The Gaming Den

Actually, the context s that masters should strive to have slaves be proud of them.

Context, though, usually doesn't help Christian texts, it only makes them more bloody, political, and xenophobic.

Back on topic though, if someone wants to complain without putting the energy into changing the things they complain about, why should anyone care about their complaints?

-Crissa

Caliborn wrote: As it stands the state of Christianity in this country is in a state of living death. America is not the home of a Living God; America is the home of Zombie Jesus.

Haha wow. I still like the way you think.

Here's something odd; I was raised Irish Catholic in childhood, but never knew it was sacrilegious to actually wear a rosary, according to some Catholics (or most?)

Yet I'm still trying to find a dark, discrete, wooden one. Just to wear. It would hold no meaning for me.
And no, I'm not Christian (although Zombie Jesus does seem promising)

Crissa wrote:Back on topic though, if someone wants to complain without putting the energy into changing the things they complain about, why should anyone care about their complaints?

-Crissa

How seriously you take them should depend on how reasonable the change they want is and how much they are willing to work to achieve it.

Caliborn wrote:As a joke in moderately bad taste I suppose it's a little funny. As an actual argument it's pathetic. Take a single line out of massive text thousands of years old, strip it of the context of the passages surrounding it, strip it of all historical context, and then add new context and you've got something sort of negative.

The line says that if you're a slave you should respect your master. That's it.

What is the horrific society destroying evil that I'm missing?

That one should kill anyone claiming anything more than a business relation to them, perhaps?

Well, that little lego puppet show goes on to quote passages saying that slaves should never seek freedom, even given the chance. Of course, the reasoning behind all this was that the Christian slave should set an example of humility for his master so the master would see the virtues of Christianity and convert. When you consider that early Christians thought Judgment Day was coming soon and that the slaves' servitude would thus end soon, it makes a certain kind of sense.

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Well, that little lego puppet show goes on to quote passages saying that slaves should never seek freedom, even given the chance. Of course, the reasoning behind all this was that the Christian slave should set an example of humility for his master so the master would see the virtues of Christianity and convert. When you consider that early Christians thought Judgment Day was coming soon and that the slaves' servitude would thus end soon, it makes a certain kind of sense.

Yeah, Jesus was supposed to make his triumphant return within the lifetimes of his apostles - a pledge that was already broken by the time the gospels were written down because the gospels weren't actually written until a couple of generations after the supposed events occurred. Not particularly surprising of course, as the original 12 apostles probably weren't real people. And I say that both because they didn't leave any historical record or artifacts of their existence at the time, and because the gospels can't even agree on what their names even were.

Of course, Jesus was at best an amalgam of several different teachers and prophets from the time. Not only because his passing failed to leave any historical writings or artifacts from the time period, but because the gospels can't even get basic facts of his life historically credible or even consistent. Harod never had all the boy babies killed (and that was part of Moses' myth anyway, and for that matter Pharoh probably never did that either), the bible claims that Jesus is a descendant of King David (through Joseph oddly enough), yet disagrees with itself over whether this is done in 28 or 43 generations. And neither one is particularly likely in any case because King David died at nearly 1000 BCE.

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Christians should do what the Hindus do - admit that their story is a fable and that many people in it do things that you should not do. That makes your faith bullet-proof. So long as they insist on the literal truth of their early iron-age epic, they are in real trouble once facts start getting looked at. If you take Jesus as a mythical figure rather than a real person, the fact that he probably never existed and certainly didn't do half the stuff credited to him isn't even a problem.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Christians should do what the Hindus do - admit that their story is a fable and that many people in it do things that you should not do. That makes your faith bullet-proof. So long as they insist on the literal truth of their early iron-age epic, they are in real trouble once facts start getting looked at. If you take Jesus as a mythical figure rather than a real person, the fact that he probably never existed and certainly didn't do half the stuff credited to him isn't even a problem.

Bbbbut that's impossible!

There are Hindu sects that believe in various things, Koumei, just as there are Christian ones.

But you have to remember that the Protestant majority in the US generally don't think of Catholicism as true Christians, so we have basically the same thing.

