The Case for Christianity

[steve_bank]

"History" as a whole, is a story. A naritive of what happend. it gets inturperted/spun by the teller.
Tolstoy's wall of text says more about him than 'humanity'. Not humanity's intent or purpose.
"...and to fulfill the will of God he is ready to sacrifice..." Shows that he has swallowed the religious CULT dogma.

To sacrifice ones own individuality and family and social welfare for a 'god' delusion, is evil and destructive to family and society. And there are signs we are growing out of that phase.

Normalizing drugs and making drugs socially acceptable has led to a drug problem, a major driver of costs in health care. Teens and younger addicted to drugs and over dosing.

Our hedonistic culture of consumption and self indulgence has led to increasing health problems driving up cost of health care. Mental health problems.

Increasing teen violence and crime. Kids killing kids.

Christians argue it is due to the diminishing of religion, and I agree to a degree. We have no moral compass in modern culture, anything goes anytime anywhere with few boundaries.

You can’t single out religion as ‘evil’ without looking at culture as a whole.

We have gone from worshiping god to worshiping athletes, actors, and musicians Many who lead self destructive lives and die early and do not die well. When one of these die for drug abuse we never hear anyone in public say do not do drugs or do not live like they do.

In music, TV, and movies self destructive anti social childish behavior has been normalized. Peole mimic it in real life.

Anti religion narratives focus on the negatives of religion but not on the negatives elsewhere.

 

[ideologyhunter]

l

Well, that makes perfect sense! Now I’m a believer … a believer in the idea that this is the most idiotic story ever told.

Also, what is holding up the Second Coming, the Rapture (where, I think, upwards of two billion Christians will flap naked up into the sky; I'm gonna bring a lawn chair and a couple of Snapples), and the big showdown between Jesus with his angels and the Freedom from Religion Foundation (which will produce a trough of blood 200 miles long and 5 feet deep, if you believe the psilocybin mirage in Rev. 14)? Seriously, why the delay? It's almost as if it was one big tease.

Responding in no particular order, choosing this post first, cos I am humoured by the humour.
(these days I only get to read and sometimes respond when I'm travelling on the train or sitting in a coffee place.)

Yeah so...the "hold up" is an "illusion", a misleading notion that depends on a particular contextual portrayal of language. Ive said this before:

No one waits 2000 years or more!

If you can entertain the idea in concept which is quite simple:

Once you die ...then it's judgement. IOW, if someone died at the age of 20 then he only waited 20 years. He may have rested for a thousand years outside his conscious awareness, but once he closed his eyes at death, he opens them again.. instantly like a blink of an eye.
So now you believe, ideologyhunter?

Perhaps not.

I'm referring you to my pal, Occam.

 

[southernhybrid]

"History" as a whole, is a story. A naritive of what happend. it gets inturperted/spun by the teller.
Tolstoy's wall of text says more about him than 'humanity'. Not humanity's intent or purpose.
"...and to fulfill the will of God he is ready to sacrifice..." Shows that he has swallowed the religious CULT dogma.

To sacrifice ones own individuality and family and social welfare for a 'god' delusion, is evil and destructive to family and society. And there are signs we are growing out of that phase.

Your post reminded me a bit of my ex. He isn't a Christian. He's a Baha'i, and when I married him, I had no idea that he was a religious fanatic. He said that our marriage didn't work because I wasn't a Baha'i, when in fact, it didn't work because he was a unloving, selfish asshole. He told our son and his daughter from his second marriage that he was leaving all of his money to his religion although he may leave them each 10K, despite him having over a million. His daughter was homeless for awhile and he never helped her. He never helped support our son like the atheist step dad did. His third wife told my daughter that all he cared about was his religion. I'm not sure if they are still married, but they do live apart.

