Agree, with one exception. All religions are based on man created myths.it is the best Social control tool ever invented, no need for a paid police force, or an army, rather its believers willingly become fodder for Jihads and wars of aggression.
Agree, with one exception. All religions are based on man created myths.It is the best Social control tool ever invented, no need for a paid police force, or an army, rather its believers willingly become fodder for Jihads and wars of aggression.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Attributed to Voltaire, but uncertain as there are several variants.
Fundamentalists all seem to have a blood lust for atrocity - at least historically. I know there are "good" people in churches....unwittingly giving cover to the bad ones. The history of the church is pretty clearly violent and brutal. This isn't about a belief or non-belief in God. It's about inventing a system of patriarchal rule and attributing it to "God."
I have a pocket voltaire. Words are alphabetized, I will look it up, but damn he is right.
The thing about good Christians and Muslims are the same case I have about "good cops"
If cops tolerate bad cops, by saying nothing because of the blue line, then silence is consent and there are no good cops.
And you are right about it not being a belief in god, but it's not inventing the patriarchy it is maintaining, rebuilding and enforcing the patriarchy.
I can't think of a belief system aside from Wiccans, that isn't patriarchal.
The need for males to dominate women is as old as mankind itself, doesn't' make it right, it makes it archaic, outdated, outmoded, because the species has advanced beyond the point,
where a physically strong male is needed to protect the family and tribe.
IMO it is also psychosexual, weak males, wannabe's, have to posture, parade around like peacocks, or banty roosters, clucking and make noise to prove to others, especially females, that they are dominant and thus the females submissive, otherwise they can't erect and copulate and thus reproduce.
Again we should have moved beyond that, as there are millions of examples of men who aren't like that, but those that are intellectual and emotional midgets can't, partly because of brainwashing by father, friends, church and media. Hollywood has been a great source of fostering an artificial image of manhood, the likes of John Wayne playing a tough hero, but never served in the military, alongside other actors who have, is an example.
Octavian, who named himself Gaius Augustus Caesar, was a brutal cad, he issued a decree called the Pater Familia, it actually could have been extracted from Leviticus. It made the husband the tyrant of a family with life and death authority over wife and children, meaning he could kill them for disobedience or unfaithfulness.
That edict passed into the Cult of Rome, which became the Catholic church, and from there to Protestantism, in large part because of the son of Gerard Cohen who changed his name to Cauvin and his religion to Catholic so he could find work in 16th Century France. Gerard got a position as secretary to a Bishop, and then embezzled the Bishops money, was discovered and excommunicated.
Excommunication meant that your property was forfeit by the Church and your person legally killed by anyone. So Gerard fled to Switzerland with his son Jean Cauvin, who took notice of what is called the reformation, and created his own religion based on Orthodox Judaism, with a twist to Christianity, called Calvinism. Like Orthodox Judaism there is a belief in pre destination, that a good Jew (or Christian, especially among Presbyterians) are born as elect or damned, and you can discern the ones favored by their god, by their wealth and status. A poor Jew is doomed like the Fiddler on the Roof, the only way to prove you are not favored by god, for Jews and Christians is by becoming wealthy, Thus the Prosperity Doctrine, which convinces rubes to give up their hard earned money, and future retirement, so some slick ass dude can buy Rolex watches, wear Brioni Suits and fly around in a private airplane.
Same stupid people that idolize Trump as their patriarchal savior.
There is even a more deadly verzion called Dominionism, or Christian Reconstruction, founded
R J Rushdoony and Ted Cruz's father Rafael. It uses Genesis as justification that man, not women, shall rule over the earth, and that their god will save them from annihilation .
They wish to make America and Canada a theocracy, it is interdenominational.. Catholics and Protestants belong. They want to create a society based on Mosaic laws (613 of them in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) , except for those they find inconvenient like eating shell fish or wearing clothing of mixed fabric., they would execute rebellious teenagers, gays and adulterers and less than faithful Christians, and there preferred method is stoing, because stones are free (very libertarian) https://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/fundienazis/royal_race.htm if you google it, the Chalcedon Foundation (Dominionists) are well aware that that site exposes them so they have created a plethora of websites to cover up and obfuscate, as well as evangelize, their religion. I had to google Royal Race of the Redeemed Sullivan County, to find this site, because just googling Royal Race of the Redeemed, all I came up with is b.s. and apologetics. Same tactic as used by Scientology so that tells you something.
And...thanks for the info. Some I knew, but not in the detail you've provided. These people are mentally ill and very dangerous. So-called "liberal Christians" will rarely hold them accountable or call them out, which is why I blame them as well.
