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RELIGION Thread

Started by theONE, October 25, 2016, 03:51:49 AM



pate

I'd walk a mile for a CAMEL-back...

SredniVashtar

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 03, 2016, 01:51:17 PM
"That's all", again, as after "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", as though you would sum up the topic on which men have scribbled away furiously since history began?  You will never make a poet, dear.  I think that just because you can not write a poem with feet that don't fright on subjects numinous, the corpus voluminous suggests that you might just be trite.

I'm surprised you didn't throw in spiritual not religious in that cliché-ridden fashionable pose.  Thou appear'st as Aesop's crow, bedecked with others' feathers!  When you guys whip all that stuff up into something coherent I can pop into when I need a quick fix, lemme know and I'll give it a whirl.  Maybe let it age a bit first, like a millennium or two, just to get the bugs out, and develop a nice patina.  In the meantime, I'll go back to singing about the little town of Bethlehem with a sweet, sweet smile.

Yep, once you jump off that horse and acknowledge the numinous (like the rest of your absurd modern semantics, it's just a way of saying that spooky God-feeling), you have to find a way to cut people like me out of the rest of Christianity for convenience -- we're too reasonable to fit your image, too uncomfortably like you in the way we approach the transcendent, and you'd rather keep harrying the stupid for sport.  It's an intellectually dishonest distinction that would bisect parishes, pews and cloisters, now and back through time.  All because we are intellectually curious and agile enough to interpret multiple meanings and figurative language that wouldn't baffle a fourth-grader and know about big-T and little-t.  Can you really be from the same race that produced those wonderful Elizabethan sonnets that manage to say two things, one gracious and classical and lovely and one very lewd, at the same time, in an acrostic?

I might not make a poet, but you are a poetaster to the life. Just because you think you can rhyme 'moon' and 'June' you think that makes you better than the rest of us. Pshaw! Not to say 'forsooth'. You might see it as cliche-ridden, but we aren't likely to come to blows with each other about the meaning of spirituality, unlike your mob who will commit any sort of atrocity over some pettifogging issue like infant baptism or the transubstantiation. I can well imagine you singing about Bethlehem, in your thin, effeminate falsetto, and trying to molest a few farm animals in the manger scene.

I don't think you are one to accuse us of incoherence since you wrote the bloody book on it! The only reason people pay it any attention is because it was written so long ago. If it had originated recently their followers would have been scorned for the irrelevant, malodorous, shiftless, sandal-wearing blisters they so obviously were.

This culinary approach to faith simply won't do, for it reduces all of your ludicrous positions to airy nothing. Nail your trousers to the mast for once, and stop climbing down.



K_Dubb

Quote from: SredniVashtar on November 04, 2016, 11:34:56 AM
I might not make a poet, but you are a poetaster to the life. Just because you think you can rhyme 'moon' and 'June' you think that makes you better than the rest of us. Pshaw! Not to say 'forsooth'. You might see it as cliche-ridden, but we aren't likely to come to blows with each other about the meaning of spirituality, unlike your mob who will commit any sort of atrocity over some pettifogging issue like infant baptism or the transubstantiation. I can well imagine you singing about Bethlehem, in your thin, effeminate falsetto, and trying to molest a few farm animals in the manger scene.

I don't think you are one to accuse us of incoherence since you wrote the bloody book on it! The only reason people pay it any attention is because it was written so long ago. If it had originated recently their followers would have been scorned for the irrelevant, malodorous, shiftless, sandal-wearing blisters they so obviously were.

This culinary approach to faith simply won't do, for it reduces all of your ludicrous positions to airy nothing. Nail your trousers to the mast for once, and stop climbing down.

Your rhetoric is characterized more by the shouted hyperbole of the revolutionary than the considered tone of a scholar.  You are a perfect caricature of every Dawkins fanboy who ever forwarded me a vid for the pleasure of imagining me squirm.  I fancy I could churn out these things like madlibs.  Perhaps once you tire I will give it a shot just for fun.

