Adekis

I believe there can be heroes.

Went to a Bible study group at my college. Got a lot of things I do not agree with, for example "Humans are sinful and stupid", "When reading the Bible sometimes you will be metaphorically punched in the face by God telling you you are wrong", etc. Now I'm concerned that when (not if, I'm very open about my beliefs) I come out as a somewhat radical Christian who tends to play fast and loose with doctrines they consider untouchable that I will be found somehow unworthy. I've met some really cool people who I want to like me through this group, but their beliefs, and more importantly the assumption that I share them, make me cringe. Fortunately, I'm going home this weekend, so I'll be able to talk to my awesome Dad about it. He'll get it.

If Earth was truly Hell, and failing to "make the grade" resulted in only reincarnation, I would gladly fail every time. I like Earth, and given the chance between living another life here or an uncertain existence in Heaven, I would pick reincarnation every time. Of course, I may be biased by my mostly good life as a white straight semi-Christian male. Still, the world is a pretty nice place, and God is present in it. If this is Hell, I'll take it. All that said, I do not believe in Hell at all. I hope there is an afterlife of some sort.

Unassailable, eh? I doubt it. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool. I jest, naturally. Nonetheless, I'm inclined to at least question this. Kinda wish I'd read it in full, but based on that very short description, I'd like to ask if Pinker argues that humans themselves have evolved to be less violent, or that human culture has become more subdued? Because those are very different ideas indeed. The necessary natural selection to remove those with violent tendencies from the gene pool seems... unlikely. If on the other hand, the difference is cultural... well, for example, you're in a restaurant, and at the end of the bar is a big burly bearded bloke with a beer. There is something about you he does not like. If he was a Crusader, or otherwise from a very pro-violence culture that would let him get away with it, he might cleave your head in twain for whatever the offense. If on the other hand he was a modern man, he might, at the most, shove you into the wall, and then only if he was very mad. I may be simplifying complex cultural differences between these two time frames, but cultures change more readily than genetics. If he's arguing that we live in a largely nonviolent CULTURE, I can think of little reason why he'd ever be refuted. In fact, it seems pretty self-evident. You're right though, there's always room for improvement! So what then, are you saying that without the reinterpretation of Jesus' death in terms of human inadequacy and "sin" Jesus wouldn't have been remembered at all? Well, you may very well be right, after all, so much of Christian history has been of a school of thought quite a bit like that, but it seems kind of messed up. The whole "redeem humanity from original sin" concept takes a real bleak view of human nature. How long after Jesus' death did it come to be viewed in that light? I doubt, based on my interpretation, if anyone who personally witnessed Jesus' boundary-breaking acts of love would interpret his death that way. I think (though I may be wrong) that Spong says the Apostles probably started to view Jesus as the "Suffering Sevant" archetype of Messiah after the crucifixtion, when they were struggling to figure out the scriptural context of Jesus' death when they were so sure he would change everything. They stumbled upon some of those "Suffering Servant" ideas in (I think) Second Isaiah, but it certainly doesn't suggest the Puritanical idea of human indecency redeemed only through "Christ's Sacrifice"..

Man, my conservative ex-girlfriend used to argue with me about this stuff all the time. It drove me nuts, We'd be watching Fantasia and the scene with the dinosaurs would come on, and she'd be like "You know this is all bogus, right? Dinosaurs were alive at the same time as humans." So I'm thinking that yes, there are some scientific problems with Fantasia. But that's not one of them. "What," I said, "like the Flintstones? You're joking, right?" Nope. We never really stopped fighting over it, just learned to ignore the issue. She legitimately believed that Earth was only about one-million years old, and she could quote enough fundamentalist pseudoscience to back herself up that she probably could have taught a class on it. Like a study that claimed because a faulty dating had rendered a newly-formed volcanic rock to be millions of years old, all scientific dating is faulty. Or how the world is slowly moving further from the sun every year and if the world was really billions of years old, we'd be far enough a way that Earth would be dead. I don't think she knew how little of a difference it really makes, or if she does she doesn't care. She was totally ridiculous and unreasonable. Wonderful girl. Totally broke my heart when she dumped me. Oh well!

There is a Hindu concept that "Atman is Brahman", that is, "the soul is God". Of course, Brahman is a much more expansive concept than the western idea of God, but I think it's that same sort of idea. God was in Jesus and if we God to be visible in us as well we should try to be like Jesus. I also agree that duality is rather overdone. God / Satan is a bizarre concept, because it's commonly seen as a duality but it isn't. The stories either have Satan as a guy God calls upon to literally play Devil's advocate, who works for God, or Sammael (or Lucifer) getting cast out because he refused to love humans as he loved God the way he was commanded. I don't think either of these should be taken literally, whether it's emblematic of the inner "Devil's advocate", simply a storytelling device, or a mandate to love humanity with all it's imperfections as the Devil failed to. Haha...

