Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
Don't forget that He also gave us Stalin, Hitler,
Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, Marx, & the Kardashians.
<Shudders>
...Kardashians...
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Don't forget that He also gave us Stalin, Hitler,
Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, Marx, & the Kardashians.
Wow...talk about blantantly ignoring your own question!
You wanted to know an historical situation (which you specified) with no Christian influence where people were better off. I gave two suggestions. You ignored those to suggest the reason I haven't moved to some current places with no Christian influence is because I wouldn't be better off for it. I reminded you about your historical qualification (which you emphasized to Shadow Wolf) and suggested that I--because of my own situation--am happy where I am and it doesn't make sense to move (but would find it interesting).
So, to be clear: I criticize Christians and Christianity but am not wholly against it. I also recognize that it is one spiritual viewpoint amongst others in this teeming humanity of ours, and it isn't the best one for everyone and it's influence isn't always positive, sometimes being downright cruel and inhumane.
Answer mine and I will answer yours.
Wow...Native Americans have been impacted by Christianity. If you can find a Reservation where their are no churches, and they adhere to their past pagan culture, then try and go and live there.
Europe was impacted by Christianity from King to pauper. Just because it is but a shell of what it used to be, does not remove the impact Christianity had upon it. And the pagans there are enjoying a society that Christianity built.
Wow.
Good-Ole-Rebel
Common Law
scholarship.law.upenned/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3029&context=penn_law_review
Good-Ole-Rebel
But just to be clear, while you appear to suppose that there can be no virtue without religion, and many of us would disagree with that supposition. In fact, it is quite wrong.Don’t miss the significance of that last statement: “..without virtue there can be no liberty….”
@Good-Ole-Rebel has it quite backwards.Which modern laws today are based on values that are specifically Christian and not common to typical human society.
I am content that his name be forever besmirched. That's all that the Democrats were able to accomplish, but it's enough.
The Dumbocrats didn't even accomplish that, because Trump is forever ACQUITTED.
Christianity presents a number of women in high regard, including the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The subject was homosexual sin, and you knew you couldn't justify it, so you moved the goalpost to slavery, etc., which you still don't have right. You lose.
I believe God and the Bible have a higher standard.
"Love does no harm to a neighbor" - Romans 13:10
Neither you nor any future descendant of yours will ever see a world without the Word of God.
More people going off the deep end .... "strongman"..."king"..."monarch". Really?
We knew all along that the Dems had too weak a case to convict in the Senate.
When historically was there a much better place where Christian beliefs did not exist?
By the time of the government of the U.S. being formed, the enlightenment did play a role. But the origin of the U.S. is Christian.
We should revisit these claims when he some day leaves office.Yeah, really.
Trump will be remembered as Andrew Johnson is - impeached. Nobody or refers to Andrew Johnson in terms of acquittal. Impeachment is forever. When enough time has passed that Trump is as poorly remembered as presidents like Andrew Johnson and Garfield, about whom people mostly only remember impeached and assassinated, Trump will still be remembered for being impeached. His children and grandchildren will hear about it continually, and Trump will gnash his teeth whenever he thinks about it.
That is not esteeming women as people, but one woman for being a chaste incubator then mother. Add submitting to husbands and remaining silent in church, and remove reproductive rights, and you have the Christian model for womanhood.
Humanism does much better. It advocates for social, economic, and political equality for women, which is what they really want, need, and deserve.
No, you lost.
He didn't move any goal post, but you deflected by so saying. His comment was apt. He was pointing out your hypocrisy for cherry picking which moral failings of the Bible you still want to bludgeon people with, and which you don't.
Here's a hysterical meme that has been floating around for several years now that beautifully illustrates the hypocrisy.
"Dear Dr. Laura
"Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
[1] Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
[2] I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? She is 6 years old, healthy, and very smart. She doesn't want to be a slave, so that might be a problem.
[3] I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19 24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
[4] When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
[5] I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
[6] A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
[7] Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear contact lenses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
[8] Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though Lev. 19 expressly forbids this: How should they die?
[9] I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? What should we do with the NFL?
[10] My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws?(Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
You are a great prophet and I will go to my grave remembering that you were among the very few who placed the blame for 9/11 where it truly belonged: on abortionists, gays and lesbians. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging."
I believe that secular humanism has a higher standard for morals than your religion. We haven't been taught to demean homosexuals, for example.
Your religion advocates the divine command theory of morals, which is defined as "a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God."
