The Horrors of christianity

To me sin has always been a condition we exist within, not actions we commit.
My intuitive perception of this condition is akin to a train with only 3 of four wheels on the tracks. It still will move along the path, but with resistance and the ever-present sense that somethings just "not on track".
I feel human history with it's perpetual search for "something" that sets that 4th wheel on track validates that idea to a degree.

The actions that we quantify as "good" or "evil" or "fruits" if you will, are merely the natural manifestation of that condition.

 

So what I got out of all this:

There apparently is no hand at the tiller of christianity. Its members are allowed to do as they please, without regard for any of the laws that "used" to apply. Its members are allowed to change its tenets as they please, and create factions of the religion to suit their own views. (This is not unique to christianity, so this is not, as some have stated, merely my picking on christianity)

Since this basically amounts to religious anarchy, (In this case meaning no central authority, for all you purists) there being no central governing body that assures the adherence to the original doctrines that started with christianity way back when, and, with the absence of proof of the existence of the main players of it (its god and the Jesus figure), then I can only come to the conclusion that:

There is no christian god. There could very well be some sort of creator entity in existence, but if so, it has not made itself known in a way that we can determine.

The originators of the religion either engaged in fraud, or succumbed to their fears, and created a religion based on some sort of entity that was supposed to "save" them from death, and their own actions.

So, all the horrors perpetuated by those long ago church leaders was plain murder, mayhem, and fraud, and those people who still today engage in similar activities in the name of the religion are also guilty of the same activities.

Since I am sure my observations will piss off a good portion of those who are affiliated with this religion, I will say that I do know a good many very good people who are affiliated with this religion, and I read about a good many more. It was never my intention to disrespect those people who do good works, in the name of any religion, I merely wanted to answer some questions I had myself. Being an agnostic, I am always looking for evidence one way or the other to break the tie. I had already had a goodly amount of evidence that lead to this decision already, my reason for posting this here, even though it caused animosity, was to see if there was anything that would lead me to question what I already knew, so I could adjust my viewpoint.

 

Almost! except:

Ditch the idea of an entity, and go outside.

No.. that would mean they believed in "divine justice" before they created it.

Believe it or not, people haven't always been as materialistic as they are now.. when you've got shitall to distract yourself with, it's a lot easier to see what you've got - and that's life. Dogma was created to give some general guidelines to respect life, to love it and not abuse it. It started out as helpful control.

Think of where the religions originated from, and then the rules around them.. Islam for example, originated from the middle east where it's hot as fuck. So, they're not allowed to drink alcohol.. why? It dehydrates you. Not allowed to eat pork.. carries all sorts of nasties, worms and toxins. Not so great when you're trying to survive in an superhot climate with limited food sources, risk is too great with no medication. etc. etc.

Pretty much..

 

It is not so that there is not regard for the laws that used to apply.
If you are talking about mosaic law, mosaic law is the law of Moses. The law that has always applied is gods law. Jesus makes the statement that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives but from the beginning it was not so. Moses, the supposed author, wrote statutes designed to mitigate the effects of a thing called, hardness of heart. Hardness of heart calls for penalty, retribution, or reparations for perceived injury.

I think you have a fundamental confusion about the power points of christ teaching. Do not think I have come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law.I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Love fulfills the law by creating a field of good being, logos, of which there is no law against. That is of course if you had learned the meaning of the council, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. It is the spirit of the law that fulfills the law, not the scapegoating of guilty infraction.

What was happening with the law of Moses was that a priestly class was offering absolution in exchange for alms and sacrifice. Jesus accused them of not going in themselves and preventing others from doing so.

My fathers house was meant for the prayer of all nations/natures, but you have made it into a den of robbers and thieves.

Further Jesus instructed that public displays of devotion for sake of being seen as pious were without substance and taught that we should go to our rooms behind ours doors and pray to our father in secret as he knows you in secret. Jesus pulled an end around on the priestly class and taught how to have direct access to divine life, or more abundant life.

