My last attempt (1 Viewer)

[Dago]

We go through this every off season. Literally. But not always DR starting it.

I dunno....the whole fire and brimstone thing dont jive with the stereotype of white Jesus

 

[superchuck500]

I dunno....the whole fire and brimstone thing dont jive with the stereotype of white Jesus

Isn’t nearly all of the end-times prophesy from Old Testament and pre-Jesus writings?

 

[DaveXA]

Isn’t nearly all of the end-times prophesy from Old Testament and pre-Jesus writings?

Sort of but not really. Jesus does reference end of days imagery on occasion, and the Epistles also reference eschatology. Of course, the book of Revelation is the culmination of all of that.

 

[Mamba]

DR didn’t answer my question earlier. But, that’s ok.

I just want to state that there is no consensus whatsoever among serious students of the Bible about what the book of Revelation is even about, let alone what each symbol refers to. Anyone who claims to be an “expert” in bible prophecy almost certainly isn’t. But I get the feeling most people here have already figured that out.

 

[Brennan77]

DR didn’t answer my question earlier. But, that’s ok.

I just want to state that there is no consensus whatsoever among serious students of the Bible about what the book of Revelation is even about, let alone what each symbol refers to. Anyone who claims to be an “expert” in bible prophecy almost certainly isn’t. But I get the feeling most people here have already figured that out.

That's not exactly true. The early Christian (and Catholic) point of view is that Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist in the mass. Scott Hahn does a great job explaining this in easy to digest language if you're interested.

 

[Booker]

Isn’t nearly all of the end-times prophesy from Old Testament and pre-Jesus writings?

A lot of it does come from the OT, much of it written while "god's chosen people" were trying to rationalize why they were living under the yoke of the Persians, then Greeks and later the Romans. But the authors of the books of the NT were definitely inspired and influenced by their interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures (Daniel, for example) about the coming end of the world.

In simple terms (per the book of Hebrews), the cosmic significance of the sacrifice of Jesus is that god-blood is more powerful than animal blood for the cleansing of sin, and once sin of the world has been cleansed then the world can end and the chosen/saved can ascend to heaven. So in that sense the whole point of the NT is to spread the gospel ("good news") that the end of the world is upon us. Yay?

 

[Mamba]

That's not exactly true. The early Christian (and Catholic) point of view is that Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist in the mass. Scott Hahn does a great job explaining this in easy to digest language if you're interested.

My point was simply that there is no current consensus (among actual scholars) on how to view Revelation. Is it simply a metaphorical portrait of 1st Century realities? Or some type of map that stretches out over the entire church age? Or is it just a symbolic representation of the ongoing struggle between good & evil? Or is it a prophetic foretelling of events that still await us? Or some combination of these views?

 

[SystemShock]

My point was simply that there is no current consensus (among actual scholars) on how to view Revelation. Is it simply a metaphorical portrait of 1st Century realities? Or some type of map that stretches out over the entire church age? Or is it just a symbolic representation of the ongoing struggle between good & evil? Or is it a prophetic foretelling of events that still await us? Or some combination of these views?

Crowd control.

 

[DCSaints_Fan]

Merriam Webster defines it as “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious”. Although I think that it’s peculiar that a smaller group with beliefs no one has heard of may be regarded as a cult whenever a large more historically established religion with some claims just as outlandish are accepted and respected. It’s human nature, but it is glaringly obvious to me that we’ve just become culturally sensitized to so much that we hardly question it.

I think that people taking what they read and establishing anecdotal experience as fact “ god helped me get a new car when I had no money”, “ he cured my sons cancer” etc. are spin offs that humans have themselves implemented that really make me question their sanity. Not that I’m trying to be down putting, but is it not surprising that we live in a society where it’s taboo to ask someone to explain, through reason, how their god helped them with an everyday event?

I suppose that ‘cult’ to me is a group of people who love and praise a particular object or idea of an entity and consistently make claims through which they deny reason or get offended when asked to explain their claims of what this object or entity performs through reason. And that to me explains most religions to a reasonable degree.