People pay attention to it because its mark on western culture is indelible.  Plenty of contemporary texts lie splayed out on their archival backing like dead insects, picked over by a few rarefied academics, while the ideas in the Bible have inexplicably survived centuries of abuse and exploitation.  Your sullen, earth-bound perspective sees only the latter and does not bother to ask why they are powerful, let alone experience it.  You mock the dirty peasants while ignoring that what they said miraculously transformed their world.  That is the opposite of intellectual.

It is like the twentieth century's rebellion against tonality, counterpoint, sonata form, and everything else composers have come up with to make music euphonious.  What a thrill it must have been to hear those first forays into naughtiness, to throw off those horrible constraints!  I like some of it, too, just like I watch your Hitchens because he was funny and clever, unlike most of his acolytes.  But, we all know where that ended up -- tone clusters, shrieking dissonances, empty novelty, ugly noise for its own sake.  Nobody listens any more except a few hair-shirted ancient virgins peering about to make sure their penance is sufficiently public.  Modern atheism is in this phase -- it only knows how to rebel, not how to inspire.

As far as airy, that's why we call it that, silly.  Look it up.





Jackstar

What is this symbol?



Asking for a friend.

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 03, 2016, 01:51:17 PM

...that would bisect parishes, pews and cloisters

I don't give a tinker's dam for parishes and pews, but since I've lived long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series, bisecting a cloister is now at the top of my bucket list.

theONE

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 04, 2016, 01:05:35 PM
Your rhetoric is characterized more by the shouted hyperbole of the revolutionary than the considered tone of a scholar.  You are a perfect caricature of every Dawkins fanboy who ever forwarded me a vid for the pleasure of imagining me squirm.  I fancy I could churn out these things like madlibs.  Perhaps once you tire I will give it a shot just for fun.

People pay attention to it because its mark on western culture is indelible.  Plenty of contemporary texts lie splayed out on their archival backing like dead insects, picked over by a few rarefied academics, while the ideas in the Bible have inexplicably survived centuries of abuse and exploitation.  Your sullen, earth-bound perspective sees only the latter and does not bother to ask why they are powerful, let alone experience it.  You mock the dirty peasants while ignoring that what they said miraculously transformed their world.  That is the opposite of intellectual.

It is like the twentieth century's rebellion against tonality, counterpoint, sonata form, and everything else composers have come up with to make music euphonious.  What a thrill it must have been to hear those first forays into naughtiness, to throw off those horrible constraints!  I like some of it, too, just like I watch your Hitchens because he was funny and clever, unlike most of his acolytes.  But, we all know where that ended up -- tone clusters, shrieking dissonances, empty novelty, ugly noise for its own sake.  Nobody listens any more except a few hair-shirted ancient virgins peering about to make sure their penance is sufficiently public.  Modern atheism is in this phase -- it only knows how to rebel, not how to inspire.

As far as airy, that's why we call it that, silly.  Look it up.
Very nice composition of words and mental images, and the last quote is just perfect, but I'm not sure SV is sophisticated enough to get it :)

theONE

Quote from: Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost on November 04, 2016, 11:57:44 PM
I don't give a tinker's dam for parishes and pews, but since I've lived long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series, bisecting a cloister is now at the top of my bucket list.

LMAO

theONE

Like to share with you this 3 teachings based on Biblical principles, buy this will have very helpful informations also for non belivers.
If you will have patience to listen to all 3 lessons you will gain quite unique and liberating understanding why sometimes troubles
won't go away.
Very valuable helpful interpretation in my opinion {not pushy -very logical and as I said you don't have to be Christian
or to know the Bible} in order to grasp the meaning of it, be brave give a listen, it might change your life ...for the better...
it might help you to deal with your troubles,bring peaceful feeling :)

[again as I suggested before best if you can listen to it away from the computer, so you can concentrate on it
and will not be distracted by surfing the web while listening
]


"When Troubles Won't Go Away", Part 1
https://www.insight.org/broadcasts/player/?bid=2838

This is the home page of that podcast in case you like to check it out: https://www.insight.org/

onan

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 04, 2016, 01:05:35 PM
I fancy I could churn out these things like madlibs.  Perhaps once you tire I will give it a shot just for fun.

