Study Says Videogames "Problematize" Religion as Violent
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This is exactly my point, we've all made our choice and if the Hindu God(s) appeared and proved there existence to me, yes I'd probably still not follow them. And if I openly reject them, then yeah I can't see an eternal existence between me and them happening. I would know this and willingly take the consequences of my choice.Treblaine said:
It's not nice, but on the other hand, the alternative is the Hindu God(s) actually changing my mind so that I follow them and in all honest I would hate that so much more. If I die forever than at least my life had meaning and I was allowed to have an impact on the own course of my future. I understand that I've been given the offer and in various religions, that that offer was unconditional and in-spite of the way i've acted in my life towards them and other people and I understand that I have consciously rejected that offer and chosen the other path and I'm happy with that choice.
I'm not happy that other people have made that choice and in all honesty, I pray pretty frequently that God will have done something brilliant that allows people to have free will and eternal life. It's not completely out of the question, because he did it once before in the crossing from Judea focus to world focus and there's a parable in the bible, about how if you've worked for your reward and when the time comes other people have got it, well don't be jealous, you haven't been paid any less.
Obviously it was meant for the Jewish people accepting that Roman's and Greek were going to be allowed to share God with them, but it could still happen.
And as I've said, there are equal cases in the bible for non-existence, or short existence then destruction and I do hope that if my prayer can't be answered then one of those turns out to be correct, but in the end, I've got to trust in God that it's going to turn out all right.
As I've said I've made that choice and I've got some Muslim friends I know who've made the same choice but the other way and I respect them from being comfortable with it.But if you don't mind me saying, I don't think you seem very comfortable with your choice yet, or at least it doesn't come across that way
I'll be frank for you anyone who believes that God commanded gays to be lynched is not a christian and needs to be saved. Urgently. There are so so many things you can show them that tell them what they're doing is absolutely wrong and hateful and if they don't listen to that, then they aren't listening to anything. God instructed, strictly, that the correct response for someone punching you in the face is to pray that they have a good healthy life and let them punch you again. That the correct answer to someone stealing your coat is to hope that it'll keep them warm and maybe seeking them out and helping them with the heating bill if they're having trouble with it.
An adulterer was brought before Jesus and they asked him to stone her. He just replied that not one person there had the right to judge anyone else, because their hearts were just as full with sin.
When people came to arrest Jesus he actually healed them.
When Jesus was on the cross, one of his last words were that God would _forgive_ the people who were actively murdering his son.
Far from killing sinners, Jesus spent most of his time with those who sinned and society looked upon and rejected for what they did. He ate with prostitutes and extortioners and loved them, deliberately avoiding the company of the 'religious' righteous people who said that these people were sinners and should be avoided.
If people can read this and still be so bloody-minded and xenophobic that they refuse to believe the words and instead preach the fear and hate in their heart, then these people need our pity and compassion because they have gone so far down the wrong path and their heart and soul is so shrivelled and burdened by the weight of their sin.
As for creationists, well I'm cool with them and respect their faith, they've just got to understand that they can't decide this for others and they've got to let the world work as it should. But in the end, even the Pope doesn't think Genesis says what they say it says.
My church at home is full of a lot of really awesome people. I've been lucky enough to live in an area where we just don't see the extremists and fake christians and there are tons and tons of teachers and doctors and nurses and people like that and I'll be honest, that was part of the reason I started going to church before I was a christian, among them are some of the nicest people I've ever had privileged of knowing but some of them are creationists and it hasn't affected the good stuff they do with their lives. They wouldn't make good geologists or physicists, but that isn't their calling in life and they aren't demanding that the world changes to suit their thinking. Apart from a certain area of a certain country it's mainly a self correcting problem. Non of the christian physicists/chemists/scientists in general I know are creationists and I don't think they would be what they are if they were. At least even in that certain area the law has seen to it that the affects on other people are limited
What a shock. News story about "religion" and "games", and it goes to 11 pages.
Gee, I wonder why? Could it be the tired ol' "Atheist Pride vs Theist Pride" again?
Keep up the good work Internet.
Gee, I wonder why? Could it be the tired ol' "Atheist Pride vs Theist Pride" again?
Keep up the good work Internet.
What a load of nonsense. This UTTERLY flies in the face of the facts and reason.BrotherRool said:
You expect me to convert to Christianity if I see proof of the God-of-the-Christian-Bible yet you remain bloody minded that you have "made your choice" that even if you see the supernatural proof that Hinduism is the one true religion you sill still reject it.