This has got to be the worst idea in all of moral philosophy. According to that, if you can convince a person that his god has ordered him to hate atheists, or gouge the eyeballs out of kittens, for example, then it becomes immoral not to do so, which is probably your position.
I challenge you to find a worse moral idea than that. That's a complete abdication of one's responsibility to be a moral agent. One is simply deferring to what he or she was told some god wants them to do.
Which is why it is false to call Christianity a religion of love. We've seen how it has generated hundreds of millions of homophobic bigots, which harms gay people, making their lives more difficult and dangerous by marginalizing and demonizing them. Worse, this religion of yours has convinced all of these bigots that they hold the moral high ground. Look at how defiantly you hold on to and repeat your homophobic message.
But you serve a useful purpose. It is very helpful that people see this. It is very helpful to see someone like @Evangelicalhumanist tell you that he finds your use of the word Sodomite to be offensive, and to see your defiant indifference to the harm you do serving as a willing vector of bigotry and hate speech.
So shine on, shining star, and show us just what your priests are teaching you constitutes love. It's what others call hate.
Word of God? No. The word of people whose lives had so little in common with ours as to be irrelevant.
But who cares if people are still reading those words in 1000 years or more? We also will probably never see a world without Druids or followers of Zeus (yeah, they still have that) - equally irrelevant to what Christianity is becoming as it slowly evaporates away. And once Christianity has lost its ability to control to the cultures in which it had hegemony, almost nobody will know it still exists.
The Modern Greeks Who Still Worship Zeus - KnowledgeNuts
Oh...apologetics casting judgement on common sense using Biblical arguments?
Pick a lane dude, you just self contradicted more times than homophobic Lacedaemonian.
Take a quick look at the third world countries where EuroChristianity has been dominant for the last few centuries. Then compare them to the countries where secular humanist values have taken over.Nice try, but your secular humanism has turned the world into a moral cesspool. And that's a fact.
Once again, your anti religious diatribe is rife with ignorant opinion, I emphasize the word ignorant.Yeah, really. Trump's dictatorial nature is world famous, and apparently the Republican Party is willing to support him in it. What did people think would be the result of a sham trial? Respect for Trump, the Republicans, and America, or the opposite?
You don't have to care what the world thinks of Trump's America, but repeating that they don't understand the American system is irrelevant. They don't need to. Most Americans don't understand it.
But they do understand Trump, the kind of man he is, and how that reflects on America given his popularity.
1. Desire for military parades
2. Browbeats the press and defines it as the enemy of the people
3. Confuses himself with the nation, calling what’s bad for him bad for America.
4. Attacks investigative committees and the intelligence community
5. Attacking vanquished political opponents
6. Attempt to control the flow of information
7. Holding rallies unrelated to campaigning
8. Calling those that disagree with him treasonous and un-American
9. Demanding adulation from his cabinet
10. Admires thuggish strongmen like Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un
11. Nepotism
12. Disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law
13. Expecting government employees and appointees to be loyal to him personally rather than the nation
14. Targeting and demonizing various scapegoated groups
15. Angry nationalism and xenophobia
16. Vastly exaggerate a threat to make people afraid so that they will sacrifice freedoms to him in exchange for unneeded protection
17. The use of executive action to claim powers he doesn’t have
18. Contempt for facts and evidence
19. The destruction of political norms
20. Threats of refusal to leave office when it’s time
No, we knew all along that Trump would be acquitted no matter the charges or evidence. The Democrats had an excellent case, but no interest in it from the Republicans.
You're trying to imply that a good life in a modern liberal democratic state is due to Christianity because Christianity is present in those countries, but life didn't get good in them until Christianity was subdued by Enlightenment values and secular humanism. What those desirable countries, which includes many nations of Western Europe, have in common, is several centuries of the moderating influence of humanist values, something the Islamic nations, especially in the Middle East, haven't had, and the main reason that they're still cutting off hands, dropping people from high towers, throwing acid in one another's face, and burning one another alive in cages. There is no reason that the Christians.
Islam and Christianity are pretty much the same religion on paper. Each reveres a Semitic desert god who is an angry, petty, vengeful, jealous, judgmental, capricious, prudish, strongman requiring worship and submission under threat of cosmic reprisal.
Believers of each attend temples (Mosques or churches) and obey paternalistic, misogynisitic clergy.
Both religions embrace magical thinking, mythology, dogma, the supernatural, and ritual.