When we parted, even some of my Baha'i friends told me they didn't know how I could stand him, as they weren't as extreme in their devotion to their religion. So, it's not just Christians who can cause destructiveness to their families. My ex also left the country to try and convert others to his religion. They refer to that a pioneers. They believe that their religion will eventually be accepted by everyone and that will bring world peace. While the Bahai's don't believe in hell and their concept of an afterlife is very vague, there are still some who are obsessed with the religion to the point that it harms their families. I used to think it was a much nicer religion compared to Christianity, but I learned that any religion can cause some people to become fanatics. Religion usually causes more harm than good as far as I can tell.

Now back to Christianity. I was thinking of all the excuses that Christians make regarding Jesus saying, "Surely I come quickly" Maybe he was talking about ejaculation, instead of returning to earth. After all, he was pretty young and he never had a partner, and we all know that younger men usually do come quickly. I can't imagine that he never pleasured himself as a relief from stress. That would make more sense than all the nutty excuses conservative Christians give when they try to explain why it's been over 2000 years since Jesus said he'd come quickly and yet they are still waiting.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What do you guys think of this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenChristian/s/JUYywpaG6I

Why are you asking what we think of it, you've yet to really fairly reply to a post here yet.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Tolstoy has got it exactly backwards.

The link did not sufficiently well represent Tolstoy's thinking. Take the Krishnamurti citation, “Be a light unto yourself” and compare it to the following from Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is within You:

Christianity recognizes love of self, of family, of nation, and of humanity, and not only of humanity, but of everything living, everything existing; it recognizes the necessity of an infinite extension of the sphere of love. But the object of this love is not found outside self in societies of individuals, nor in the external world, but within self, in the divine self whose essence is that very love ...

It is also to be kept in mind that Tolstoy was in large part concentrating on addressing the context of his time and place and, so, significant aspects of what he wrote was with "the advocates of [the] Positivist, Communistic, Socialistic fraternity" in mind. Of course, in his mind, he was addressing a primarily (at least nominally) Christian audience and was attempting to re-focus that part of the expected audience away from merely superficial (and often superstitious) ritual and the politically associated corruption of orthodoxy to the essence of the individual which is the response-ability to make love manifest in the world, with that love being, of course, identified with the divine because, with regards to love for the sake of others, he thinks that "There is no motive to produce it" except as in service to God.

Were he to take that thinking to its logical extreme, he would recognize that as that (responsive ability to) love is ever more fully developed from and within a person - as the Godli(ke)ness of the person comes ever closer to its fullest possible manifestation - then God, the divine, falls away as love itself is the motivation. Then again, God, the divine, does not actually fall away except possibly as an alternative manner of expressing the person's thinking. God by this reckoning does not actually fall away because the essence (so to speak) of this God is supposed to be that very love which becomes the grand purpose of the loving person. But such thinking about God would be beyond what most of Tolstoy's intended audience could fathom right away; hence, even if Tolstoy had any such thought himself, there would be no good reason to go that far with his message. It would be even more eccentric than his vegetarianism, and such a message would be too confusing. After all, such a way of thinking could be mis-taken as holding that God is not.

Although it has been quite some time since I read Tolstoy, I recall thinking that he best presents the sense of what he was trying to bring forth in The Kingdom of God Is within You with his story, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and in his novel, Resurrection.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Tolstoy -- as far as I've read him, which includes The Kingdom of God..., never made a "case for Christianity", and did not concern himself with proofs or apologetics. He seems to me to have been a mystic Christian who depended on what he would have thought of as unimpeachable spiritual epiphanies. In other words, one of Eric Hoffer's true believers who had a need for an orthodoxy and a pathway out of his self-perceived wastrel ways. In Persia, he'd have been an Islamic mystic. In India, he'd have been a Brahman's devotee. He had a strong need to renounce self and carnal desires. Drove his wife nuts.

 

[pood]

I should stress that I was responding specifically to the quoted passage of Tolstoy, not the broader Tolstoy, who seems to have advocated ethical and mystical Christianity. And that is fine — I’ve no problem with either, including the mysticism part, which is not to be confused with religious dogma or superstition.

But I wanted to call attention to how misplaced this idea of tribe, clan, family, state, divinity etc. is in and of itself. It seems to me these are no solutions to any problem but in fact ARE the problem. This was Krishnamurti’s recurring point. Krishnamurti spoke of negation, negation, negation, to the point where one of his flustered interlocutors responded, “You want me to kill myself!”