Hypocrisy. Pure hypocrisy.
You are victim of deluded thinking, you think God is real just because you believe in him regardless of everything about the actual observable world.
Everywhere you assume god did this. Rather than Christianity is simply the evangelisation of Judaism orchestrated by priest who wanted a wider and ever expanding flock to hear and blindly accept their ideology.
"God instructed, strictly, that the correct response for someone punching you in the face is to pray that they have a good healthy life and let them punch you again. That the correct answer to someone stealing your coat is to hope that it'll keep them warm and maybe seeking them out and helping them with the heating bill if they're having trouble with it."
Irrelevant nonsense as is borne out in fact. The punishment for theft in Christian countries is to be locked in a cold cell, the punishment for violence is reaction and punishment.
The practice of Christians IS "Jesus Forgives, I don't". They have transplanted forgiveness to be something that is only possible in the after life and that forgiveness is not for in this world
"An adulterer was brought before Jesus and they asked him to stone her. He just replied that not one person there had the right to judge anyone else, because their hearts were just as full with sin."
He doesn't say that adultery isn't a crime against society, he simply says we are too meek to punish for it. What if a murderer or child rapist was brought before Jesus? would he say they cannot be punished and they should be let go because "we are just as guilty"?
This pacifism is useless and inaccurate. Christianity didn't get where it is today from pacifism. When it was struck by opposing religions it's didn't turn the other cheek, it started the crusades!
And why is it atheist organisation who are the loudest opponents of Westbro Baptist Church? And of course they all fit in perfectly with your ideal that all humans should be meek pacifists, Westbo Baptist Church is causing offence by claiming GOD is responsible for all these horrible things and we DESERVE all this as gods wrath. Why should we accept this? God or not he is acting like a psychopath, he doesn't deserve to be prayed to, we should be plotting how to destroy him, to stop this being dealing death and destruction.
Not entirely true. It mostly held true to their pacifism during their early days, but once the Roman emperors adopted it, suddenly it was no longer a peaceful underground religion and now a powerful force they felt was obligated to share with everyone, willing or not.Treblaine said:
On a side note, the whole "divine right of kings" started when a devout Eastern Roman empress got booted out of a chapel on account of being a woman, and when she kicked up a fuss about it, this gradually got her equated with the Virgin Mary, and if she was producing the heirs of the "holy" Romans, than they have a divine right to their rule. Other kingdoms played "follow the leader" and adopted this mentality to assert their rule. Byzantium was still stuck in this mentality by the time most of Europe thought it was a stupid idea; that's part of why nobody helped the Byzantines against the Turks - they thought the Emperor was a pompous ass.
In the end, it's less that the original religion was corrupt so much as the Romans twisting things around.
Some time ago one of those Christian zealot organizations.. ya know.. the kind that don't wanna be portrayed as violent while they espouse violence against gays, Muslims, abortion clinics, etc, made a play to have games with religious themes to be rated for "Satanic content" specifically citing games like SMT:Nocturne and Shadow Hearts where you kill a "god" entity as the final boss.RaikuFA said:
Though, it was interesting to learn that some Christian groups think their god is the same as the one in Shadow Hearts.. a gigantic space insect monster. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is way off.
I see these religions for what they are, the way they ACTUALLY act, not they way you say they are supposed to act.Kimarous said:
And don't act like it's a good idea to get "back to basics" with the bible with the whole duality of either stoning adulterers and homosexuals... or the other extreme of saying we can't punish any guilty people.
This "turn the other cheek" pacifism is only going to lead to believers getting robbed and murdered but maybe they'd be fine with that as they hold the delusion of Heaven so will have little qualms with throwing away their precious lives and the lives of their family and letting barbarians prevail.
In super Mario Brother's 3 there's one of the desert levels where you must use a turtle shell to destroy blocks to enter a pyramid. Now, clearly the desert setting is representative of the middle east where Islam is the dominant religion and the blocks represent Western influence as well as the state of Isreal and the WTC towers, preventing Mario, who is an allegory for the Islamic followers, from entering into the pyramid, which represents the holy land. In the face of this western and Zionist oppression, Mario must use force in order to move forward to his goals. The turtle shell represents the planes from 9/11 and how Mario must use this planes to simultaneously break down the walls of his oppressors and the WTC towers.Abandon4093 said:
The hijackers obviously played SMB3 and figured out all this deep symbolism and that inspired the 9/11 attack. And there you have it, Mario caused 9/11.
