CHRISTIANITY HATERS

[neoolong]

YAY!

Just take a look in the bible. The judeo-christian god is a vengful spitful ass-hole(killing small children and all that) assuming he exists, he is a very corrupt and evil super-being.

And if anybody says that we as the creation aren't in the place to judge, they need to be reminded that we are the ones getting fucked over and have every right to judge him.

[Antediluvian]

YAY!

Just take a look in the bible. The judeo-christian god is a vengful spitful ass-hole(killing small children and all that) assuming he exists, he is a very corrupt and evil super-being.

And if anybody says that we as the creation aren't in the place to judge, they need to be reminded that we are the ones getting fucked over and have every right to judge him.

You got that goddamn right.

Hooray for neoolong!

[macman]

A strawman is a logical fallacy. you misrepresent another persons claim, then attack the misrepresentation.

Sorry I will be more careful

As well you should*cast nymbors stern reproof* *pain surges through your body, causing you to gasp fpr beath and spasm in agony*

Stop Stop I won't do it again.....

[weemadando]

First of all i must inform you that i get my information from books. Rarely do i use the internet as a source. Also i must say that all the books that i use are secular in nature. I adamantly refuse to use books that were written by a christian or islamic point of view. That said i must say all the books that i have read also state the fact that christianity was a bridge that brought MOST of the citizens of the empire together. The authors of these books are varied scholors with PHDs, i do NOT get my information from bible thumping fundamentalists.

Good for you, but Ancient Civilisations for Dummies isn't a recognised academic source.

I wonder where you get your information? Do not take this as an insult, i would like to read it. It offers an interesting view that i have not read about before. If you want a decent book try the Idiot's Guide to the Roman empire(this is not an insult, it really is a decent compiliation of roman history and the prose isn't that hard to read).

Being an Ancient Civs scholar I have to use both primary and secondary source documents in an academic capacity when proving a point.

http://www.fordham.eu/halsall is an EXTREMELY good source for primary materials, as is the University of Virginia e-text library. Primary materials if you don't know are those from the period, in this case I would refer to the works of Lactantius, Eusebius and Zosimus among others.

Secondary materials are very common, these are modern or more recent works regarding the period. However one must be very careful when choosing them in order to determine bias and accuracy. Some excellent one's are Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, though this work is beginning to show some cracks in its theories due to more recent theories and discoveries, the works of James O'Donnell and April Cameron (I can't remember the name exactly, but she is an excellent source on the later empire and in particular the role of women). I must emphasis however, just how careful one must be in trusting secondary sources. GEnerally I try to only use those that have a definate academic background and are not "coffee-table books" like The Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire.

In my previous post I mentionted the fact that christianity was an effective crowd control device for the emperors. In my previous post i mentioned the fact that it bridge the ONE god in heaven and the ONE emperor on earth ideal, so i won't repeat everything.

Oh my god.

You really are quite painfully deluded. The pagan emperors preached the one god one emperor ideal. Hell look at the majority of the 2nd and 3rd century emperor's who preached the dominus et deus philosophy. For the most part Apollo was equated with the "god" of the Christians. And that essay link should be working, it worked for everyone else. Try cutting and pasting it, the whole Christian/Pagan ideology crossover is covered in it.

Now please, do some research and THEN come back at me.

[Coyote]

I'm trying to post and all I get is "General Error"... let's see if it works this time.

[Coyote]

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I was on a dial-up and had no patience.

Are you implying that there is some sort of limbo state between "holy" and "unholy"? Besides, the entirety of the Bible is written from perspectives of black and white.

It makes sense that there would be a neutral state between "holy" and "un-holy", although in this case perhaps we should differentiate that from "damned". I mean, for a Christian, a Church is "holy" but that doesn't mean that ordinary homes, offices, garages, etc are dwellings of evil. That same Christian would probably describe a Wiccan circle to be "damned" if he's a Fundie rather than a liberla new Christian...

The Bible is very black & white, another reason why it is just a collection of stories, in my opinion, and I, like you, wouldn't accept it as a valid historical treatise.

They were utterly destroyed. God sicked his Israelites on them. Also, God promised that, after the Great Flood, he wouldn't do such a thing again.