Yes, I suppose you could. Needing only smatterings of history and partially thought out whimsical fantasy, you do have an advantage.

That's the problem with pseudo philosophers, believing blatherings are inherent truth. You guys are good with the concept of ontology yet you never get anywhere.



Quote from: K_Dubb on November 04, 2016, 01:05:35 PM
Modern atheism is in this phase -- it only knows how to rebel, not how to inspire.

As far as airy, that's why we call it that, silly.  Look it up.

Of course we rebel, you guys are ahead by more than 2 millennia of bullshit, circumventing you will take maximum effort.


K_Dubb

Quote from: onan on November 05, 2016, 06:21:24 AM
That's the problem with pseudo philosophers, believing blatherings are inherent truth. You guys are good with the concept of ontology yet you never get anywhere.

That's because there's nowhere to get.  But that's never stopped us before.

SredniVashtar

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 04, 2016, 01:05:35 PM
Your rhetoric is characterized more by the shouted hyperbole of the revolutionary than the considered tone of a scholar.  You are a perfect caricature of every Dawkins fanboy who ever forwarded me a vid for the pleasure of imagining me squirm.  I fancy I could churn out these things like madlibs.  Perhaps once you tire I will give it a shot just for fun.

People pay attention to it because its mark on western culture is indelible.  Plenty of contemporary texts lie splayed out on their archival backing like dead insects, picked over by a few rarefied academics, while the ideas in the Bible have inexplicably survived centuries of abuse and exploitation.  Your sullen, earth-bound perspective sees only the latter and does not bother to ask why they are powerful, let alone experience it.  You mock the dirty peasants while ignoring that what they said miraculously transformed their world.  That is the opposite of intellectual.

It is like the twentieth century's rebellion against tonality, counterpoint, sonata form, and everything else composers have come up with to make music euphonious.  What a thrill it must have been to hear those first forays into naughtiness, to throw off those horrible constraints!  I like some of it, too, just like I watch your Hitchens because he was funny and clever, unlike most of his acolytes.  But, we all know where that ended up -- tone clusters, shrieking dissonances, empty novelty, ugly noise for its own sake.  Nobody listens any more except a few hair-shirted ancient virgins peering about to make sure their penance is sufficiently public.  Modern atheism is in this phase -- it only knows how to rebel, not how to inspire.

As far as airy, that's why we call it that, silly.  Look it up.

I'd rather not hear about what sort of videos make you squirm; no doubt supplied by your little 'circle' under plain cover. I only hope you keep the curtains closed while it's going on and give those gerbils a thorough rinse afterwards.

Ah yes, those precious 'ideas'. Genocide, for example (the Midianites)? All those ridiculous rules about menstruation and shellfish? It's a good job we didn't decide to turn the other cheek in the 1940s or we would have been overrun by the Nazis. Where is the sense in taking no thought for the morrow? How about the Decalogue, which puts women on the same level as beasts of burden? No, best not to mention those; much better to strain out those bits and leave the residue. But then, once you do that, there is very little of 'religion' left, except some incense and a few nice buildings.

You talk about religion as though it were all Chartres Cathedral and Fra Angelico, but there's at least as much bad as good. I don't suppose the people who were slaughtered during the Thirty Years War were all that taken by the 'miraculous' transformation you fatuously refer to. I don't imagine that the people tortured and burned alive for daring to read the Bible in the vernacular were all that edified either.

If you want to be dourly diatonic all your life then that's your prerogative, but you are missing out. You probably think John Adams is edgy. All you are displaying is a sort of ingrown conservatism that blanches at the thought of any kind of idea that happens to be new and challenging. It's parochialism, pure and simple. You sound like you'd fit in very well in Anschluss Austria, condemning all that 'Entartete Musik'. If  you don't move forward, aesthetically, you move backwards. You might be happy to smugly sit there on your pampered posterior, listening to Palestrina, but that doesn't means the rest of us have to.