I'm guessing it's the heretical Geth who worshiped the Reapers as heretics. Seeing as they wanted to cleanse the universe for their 'gods' (another example where the god or gods in quesion were tangible), I can understand the comparison.soren7550 said:
Wait ... so ... what's the problem then? Yeah, religion is violent and creates problems, so what else is new?
I just love the highly biased non-thinking in this thread. Some of you anti-religious types are just as willfully ignorant and irrational as you bemoan any religion or religious person of being. You have become sucked into the very distorted portrayal of religion to which the article is referring.
The problem never has been religion itself; the problem has always been people. Most religions, if you consider its most basic fundamental message from its original writings, not the screaming of Preacher Man, Sister Mary-Rosen Clapsalot, or some nut-job, anti-religious atheist with a bug up his ass, you will likely find the doctrines teach something much more enlightened, peaceful, harmonizing, and edifying to one's spiritual growth and society in general. The atrocities happen because people twist things, even religion, to suit their own biases, prejudices, rationalizations, or psychoses.
People misuse religion to further their own means. People misuse religion as an excuse to evade having to try in life. People misuse religion to make themselves feel better about themselves and not have to deal with personal accountability or development. People misuse religion. This is not the fault of the religion but of the people. Religion does not commit these acts, but people do. An atheist is no more or less prone to violence, hatred, ignorance, intolerance or irrationality than any religious person(just look at all the fanboy and flame wars and people calling each other "idiots" for the least little thing on these and any other forum on the web).
Those of you who seriously believe most wars are the result of religion should look again. Most wars have nothing to religion and everything to do with fear, power, territory, or the simple self-agrandizement of some ego-maniac. These emotions and motivations are not precipitated by religion; they already existed in the person long before any religion entered their minds. However, they may misuse religion as an excuse or rationalization to justify their actions.
Religion is often misused, misinterpreted, or misrepresented. People need to exercise more care in dealing with religion and any religious statement. Unfortunately, most people, on both sides of the fence, religious and anti-religious, simply fail miserably in that regard. It is easy to just blindly accept or demonize religion; it is much harder to examine it in a more careful light that deals with the true motivations and causality of people's actions and beliefs, as well as the boundaries of applicability of any given statement. This is because people are being lazy and just want easy answers. Unfortunately, life never has been, and probably never will be, so easy. Besides, the universe would be a boring place if all the answers were so black-and-white cut-dried. Not to say there are not black-and-white answers to some things, but there is also an awful lot of variations of grey.
Truly understanding a religion and learning to live it properly takes a lot of effort and courage that is beyond most people. However, the few people that have managed it go on to become awe-inspiring examples(unless you believe someone like Gandhi didn't exist) of the heights one can achieve through faith and belief. But, it seems such exemplary examples are often dismissed or ignored in favor of taking the easy-road of snide cynicism(which is, itself, an extreme distortion of reality) and declare all religion to be evil upon the world. But, these examples do exist and prove, by contradiction, that the fundamental problems of violence, hatred, prejudice, wars, intolerance, and atrocities against humanity are not inherent of religion(in fact, most religions have fundamental doctrines that teach, quite explicitly, against such things); they are inherent of being human beings that have failed to mature pass their ancient ancestral behavior of being monkeys in the trees.
By the way, I disagree with the notion that video game stories have become more nuanced. They are more detailed, in that they have more characters or events going on, but in terms of being nuanced, most video game stories have the subtlety of a large boulder made of lead being hurled through a glass window.
Just my 2-cents.
EDIT: minor spelling and grammar edits.
The problem never has been religion itself; the problem has always been people. Most religions, if you consider its most basic fundamental message from its original writings, not the screaming of Preacher Man, Sister Mary-Rosen Clapsalot, or some nut-job, anti-religious atheist with a bug up his ass, you will likely find the doctrines teach something much more enlightened, peaceful, harmonizing, and edifying to one's spiritual growth and society in general. The atrocities happen because people twist things, even religion, to suit their own biases, prejudices, rationalizations, or psychoses.
