by free2beme 100 Replies latest jw friends
jgnat,
I did read what you wrote and I followed the link. I was just shocked I was called a troll and responded to that first. My father is in a Christian religion that teaches people to read the Bible and take what you want and leave the rest behind. I was shocked by this, with my Witness background, at the same time I realize that it is a form of religion evolution. In that religion will and has to change with the times.
You think I am a troll and respond to me anyway. Here is why, you are bothered by what I say on a personal belief level and this is a form of lashing out to try and make me look bad for saying something that bothered you. Perhaps a level of guilt of knowing that what I am saying must be caused ;by known Christian behavior in society, when we all know that Christian's claim a loving life and yet the right hand does not know what the left is doing. So ;call me a troll, by your definition and by what ;I know of Christians ... I expect it from someone. Here though it what ;I define a troll as.
You don't even know who I am or what I believe. How dare you make any such comments. You are still very much in line with WT thinking, only your beliefs have changed. Let me spell it out for you:
must be caused ;by known Christian behavior in society, when we all know that Christian's claim a loving life and yet the right hand does not know what the left is doing. You make the insinuation that because some people who are Christians have done evil things, then the whole religion is not worthy. This is illogical, but it is a rhetorical technique frequently used by the WT.
You also stated that if there is one error in the bible, then you should throw the whole religion out. Again this illogical, as there are many types of Christianity that believe different things, it is only because of the WT mould of your thinking that you think that the part equals the whole.
Now if you are bending my stance on how I see Christianity as a religion, then perhaps you define troll as a more lower version and less harmful version from what I have said above. Also, to call someone a troll and ask them to move on when they are not being a troll. Reminds me of this ...
Don't give me a dictionary definition what a troll is: Meaning is formed by use. You use polemics instead of true discussion, that is what the WT does. So instead of accusing me of this:
Brother, your behavior is not acceptable with the congregation, so we are disfellowshipping you. We know we are only a small percentage of the congregation and no one else has said this, but we stand as judge and executioner to the congregation. Don't take it personal though!
Look at your own language, argument, and line of thinking.
You don't even know who I am or what I believe.
I know the type, and sorry, but your are presenting your personality to me as much as I am to you and if you do not like my conclusion then perhaps an edit is in order. I am not going to continue this debate of troll, next ...
Base your life on hearsay? What kind of fool does that?Answer: Christians
Christians and most everyone else.
It would seem most all of us base our identity and sense of that identity's place in the universe (in other words our entire reality) on hearsay.
Hearsay of the mind which interprets via the secondhand nature of past remembered pattern recognition. Living solely via the prism of the mind we forsake the actual wholeness of being and instead live as a broken fragment adrift in space and time, past and future. We are all fools feverishly spending our currency on facsimiles and make-believe replicas; never once questioning our cherished realities validity.
j
Jesus never lived, any more so then Hercules did. The legend lives on though!
one word i have searched for in this thread was "meme", and i failed to locate anyone using it.
the hercules myth of the greek-god meme, has survived. it's just that no one cares. the jesus/christian meme is much more powerful. it has evolved in a way that has made it very survivable, and highly contagious.
Christianity is a closed belief system that does not rely on any external references, at all, in order to justify itself. a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. it only really works, memtically, as a whole. take it in individual portions, and it tends to fall apart.
Christianity is a closed belief system that does not rely on any external references, at all, in order to justify itself.
I don't entirely agree with this, but I will say that you have stated truth in this nonetheless.
There is an internal reference to which Christianity speaks most strongly, which is our self-knowledge. When I finally realized that 40+ years of really trying to quit certain bad habits wasn't getting me anywhere(!)... it finally dawned on me that I truly had a problem beyond my control (even though my habits weren't murdering people). Extremely depressing... Like jgnat put so nicely, I found the divine outside rather than in, at least the part that I lacked ( because I can find the fingerprints of divinity in me and in each/every person). I was my own reference for this. The "hearsay" made great sense to me personally, because I KNOW how helpless I am, if I know nothing else.
Free2be, lots of us Christians have had plenty of opportunity to be challenged here. You aren't the first to ask the question. Neon's a pretty even-tempered guy btw, if you've only been here a short time (eg, haven't lurked for months). I think your zeal in your opinion is coming across as a little trollish... I think that is probably unintentional, though...
Anyway... Here is an excerpt from "The Grand Miracle" by CS Lewis which addresses some of your original question. (It is found on the website http://mypage.direct.ca/j/jlove/tchissues/tch0398.htm#THE%20GRAND%20MIRACLE%201, click on the title at the left to read the whole article.)
...When I say "resurrection" here, I am not referring simply to the first few hours, or the first few weeks of the Resurrection. I am talking of this whole, huge pattern of descent, down, down, and then up again. ... One has a picture of a strong man trying to lift a very big, complicated burden. He stoops down and gets himself right under it so that he himself disappears; and then he straightens his back and moves off with the whole thing swaying on his shoulders. Or else one has the picture of a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold, freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get. This thing is human nature; but, associated with it, all nature, the new universe. ....