As you might be able to derive from the description above, tenants and factions are not representative of christ teaching. By this they shall know the you are my disciples, that you love one another.
As you point out, you are viewing a phenomena in the case of religious organizations that is not exclusive to the christian religion. It is however synonymous with the superfluous attempts of religious organizations in apprehending the spirit of god. The same dichotomy between official representation and the effort of personal reflection, knowing god, exists in the present day circumstances as they did jesus' time. And those circumstances create the same mean spirited hypocrisy you see, as well as the more uplifting expressions of christian practice.

We see the very same dichotomous tensions in regards to civil authority versus civility.

Whereas the church claims authority, the real authority of christian practice is what is called the holy spirit. The holy spirit is the conviction that the world is precious creation and if we allow it's perspective to apprehend the world as a opposed the the perception of guilt, then creative solutions appear to intractable human problems.

Christ teaching is not dogmatic, church teaching is.

Of course organized christian religious organizations are not representative of genuine relations with god so you would not expect to find evidence of a christian god there. The evidence of the christian god would be found in individual expressions of love.

Being an agnostic and looking for evidence to break a tie are not synonymous practices. I am curious as to where you found animosity? What evidence have you considered?

 

Your views don't piss me off. They just seem to be a bit muddled. You seem to be saying that if there were a God, (S)he'd take control, prevent us from deviating from the divine plan and prevent any bad things from happening. Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe (S)he doesn't want to do that, for whatever reasons. Maybe it would be boring or pointless. Maybe God is like Norman Mailer's Cosmic cinematogapher, setting up this theater of the absurd and enjoying the show. Maybe God isn't as omnipotent as we thought, or omnipotence isn't as omni or potent as we thought. Maybe... Meanwhile, what to do? Put your faith in something else, which then becomes your god? Believe in nothing? Or go on the basis of a reasonable suspicion based on the best available evidence? Most accounts of Jesus say that he preached peace, love and understanding even for society's rejects. Just what could be your beef with that? And how is that so horrible?

 

Sorry, that wasn't intended for you, just a generalized comment that it could piss some off.

Christianity is a muddled religion. Few of all the various factions within it can agree with each other on all aspects of it. It is difficult to write so someone else can understand what I found while looking at the matter, so while it makes perfect sense to me, it is understandable that others may not understand it. I would be happy to elucidate on any of it, if need be.

It supposedly used to take a direct role in what was going on, why not any more? And if you had gone to all the trouble to set up a world, populate it, and set rules for the population to follow, and they deviated from it, wouldn't you fix that problem? I know, you aren't god, we can't know his plan, I have heard all that before. I have also heard how the supposed Jesus was supposed to do just that, fix things, get things back on track, yet here we are, with even further deviation from the original intent, or whatever we are supposed to call it. Even more factions, even more bickering between those factions, more disagreements as to what the scriptures supposedly say. Christianity is nothing more than chaos, right now.

This wasn't the point when this god supposedly laid down its laws, they were very specific. Even your comments reflect a lack of conviction in what you are supposed to believe. How can anyone believe in something like Christianity when the rules are always changing, and no one knows how they are supposed to act. Every time another Jim Jones or the like takes charge, things change again, doubt is again cast as to why this god would allow these things to happen. Would a good and kind god allow this to go on? Why would it allow such deviation from its original plan? I think it was pretty clearly spelled out in the early times, and it is not the same now.

Well, no, my contention is that faith is a large part of the problem. Blindly following any sort of reasoning without verifying the validity of that reasoning is really, pretty seriously, a foolish thing to do. What if there really is a Creator of some sort and it is sitting somewhere shaking its head at how dumb the adherents to christianity are because they blindly follow what people tell them? What if it is happier with the atheists since they at least questioned some pretty serious flaws in the whole christian concept?