People misuse religion to further their own means. People misuse religion as an excuse to evade having to try in life. People misuse religion to make themselves feel better about themselves and not have to deal with personal accountability or development. People misuse religion. This is not the fault of the religion but of the people. Religion does not commit these acts, but people do. An atheist is no more or less prone to violence, hatred, ignorance, intolerance or irrationality than any religious person(just look at all the fanboy and flame wars and people calling each other "idiots" for the least little thing on these and any other forum on the web).
Those of you who seriously believe most wars are the result of religion should look again. Most wars have nothing to religion and everything to do with fear, power, territory, or the simple self-agrandizement of some ego-maniac. These emotions and motivations are not precipitated by religion; they already existed in the person long before any religion entered their minds. However, they may misuse religion as an excuse or rationalization to justify their actions.
Religion is often misused, misinterpreted, or misrepresented. People need to exercise more care in dealing with religion and any religious statement. Unfortunately, most people, on both sides of the fence, religious and anti-religious, simply fail miserably in that regard. It is easy to just blindly accept or demonize religion; it is much harder to examine it in a more careful light that deals with the true motivations and causality of people's actions and beliefs, as well as the boundaries of applicability of any given statement. This is because people are being lazy and just want easy answers. Unfortunately, life never has been, and probably never will be, so easy. Besides, the universe would be a boring place if all the answers were so black-and-white cut-dried. Not to say there are not black-and-white answers to some things, but there is also an awful lot of variations of grey.
Truly understanding a religion and learning to live it properly takes a lot of effort and courage that is beyond most people. However, the few people that have managed it go on to become awe-inspiring examples(unless you believe someone like Gandhi didn't exist) of the heights one can achieve through faith and belief. But, it seems such exemplary examples are often dismissed or ignored in favor of taking the easy-road of snide cynicism(which is, itself, an extreme distortion of reality) and declare all religion to be evil upon the world. But, these examples do exist and prove, by contradiction, that the fundamental problems of violence, hatred, prejudice, wars, intolerance, and atrocities against humanity are not inherent of religion(in fact, most religions have fundamental doctrines that teach, quite explicitly, against such things); they are inherent of being human beings that have failed to mature pass their ancient ancestral behavior of being monkeys in the trees.
By the way, I disagree with the notion that video game stories have become more nuanced. They are more detailed, in that they have more characters or events going on, but in terms of being nuanced, most video game stories have the subtlety of a large boulder made of lead being hurled through a glass window.
Just my 2-cents.
EDIT: minor spelling and grammar edits.
Actually, if anything the Assassin's Creed series religion is handled sympathetically: both Christians and Muslims are portrayed as decent people. The Templars are portrayed as the real threat and their membership transcends religion, and use their power within the religious groups they're members of to further the goals of the Templars as opposed to those of their coreligionists.karloss01 said:
After all, they don't flash that message up at the start of the game just to be pompous. Instead, it serves to reinforce that the belief systems featured are part of the backdrop and texture of the games' settings, not the focus of any examination or criticism as one might, on the surface, assume.
Your 2-cents should be shared with the world. I find what you posted to be very refreshing.geizr said:
The thing about Pascal's wager is that people generally don't use it to try to convince others so much as prove that their own faith is a more rational/better position than atheism. Here's another argument to consider though, in a world with multiple conflicting religions you're chances might be better if you don't commit to any of them, just in case you pick the wrong one. That is to say, God might be more forgiving for someone who was skeptical by nature than someone who commits to the wrong faith (assuming they both live lives of equal moral worth). If worshiping false idols is a big no-no for the monotheistic religions, then not worshiping anything would be probably be better.BrotherRool said:
'Worth' is a human concept. Finite existence simply is, you're the one who deems it worthless.BrotherRool said:
What is the 'meaning' of a rock sitting in the sand? When you pass by the rock you can value it in a certain way. Perhaps you regard it as beautiful, or useful. When you walk away does the rock become pointless? It sits there because it is a rock. Rocks aren't concerned with meaning. Meaning and value are creations of human will. What you have described is your own lack of will.BrotherRool said:
Properly speaking, you wouldn't be eternal, but sempiternal. Being eternal means existing beyond/outside of time, but supposedly you came into existence out of nothingness at the moment of your conception.BrotherRool said:
"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living." And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.- Matthew 22:30-33.
So what is heaven like? What do angels do to occupy their time? Checkers? I vaguely remember something about gathering in a giant amphitheater around God and serenading him for all of eternity, but I can't be bothered to find the passage.