To me a cult is any organization that has these qualities:

1) Demands that members make unreasonable personal sacrifices. Particularly financial.

2) Leaders cannot be questioned or debated. Clear power imbalance between leadership and followers.

3) Dissuades members from associating with members outside the organization. Labels anyone who is outside the organization as evil. Members often encouraged to break family bonds (goes along with 1)

4) Members strongly discouraged from leaving (goes along with 3). Ex-members often face severe repercussions from the organization.

 

[Goatman Saint]

To me a cult is any organization that has these qualities:

1) Demands that members make unreasonable personal sacrifices. Particularly financial.

2) Leaders cannot be questioned or debated. Clear power imbalance between leadership and followers.

3) Dissuades members from associating with members outside the organization. Labels anyone who is outside the organization as evil. Members often encouraged to break family bonds (goes along with 1)

4) Members strongly discouraged from leaving (goes along with 3). Ex-members often face severe repercussions from the organization.

In other words over half the religions in the world

 

[DaveXA]

To me a cult is any organization that has these qualities:

1) Demands that members make unreasonable personal sacrifices. Particularly financial.

2) Leaders cannot be questioned or debated. Clear power imbalance between leadership and followers.

3) Dissuades members from associating with members outside the organization. Labels anyone who is outside the organization as evil. Members often encouraged to break family bonds (goes along with 1)

4) Members strongly discouraged from leaving (goes along with 3). Ex-members often face severe repercussions from the organization.

Having been a pastor/minister previously, none of those 4 describes anything I taught. I always put a high value on allowing people the room to make their own choices and decisions about what they believe. It worked well for me and the people I worshipped with appreciated that I wasn't necessarily trying to coerce them into doing anything.

One of the things I try to cognizant of is people who feel trapped in cults. It's often very difficult to get out for myriad reasons, and it's not an easy subject to broach, because it involves challenging the believer's world view as well as spiritual authority. It's a heart breaking process for who has invested so much time and energy in their faith, only to find they'd been decieved. Tough topic because I've seen the aftermath of those damaged by cults. The unfortunate reality is that most never make it out.

 

[St. Geezy]

I told myself I would not come back to this thread, but I can't help myself after reading through it all last night.

Not sure why I feel the need to qualify this once again, but for the record, after growing up in the Catholic Church and Catholic school in my youth, I now consider myself Agnostic. Some may say that that's the cop-out view, but I am among many that are of the belief that there's a chance that there is a God, but are also not going to blindly follow one just because everyone else does or because my grandparents did. It is easy for us to believe in a god blessing us, living in our current conditions in this flawed, but otherwise great country. What about the starving people in Africa? What about the babies being killed around the globe? What about the 7-year old forced to live under the I-10 bridge? Has God just decided he does not like them?

Do I believe firm believers are wrong? No. Do I believe atheists are wrong? No. I believe that neither side can definitively state anything, no matter what they convince themselves of or what their ancestors have passed-on to them.

Do I believe a man named Jesus (or something like that) once walked the Earth proclaiming to be God? Probably. Does that necessarily mean he was God? Probably not.

I'm not willing to bank my time and energy on a story from the opposite side of the globe, at a period of time when people weren't very sophisticated at all to the point where they were nailing people to crosses, to believe that someone was God in the flesh just because people from 2000+ years ago believed it. What if Jesus was a master illusionist and the biggest con in human history? What if the Virgin Mary wasn't really a virgin? What if this is a simple, middle eastern fable that just happened to get bigger and bigger as it passed from generation to generation? What if "the Resurrection" was hoax, perpetrated by his closest followers? What if he truly was never dead in the first place? I'm not saying that's what I firmly believe, but those are questions I have as a man, and based on the laws of physics/science that I know, at least one of the handful of questions I just posed are more likely to be accurate than not.