Here Religion thread.  Three years of Shattering Myths archives hosted by Yada Yah.    Discuss.

http://www.blessyahowah.com/sm/sm.html


I'm outta here.

theONE

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on November 05, 2016, 09:41:17 AM
Here Religion thread.  Three years of Shattering Myths archives hosted by Yada Yah.    Discuss.

http://www.blessyahowah.com/sm/sm.html


I'm outta here.

what this link is all about??
/at least I'm not clicking on links with no idea what that is ,maybe malware nest or porn site/

K_Dubb

Quote from: theONE on November 05, 2016, 10:03:21 PM
what this link is all about??
/at least I'm not clicking on links with no idea what that is ,maybe malware nest or porn site/

Looks good.  Two hours of considering the ant in Proverbs 6.  I'm in.

K_Dubb

Quote from: SredniVashtar on November 05, 2016, 08:57:13 AM
I'd rather not hear about what sort of videos make you squirm; no doubt supplied by your little 'circle' under plain cover. I only hope you keep the curtains closed while it's going on and give those gerbils a thorough rinse afterwards.

Ah yes, those precious 'ideas'. Genocide, for example (the Midianites)? All those ridiculous rules about menstruation and shellfish? It's a good job we didn't decide to turn the other cheek in the 1940s or we would have been overrun by the Nazis. Where is the sense in taking no thought for the morrow? How about the Decalogue, which puts women on the same level as beasts of burden? No, best not to mention those; much better to strain out those bits and leave the residue. But then, once you do that, there is very little of 'religion' left, except some incense and a few nice buildings.

You talk about religion as though it were all Chartres Cathedral and Fra Angelico, but there's at least as much bad as good. I don't suppose the people who were slaughtered during the Thirty Years War were all that taken by the 'miraculous' transformation you fatuously refer to. I don't imagine that the people tortured and burned alive for daring to read the Bible in the vernacular were all that edified either.

If you want to be dourly diatonic all your life then that's your prerogative, but you are missing out. You probably think John Adams is edgy. All you are displaying is a sort of ingrown conservatism that blanches at the thought of any kind of idea that happens to be new and challenging. It's parochialism, pure and simple. You sound like you'd fit in very well in Anschluss Austria, condemning all that 'Entartete Musik'. If  you don't move forward, aesthetically, you move backwards. You might be happy to smugly sit there on your pampered posterior, listening to Palestrina, but that doesn't means the rest of us have to.


Hahaha I wondered how long it would take before one of us resorted to reductio ad hitlerum.  You did it gracefully, dear, without the slightest hint of irony, and I salute you.  I'll leave you to guess exactly how -- I'm pretty sure you can come up with something horrid.

You are absolutely right that I strain and sift.  Christianity is an immense, sprawling body of thought that has given us conquerors and pacifists, chaste ascetics and Rasputin's orgies.  Discretion is a prerequisite.  I'm glad you can enjoy its many beauties with due regard for its terrors the same way I do.  The difference comes down to that toothless old saw about Wagner you dragged out, to which the obvious reply is "of course you don't have to be pagan, but it sure helps."  It's about the only way you'd get me to sit through that again.

Do not imagine I shrink from the new or challenging; I watch you guys with your simulation theory where God is a programmer and you debate whether He is inept or cruel, quantum souls that live forever, and the multiverse where heaven is in our grasp, just on the other side.  But at this rate it will take a few hundred years for the ideas, then generations of artists to hymn them and distill to the kind of pithiness that can be on the lips of everyman.

Aesthetically, atheism to me looks like a sharp cliff with nothing but seething, puritanical anger at the bottom.  It's like joining up when they're still smashing windows.  I've never met a single one who tried to seduce with light and charm -- it's all insults and calling me stupid, at which even my feeble intellect rebels -- or seen any convocation that can get beyond congratulating each other for being there and glowering menacingly out the windows.  At least start singing about love and brotherhood and joy personified like Beethoven, or giving the people cold clear water instead of exotic, intoxicating drinks like Sibelius!  No thank you, give me the comfortable freedom and decadence of a dying culture with all the fight knocked out of it.