Well, let me ask you, did you happen to explore any other religions aside from Christianity? Or did you default to Christianity because it was most prevalent choice? You seem to be moving in a binary fashion, either Nihilism or Christianity. There's a lot more out there, you know. If the Christian God does exist, then perhaps he prefers blind faith to intellectual exploration.BrotherRool said:
I can hardly see how an all-loving God could punish people for not believing in him when he doesn't make it obvious that only one particular dogma is the way to salvation. He is omnipotent after all. And blaming the devil makes no sense whatsoever. Supposedly God created the devil, so he could smash him to bits with the snap of a finger. So why does God allow Indians to be Hindus?
What is belief, and why does it matter so much? It's hard to see how something as mundane as a propositional attitude could reward you with eternal life. We've believed all sorts of stupid things over the millenia. For the most part we can't even control our beliefs. Belief arises when someone is presented with enough evidence that they feel compelled to think that something is the case. How is it fair to punish someone for something they can't fully control? I imagine almost any priest will tell you that you can't just get up one day and say, "you know what? I think I'll be a faithful Christian."
So does that mean that God gives you faith as some sort of gift, like grace? If that's the case then how in the hell could he punish someone for not having what he is responsible for giving them? Maybe you have to earn your faith. Well, that's a bit of a catch 22, now isn't it? What would make you want to have faith if you don't have faith? Are you going to ask a God you don't believe in for the power to believe in him?
If there really were an all loving God, then I think he would be a lot more concerned about how we live our lives than what we believe. Let me ask you this: what did Jesus preach? Did he go on and on about the proper way to perform religious rituals? No. He preached about how to live a moral life, to love thy neighbor and to turn the other cheek. He didn't set up the Catholic Church. You know who did? The Romans. Yeah, because they totally weren't a bunch of corrupt assholes.
Have you ever heard of Gnosticism? It's an interesting tradition. It could best be characterized by the idea that one can achieve personal/mystical knowledge of God by studying scripture. The funny thing about Christian Gnosticism is that it doesn't require priests and the church as an intermediary between humans and God. Can you guess what happened to the Gnostics? Yup, wiped out by the Roman Empire in around the 4th century.
So how much of the modern Christian tradition is the word of God, and how much of it is the result of the corrupt human lust for power and control over one's fellow man? The idea that an earthly organization holds the keys to eternal life or eternal damnation should probably raise some red flags. Martin Luther founded Protestantism in order to rebel against what he saw as corruption in the Catholic Church. The problem is that the Catholic Church (aka the Roman Empire) had already controlled Christianity for centuries and molded it into a means of control. So what guarantee is there that Martin Luther, or anyone else for that matter, could purify it and retrieve the central message?
If you have faith, then you have faith. To be honest I haven't the foggiest idea what faith is like phenomenologically speaking, I'm extremely skeptical by nature. Not only of religious doctrine but also of certain scientific theories (primarily theories in Physics like the Big Bang and String Theory). What I understand about faith is that it's supposed to be deep seated and emotive, so rational arguments probably aren't going to affect it.
It's not my life mission to convert people to atheism. In fact, I find people who define themselves as atheists to be extremely annoying. Atheism is not at all an interesting doctrine. What most people mean when they call themselves atheists is that they hate Christianity. If these people were actually philosophically inclined they would identify themselves as physicalists or materialists, which imply atheism because they include a general rejection of supernaturalism. Unlike atheism, physicalism and materialism are substantive philosophical doctrines.
Anyone who views religion as some sort of demonic zeitgeist that causes mankind to go against its inherently rational and peaceful nature is, in all likelihood, a complete imbecile.
Hey, guys. Don't at all acknowledge the fact that movies, TV shows, novels, and comic books aren't also guilty of this.
Or the fact that religion does have a bit of a fucked up history (and this is coming from a Catholic, mind you, so shut up). I try to have an unbiased view of the world, and if you try not to view things through a colored lens, you can see that religions often forsake their own messages of 'equality' in order to forward their agenda of 'power' for a specific race or a specific group of people, or more often, against certain castes or races that they believe shouldn't have said power.