To me, there's probably a better chance than not that humans are not as special as we believe we are. The moment we find life elsewhere in space is the moment we realize we're not and that this entire universe isn't all about us or for us (I believe this event will happen either in our lifetime or in my children's lifetime). There's more scientific evidence than not that we aren't special. Knowing what we know now, which was not known 2000+ years ago - that we're one of several hundred billion planets, located in one galaxy among a couple of trillion galaxies throughout the known universe, most of which with billions of planets of their own - it is incredibly statistically improbable that we're alone...and if we aren't alone, then what?

In regards to the church specifically - there's so many of them. Who is to say one church is wrong and the other is right? Obviously they all cannot be right. Am I supposed to believe Christianity is right just because I live in America and because that's what my grandparents and great grandparents believed in? To me, people believe in what they believe in because they psychologically NEED it. The scariest thing for the human race to learn is that they aren't special or that this world isn't all about them. It's a bit of an egotistical, downright arrogant flaw of ours. We inherently need to feel important.

To me, there's a better chance than not that church is something that was created thousands of years ago for a host of different reasons, chief among them -

• A way to control the masses via a threat of harm from a higher power, a threat that cannot be proven right now, but conveniently, in the "afterlife"
• To help us cope with loved ones that pass away, giving us peace of mind that "they're now in a better place"
• To help us cope with the thought of our own death, giving us peace of mind that heaven awaits us so we can live forever
• Money (more so an issue with modern-day churches)
• To give us peace of mind that someone is watching over us and our loved ones at all times
• Social time, gives people something to do with others, especially older people who may not get much social interaction outside of their Sunday church services
• To give us someone to blame ("the Devil") when we make bad decisions in our life
• To give us peace of mind that we're not alone in this grand universe, which at the time churches and religions were started, no one truly understood the vastness of our universe. Heck, back then, many people thought that are our planet was essentially the entire world.
• And lastly, to give ourselves a sense of purpose. "Since we're smart, have intelligent brains, are self-aware, and all the animals around us aren't, this entire thing has to be all about us, right?"

I would ask someone to prove to me that anything I stated above is not true, but I know that that's not possible. Just like if I were a firm believer and my entire post was a church sermon quoting bible verses, and someone asked me to prove what I said was true, I would not be able to.

That's why I conclude, as I stated yesterday, to each his own. Believe in what you believe in, but please don't tell me or others that we are damned to burn in hell for eternity or that their "head will be cut off" just because we don't believe in the same thing you believe in.

 

[Consigliere]

If one believes the accounts of the Bible and what the Christian god did, then I want no part of it/him even if they are the ultimate truth. There is a moral case to be made that god is more immoral than the devil he created. Slaughtering children, ordering archaic laws and bloodthirsty tribal conflicts..yeah, if he’s real, he’s a terrible, terrible entity not worth our time or all the accounts of his actions are completely fabricated in which case he has some explaining to do for not making his nature clear to the people he created.

Christopher Hitchens, is that you? Welcome back!

 

[mjcouvi]

I am among many that are of the belief that there's a chance that there is a God

Your post was long and thoughtful, but just going to focus on the above for a moment.

There is a God, or Gods. I feel that's not a matter of question, but rather a fact produced by our language and culture. God exists. For me, it's not a question of whether or not a/some God/s exist/s, it's a question of HOW God/s exist/s. What is the form of God? Where is God? What is God? Is God a physical being that we may be able to see/touch/hear or something more abstract?

I don't think the Christian God exists as far as it is something outside of conscience, something outside of mind, or imagination, or concept.

God may be a physical being, though I don't think so. Or, God may be just your idea of God, even if you just interpret God through listening to what some might think is BS about God.

So, I take the metaphorical view of God -- that God is an image in one's own mind, potentially a source of goodness or hate, or anything in between, depending on interpretation and perspective.

Although it's worn out, I like the Santa Claus analogy. I believe in Santa like I believe in God -- both are ideas that are meant to convey something to those who hold the ideas. Does Santa exist? Well, yeah, sure he does, in our minds. A concept can exist within our imagination as well as it does in our physical world.

God, pretty much, is just what we make it, and I believe God exists even in the minds of those who say there is no God.

That's my "God" convolution anyhow.

 

[mjcouvi]

By this logic, there is a Santa Clause.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.