I've always been horribly offended by the idea of the Fall. Like somehow we're just naturally sinful, like human beings are all naturally depraved monsters. It's depressing, and it's easy to see why societies based on that principle (like Puritan New England, for example) had so many people with ridiculous psychological trauma. First of all, I don't see the fall as a literal story, and I don't believe in original sin. Humans can choose, and sometimes they choose wrong, it's simple as that. I'm not sure why there's such an inferiority complex among the Christian faith though... does anyone know the exact origin of this idea? AS for Jesus' actual death... I think this is a great point, and one I hadn't previously given much thought to. I certainly don't believe he "died for our sins". I think Jesus died because he was willing to make a stand against the Romans and the corrupt Jewish authorities. It can be considered an honorable act, but I certainly don't think he went up there with the idea of absolving original sin, even if he did believe in it, as he may very well have (I'm unclear about first century Jewish beliefs on the subject). I don't think he went up there to establish a religion either. Three out of four Gospels agree that Jesus was a pretty humble guy, not given to demagoguery. If he did let the Romans capture him (and there is apparently evidence to suggest he could have gotten away from them in Gethsemane but deliberately did not) it may have been because of something like this: Jesus is a well known figure and his followers are well known across the region. The corrupt Jewish elite are going to crucify him, but then people will remember his boundary breaking ways and anti-establishment principles in a way they might not otherwise. Jesus was going to be pursued if he ran. He would probably be forced to go into hiding and stop doing his thing if he wanted to survive, like Batman at the end of The Dark Knight. Jesus running away would not advance the greater good. Instead, he picked a very dramatic and painful death for himself, because he did not fear death, at least not as much as he may have feared that his ideas would be forgotten. After all, what has he to lose from death?

I happen to agree about the two-party system being bad for America, but at the same time I'm of the group that reads Obama's speeches and finds myself agreeing with basically everything he says. I have no reason to vote against Obama since I don't disagree with his policies. If I did it would be a protest against the two-party system, which sadly would probably have little effect, and at least for this election would be a bit counterproductive, since I'm vastly in favor of the current President anyway. I wonder how it would be possible to avoid the two party system. Unless a third party candidate caught on like Roosevelt in the thirties, I don't see it going anywhere. The idea of the GP or other third parties spending more time and effort than ever before getting their word out doesn't seem like a bad idea, but I doubt it'd work. Hmm....

Ladies and Gentlemen. So! I was raised Catholic. I was made to go to mass every week by my parents, and I rarely enjoyed it, finding little divinity in the drawn out reenactment of the Last Supper that is the Eucharist, and despite my liking for most of the Gospel stories and Sermons I found myself with low regard for the world of institutionalized religion. Furthering this set of ideals was my middle school social science and theology teacher, who was a grand example of the kind of person I admired - strong, mostly just, opinionated and focused on social justice- yet seemed very held back by his dogmatic beliefs. Accordingly, my beliefs were changing. I no longer believed Jesus was the "Son of God" and I told my mother so. I stopped going to Church and she stopped making me. Not only that, I became very disillusioned with most of Christianity, hearing story upon story, as I'm sure we all have, about homophobic, sexist and ignorant rich people who act more like Darth Vader ("I find your lack of faith disturbing") than Jesus. I was well on my way to becomming what I call a snarky atheist with nihilist leanings. This was when my father intervened. He wasn't a jerk about it. He just thought if I wasn't going to Church I should spend some time now and then taking a look at alternate religious views. We watched documentaries on Atheism, Christianity, the early Church, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto and other various religions, most of which I found very interesting, especially the alternate takes on Christianity. And then he gave me a book. It was a reconstructive look at Christianity he'd been given by a coworker by John Shelby Spong called A New Christianity for a New World. I loved it. It was amazing. This denial of theism which did not deny God or Jesus was something hirtherto inconcievable to me and I was absolutely enthralled. I spent my high school career as the only "believer in exile" I knew aside from my Dad, and had no complaints. I often felt a bit lonely between my snarky atheist friends and my mostly moderate and reasonable Christian friends. I love my friends, but it seemed there was nowhere that I could find like-minded people. So now I'm just starting college, have no friends up here, and I found this site and decided heck, I could possibly meet some like-minded people. Here's hoping!