Well, if a person wants to take the pov that God is, indeed, manipulating/using the Israelites it might be that he is using their tribe as a replacement smite... but bear in mind that he tends to prefer plagues, pest infestations, and in one case raining of fire...

God did consider the Hebrews to be his 'favorites' because they accepted the restrictions and rules of the Commandments and the other 613 mitzvot.

They were the only people he gave them to, apparently.

The cause & effect I've always understood was that God felt that the Hebrews were closest to his intentions and desires and so gave them the laws.

The entire chapter stinks of master race-like propaganda. "Bla bla bla, you're my favorites. Go out and kill everyone else, because you're my favorites, bla bla bla <insert Biblical talk of "graven images" and "holy" things here>."

It is very antagonistic; but for reasons I've outlined before it seems to me to tbe more of a Nationalistic propaganda than a Racial one-- to be sure, even Jews of today don't really know or understand what constitutes a Jew as far as race goes.

I mean, a blond haired, blue-eyed kid who would be a poster child for the SS converts to be Jewish; and suddenly he is in just as much danger as the others-- 'tainted blodd' and all that garbage. It makes no real sense, either to the Jews or outside observers.

However nice the Jews were to their slaves in comparison to everyone else is irrelevant, since no one else is claiming today to be moral paragons, like the Jews.

Well, even the Jews of today are not claiming to be moral paragons (or do you mean todays Jews holding up yeseterday's Hebrew tribe as examples?). I saw the Hebrews in the OT to be treated with a sort of blunt matter-of-factness to their situation, whereas it was much later (through the Middle Ages and onward) that there was this notion that their shit didn't stink.

It seems to me that most modern Fundamentalist Christians hold this pov, a few extreme Jewish sects do but not the mainstream.

But, hundreds of millions of people do honor Moses, a mass-murderer and terrorist... They label mass-murderers as "wise" and "holy."

Moses is mostly held reverent for leading the Jews out of Egypt, rather than celebrating his killings. The killings at Mount Sinai are certainly part of some crazed "jihad" behaviour but I'd be more willing to view the drowning of the Egyptian Army (whatever it was in reality) as defensive; after all, according to the legend the Egyptians were coming to kill refugees.

Now, as to why God would "harden Pharoah's heart" time after time even after letting the Hebrews go-- thus setting up the situation-- that's another criticism that I frankly can't figure out. (It's weird, stupid deux ex machina like that throughout the Bible that leads me to believe that it was re-written and embellished a lot before the final form was codified).

... How are the people of Israel to be "superior"? The only time God mentions how their superiority is to be manifested it is in a spiritual way, to be Priests above the nations.

He deems it necessary and acceptable for them to arbitrarily invade other lands at a whim because it's the "Promised Land" or other such nonsense. In other words, Israel's needs come before everyone else's.

Yes, but again once the "kingdom of Israel" is carved out, they pretty much forgo truly aggressive border expansion and stay within the boundaries they believed they were "promised". And even back then, considering the relative sizes of known lands such as Egypt, Babylon, etc, they semed content with a pretty small kingdom.

Now, don't get the idea that I'm saying the bloodletting was a good thing, I'm just saying that this is pretty modest imperialism indeed, not the type of behavior I'd expect from someone who thought they had a racial imperative to dominate others.

Understand that when I say, "It was the way things were done back then" it is not supposed to excuse the actions of any of the barbarian tribes and empires; it simply explains them. In that, the Hebrews were basically just like anyone else and there is no paticular reason to say that they were wonderful people back then-- again, it seems to be a modern romaticization.

The rest of your post I agree with in many respects, with the exception of the master race thing which I outlined above as being more of a "nationalist" imperative. Sometimes the two can be closely linked (as in Nazi Germany) but in the case of the United States it is an impossible link.

Given the actual racial/ethnic mix of the Hebrews through history (and the 'priest' angle to the implied superiority) I'm going to have to go with the more Nationalist version of this -- it still seems to fit more closely than the Racial one, from my pov.

Again, as to why the Hebrew tribes' actions are now seen as good and proper I never tried to justify, so you'll get no disagreement from me on this.