Krishnamurti replied: “Of course!”

 

[pood]

The actual phrase of the interlocutor was, “You are asking me to die, arén’t you?” I think K was relieved to discover that someone finally got his point.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

Tolstoy -- as far as I've read him, which includes The Kingdom of God..., never made a "case for Christianity", and did not concern himself with proofs or apologetics. He seems to me to have been a mystic Christian ...

That seems right. He spoke with frequent reference to Christianity and God - both of which he associated repeatedly with truth - and he obviously cited sayings attributed to Jesus but without seeming to be very much bothered with the idea of Jesus as a blood sacrifice. At least as far as I recall. Even so, given the context into which he was born and lived, it is to be expected that he would employ expressions already familiar to those around him with whom he would engage.

who depended on what he would have thought of as unimpeachable spiritual epiphanies.

He would certainly not have doubted his own experience(s). Matthew Sanderson says that according to Rudolf Otto, who apparently distinguishes mystical experience and numinous experience, "the existence of the holy is self-evident to anyone who has ever felt numinous emotion." That is understandable. After all, there is nothing more real to one than one's own experiences.

So, Tolstoy would not have doubted the experience, but he might have been aware that his interpretations of such experience, the then-what?, the so-what-follows-from-that-experience?, was always to be subject to reconsideration.

had a need for an orthodoxy

This is a common problem, one which Hannah Arendt addressed in her discussion about authority as essentially coming from - or residing - beyond the limits language. In the following, she is specifically discussing The Republic but the point applicable to the nature of authority is that "it could only be justified if the philosopher's truth possessed a validity for that very realm of human affairs which the philosopher had to turn away from in order to perceive it. ... he must take his truth and transform it into a set of rules". Of course, given the beyond the limits of language nature of authority, any expression in terms of determinate rules necessarily fails to capture the actual quality of authority (which is why schools of sufism are very unlikely to produce actual sufis, meaning mystics). And, yet, a common language is necessary for there to be any communication leading to furthered development.

In Persia, he'd have been an Islamic mystic. In India, he'd have been a Brahman's devotee.

Yes. In a different context he would have used a different manner of expression in the attempt to speak of what would seem to be (in Otto's terms) the same mystical and numinous.

He had a strong need to renounce self and carnal desires.

Just like his disciple, Gandhi. Interesting that, as far as we know, neither one of them seems to have gotten to the point of rising above such renunciation.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

This was Krishnamurti’s recurring point. Krishnamurti spoke of negation, negation, negation, to the point where one of his flustered interlocutors responded, “You want me to kill myself!”

Krishnamurti replied: “Of course!”

The actual phrase of the interlocutor was, “You are asking me to die, arén’t you?” I think K was relieved to discover that someone finally got his point.

Yeah, I'm relieved, too! I mean I'm glad the guy didn't think he was being told that he should commit suicide. Dying without physically, metabolically dying is actually a common way of expressing what occurs with the process of advancement/improvement (such as occurs with repentance, being born again, things like that).

 

[pood]

This was Krishnamurti’s recurring point. Krishnamurti spoke of negation, negation, negation, to the point where one of his flustered interlocutors responded, “You want me to kill myself!”

Krishnamurti replied: “Of course!”

The actual phrase of the interlocutor was, “You are asking me to die, arén’t you?” I think K was relieved to discover that someone finally got his point.

Yeah, I'm relieved, too! I mean I'm glad the guy didn't think he was being told that he should commit suicide. Dying without physically, metabolically dying is actually a common way of expressing what occurs with the process of advancement/improvement (such as occurs with repentance, being born again, things like that).

Yes, his point was “die to the past at every moment.” As a byproduct, this will mean that when you physically die, you have already had the experience of psychologically dying many times, so it is “been there, done that,” and no fear.

“You want to know my secret?” he said to one audience. “I don’t mind what happens.”

There is, however, a crucial distinction between “I don’t mind what happens” and “I don’t care what happens.”