There's nothing fatuous in observing that the ideas of a few illiterate peasants, predisposed by their culture to arcane propitiatory rituals and xenophobia, suddenly swept all that away.  If anything in deserves to be called miraculous, that's it. St. Paul says God did it that way because He thought it'd be ironic.  You don't have to do anything you don't want to, dear, but it is in the spirit of true Christian charity that I suggest you guys start praying for a similar one.

Speaking of which, brave men of Britain,

I hope God smiles at our fun
(Though sure He mourns your loss):
The irony that Bloodaxe's son
Should chase you with a cross!

theONE

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 05, 2016, 10:08:42 PM
Looks good.  Two hours of considering the ant in Proverbs 6.  I'm in.

Thanks K_D

I just like when people put a bit of effort and type brief description what the link is all about

SredniVashtar

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 05, 2016, 10:23:44 PM

Hahaha I wondered how long it would take before one of us resorted to reductio ad hitlerum.  You did it gracefully, dear, without the slightest hint of irony, and I salute you.  I'll leave you to guess exactly how -- I'm pretty sure you can come up with something horrid.

You are absolutely right that I strain and sift.  Christianity is an immense, sprawling body of thought that has given us conquerors and pacifists, chaste ascetics and Rasputin's orgies.  Discretion is a prerequisite.  I'm glad you can enjoy its many beauties with due regard for its terrors the same way I do.  The difference comes down to that toothless old saw about Wagner you dragged out, to which the obvious reply is "of course you don't have to be pagan, but it sure helps."  It's about the only way you'd get me to sit through that again.

Do not imagine I shrink from the new or challenging; I watch you guys with your simulation theory where God is a programmer and you debate whether He is inept or cruel, quantum souls that live forever, and the multiverse where heaven is in our grasp, just on the other side.  But at this rate it will take a few hundred years for the ideas, then generations of artists to hymn them and distill to the kind of pithiness that can be on the lips of everyman.

Aesthetically, atheism to me looks like a sharp cliff with nothing but seething, puritanical anger at the bottom.  It's like joining up when they're still smashing windows.  I've never met a single one who tried to seduce with light and charm -- it's all insults and calling me stupid, at which even my feeble intellect rebels -- or seen any convocation that can get beyond congratulating each other for being there and glowering menacingly out the windows.  At least start singing about love and brotherhood and joy personified like Beethoven, or giving the people cold clear water instead of exotic, intoxicating drinks like Sibelius!  No thank you, give me the comfortable freedom and decadence of a dying culture with all the fight knocked out of it.

There's nothing fatuous in observing that the ideas of a few illiterate peasants, predisposed by their culture to arcane propitiatory rituals and xenophobia, suddenly swept all that away.  If anything in deserves to be called miraculous, that's it. St. Paul says God did it that way because He thought it'd be ironic.  You don't have to do anything you don't want to, dear, but it is in the spirit of true Christian charity that I suggest you guys start praying for a similar one.

Speaking of which, brave men of Britain,

I hope God smiles at our fun
(Though sure He mourns your loss):
The irony that Bloodaxe's son
Should chase you with a cross!

Even Jessica Christ herself said she wasn't going to bring peace but a sword, so I don't know where this idea of Christianity as being all hearts and flowers comes from. Polytheism was much more stable as a body of ideas than Christianity, which has led to countless bloody quarrels over the centuries. If you are going to believe in nonsense, I'd far rather you decided that they were all equally true/false and left it at that. The early Christians invited their persecution by the Romans, when all they had to do was burn a bit of incense in a temple and go about their business. The trouble with monotheism is that it wants to be the only onion in the stew and it has to be true to have any validity. If it were just a case of quasi-believing in a few myths I wouldn't care very much; it's the insistence that they are correct that leads to problems and divisions. The only reason Christianity caught on was because it had to import elements of polytheism to appeal to the barbarian conquerors of Rome, hence all your saints and all the rest of that bloody nonsense. It was calculated policy rather than anything innately convincing, otherwise it would have gone the way of Osiris and Marduk long ago.