And as to the conversion of children, if you know of an instance where the mixed-marriage children (and/or parents) were killed solely for that purpose I'd be interested in knowing about it; off the top of my head I can't recall it happening. I know that in recent history the children are given the choice to convert or not.

[Durandal]

I don't really feel like dragging this out, since it seems like we're getting closer and closer in agreement with each other. The only thing I'll address is praising Moses.

Who cares why Christians and Jews honor him? He was a fucking mass murderer and terrorist, and he freed the Israelites from Egypt by slaughtering hundreds of innocent children! The Jews actually have a holiday devoted to this event! They celebrate the deaths of innocent children. So yes, it is in the mainstream.

You don't honor mass murderers who kill children and thousands of their own people at the drop of a hat. If Moses was alive today, he'd have a bounty on his head as large as the one on Osama bin Laden's.

[Coyote]

I don't really feel like dragging this out, since it seems like we're getting closer and closer in agreement with each other.

I was thinking the same thing; I know that in the long run (from past conversations and observations) that we're mostly in agreement and this here is just picking over details.

As for Moses, it was an act of God that killed the children of Egypt, as was the plagues, etc... just as I doubt Moses himself turned the Nile into blood with his staff, it was God acting through the staff...(??)

[Durandal]

I don't really feel like dragging this out, since it seems like we're getting closer and closer in agreement with each other.

I was thinking the same thing; I know that in the long run (from past conversations and observations) that we're mostly in agreement and this here is just picking over details.

As for Moses, it was an act of God that killed the children of Egypt, as was the plagues, etc... just as I doubt Moses himself turned the Nile into blood with his staff, it was God acting through the staff...(??)

It's more plausible that Moses orchestrated a mass-slaughter of infants during the night while they were sleeping than God sending down his Angel of Death (tm) to do his dirty work for him. Unless you believe the Allah was the one who actually rammed planes into the World Trade Center.

[God Emperor]

I am a christian and during religion last week I ask the teacher, "If absolute power corupts absolutly wouldn't that make God corupt because he has absoulute power." In responce she said that coruption is a human chartaristic and can not be used to describe god, This to me is bull shit and has made me conceder renouncing my faith.

Have you covered whether or not moral precepts of mass-genocide being wrong apply to God? I remember when we covered the Great Flood back in school.

"Is it murder if God does it? No, because he created us and has the right to destroy us if we don't honor him."

no we haven't but we talked about the crusades and she said that it was not the christians that did the mass killing but the other people. that to is bull shit

[neoolong]

I am a christian and during religion last week I ask the teacher, "If absolute power corupts absolutly wouldn't that make God corupt because he has absoulute power." In responce she said that coruption is a human chartaristic and can not be used to describe god, This to me is bull shit and has made me conceder renouncing my faith.

Have you covered whether or not moral precepts of mass-genocide being wrong apply to God? I remember when we covered the Great Flood back in school.

"Is it murder if God does it? No, because he created us and has the right to destroy us if we don't honor him."

no we haven't but we talked about the crusades and she said that it was not the christians that did the mass killing but the other people. that to is bull shit

Major bull. It's the same delusion that no evil person could possibly be Christian. Ask her about Hitler and see if she says that he was an atheist or a Christian.

[Durandal]

no we haven't but we talked about the crusades and she said that it was not the christians that did the mass killing but the other people. that to is bull shit

The only prerequisite for being a Christian is believing that Jesus Christ was the son of God. The Crusaders believed as much.

[AdmiralKanos]

The only prerequisite for being a Christian is believing that Jesus Christ was the son of God. The Crusaders believed as much.

As did Hitler.

[Coyote]

[quote="DurandalIt's more plausible that Moses orchestrated a mass-slaughter of infants during the night while they were sleeping than God sending down his Angel of Death (tm) to do his dirty work for him. Unless you believe the Allah was the one who actually rammed planes into the World Trade Center.[/quote]

Heh! Good point! In the long run, it all came down to, and still comes down to, human responsibility for their own actions. Too many people will bend over backward to do anything and then say it as the will of some supernatural creature...