Does religion offend you?

[SomewhereInND]

Humans are trying to build a better world for the next generations....

I dont think that is even close to being correct.   Humanity is too selfish to worry about the future.

[fazFwQo83]

Thump, My argument wasn't specifically directed at you, just the principle of giving credit where none is due.

Are you saying that religious organizations deserve no credit for their good works?

Not at all, but religious organisations give the credit to god. I'm saying we should give the credit to the people who make it happen and leave god out of it. I'm saying that people often identify compassion and kindness with religion and god. I'm saying that it's rubbish. People are capable of great compassion and we don't need some imaginary god character to motivate us to help another human being.

Also, I do apologise if I came across all preachy, I don't mean to be ... it's just an observation. Please don't take it personally.

If you reread my post, you'll see that my "preaching" comment wasn't directed at you.

Sorry about that. I misread your post.

[Fininho]

All gods are human creations.
You can go check around your suburb and see.
I arrived at that conclusion because there's one Pentecostal church down the road here, shouting so loud to its god that it annoys people three blocks away!
It is obvious that the god they shouting to is deaf and they are all a bunch of losers!

[tunghaichuan]

It is said that Yahweh invented the monarchies while the Devil preferred democracies.

By whom? Citation?

The Bible describes a revolt in heaven, where a minority wanted to overthrow the tyrannical monarchy of Yahweh, but failed.

Revelation 12:7-9
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled downâ€"that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

From: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

Doesn't say "Lucifer." In fact, Lucifer in Latin means "Light Bringer." So how did he get mixed up with Satan?

Lucifer wanted democratic rights in heaven: one angel one vote! Yahweh wanted a dictatorship forever.

Cite?

But Lucifer will have other opportunities; he is indestructible.

1. Nebuchadnezzar called by this name (Isaiah 14:12)

from: http://www.biblegateway.com/topical/Lucifer/Nave

This is the only place in the Bible where Lucifer is mentioned by name.

Oddly enough Nebuchadnezzar was the king of the Neo Babylonian empire, where the Jews got the idea of an evil being in opposition to a benign creatior. Before, the Satan was a title, he was Yahweh's attorney general, Yahweh's employee. I believe it means "the accuser" or "adversary." Before being conquered by the Babylonians, the idea that any being could challenge Yahweh was unthinkable.  The Jews go this idea from Zoroastrianism, which has a benign creation who is opposed by and evil being.

Satan was mentioned one time in 1 Chronicles, most of Job (where he had a starring role,) and once in Zechariah in the Old Testament. But not in Genesis. What it says:

Genesis 3:1
[ The Fall ] Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.

(emphasis mine). It doesn't say Lucifer, it doesn't say Satan. We have to look at what is there and not what we *want* to be there. Of course there is the referral back to this passage in Revelations, but a lot of time had passed by the time Revelations had been written down.

Satan is mentioned numerous times in the New Testament, but by this time the Jews had been influenced by Zoroastrianism. By the time we get to the New Testament, "Satan" means something completely different. Most of what people "know" about the war in heaven is from John Milton's Paradise Lost.

[Fininho]

Revelation is the most violent book of the entire Bible.
I believe the apostle John was addicted to Hashish in his old age to alleviate body pain.
Hence his horror visions!
It is in Revelation where John sees the god he imagined existed incinerating the entire Cosmos to make new heavens and a new Earth!
But I ask: what on earth was wrong with the heavens, for heaven's sake that Jehovah had to burn up everything in heaven?!!!...

[Inevitable Droid]

Faith offends me.  Base a religion on hope and I won't be offended.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Not at all, but religious organisations give the credit to god. I'm saying we should give the credit to the people who make it happen and leave god out of it. I'm saying that people often identify compassion and kindness with religion and god. I'm saying that it's rubbish. People are capable of great compassion and we don't need some imaginary god character to motivate us to help another human being.

I agree that the association between the Christian god and good works is nonsense, and that "god" as a motivating concept is incredibly weak.  However, I was making my point in reply to this post another member made saying that they saw no good that religion does; I was pointing out an example I've seen of religion doing good, without reference to whatever they might claim as inspiration.