Well, I can pretty much guess that you and I would go loggerheads over what constitutes "the best available evidence". I would use the scientific method to form my opinions, would you use faith? Or would you take a more objective view of the matter, and say, what IF this is wrong?

I am sorry, but I have a pretty solid belief that the Jesus of the bible did not exist, so this means nothing to me. If he did exist, if he did take over for his supposed father, then where is he? People have been going gaga over his supposed return for quite some time, and each time, there is another excuse as to why it did not happen. This is the problem with prophecy, when it does not come true, the doubts set in big time for a lot of people.

My beefs with that is that I really find it untrue that the Jesus of the New Testament even existed, and that he was a fictional character used by the creators of christianity as a figurehead for others to follow. They needed something mystical to kick things off and that is what they used.

If it happened as you say, that would not have been horrible, but we have the history of christianity that shows it perpetuated some pretty horrible things. What is horrible is that christianity goes on, horrible deeds have been accomplished in the name of its god, and its gods son, and they go on to this day, and neither of the main players (god and jesus) have done anything to correct the problems that still exist within christianity.

For me, all the evidence points to my conclusions regarding what I posted as being true, christianity is either a fraud, perpetuated by the early founders of it, and it is an ongoing fraud, or,
the god of christianity just does not care, in which case, why follow it?
or,
the god of christianity gets its jollies off by watching all the troubles going on in the world, and does nothing about them, in which case, why follow it?

Please don't take this as animosity directed towards you, it is not. This just reflects where I ended up after looking into the matter for myself, and was a topic I wanted to discuss. As I stated to another poster, as an agnostic I am always looking for new evidence that would resolve the matter one way or the other, yet I have seen nothing here that changes my view, actually, I have seen more to support a view that this god does not exist than otherwise, but it is not empirical proof, so I don't consider it as resolving anything.

 

Where is he? When we see christ we shall be like him. Let the mind be in you that is in christ. The second coming of christ is his coming in spirit and mind, the first coming being physical. No one knows the hour the second coming because love is based on invitation, not time.

 

thedope:

Love is christ?! Love is love.

 

What is love? To you a condition. Is it one of those I know it when I see it kind of conditions? Or can you list specifically those acts or appearances that satisfy the definition of the condition of love?

The sign of discipleship for christians is that they love one another. The christ mind is the mind that loves without reservation.

Christ teaching is not a cult of personality. Jesus was specific in stating if you believe in me, you believe not in me but in him who sent me, that is the authority of the teaching, not jesus' personal authority. Although those who are practiced in giving command deep respect.

 

Let me spell out that I, like most Progressive Christians, don't believe in the literalist assumptions you want to attribute to Christianity. I don't believe we ever had a hands on, anthropomorphic deity. The OT passages suggesting otherwise were metaphor or error. So your notion that if such an imaginary being doesn't swoop down and straighten things out Christianity must be wrong is based on a simplistic idea of what it's about. The quest for uniformity in belief led to all the "horrors" in the first place. Agnostic Bart Ehrman's latest book explains why most scholars in the field believe that your "pretty solid belief" that Jesus didn't exist is on a weak foundation, and what difference does it make? That the Church committed abuses in Christ's name in centuries past has no bearing on the validity of Jesus' teachings. Christianity is a work in progress, and I think there's been lots of progress. I doubt that its being guided by some supernatural Dude in the Sky, but the humans who continue to be inspired by it contain enough good minds of good will to make me optimistic about its future. You seem to be stuck in the past.

