkers in “athensandjerusalem.com” as heretic and nonChristian.
In my view, it would seem that the term: “Christian” is ultimately just a name for a basic set of beliefs with an expandable base, rather than a rigid one, and that to be “Christian” does not entail or necessitate a strict adherence to EVERYTHING THE BIBLE SAYS. But it was interesting to read you relax about this, Matt- in later posts.
Indeed, it should be warned that conventional Christians think that everyone holds that the Bible is inerrant, until you say otherwise-and then the conversation is over and you are ignored as a heretic. This is unfortunate, as I see a disturbing trend in fellow theists to hold their beliefs to be strong and inflexible necessities in the absence of experience.
I take a view of dissecting beliefs down into possibilities. I believe in God ( the Judeo-Christian God) but at the same time I have a set of what I call “grand metaphysical possibilities” in the back of the mind: some are godless-other’s aren’t. They do not form my set of strong beliefs, but they are there in reserve nonetheless. I can just say that in my set of beliefs I have no anecdotally been proven wrong in my belief in a God.
Anyway, good job on this discussion forum Matt. It was a relief to the walking on the plank I received by my “fellow” Christians in athensandjerusalem, where the Bible is totally infalliable and anyone who thinks otherwise cannot even use the word: “Christian” lest their tongues fall out and lightning strikes them dead.
have you been reading too much nietzsche? hehe. i agree with his (and perhaps yours so far) take on christianity. he saw christian self denial as a negation of life.
mainly because i also think God gave us a rational brian and not everything is forced feed like mindless idiots.