Sorry about that. I misread your post.

No sweat, just sayin'.

[elliebean]

It is obvious that the god they shouting to is deaf and they are all a bunch of losers!

Much like the very same ones who are currently providing me with free housing, food, and medicine, plus help with buying clothing and other essential needs. Sure it's because we're family, but if they're losers, what does that make me - other than a needy disabled person, who happens to be transgender, lesbian, and an atheist living comfortably in a Christian home, until I can get out on my own?

You know you do come off preachy; preaching to the choir for the most part, it seems, but preaching all the same, which is against the rules of this forum, btw. And you seem rather to have something of an agenda, like justifying your vitriol for all things Christian (which you broadly label "religion"). Why? Do you need to be angry at something? And if so, why come here to collect a group of cheerleaders, when you can just as easily sit and stew in the quiet of your own home. No justification or cheaply solicited validation needed.

Don't get me wrong; I get it. There are a lot of things about a lot of religions that do offend me very much. There are a lot of religious people who do things because of their religious beliefs, and certainly there are many beliefs which, in themselves, offend me. But you're shoving them all together into one group and in doing so, you are also talking about my family. ALL of my family. And yes, many of them have offended me with their religiosity too. But those are only minor aspects of who they are.

As far as I'm concerned, the people who hold such offensive beliefs and exhibit such offensive behavior are not the perpetrators, but the victims of, as Droid pointed out, faith... not religion, which is too abstract a concept to cause any real offense in itself.

If you need a chorus of people chanting along with you about what offends you, at least talk about specific things that are offensive about specific tenets or behaviours, without generalizing all adherents to all religions as if they are equally responsible for spoiling your day.

Simply repeating "Religion is offensive, boo Christians!" gets us nowhere.


[/bitchy rant]


 

[Achronos]

Funny thing is other denominations of Christianity offend me, quite deeper than any other religion or anti-religion stance out there.

[Inevitable Droid]

Funny thing is other denominations of Christianity offend me, quite deeper than any other religion or anti-religion stance out there.

Ah.  I see you now label yourself as Orthodox Christian.  I was thinking you must be that or Catholic.  Your thought processes don't run in Protestant lines.  May I ask if you're Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or some other?

Why do other denominations offend you?

[Achronos]

Funny thing is other denominations of Christianity offend me, quite deeper than any other religion or anti-religion stance out there.

Ah.  I see you now label yourself as Orthodox Christian.  I was thinking you must be that or Catholic.  Your thought processes don't run in Protestant lines.  May I ask if you're Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or some other?

Why do other denominations offend you?

I.D. may I ask a personal question to you? Are you yourself in a quest to find God? Do you want to believe there is a God? It seems your curiosities suggest as such.

I go to a Greek Orthodox Church and my friend we could spend at quite a length discussing how important Orthodoxy is and my disdain with the other denominations, such as those which misinterpret Scripture. Greek, Russian, Antiochian, are still the same church but just in different jurisdictions.

I will try to be as brief as possible, but if you want me to I can elaborate a great deal on what separates my faith amongst the others in Christianity (and yes there is one correct faith)

So here is what we believe, The Scriptures are true-holy, just and good. But they were NEVER meant to stand alone. Their enforcer and interpreter-indeed, their writer-is the Church. The Church is also the doer of the Word. And the way things are done and have been done is preserved for us in a holy tradition. But even the Church did not originate her tradition.

That tradition has one source: God Himself. To begin with, the Apostles received it from Jesus Christ and passed it on unchanged and undiminished to the churches which they formed. Jesus had told the Twelve that they still had truth to learn, that the Holy Spirit would lead them into it.

There is alot more, but as we know the Great Schism happened in 1054 which the Roman patriarch at the time disbanded and began the Roman Catholic church (himself becoming the Pope). Then in 1517 began the Protestant Reformation and now we have more denominations than we can count. Plus with all of these theological debates and ambiguities caused by misinterpretations in Scripture, out of itself arose cults such as Mormonism, JWs, Christian Science, New Age Movement etc. It split up the faith and secularized it, instead of it being one Church and one Faith. If we stayed as one Church, the world we are living now would be entirely unrecognizable.