Now as soon as you have thought of this, this pattern of the huge dive down to the bottom, into the depths of the universe and coming up again into the light, everyone will see at once how that is imitated and echoed by the principles of the natural world; the descent of the seed into the soil, and its rising again in the plants. There are also all sorts of things in our own spiritual life where a thing has to be killed, and broken, in order that it may then become bright and strong, and splendid. The analogy is obvious. In that sense the doctrine fits in very well, so well in fact that immediately there comes the suspicion. Is it not fitting in a great deal too well? In other word, does not the Christian story show this pattern of descent and re-ascent because that is part of all the nature religions of the world? We have read about it in The Golden Bough. (1) We all know about Adonis, and the stories of the rest of those rather tedious people; is not this one more instance of the same thing, "the dying God"?
Well, yes it is. That is what makes the question subtle. What the anthropological critic of Christianity is always saying is perfectly true. Christ is a figure of that sort. And here comes a very curious thing. When I first, after childhood, read the Gospels, I was full of that stuff about the dying God, The Golden Bough, and so on. It was to me then a very poetic, and mysterious, and quickening idea; and when I turned to the Gospels never will I forget my disappointment and repulsion at finding hardly anything about it at all. The metaphor of the seed dropping into the ground in this connexion occurs (I think) twice in the New Testament, (2) and for the rest hardly any notice is taken; it seemed to me extraordinary. You had a dying God, Who was always representative of the corn; you see Him holding the corn, that is, bread, in His hand and saying, "This is my Body", (3) and from my point of view, as I then was, He did not seem to realize what He was saying. Surely there, if anywhere, this connexion between the Christian story and the corn must have come out; the whole context is crying out for it. But everything goes on as if the principal actor, and still more, those about Him, were totally ignorant of what they were doing. It is as if you got very good evidence concerning the sea-serpent, but the men who brought this good evidence seemed never to have heard of sea-serpents. Or to put it in another way, why was it that the only case of the "dying God" which might conceivably have been historical occurred among a people (and the only people in the whole Mediterranean world) who had not got any trace of this nature religion, and indeed seemed to know nothing about it? Why is it among them the thing suddenly appears to happen?
The principal actor, humanly speaking, hardly seems to know of the repercussion His words (and sufferings) would have in any pagan mind. Well, that is almost inexplicable, except on one hypothesis. How if the corn king is not mentioned in that Book, because He is here of whom the corn king was an image? How if the representation is absent because here, at last, the thing represented is present? If the shadows are absent because the thing of which they were shadows is here? The corn itself is in its far-off way an imitation of the supernatural reality; the thing dying, and coming to life again, descending, and re-ascending beyond all nature. The principle is there in nature because it was first there in God Himself. Thus one is getting in behind the nature religions, and behind nature to Someone Who is not explained by, but explains, not, indeed, the nature religions directly, but that whole characteristic behaviour of nature on which nature religions were based. Well, that is one way in which it surprised me. It seemed to fit in a very peculiar way, showing me something about nature more fully than I had seen it before, while itself remaining quite outside and above the nature religions. ...
bebu
What's going on with the formatting here?...??
Sorry about how weird that looks above; I cannot fix the format!
Jgnat:I've got a couple of spare pipes. I can lend you one, if you like, but only if you start wearing that sexy tea-towel again (though it needn't be on your head)
Terry/Tetra:I'm afraid that you're missing one vital piece of evidence, that being that there are many people who have had an encounter with someone/something that they interpret as being "Christ". That isn't heresay or "meme" to them, it's hardcore fact. It's also one that's been attested to for nigh-on two millenia.
In the absence of a personal experience of your own, your only realistic counter is that the bearers of such a testimony are deluded, so feel free to let it rip, boys...
Free2beme:The Christian religion has always had those who are eclectic regarding the bible. It's nothing new. As for your opinion, you are of course entirely "free 2 be you". Keep on challenging things, but also, bear in mind that a little tolerance goes a long way. You'll find few true imbeciles here - people have arrived at some of their evolving conclusions the hard way
I only had to read this far to hear, "your going to hell, your going to hell, your going to hell" in my mind. I know that Christians do not want to accept the Christ-myth. If they did, they would not be Christians. So to show an example of a Christian using limited info to prove their point, is as expected as the sun rising tomorrow.
Translation of above: only people who already agree with my preconceived dogma are qualified to make statements about it.
The "limited info" in that article refutes most of the major arguments in favor of your theory. Of course, you wouldn't know that, since you aren't interested in reading any opinions that diverge from your own.
That isn't heresay or "meme" to them
LT,
i appreciate that one's experience is not a meme, per se. but it is precisely the christian meme that had them interpret their experience as an encounter with christ in the first place!