I knew what they were from the age of six, when a Sunday School teacher told me that heathens who had never even heard of Jesus were all going to hell because they didn't believe in him. She then proceeded to tell me I must save all my pennies to give to missionaries who would go tell them about Jesus and save them. I walked away from her suddenly realizing it was all a line of crap. Some people never pass the age of six in their intellectual development.
Your parents must be Southern Baptists, because my uncle who was Southern Baptist Preacher and a racist, homophobic, misogynistic adultering asshole (forced me to be baptized at 17 because the church elders were scandalized by my behavior and the fact that I was not "born again", he also said that Jesus drank grape juice, when their Bible clearly said he turned water into wine. Which by the way was the trick of the Greek god of Wine, Dionysos, (actually means son of God, the Latin word for god, Dios, is their rendition of Zeus. So the Jewish apostles spread through the Roman World spreading a religion based on Dionysos ( Bacchus).
You got it right. My mother was Southern Baptist, my stepfather, a lapsed Catholic who converted at my mother's insistence. Neither of them were church goers, except very rarely. I went regularly, sang in the choir and often was at church several times a week. It was the only place I was allowed to go as a teen. I only saw my stepfather go one time - when he was baptized. Christian rituals are derivative from pagan rites and rituals. The Catholics integrated a lot of these rituals into Christianity to bring pagans into the fold. Christmas was never the birth time of Jesus (if He ever existed in the material world); estimates by historians say He was likely born in late summer. But the winter solstice is ~Dec 21, a huge pagan holiday. I'm not pagan, but I like holidays, so my family celebrates on the solstice. Easter was originally Ä’ostre and the Spring Equinox, another pagan holiday. There are others - almost all of them, actually.
I've read and I do believe that the Christian contribution to humanity's moral progress has been the concept of confession and forgiveness. Protestants prefer to skip the confession part and I suspect the Catholic Church has the right of it - confessing ones shortcomings to another helps put one's own behaviors at the forefront. In earlier times, once God or the Gods were peeved at you, that was it. Game over. The idea of being born again gives people a chance to move on from mistakes they truly regret and do better. Evangelical/Modern Christianity seems to desire the "I'm forgiven, so I'll just move on" part, without ever considering the "do-better" part. They've reduced the potential for transcendence to a series of "thou shalt nots," which, surprise!, are mostly applied to things other people do that they don't personally like. I'm not Christian; if I were, I'd lean towards Catholicism, despite its bloody and brutal history. At least there's some history and consistency there, as well as some beautiful rituals. For example, while they are anti-choice, they are also anti-death penalty (now, anyway, not in the past) - consistency. Protestantism contains a mess of extremism and outright nutty ideas. Pastors adhere to no common canon and often make things up as they go along. While Catholics do beat their children, Protestantism turns beating children into an art form with the whole "spare the rod, spoil the child" business. Cults all over the USA are victimizing children, legally, as we converse here. I've seen and experienced real brutality from this mindset. When I confronted my mother about the violence visited upon me and my siblings (violence never used by her own parents), her only response was "I did the best I could and Jesus forgives me," never bothering to ask for forgiveness from the those she harmed or to even acknowledging that harm. I'm likely biased, but that, to me, is the essence of Evangelicalism. There is precious little self-awareness or self-reflection involved.
Let me start by explaining why Christmas and the Bacchanalia are celebrated on Dec 25th
After the summer solstice the sun , from the point of view of the ancients, starts it's descent into the grave. The ancients, as far as I know, thought they earth was flat, and the place that the sun went every night was the underworld or the grave.
After the solstice they days got progressively shorter, and by Dec 21st there is the winter solstice All of this you and everyone else knows.
However the ancients, neolithic peoples, who were farmers knowing nothing of celestial mechanics and thinking that the sun, moon and stars were gods. (ex: Mercury the messenger, has, what appears from earth, a retrograde orbit, meaning that it appears to move between Mars and Jupiter hence messenger of the gods). Were fearful that the sun was dying and descending into the grave. This would occasion pleas, sacrifices (sometimes human). To prove that they loved "god".
Then on Dec 21st the sun stopped it's descent, lay three days, in it's grave, then praise ye Ia (Ya) or Halleluia , the son arose from the grave and started it's ascent again And there was tthe promise that so long as the son rises, there will be everlasting life. So every Dec 25th there was a massive celebration, the Greeks called Dionysia and the Romans the Bacchanalia.
Originally Dionysus was the Greek god of fertility. Later, he came to be known chiefly as the god of wine and pleasure. The Romans called him Bacchus. Dionysus was the son of the supreme god Zeus and Semele, the daughter of a king.
In Greek Dionysos (Dionysus) means son of god (god being Dios, (familiar huh, as in Gracia Dios) we know Dios as Zeus.
The Roman's chief god was named Jupiter, not Zeus, I guess there is a limit to how much you can crib from another culture, so you integrate theirs with yours.