 

[bilby]

Normalizing Criminalizing drugs and making drugs socially acceptable has led to a drug problem, a major driver of costs in health care.

FTFY.

 

[James Brown]

It really is circular, isn't it?

"X" is causing problems! Let's criminalize it!

<years later>

The criminalization of "X" is causing even worse problems. Let's decriminalize it.

<years later>

"X" is causing problems! Let's criminalize it.

You can insert just about anything for "X". Drugs, alcohol, pornography, soft drinks, reality television, and so on.

 

[bilby]

Christians argue it is due to the diminishing of religion, and I agree to a degree. We have no moral compass in modern culture, anything goes anytime anywhere with few boundaries.

Let me guess, you were raised by Roman Catholics.

Your opinions in this regard are exactly in conformance with those of every "Lapsed Catholic" I have ever met; Roman Catholicism has evolved to burrow bad ideas into brains in much the same way that Loa Loa Worms burrow into eyes. The patient can rid themselves of the parasite, but the scars are permanent.

The non-religious have at least as good a moral compass as do members of any religious sect or group. Morality and religiosity are not strongly correlated at all, but what little correlation there is, is negative.

That people you trusted as a child systematically lied to you about this until you internalised their claims as fundamental facts about reality is, paradoxically, strong evidence for my position here.

 

[unapologetic]

Once you die ...then it's judgement. IOW, if someone died at the age of 20 then he only waited 20 years. He may have rested for a thousand years outside his conscious awareness, but once he closed his eyes at death, he opens them again.. instantly like a blink of an eye.
So now you believe, ideologyhunter?

WTF?
Delusional.

Anti religion narratives focus on the negatives of religion but not on the negatives elsewhere.

Well the subject was 'religion'. Are you trying to move the goalposts?
You want to talk about the drug problem? I have opinions on that, you won't like.
You talk like religion (conformaty) is the solution to every social problem. It is definatly NOT. It only claims to be. Especially problems the cults dreamed up.

 

[steve_bank]

Once you die ...then it's judgement. IOW, if someone died at the age of 20 then he only waited 20 years. He may have rested for a thousand years outside his conscious awareness, but once he closed his eyes at death, he opens them again.. instantly like a blink of an eye.
So now you believe, ideologyhunter?

WTF?
Delusional.

Anti religion narratives focus on the negatives of religion but not on the negatives elsewhere.

Well the subject was 'religion'. Are you trying to move the goalposts?
You want to talk about the drug problem? I have opinions on that, you won't like.
You talk like religion (conformaty) is the solution to every social problem. It is definatly NOT. It only claims to be. Especially problems the cults dreamed up.

If you want to label religion as 'evil', in context to what?

The ideological atheist communist systems were horrible. We accuse theists of wearing blinders accusing atheists of being evil while ignoring problems with religion.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Atheism can be as narrow minded an ideology as any religion.

 

[Elixir]

Atheism can be as narrow minded an ideology as any religion.

Or not.
Which differentiates it from religions.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Atheism can be expressed in full in one sentence.
Whatever else an atheist expresses on religion is going to be personal analysis and opinion, and yes, that can have limitations or narrow-mindedness. But the definition of atheism? What more needs to be said after you say, "There's no evidence for gods"?

 

[TomC]

Atheism can be as narrow minded an ideology as any religion.

Nope, that is not possible.

Narrow minded individuals can identify as atheist, but that's not the same thing.

Whatever the reason that they are narrow minded, it won't be a lack of belief in theology.
Tom

 

[DBT]

It really is circular, isn't it?

"X" is causing problems! Let's criminalize it!

<years later>

The criminalization of "X" is causing even worse problems. Let's decriminalize it.

<years later>

"X" is causing problems! Let's criminalize it.

You can insert just about anything for "X". Drugs, alcohol, pornography, soft drinks, reality television, and so on.

The window dressing is constantly rearranged, but we, our condition, essentially stays the same, the rich get richer, politicians sit in parliament drafting new laws to 'keep us all safe.'