What happened to the Scientologists?

[Detroitej72]

You're right... it's not a science book. But, if they are so tolerant of science, why did the catholic church spend almost 5 million in direct contributions to MiCause to stop the stem cell proposal last year?

Most of the groups that gave money are affiliated with the church, but not part of the hierarchy. Their reason for being against stem cell research is that they believe it will cause more abortions, which the church opposes because they view all life as sacred. I should think that is something folks of all religious faiths should believe in.

The Catholic Church is consistant in this belief, remember when the Pope called the war in Iraq immoral? They also are against the death penalty for the same reasons, all life is sacred.

I think they should be open to stem cell research, but obviosly I have no baring on what positions they hold since I am not part of the hierarchy.

For you to completely dismiss the Church is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They support quite a bit of great and moral causes throughout the world and if you choose to ignore them, that is your blinders getting the best of you.

The Catholic Church has done many injustices in the past, but in recent years, Pope John Paul II went to great lengths to apologize and try to seek amends. They may still have some views that are not to many folks liking, but they are, overall, a good organization.

BTW, you are spot on in regards to helpping the poor, per Matthew 25 quotes.

[MIRepublic]

Sstashmoo,

There is a "quote" option at the bottom right-hand corner of any post you which to quote. Please start using it.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "Things not really looking good for you there Tash."

Show me the verse where we are supposed to take care of those that simply refuse to take care of themselves. The Bible warns all through it about laziness, refusing blessing, idle hands, etc. It doesn't follow up by saying anything about anyone else taking care of them. They have made their bed. The Bible also mentions "be ye separate". As believers we are also supposed to be wise stewards and not aspire to be dumbasses. You want to hand your money to some guy that refuses to work, go for it. I gave that shit up a long time ago.

Quote: "For you to completely dismiss the Church is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They support quite a bit of great and moral causes throughout the world and if you choose to ignore them, that is your blinders getting the best of you."

You said it.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "Sstashmoo,

"There is a "quote" option at the bottom right-hand corner of any post you which to quote. Please start using it."

I honestly don't see what the big deal is with that. If it bothers you just ignore my posts.

[Detroitej72]

Sstash, you made reference to most homeless folks choose to live that way. That is somewhat inaccurate, many, if not most, are mentally ill and have a hard time taking care of themselves. We've done them no service by closing places like the Lafayette Clinic and the like.

Taking care of them is what is meant by the whole "as you do unto the least of my brother, you do unto me" statement.

[Sstashmoo]

I may need to rethink that.

[Detroitej72]

I may need to rethink that.

Anyone who calls themselves a Christian should. We must help out the less fortunate among society.

[cheddar bob]

Uh.. well, then if he created others, did they all eat the apple? If he created a whole bunch of adams and eves...shouldn't there be a race of immortals...immune from disease and not knowing of death?

Or did he create a bunch of fallen humans?



Assuming that is a dig against stimulus money doing nothing.. because thatis all I can seem to get from that nonsensical answer. ....that is a pretty cynical thing for a religious person to say. I mean , 5 million wont do much to help the homeless, might as well burn it fighting something that the vast majority of the state wants because our book of fables says it's a bad thing.

sstashmoo seems to be ducking you here.

Show me the verse where we are supposed to take care of those that simply refuse to take care of themselves. The Bible warns all through it about laziness, refusing blessing, idle hands, etc. It doesn't follow up by saying anything about anyone else taking care of them. They have made their bed. The Bible also mentions "be ye separate". As believers we are also supposed to be wise stewards and not aspire to be dumbasses

= the bible consistently contradicts itself.

I may need to rethink that.

=I'm not changing anything.

[Sstashmoo]

What are you, the referee?

[Gannon]

Nah, that implies impartiality and even-handedness in judgment.

Cheddar has glibly and enthusiastically yielded that a while ago!


I've enjoyed this conversation...and Sstash's honesty on the illuminations from the Book.


There are interpretations, then there is plain language...and my favorite mentor always encouraged us to take the plain language of Jesus/Yeshua over any complex additions of fractions of scripture. It surely makes things simple and pure and...well...easy to understand yet impossible to follow unless you DO have the Spirit of God flowing through you.


Of course, that tack bumps a bunch of the Pauline contradictions...something I'd puzzled deeply with until I began reading "James, the Brother of Jesus" by Robert Eisenman. He uses his extensive Dead Sea Scrolls research to conclusively prove that Paul was an agent of the Roman government, and probably the origin of much of the church's latter-day erroneous traditions and commentary and odd habits.


I also USED to wonder why the Catholic church and the powers of the state of Israel were SO active keeping the Dead Sea Scrolls from the public for most of my lifetime. They were afraid. Very afraid.


After reading Eisenman's take on things, now I know why. House of cards, the whole thing is...and I specifically do NOT mean the initial stories and teachings of Yeshua/Jesus, but the taking of those and bastardizing 'em until it all became the divisive and largely ineffective mess that Christianity is today.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "until it all became the divisive and largely ineffective mess that Christianity is today"

One man's junk is another man's treasure. I don't see it as a "mess" at all.

Re: Eisenman's book:

These dudes don't think much of it.

Commenting then on Eisenman's work in the same book, L.H. Schiffman [[professor at NYU and DSS expert) says of Eisenman:

• "What you essentially do is load on a whole lot of associative material that may or may not be parallel, and then deny all criteria of dating which specifies anything that we can possibly use -- one by one they're all written off -- then you take a fundamentally correct position [[that all this stuff has got to be reevaluated and requestioned) and turn it into a bunch of jumbled information, which has nothing to do with the subject at hand.... Thus theory presents the notion that the entire set of documents is talking about a certain period, whereas virtually everybody believes that it dates to another period. So you must simply write off all evidence which doesn't fit your view."