There is one characteristic that Dionysos and Jesus have in common. Dionysos was the god of wine, and both are said to have changed water into wine. (Actually the Greek philosopher Heron invented a vessel that you could fill with water, then pour at as wine, via a hidden chamber.
And there you have the reason behind Dec 25th. I agree though that the cult of Rome needed something to supplant the Bacchanalia, so it preempted it with Christmans, leaving them a quandary later on, as to how to celebrate the birth.
The polytheists providedd a solution, coopt the fertility rites of the Greeks, Celts, Germans, a rite that often included human sacrifice, and took place in late spring, when the ground warmed enough to sow seed. The hare (Easter bunny ) was the totem of the fertility rite, because of its prolific reproduction. The Goddess that brought fertility was Easter in the north of Europe, Also known as Astarte, Astar, Ashera, Esther. and to the pre Islamic Arabs as al Uzza.
Different names for the planet Venus, besides fertility she was the most fearsome and feared goddess of War in the pre Roman world.
I want nothing to do with the Catholic cult. I spent 7 years as a trad Catholic. I too converted to marry, at first cognitive dissonance took over and I became a traditional, ()Latin mass) Catholic even joined the Catholic Truth, subscribed to the Wayfarer (a trad Catholic paper, that called Pope John Paul II, the anti Christ.
It took some time for the nonsense to wear off. I must confess I enjoyed Latin Masses, sang in a choir even, (Latin songs), but when the priest, after finishing his homily, said "That is the word of god". my prefrontal cortex was being nudged into awakening, and I realized that these people who stood in front of a congregation lecturing them were using something they called God as a marionette, I prefer the modern term of sock puppet.
The true religion is the "TRUTH", whatever it is. We can all believe whatever we want to believe, but if it is not true it is worthless. Liars are allergic to the truth, so they create phony religions to placate themselves with. IMHO, Buddhism is more of a philosophy, I consider that the closest to the truth. God is good, phony religions are evil, which is pretty much all of them.
Belief in God is a choice. It really doesn't have anything to do with day-to-day life. Religion. in the main, has little to do with this choice. It's a system of control and grift. That's all it's ever been from the earliest days when priests told people they had to sacrifice their children or the sun wouldn't rise the next day.
The believers and the non-believers should all agree that God is good. If there is no God like the atheist believe, it won't matter anyway. Just getting the Trump cult members to acknowledge God is good, would be a giant step. Quite frankly I'm agnostic or a none, and only care about what can be proven. We need to all unite against evil, which is liars and lies, that is probably why I dislike the GOP so much, honesty doesn't matter to them, that makes them evil not neutral.
Agree, with one exception. All religions are based on man created myths.It is the best Social control tool ever invented, no need for a paid police force, or an army, rather its believers willingly become fodder for Jihads and wars of aggression.
Suggest read if you can find a copy
https://www.amazon.com/Word-controlled-humans-brief-history/dp/091475212X
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Attributed to Voltaire, but uncertain as there are several variants.
Fundamentalists all seem to have a blood lust for atrocity - at least historically. I know there are "good" people in churches....unwittingly giving cover to the bad ones. The history of the church is pretty clearly violent and brutal. This isn't about a belief or non-belief in God. It's about inventing a system of patriarchal rule and attributing it to "God."
I have a pocket voltaire. Words are alphabetized, I will look it up, but damn he is right.
The thing about good Christians and Muslims are the same case I have about "good cops"
If cops tolerate bad cops, by saying nothing because of the blue line, then silence is consent and there are no good cops.
And you are right about it not being a belief in god, but it's not inventing the patriarchy it is maintaining, rebuilding and enforcing the patriarchy.
I can't think of a belief system aside from Wiccans, that isn't patriarchal.
The need for males to dominate women is as old as mankind itself, doesn't' make it right, it makes it archaic, outdated, outmoded, because the species has advanced beyond the point,
where a physically strong male is needed to protect the family and tribe.
IMO it is also psychosexual, weak males, wannabe's, have to posture, parade around like peacocks, or banty roosters, clucking and make noise to prove to others, especially females, that they are dominant and thus the females submissive, otherwise they can't erect and copulate and thus reproduce.
Again we should have moved beyond that, as there are millions of examples of men who aren't like that, but those that are intellectual and emotional midgets can't, partly because of brainwashing by father, friends, church and media. Hollywood has been a great source of fostering an artificial image of manhood, the likes of John Wayne playing a tough hero, but never served in the military, alongside other actors who have, is an example.
Octavian, who named himself Gaius Augustus Caesar, was a brutal cad, he issued a decree called the Pater Familia, it actually could have been extracted from Leviticus. It made the husband the tyrant of a family with life and death authority over wife and children, meaning he could kill them for disobedience or unfaithfulness.