Also, (and again, I'm a Catholic), I believe that any religion that stubbornly clings to the dogma of a book written some 2000 or so years ago should go back and realize that God DID NOT write these books. If we're to believe everything said in the Bible, Qur'an, etc., then these were messages from God, INTERPRETED by a HUMAN, who is susceptible to HUMAN ERROR and CULTURAL BIAS.
No matter how much you want to deny it, guys, do realize that unless an angel came down from Heaven and handed you a book saying, "Yes, God did take some time out of his schedule to write this." that the stuff you're writing was written by someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away or some shite like that. Believe in everything all you want, but at least try to have some interpretive reasoning and realize that maybe, JUST MAYBE some of this stuff is wrong.
Or the fact that religion does have a bit of a fucked up history (and this is coming from a Catholic, mind you, so shut up). I try to have an unbiased view of the world, and if you try not to view things through a colored lens, you can see that religions often forsake their own messages of 'equality' in order to forward their agenda of 'power' for a specific race or a specific group of people, or more often, against certain castes or races that they believe shouldn't have said power.
Also, (and again, I'm a Catholic), I believe that any religion that stubbornly clings to the dogma of a book written some 2000 or so years ago should go back and realize that God DID NOT write these books. If we're to believe everything said in the Bible, Qur'an, etc., then these were messages from God, INTERPRETED by a HUMAN, who is susceptible to HUMAN ERROR and CULTURAL BIAS.
No matter how much you want to deny it, guys, do realize that unless an angel came down from Heaven and handed you a book saying, "Yes, God did take some time out of his schedule to write this." that the stuff you're writing was written by someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away or some shite like that. Believe in everything all you want, but at least try to have some interpretive reasoning and realize that maybe, JUST MAYBE some of this stuff is wrong.
I'm sorry you feel that I'm being hypocritical. I don't expect you to convert with evidence and I'm still being biblical. In Romans it talks about how in everything he does God makes himself obvious to people and even more so through his word, but people being who they are refuse him and shut their eyes. Jesus said the same sort of thing. In the end facts are cool and God has chosen his word and his actions to be the thing that spreads faith, but faith is faith. I have it. A Hindu has it for another thing, a Muslim has it for another and an atheist for another.Treblaine said:
I don't expect you to understand my faith, I don't even expect you to respect it. Saying that, what we do know about Christianity, it wasn't created by priests to spread the faith. Most atheists agree on the christian timelines of the new testament
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_nt.htm
(With some jiggling around with things that christians take as predictions and atheists as retcons) and we know that Jesus very probably existed and that his disciples, + Paul existed, spoke about what they spoke about and were persecuted and died for their actions. We also know that most christian doctrine was established at this time between 20-100 ad, that is in the generation of Jesus and the apostles.
I think the most likely atheistic interpretation is that Jesus was an incredible intelligent charismatic man, see Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Buddha. He existed in a similar time as them actually because the Romans were very much the oppressors of the Jewish. He said something, it may have been what he was supposed to have said or may have been a general 'don't fight and get along guys' and completely blew the minds of his disciples. When he died they didn't give him up and began interpreting what he said as that he was God. (similar to the deification of Buddha) and in their passion spread it across the world and died for it.
There isn't a lot of space for self-interest as you suggest, because we have the Roman records to show that the life of an evangelising Christian was short, poor and brutal. I think it would have to be self-deception.
There is no country today that's ruled as a christian country nor was there often a country that was actually ruled by a christian. For instance King Henry VIII seemed to treat God as fact, but only because he'd been taught so, and instead of following God he kind of led, just expecting God to jutify whatever he did (including robbing churches), he had a friend who was the same and he made archbishop, but shockingly that friend began to become a real christian and started giving away all his wealth and actually sneaking out to wash poor people at night. He opposed what Henry was doing with the country and so Henry killed him.
Whats more few christians are able to live up to the ideal. We're not better people than other people, we're just maybe a little bit better than ourselves a few years ago. I do more charity stuff now than I ever considered doing before but I'm not a great person and I'm sure you'd be pissed off at the hypocrisy of how i live my life. But I'm trying to get better. Ironically Gandhi studied the non-retaliation a lot and is one of the better people at putting it into practice.
Still I do know people who've managed it. A christian friend was mugged and he caught up with them afterwards and gave them the rest of his money too. I think most christians will strive to do what the bible says, and they know the right thing to do is to forgive people, they just find it hard like we all do.
