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  1. Vishvavajra

    It's said Jesus' sacrificed himself to save us...

    None of those modern usages of the word "sacrifice" remotely resemble how people understood the concept in antiquity. Back when the books of the Bible were written, a sacrifice was a kind of meal shared with the god. If you look at the actual form of the rite, you'll see that it the food has to...
  2. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    What I usually say is this: the question isn't "did this really happen," but "what does this mean." Myth is a kind of language that is trying to communicate something within a highly subjective cultural context. That makes it harder for people outside that context to understand. But myth is...
  3. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    You'd be surprised. The idea that the Genesis narratives in particular are meant to be understood literally is a fringe idea in Christianity at this point, isolated to fundamentalist evangelicals and a few other groups. Not one shared by Catholic or Orthodox or mainline Protestant clergy. As...
  4. Vishvavajra

    Will Atheists & Polyheists burn in Hell according to Bible?

    I'll admit to making certain assumptions, but here's an example that will illustrate my reasoning: The Gospel of John is very interested in portraying the incarnate Jesus, including bodily resurrection. If you look at the Johannine epistles, which are thought to have been written by the same...
  5. Vishvavajra

    It's said Jesus' sacrificed himself to save us...

    On the contrary, it alienates far more people than it reassures. Nobody wants someone's death on their hands like that, least of all as a demonstration of reconciliation. People prefer their olive branches without blood on them. And a whole lot of people are going to be turned away from the...
  6. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    ...unless God is a mask worn by the insecurities of the man, in which case God desperately needs believers to fill the aching void of existential angst.
  7. Vishvavajra

    Will Atheists & Polyheists burn in Hell according to Bible?

    Eh, not so much. Various things get thrown into a lake of fire, which is like a mythologized Gehenna. That list notably includes death and Hades. So apparently death itself is going to go to hell. Or rather, death and the realm of the dead are thrown out with the trash, to use modern parlance...
  8. Vishvavajra

    Will Atheists & Polyheists burn in Hell according to Bible?

    It's impossible for scripture to refer to itself collectively. Some texts do refer to other texts, others to the concept of scripture generally. Christian authors refer to the Hebrew Bible and sometimes to non-canonical stuff, making no real distinction. Occasionally they reference the texts of...
  9. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    This is completely true. This is more of a distortion. If you spend your time listening to the ravings of creationists, you'll get the impression that Biblical myths are meant to fill in as explanations for the literal facts of the universe, like a poor first attempt at science. But that's not...
  10. Vishvavajra

    Could God Exist, And Not Exist Too?

    On the one hand, it's true that the divisions that we assign things by means of semantics have no absolute reality to them; they're based on utility and vary considerably from one language to another, or even one person to another. Some languages have no distinction between green and blue, or...
  11. Vishvavajra

    Will Atheists & Polyheists burn in Hell according to Bible?

    Well, there are a lot of assumptions that go into those readings, and those assumptions aren't necessarily correct, even if they've got the weight of centuries behind them. After all, Christianity is basically about how most people can indeed be wrong most of the time. And it's not as if...
  12. Vishvavajra

    Could God Exist, And Not Exist Too?

    Yes, in that case it's not really an argument about existence, but about whether "God" is an accurate descriptor of what is already taken to exist, which is a different sort of question.
  13. Vishvavajra

    Will Atheists & Polyheists burn in Hell according to Bible?

    Depends what you mean by "apocrypha" and also what you mean by "hell." I don't think it's there in the deuterocanonical works, which is what most Protestants mean when they say "apocrypha" (i.e. "the stuff traditional Christians accepted as part of the Bible but we don't"). It's there in...
  14. Vishvavajra

    Could God Exist, And Not Exist Too?

    I explicitly said that it did not invalidate the description. However, it does mean that the glass is not an essentially existent thing. It's at best a conventionally existent thing. The point is that "existence" is a relative concept. And reduction of "human" to the level of atoms is not...
  15. Vishvavajra

    Religions fun?

    If you do it properly and make it into a habit (like exercising), Chan meditation is actually quite enjoyable. It took me a while to believe that, but it's true. I even like doing prostrations. Anything done with a pure and concentrated mind will leave you feeling cleansed and refreshed...
  16. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    On the contrary, the desire to be obeyed is a distinctly human trait. It comes from the vice of pride, which in turn ultimately flows out of feelings of insecurity, specifically the fear of death, which is what causes people to crave power over their surroundings in a vain attempt to fill that...
  17. Vishvavajra

    God/Jesus doesn't answer my prayers.

    It's hard to say that Christianity is categorically false when pretty much nobody can agree on what exactly Christianity is in the first place. I'd say the only reasonable view is that it's a family of traditions, and it's not possible for those to be true or false; they just are. There's a...
  18. Vishvavajra

    It's said Jesus' sacrificed himself to save us...

    I'd say the metaphor of forgiveness is misleading to begin with. The Greek word that gets translated as "sin" is not the normal word for the transgression of a rule, or an insult against authority, or anything like that. Those are concepts that a legalistic Roman church imposed down the road...
  19. Vishvavajra

    Why they are fake?

    I tried once. It was very obvious to me that it was written by a human mind as well as human hands. Too many human vices labeled as "God." But I have found a scripture that appears to be very ancient (or at least it says it is). I know it's a direct message from God because it also says that...
  20. Vishvavajra

    It's said Jesus' sacrificed himself to save us...

    Where do you find Jesus telling his disciples to wipe their asses? Toilet paper is un-Biblical! The thing that's a joke is your insistence that people can only do what they're commanded to do and nothing else, as if they were nothing more than meat puppets. Never mind that the alleged commands...
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