In his 1994 book titled "Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls", Schiffman goes on to say:

Second, the scrolls are not the documents of an early Christian sect. Contrary to claims by certain sensationalists, the scrolls never mention Jesus, John the Baptist, or James the Just, the "brother" of Jesus. Further, the scrolls in no way reflect Christian beliefs. The only way to make such an outrageous claim is to radically redefine Christianity to accord with the scrolls. In fact, the most recent carbon-14 testing has confirmed the dating that had already been established by paleography, which is the study of the shapes of Hebrew letters and of other ancient writing. Since all the material was composed before the rise of the early church, the Dead Sea Scrolls cannot refer to those events. [page xxi] He [Eisenman] has advocated the view that the scrolls are closely linked to early Christianity, an approach that has gained few adherents. [page 25]
A similar view has recently been espoused by some who wish to claim that the scrolls refer directly to the early Christian movement. This view, as I previously maintained, is impossible to accept on chronological grounds. [page 120]
It must be stressed at the outset that the scrolls contain no references to Christianity. Christianity is a movement that began as a Jewish sect and then developed into a separate religious group. Because the sectarian documents [i.e., Dead Sea Scrolls] were authored before the careers of John the Baptist and Jesus, the scrolls make no mention nor do they even allude to these New Testament figures -- not withstanding specious claims to the contrary.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Literature/eisenman.html

[gnome]

Gannon the Paulean influence in the dogma, the rituals, the churchiness of the catholic faith is spot on. Paul was a later-in-life convert, and as such he was a bit of a zealous in his zealotry. Keep in mind Paul was the rudder through some difficult times. His letters and teachings kept the herd of frightened cats herded. So if you were generous you could say that Paul was the steel in the church's backbone. If you weren't you could say that he was just a prick.

But prick or not, Paul taught about love. Some of it was tough love, but love nonetheless. It was later on, when Paulean concepts were translated in the more temporal demands of dogma that things get fugly.

[Gannon]

That may be the company line on everything, but after reading Eisenman's extensive treatise on some of the rare stuff that survived the Catholic/Jewish/British purgings of the archaeological record...especially in addition to the doubt instilled by the shenanigans around that decisive 325 a.d. [[or c.e.) forced meeting of the leadership by a very ambitious Constantine...even devout followers of the most strict of Pauline-influenced sects within the Christian tradition might honestly find an end to their apologies.


I'm just sayin'...weak mind and all.

[Sstashmoo]

Just whatever one chooses to believe, Noted scholars such as Schiffman say Eisenman's work CAN'T be correct. Many things he points to are inaccurate or do not exist at all. It's essentially another version of the Da Vinci Codes. Huge fabrication.

Why is no other faith being attacked? We don't see Judaism or Islam under such scrutiny. One must ask, what is the beef with Christianity?

[Lorax]

I really love listening to the sanctimonius who have a habit of quoting scripture as if it means anything.

People who live their lives picking and choosing from the bible, passages that they interpret to their own wishes and desires.

It's such a load of crap, this talk about not helping someone, regardless of how they got to where they are, by saying 'the bible told me so'- it's just so juvenile and backward.

There are hundreds of books you could quote from that would have far more meaning and relevance to living in a modern world than a 2000+ year old book of Jewish fairy tales.

Aesop's Tales would be better as a guide to life.

The Giving Tree is even a better read.

Religion is so damaged and discredited, and is really the root of all the political strife we have in the world today. It's time to give it a proper burial and start thinking like adults. Following some religious dogma is about as 11th century as it gets.

[Sstashmoo]

""Religion is so damaged and discredited,""

And that was on purpose.

""and is really the root of all the political strife we have in the world today. It's time to give it a proper burial and start thinking like adults.""

What a laugh. You wouldn't want to live in this world without religion. You think you do, think harder.

Kim Jong Il would look like Mary Poppins.

[Gannon]

Sorry Sstash, I wrote that before seeing your post...this 'jump to last post' feature be damned...lemme chew a bit before posting a reply.


But off the cuff it seems that a premise of nowadays Christianity exactly fitting a series of archaeological documents written hundreds of years before the gutting and destruction of anything that disagreed with the Council of Nicea's [[read: Constantine's) agenda [[they almost voted out the book of James, who was referred to in other correlated historic record texts including the Pauline letters as the LEADER of the Jerusalem church!) would be quite the fantasy!


Why would anyone argue so weakly...and use carbon-dating with an error range of plus/minus 40 years...unless, of course, they had their own book and/or religion to defend. Heh.

More recently, the laboratories try to quote the overall uncertainty, which is determined from control samples of known age and verified by international intercomparison exercises [6]. In 2008, a typical uncertainty better than ±40 radiocarbon years can be expected for samples younger than 10,000 years. This, however, is only a small part of the uncertainty of the final age determination [[see section Calibration below).

But that is merely Wiki...other websites I found challenge the validity of radio-carbon dating from any one of a number of angles. This one, for instance. Not a religious or anti-religious comment anywhere on that site, they seem unbiased enough.



Hey, I've gotta go see another forumer play at the Old Miami...I'm late. I'll put some teeth into your example later.

Cheers

[GREENTROIT]

I don't know why anyone would ever ridicule religion [[sarcasm)...

[ThaFuzz]

'nuff said!

[Sstashmoo]

Yeah you're outnumbered, your point?