This will sound egregious, but I feel it was the work of Satan that caused such a split to cover up the truth.

[Fininho]

One of the things I get offended in religion is Christians appearing from all sides with their PRIVATE interpretations [of the Bible], and next disdain the private interpretations of other students!!
It's a bankrupt policy!
It is bankrupt because such a fabulous Almighty - as they want to promote - would have had enough time to present a document in clear language where nobody would need to interpret anything!
What would have been that Almighty's problem to avoid speaking straight to intelligent readers, for Pete's sake!!!

[Inevitable Droid]

I.D. may I ask a personal question to you? Are you yourself in a quest to find God? Do you want to believe there is a God?

No and no.

It seems your curiosities suggest as such.

I am in a perpetual quest to ascertain the nature and extent of truth.

Faith offends me intellectually because it attempts to make the subjective objective and thus is oxymoronic.  Hope, by contrast, glories in the subjective precisely because it's subjective - delights in the subjective as the self's most personal property.  Faith offends me morally because it is inutile and ultimately insane, because it is socially inappropriate in a cosmopolitan milieu, because it is inauthentic in that it demands self-deceit in order to subsist, and because, all too often, it incites injustice.

I go to a Greek Orthodox Church and my friend we could spend at quite a length discussing how important Orthodoxy is and my disdain with the other denominations, such as those which misinterpret Scripture. Greek, Russian, Antiochian, are still the same church but just in different jurisdictions.

One of your mental attributes that marks you as something other than Protestant is your willingness to take poetic paradox as a moral guide.  That's an Eastern modality.  Protestantism is more heavily Western.

I will try to be as brief as possible, but if you want me to I can elaborate a great deal on what separates my faith amongst the others in Christianity (and yes there is one correct faith)

So here is what we believe, The Scriptures are true-holy, just and good. But they were NEVER meant to stand alone. Their enforcer and interpreter-indeed, their writer-is the Church. The Church is also the doer of the Word. And the way things are done and have been done is preserved for us in a holy tradition. But even the Church did not originate her tradition.

That tradition has one source: God Himself. To begin with, the Apostles received it from Jesus Christ and passed it on unchanged and undiminished to the churches which they formed. Jesus had told the Twelve that they still had truth to learn, that the Holy Spirit would lead them into it.

Yes.  It always amused me that the Protestants based their revolution on the idea that Scripture was God-breathed... an idea they didn't originate, but took as authoritative from the very organization whose authority they were rejecting and revolting against.  Apparently the Pope lied about everything else except that one thing.

[Persimmon Hamster]

where is it?

Norway. We do a lot of good here, we do. For instance, imagine the map of Norway, Sweden and Finland... Without us here, Scandinavia would look eerilly penis-like  

[Achronos]

I am in a perpetual quest to ascertain the nature and extent of truth.

Because of our visceral desire for God. Even atheists have proven this, unknowingly.

Faith offends me intellectually because it attempts to make the subjective objective and thus is oxymoronic.  Hope, by contrast, glories in the subjective precisely because it's subjective - delights in the subjective as the self's most personal property.  Faith offends me morally because it is inutile and ultimately insane, because it is socially inappropriate in a cosmopolitan milieu, because it is inauthentic in that it demands self-deceit in order to subsist, and because, all too often, it incites injustice.

That is the whole point of faith. Faith is to have a reason, to have a knowledge, to have a sense of security and understanding, that the 'ideology' is indeed a real fact.

Not some abstract placebo, like Oprah's "The Secret". Please stop this, "Faith is on the basis of reaching out into the unknown." Jesus never proposed such a case. Nor did the Apostles, neither God himself in the Tanakh.

Yes.  It always amused me that the Protestants based their revolution on the idea that Scripture was God-breathed... an idea they didn't originate, but took as authoritative from the very organization whose authority they were rejecting and revolting against.  Apparently the Pope lied about everything else except that one thing.

Jesus Christ destroys religion. Yes, even Christian "religion". Biblical Christianity is not a religion.