Each feature demons angels, prayer, an afterlife, a judgment, and a system of reward and punishment after death.
They each think they have the right to determine who should be allowed to diddle whom how, who should be able to marry whom, and what women must do regarding their bodies.
Both are patriarchal, authoritarian, misogynistic, sexually repressive, anhedonisitic, atheophobic, homophobic, antiscientiific, use psychological terrorism on their children, have violent histories featuring torture, genocide and terrorism, and demand obedience and submission.
Each consider faith a virtue and reason a problem.
Each advocates theocracy over democracy.
I could go on, but you get the point. So why are Islam and Christianity rendered so differently in the countries where they dominate? Secular humanism in the West is the difference. Before that, Christians were as barbaric and brutal as the Muslims, putting people in large metal kettles and boiling them alive, or extracting admissions of impiety using the rack, the pear, and whatever other brutal torture they could conceive. Humanism eliminated that
If you switched the ideologies out, and put Christianity in Saudi Arabia and Islam in America, you would have Christian Arabs cutting off hands and heads, and American Muslims going door to door asking if you know Mohammed. America would still be a secular state with a Muslim majority forced to tolerate "infidels" thanks to humanist values, and Saudi would still be a brutal, intolerant theocracy, but a Christian one instead. There is no reason to believe otherwise.
And when the Muslims finally ban these practices, it will be because they have traded their Abrahamic practices for humanist values.
No, the origin of the US was a rejection of Christian values regarding statecraft.
If you want to see the Christian model for government, daily life, and the role of individuals, look to the Middle Ages, when Christian theocratic government was common. If you want to see the reaction to that and its rejection, look to the Enlightenment versions of those things, which you are crediting to Christianity..
I just had a lengthy exchange with another RF poster who was insisting that secular humanism was an outgrowth of Christianity. I disagreed, and refuted his claim by showing how secular humanism was a rejection of Christian values. The two have almost nothing in common beyond it being wrong to kill or steal.
Likewise here. The principles that define Americanism look nothing like those that define Christianity. When two modes of thought are related, they look alike, as Christianity and Islam do.
Christianity says there is one God, and its Bible commands us to worship it only and obey the Sabbath. Americanism says worship any god or no god.
Christianity teaches,
- "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."- Romans 13:1-2
- "Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient" - Titus 3:1
Americanism is grounded in revolution against just such a governing authority, and includes democracy, free citizens with guaranteed rights, and sees them as autonomous citizens rather than them being viewed as subjects of a god and king.
- "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king" - 1Samuel 15:23
Christianity is all about sin, redemption, and obedience. Americanism is about freedom and the pursuit of happiness. You didn't find those things in the Christian era, The Age of Faith. The Age of Reason, which followed, is a rejection of that model, just as reason itself is a rejection of faith, and faith a rejection of reason.
And yet all of the data appears to refute that.Nice try, but your secular humanism has turned the world into a moral cesspool. And that's a fact.
Did we choose to be born here? And, as I have pointed out, people like me work against Christianity. Those of us moving America away from Jehovah. If say we've been so successful that Christians have had to pervert their faith by putting it on money, and have been so rocked by society moving away that they had to add it to things here and their so they don't forget.Inconvenient actually is a mild word for it. It is interesting to me how much whining people do about Christianity, yet live in countries that have been impacted by Christianity.
Good-Ole-Rebel
Saying "I d9nt remember but it's found here" is a perfectly acceptable answer based in honesty. Would you rather me make things up?Bob isn't the only one skeptical of vague recollections as proof.
So, you deny slavery is supported in the Bible? That Paul didn't say women are bellow men? Do you deny Ham was cursed?Christianity presents a number of women in high regard, including the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. You conveniently ignore those women.
No. That was a cult teaching, not in scripture And you've got that wrong too. "Ham himself is not cursed, and race or skin color is never mentioned." - Wikipedia
Horse manure. That's not in scripture and many Christians fought against slavery. Also, what part of Jesus' "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" do you in any way think endorses slavery?? Just the opposite - it teaches against slavery. But Jesus was not born to start a war with the Jews and Romans over slavery.
You're full of folly. Jesus fed the five thousand. He produced a net full of fish for Peter, which fed many others. And to call the Savior of Mankind a "bum" shows how incredibly shallow your theological understanding is.
I understand the basis for your belief.Saying "I d9nt remember but it's found here" is a perfectly acceptable answer based in honesty. Would you rather me make things up?