I wasn't saying homosexuality isn't a sin. I don't know I'm on the fence with it, so if your gay and want to be christian just pray about god with it and he'll tell you which way it is, because frankly your the only one who needs to know, I was saying we shouldn't act on it. And if a rapist came across Jesus, yeah Jesus would forgive him. He forgave the people who crucified him, he's forgiven people who've done horrific things with their lives. There's no-one he isn't big enough to save. Now we're not Jesus so we can't actually know exactly what someone will do after that point so we should still arrest rapists, but it should be clear that we're doing so as prevention, not out of hate for the rapist, and personally I think that means there shouldn't be capital punishment either.
That's even biblical, when he was alive Jesus told his disciples to leave all the pratical thing in life behind. Money, defence etc, because they were with him. Just before he died he told them they were going to need to use them again and be sensible about it, do what they were doing but unlike him they should probably still need to arrest people and stuff (if they were in such a position in society)
I think Christianity got to where it is today because people recognise the truth of it's ways, pacifism included. That's why the modern christian heroes are Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela (and Nelson Mandela is a great example, because he started off too weak to be pacifist but as he grew as a person he was able to cast his violence aside and regret his actions). We don't idolise the people in the crusades, those are one of our greatest shames and in all honesty so many of the leaders involved were just people co-opting the christian leadership to mislead the people who had put their trust in them. I mean this was the time where priests deliberately avoided translating the bible in case the people who genuinely wanted to follow God read it and realised it wasn't the same thing as the priests were saying. This is the time where popes would buy their way into office despite the bible condemning people who did this. The mistake was for the church to take on actual power instead of confining themselves to spiritual power, because everywhere there will always be people wanting power and those people have got a bad habit of getting it. John warned us of many anti-christs and even today we get things like that dude who made a lot of money telling everyone the world was going to end, even though the bible was clear that no-one gets told that
As far as Westboro Baptist Church goes, I don't know anyone who doesn't condemn what those 80 people do. The truth is most of my christians friends I've talked about don't know it exists, which is wrong, but I think the reason more atheists know it exists is because, well atheists like to make a point. In contrast most of my agnostic friends don't know it exists either.
As far as they go, whenever I send them an email explaining how the Bible hates what they do, they refuse to respond. They're happy enough to answer questions that don't expose them for the hateful frauds they are just not the ones which say that everything they do is a lie
"In Romans it talks about how in everything he does God makes himself obvious to people"BrotherRool said:
The bible. A worthless, unsubstantiated and adulterated source.
Christianity WAS created by priests, god didn't come down and personally set up, with was written by people.
Just because Jesus existed and his life has been hugely embellished that doesn't prove anything. There is also a huge difference between non-violence and pacifist submission.
"There is no country today that's ruled as a christian country"
Nor by YOUR standards apparently has a "truly Christian" country EVER existed! Any country that was as pacifist and inactive would be totally pillaged, destroyed and enslaved within weeks.
The fact is Christianity is not what you claim it is. Christianity is what the likes Henry VIII spread. You are
"I wasn't saying homosexuality isn't a sin."
It's not a sin as in a crime against society nor nature. It's a form of genuine human love that doesn't harm anyone. They do not need forgiveness, they need acceptance.
"And if a rapist came across Jesus, yeah Jesus would forgive him. He forgave the people who crucified him"
he has no right to forgive people for such a heinous crime they have committed against OTHER people! Arrest is not enough, justice demands they must be PUNISHED! Prevention is not enough. The Catholic church followed this logic of prevention over punishment when they caught their priests raping children. These re the perverse ideals of Christianity.
And it's easy to forgive those who crucified him as he knew he'd have life after death!
"I think Christianity got to where it is today because people recognise the truth of it's ways, pacifism included."
Nope. Christianity spread because Christian countries had better weapons and expanded more via seas, i.e. British army gunning down thousands of locals then the missionaries moving in. I.e. the pogroms. the crusades. THAT is how Christianity prevailed. If they had been pacifist then Christianity would have been destroyed by other religions.
The only advantage Christianity has is the LIE of pacifism. To kill and conquer better than anyone else then be two-faced of claiming peace and kindness.
Oh, and you send a private email to Westbro Baptist Church, wow, a real activist. Why is it that atheists are actually getting up of their ass to make counter-protests, to challenge them in public debates? HOW can most Christians not even know about such an infamous organisation as this?!?! Other than willful ignorance of what their ideology alows?!?