Like other elements of human culture, Christian memes follow basic patterns of evolution: mutation and natural selection. Diversity is a good thing, because it gives natural selection something to work with. There's no guarantee of progress and there are some aspects of the current scene that bother me. But as rational beings with free will, we can help guide the process by dialogue and action. Uniformity is a sign of sickness. Religion offers a big tent, with many paths to God. Science is great for subjects that lend themselves to rigorous proof, but in my opinion life would be sterile and society unworkable if we confined ourselves to that. By applying rational inquiry to Christianity, scholars like those of the Jesus Seminar are able to debunk many claims about Jesus while providing convincing evidence that He not only existed but said and did over 15% of the things attributed to him--good enough for me if not the bible thumpers. There is no fraud in that. It's fallible people of good will doing their best to figure out as best they can the mysteries of our existence.The "best available evidence" can include intuitions, good judgment, and reasonable suspicion falling short of scientific proof. And I wouldn't rule out the religious experiences that Noxious Gas brought up. I owe my Christian faith to a life changing experience, and I've never taken psychedelic drugs. Whether it was the result of "outside" influence, or a natural psychological phenomenon is impossible for me to say, and again irrelevant. But the ideas stand on their own merits. My faith in universal, unconditional love for everyone, including society's rejects, doesn't depend on supernatural grounding. I call it "Christian" because that's where I learned it and it's a generally accepted as a source--at least in my circles of fellowship.

So is this just the mindless operation of robot vehicles for selfish genes blindly programmed to preserve themselves, or is there something more emergent going on here? Dawkins and Gould would say the former, but I find that hard to believe. I agree with Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies that the universe shows evidence of mind at work--not necessarily the omni-Dude you're talking about, but awesome none the less; same goes for social evolution. Maybe for the late Steve Gould, the experience of hell consists in the realization that Tielhard de Chardin might have been right after all!

 

thedope:

Condition through and through, it is life at all limits. What you call 'maximal expression'. You say love is without condition, you deny it condition, you deny it existence. Keep questioning love.

Love has no reservations. Do christians in their discipleship love only one another?

You deny personality.

 

There is one point about Christianity that I don't think has been brought up yet.

Christianity isn't a "book" religion, it is an active, alive relationship with God or whatever/however you want to term it.

It really truly honestly is just like in the book of Acts, one minute you be plain old Joe Blow, next you be filled with some force or power that fills and flows through you and your life.
THAT is the power that you and your wife were looking for and couldn't find.
I know it sounds cliche and trite and like bullshit, but it is real, it is alive and powerful and it is an absolute life altering experience/relationship.


Let me ask you Still Kicking, have you any experience with psychedelic substances?

If you do then hopefully you will understand and appreciate that no amount of book study, interviews, meditation, etc. can adequately convey the impact and just utter difference of a psychedelic experience.

The same applies to true religious/spiritual experiences.

:sunny:

 

Why not the mind that is in us? Too personal? :-D

Christianity gets remembered as the torture religion. The know-not-what-you-do affair. I wonder why? No.

 

"Gets remembered" by whom? There are many memorable aspects of Christianity, that one not being on my mind much.

 

Okiefreak:

By all who don't find anything divine in the crucifixion of Jesus.

 

Crucifixion happened a lot. It was horrible. Torture happens today, right here in River City. Your "know not what you do" reference is possibly referring to Jesus' remark in the Luke gospel forgiving His torturers because they were ignorant. Now that's what I think is worth remembering. Would you dismiss the Peace Movement because they "get rembered" as being too much about war?

 

I thought Dejavu's "religion of torture" comment was in reference to the most godless things done to witches and heretics by, ironically, christians.

 

I don't question love. I question what you mean by love when you offer that love is life and yet find some life less than lovely.

I agree. See above. This contrast is what gives me to question you on this issue.

As you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me. If the eye be sound the ,whole body, (of man), will be full of light. There is no, other, but we are one another

I say that the worship of jesus as a personality was not intended by the personality of jesus.

 

Dejavu, all things being equal you have a point. However, not all things appear equal to some. The well have no need of a physician. Christ mind is a level of our own mind that is accessed when we see there is no fault in phenomena. It penetrates to the point of accurate prediction.

It gets remembered by you in that way because you forget all other possible expressions. Remembering in your case is selective forgetting, or the refusal to allow that the phenomena of god has any positive effects.

 

Dejavu views god as a disease of the mind. I view moral indignation, a disease of the mind.