Obama's church, for instance, does profess that the bible as written is fable. But also was refuse ad space on a major network because its message - one accepted by even the Catholic Church as a non-issue - was 'too controversial'. Even though it is one of the top ten largest Christian churches in the nation.

-Crissa

The U.S. is the last refuge of Christian Fundamentalism. For example, only in America, among all Western Nations, do political candidates of a major party have to declare that they don't believe in evolution in order to be viable. The sad part is that the people who think the Earth was literally created in six days 6,000 or so years ago have political influence out of proportion to their apparent numbers.

It's because arguing with them is like shouting at a brick wall, so all the people with an IQ higher than "dirt" just leave 'em alone and let them, more or less, do what they want, because seeing them is less mind numbing than arguing with them.

Don't worry, in the constant Americanization of Australian politics, a great deal was made of the cult of personality and our great leaders religiosity. Now he's curb stomped gay marriage. Argh.

Man I hate him.

You know it's occurred to me that it would be exceedingly easy to troll you guys/derail any thread I wanted.

But to try to put this thread back on topic. Who do you favor for president of the United States?

As I've said Obama looks like the best candidate to me.

Obama now has the requisite delegates to secure the nomination. And many people seem to want Hillary as his VP.

But then, this news isn't really very surprising.

sigma999 wrote:

Caliborn wrote: As it stands the state of Christianity in this country is in a state of living death. America is not the home of a Living God; America is the home of Zombie Jesus.

Haha wow. I still like the way you think.

Here's something odd; I was raised Irish Catholic in childhood, but never knew it was sacrilegious to actually wear a rosary, according to some Catholics (or most?)

Yet I'm still trying to find a dark, discrete, wooden one. Just to wear. It would hold no meaning for me.
And no, I'm not Christian (although Zombie Jesus does seem promising)

I know that I've never seen anyone wear a rosary; crosses yes, rosaries are usually held in the hand(s).

Also, most christians and catholics that I know don't actually read the Bible. So they tend to well, they're weak in quoting scripture. When scripture is used against them, they tend to have problems.


Also, I just saw this morning that Obama won the nomination for Democratic Candidate. I'm not an American, but they're the elephant that crawls into bed. I prefer it when I can at least pretend to agree with the elephant that's shoving me around in bed.

Crissa wrote:There are Hindi sects that believe in various things, Koumei, just as there are Christian ones.
-Snip-

-Crissa

-A_Cynic popping in through virgileso's account-

Hindu* not Hindi*.

HIndi - Language.
Hindu - religion.
Sorry, I"m bored and lurking.

Shaker rrp in an article upon conflating communal, personal, and issues in the primary:
... What I haven't seen in the primary season is a close critical look at Obama's policies, though there are handwaves towards his (inadequate, imo) health care plan and (fairly mainstream) energy proposals. More troublesome are his advisors such as Austan Goolsbee (his senior economics advisor) who "said that one of the things that distinguished Obama from Clinton was his skepticism about standard Keynesian prescriptions, such as relying on tax policy to stimulate investment and saving" and wrote "Obama rejects heavy-handed regulation and insists above all on disclosure, so that consumers will know exactly what they are getting." (nice article in the NYRB) This suggests a more laissez-faire relationship to both business and the economy than we need right now. I don't know what good disclosure does when consumers have little choice and no legal remedies for abuses. We need better.

Speaking about specifics, here's some.

-Crissa

Judging Eagle: I have seen worn rosaries but in these Protestant regions it is exceedingly rare.

It is true that many "non-denominational", aka Evangelical-in-disguise, Christians keep a bible in their house just to quote scripture from, but pick and choose the life-lessons from old and new testaments as if from a buffet table.

I suppose that's the result of a low-danger environment that doesn't challenge ones believes in action or propose alternatives very often.
If we had more Arabs or Buddhists in Maryland state, I guarantee there would be more intense consideration of how well conservative Christian doctrine holds up in the face of diversity, but that might take some time.
For now, there is the multi-faith church being constructed by the Pagan winner of the last big lottery.
And I'm eager to witness what happens to such an experiment in this stale, morally backasswards state.