And of course its 'pick and mix', it's a several thousand year old document.

I am very familiar with Buddhist superstitions and why you think I would exonerate it as being free from them baffles me a little.

I have tried to study as much as I could and can from many religions. Sometimes you can't absorb it all at once and often times the stuff is so remarkably silly it almost insults your intellect to be giving it your time.

...but the Bible is just so darn thick:listening:

The old judaic God was about obediance more than love, a message that Christ reverses. The old testament has some wonderful, beuatiful and wise things in it, but it also has brutal, illogical and misguided things.

I feel there is a new generation christian propaganda ensuing.

I often hear Christians say god is love, but it is clear they have never read the bible, of if they have they completely ignore the parts where god is condemning some innocent person for the crimes of someone else. Or issuing death orders onto people for minor offenses.

The only way the religion gets new Christians is by indoctrinating children but it doesn't use the bible to do it, but instead it uses some one liners of half truths.

It is not until they get older if they have a curiosity and actually read the bible that they become atheists.

So with this happening and the fact that Christianity is slowly dying

it means that we are on the threshold of a last ditch effort for Christians to maintain their religion.

The only way it can do this is to reinvent itself and I see this starting to happen.

Call me paranoid or retarded or an idiot but the creationist christian is a modern branch of the religion.

It was an uprising to confront scientific findings which painted christian thought back into backward bronze age thinking.

So the revival came rejecting all science that contradicts biblical messages. The irony is they ONLY object to the science that shows their religious thought to be wrong. They NEVER object to any other science at all. How could science only be wrong when it comes to concepts that involve religion? That doesn't seem odd at all?

Jesus criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children as required by Old Testament law. (See Ex.21:15, Lev.20:9, Dt.21:18-21) 7:9-10

Mark 7

Clean and Unclean

1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. 3(The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.[a]) 5So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?"
6He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" 'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'[b] 8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
9And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions! 10For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,'[d] and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'[e] 11But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
14Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "[f]
17After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body."

20He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' 21For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' "

Actually, I have to say that, Jesus probably was not Jew. (Read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary and History of Adoption Christianity). The other point is that he probably didn't exist at all. At least, he obviously could not be author of all what was ascribed to him.
The gospels were written in Greek, and I think they perform mixture of two traditions: Greek, philosophical, and Jewish, legalist.
I think also that Christ or those who composed gospels wanted to attract as much adherents as possible amongst Jews and they rearranged old testament therefor. It has always been very often to attribute one's own teaching to a famous person (Plato did the same).

Technically speaking, there's no proof whatsoever of Jesus' existence. Not even those who crucified him noted any such crucifixion.

I'm just wondering, how can you know that you pick the right things to belive in? I thought religions were supposed to be a bit...lasting. I think I'll have to discuss this with the only christian guy I know. And I must admit, I haven't read whole the new testament, I'll get there, but the Bible is just so darn thick:listening:

The thing that surprises me always is that those western intellectuals incline to regard Buddhism as "intellectual" religion. For example, both Einstein and Nietzsche called Buddhism "the religion of the future" if I am not mistaking, whereas Christianity is deemed to be out-dated. And they swallow all those superstitions, go to India or Tibet, or Thailand, become monks etc. "There is no prophet in his homeland"

One thing is unclear for me: how canst thou speak of Christian love and yet justify crimes of church? The idea of thy previous posts that violence perfomed by church was an adequate reply to distortion of heresies smells a lot like utilitarianism. Is it sometimes reasonable to forget about Love? But if yes, then love is not the highest good anymore...

Wait, I'm sorry, no proof?!?!! What the hell do you call all the various gospels? Do they not count as proof then?

I am no utilitarian. I think that killing in any cause is wrong. However I think that sometimes it is the least of all evils. That may seem like a narrow distinction, but if you think about it a utilitarian says that if it was the best option killing would be a good whereas I see it as an evil neccesitated by a fallen world.

To be honest, there were some supernatural things attributed to Socrates (recall his daemon).

That's a totally spurious point as far as I see it. Socrates' daemon is a belief attributed to Socrates (assuming he meant "something" to mean daemon, and that he meant it to mean something other than a metaphore for conscience), not an episode of his life that is mythological in character.

Just because Socrates might have believed in something supernatural, or used supernatural metaphores in his teaching, does not mean that he himself was anything other than human does it?

Don't try to equal Socrates' daemon to conscience as many moral philosophers tried to do. For every one who's read Plato and accounts of many other historians and philosophers, it is obvious that Socrates did experience some sort of divine intereference (or interpreted it as such) in his life.

Surely not consience made him sit when he wanted to go away....

And some authors also tried to mythologised Socrates' personality as being god's prophet.

Why not? It regularly makes people do or not rather more complex things.

I refuse to accept that the whole of Christendom - and that is what our civilization was called until quite recently - was founded on a fable.

(Biblical fundamentalism is in any case not accepted by any mainstream denominations and is a literal perversion of the truth. The fruit of a uniquely American kind of stupidity.)

[Eastern Orthodoxy] is much nearer to the Eastern traditions that Catholic or Protestantism.

The problem with the Western world generally is that it has all been externalised, projected outward into institutions and the world and the structure of the universe. The more I read and practise the more I realise that only the inner meaning has any real value, and it is very elusive, precious and rare. You have to learn to be quiet and get out of the way. It takes a lot of doing (or not-doing:-).

Wait, I'm sorry, no proof?!?!! What the hell do you call all the various gospels? Do they not count as proof then?

Here is one very simple argument for the historical accuracy of the accounts- they were written in different places across the world- indeed one christian community was founded as far away as India. And yet the central message of Christianity- that Jesus was the son of God, was crucifyed and rose from the dead is agreed upon by all of them.

As for the greek philosophy two things. Yes much has been added and there is nothing wrong with that, if Christ hadn't wanted us to rreach our own conclusions and develop theology on our own he would have just given us the holy book direct from God, and like Islam christianity would be utterly bound to a stifiling message. The second point is that Jerusalem was part of the roman world, and Christ and his disciples, many of who were well educated, would have been well aware of greek philosophy.

But Chrisitainity is lasting, and the fact that we can develop and come to greater understanding of the scripture is part of the reason for that. I didn't say the bible was pick and mix, I said the old testament was pick and mix. I think that there are clear limits to the extent to which we can interptet scripture- I personally believe in the literal truth of most of the miracles in the new testament, and I think that some in the old testament may well have been true.

Buddhist thinking sometimes borders nihilism too closely for my taste, but I do find it very appealing as a social construct.

Buddhist thinking sometimes borders nihilism too closely for my taste