Atheism isn't joyless, it just takes the view that happiness is to be found in this world rather than an imagined next. Religious people have trouble with that idea and get very defensive, in the way that Epicureanism was traduced by the Catholic church for being all about self-indulgence when it was anything but. Abstract ideas are hard for human beings to grasp intuitively so they resort to personifying everything to make it explicable. We'll pass through all this eventually, hopefully, but it will take a long time. There are far more stirring and absorbing mysteries to contemplate without having to reduce it all to the level of a simple-minded five-year-old. My biggest gripe about theism is that it's so boring, both intellectually and aesthetically. Who's to say that artists liberated from the need to circumscribe their minds within religious orthodoxies could not have come up with something far more sublime and challenging?

Lilith

Having been raised Catholic, and being myself a skeptic of many years, I am thoroughly enjoying K_dubbs and Shredmes discussion.

K_Dubb

Quote from: brig on November 06, 2016, 08:48:15 AM
Having been raised Catholic, and being myself a skeptic of many years, I am thoroughly enjoying K_dubbs and Shredmes discussion.

Thank you dear, me too!  My faith schools me to throw myself at the nearest lion in pursuit of martyrdom but Shreddy has decently refused to oblige me.

theONE

Quote from: brig on November 06, 2016, 08:48:15 AM
Having been raised Catholic, and being myself a skeptic of many years, I am thoroughly enjoying K_dubbs and Shredmes discussion shredding Shredmes to shreds.

FIFY

K_Dubb

Quote from: theONE on November 06, 2016, 10:43:12 AM
FIFY

Don't be silly.  Your job was to attack me for not being a real Christian because I talk about symbols and metaphors, so that I might be devoured by both a lion and a leopard -- all for the glory of God, of course.


Quote from: SredniVashtar on November 06, 2016, 08:40:17 AM
Even Jessica Christ herself said she wasn't going to bring peace but a sword, so I don't know where this idea of Christianity as being all hearts and flowers comes from.

Jessica, huh? Are you simply blissfully ignorant or is that your attempt at being provocatively snarky? Not sure which, but neither do I care. You should read up a bit. You`re certainly entitled to your beliefs and that`s a great thing, indeed. However, there are some items that are considered fact by the majority of religious scholars. you may be somewhat surprised to learn them. First and foremost, Jesus existed and it`s very well documented:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.
2. He was buried.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.
4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof).
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.
9. The Church was born and grew.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).
12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic).

theONE

Quote from: K_Dubb on November 06, 2016, 10:35:15 AM
Thank you dear, me too!  My faith schools me to throw myself at the nearest lion in pursuit of martyrdom but Shreddy has decently refused to oblige me.

Because Shreddy is a tootles lion, but more precisely as you all know Sredni Vashtar is just some obscure polecat-ferret locked in a hutch,
totally unimportant creature when it comes to real debates on human issues, just some polecat-ferret that's all.

*"Sredni Vashtar" is a short story written by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) between 1900 and 1911 and initially published in his book The Chronicles of Clovis.
It has been adapted for opera, film, radio and television.
The story concerns an unhealthy ten-year-old boy named Conradin, who lives with his strict cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp.
Conradin rebels against her and invents a new religion for himself, which centres on idolising a polecat-ferret he calls Sredni Vashtar;
he imagines Sredni Vashtar to be a vengeful, merciless god.

Conradin keeps the ferret hidden in a cage in the garden shed, and worships the idol in secret.
The story comes to a climax when his cousin sets out to discover his god.

Rebelling against her oppressive care, Conradin secretly cares for two animals in his unused garden shed - a Houdan hen, whom he adores,
and a polecat-ferret, whom he fears and keeps locked in a hutch. Gradually, Conradin begins to venerate the ferret as a god,
naming it Sredni Vashtar as a result of his imagination.
He worships the ferret weekly ("every Thursday"), bringing it red flowers and scarlet berries, and stolen nutmeg
for special occasions, such as Mrs. De Ropp having a toothache."*


[attachment deleted by admin]

Jackstar

Quote from: theONE on November 06, 2016, 03:02:09 PM
The story concerns an unhealthy ten-year-old boy

Jesus! Spoilers!

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