That edict passed into the Cult of Rome, which became the Catholic church, and from there to Protestantism, in large part because of the son of Gerard Cohen who changed his name to Cauvin and his religion to Catholic so he could find work in 16th Century France. Gerard got a position as secretary to a Bishop, and then embezzled the Bishops money, was discovered and excommunicated.
Excommunication meant that your property was forfeit by the Church and your person legally killed by anyone. So Gerard fled to Switzerland with his son Jean Cauvin, who took notice of what is called the reformation, and created his own religion based on Orthodox Judaism, with a twist to Christianity, called Calvinism. Like Orthodox Judaism there is a belief in pre destination, that a good Jew (or Christian, especially among Presbyterians) are born as elect or damned, and you can discern the ones favored by their god, by their wealth and status. A poor Jew is doomed like the Fiddler on the Roof, the only way to prove you are not favored by god, for Jews and Christians is by becoming wealthy, Thus the Prosperity Doctrine, which convinces rubes to give up their hard earned money, and future retirement, so some slick ass dude can buy Rolex watches, wear Brioni Suits and fly around in a private airplane.
Same stupid people that idolize Trump as their patriarchal savior.
There is even a more deadly verzion called Dominionism, or Christian Reconstruction, founded
R J Rushdoony and Ted Cruz's father Rafael. It uses Genesis as justification that man, not women, shall rule over the earth, and that their god will save them from annihilation .
They wish to make America and Canada a theocracy, it is interdenominational.. Catholics and Protestants belong. They want to create a society based on Mosaic laws (613 of them in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) , except for those they find inconvenient like eating shell fish or wearing clothing of mixed fabric., they would execute rebellious teenagers, gays and adulterers and less than faithful Christians, and there preferred method is stoing, because stones are free (very libertarian) https://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/fundienazis/royal_race.htm if you google it, the Chalcedon Foundation (Dominionists) are well aware that that site exposes them so they have created a plethora of websites to cover up and obfuscate, as well as evangelize, their religion. I had to google Royal Race of the Redeemed Sullivan County, to find this site, because just googling Royal Race of the Redeemed, all I came up with is b.s. and apologetics. Same tactic as used by Scientology so that tells you something.
And...thanks for the info. Some I knew, but not in the detail you've provided. These people are mentally ill and very dangerous. So-called "liberal Christians" will rarely hold them accountable or call them out, which is why I blame them as well.
I knew what they were from the age of six, when a Sunday School teacher told me that heathens who had never even heard of Jesus were all going to hell because they didn't believe in him. She then proceeded to tell me I must save all my pennies to give to missionaries who would go tell them about Jesus and save them. I walked away from her suddenly realizing it was all a line of crap. Some people never pass the age of six in their intellectual development.
Your parents must be Southern Baptists, because my uncle who was Southern Baptist Preacher and a racist, homophobic, misogynistic adultering asshole (forced me to be baptized at 17 because the church elders were scandalized by my behavior and the fact that I was not "born again", he also said that Jesus drank grape juice, when their Bible clearly said he turned water into wine. Which by the way was the trick of the Greek god of Wine, Dionysos, (actually means son of God, the Latin word for god, Dios, is their rendition of Zeus. So the Jewish apostles spread through the Roman World spreading a religion based on Dionysos ( Bacchus).
You got it right. My mother was Southern Baptist, my stepfather, a lapsed Catholic who converted at my mother's insistence. Neither of them were church goers, except very rarely. I went regularly, sang in the choir and often was at church several times a week. It was the only place I was allowed to go as a teen. I only saw my stepfather go one time - when he was baptized. Christian rituals are derivative from pagan rites and rituals. The Catholics integrated a lot of these rituals into Christianity to bring pagans into the fold. Christmas was never the birth time of Jesus (if He ever existed in the material world); estimates by historians say He was likely born in late summer. But the winter solstice is ~Dec 21, a huge pagan holiday. I'm not pagan, but I like holidays, so my family celebrates on the solstice. Easter was originally Ä’ostre and the Spring Equinox, another pagan holiday. There are others - almost all of them, actually.
I've read and I do believe that the Christian contribution to humanity's moral progress has been the concept of confession and forgiveness. Protestants prefer to skip the confession part and I suspect the Catholic Church has the right of it - confessing ones shortcomings to another helps put one's own behaviors at the forefront. In earlier times, once God or the Gods were peeved at you, that was it. Game over. The idea of being born again gives people a chance to move on from mistakes they truly regret and do better. Evangelical/Modern Christianity seems to desire the "I'm forgiven, so I'll just move on" part, without ever considering the "do-better" part. They've reduced the potential for transcendence to a series of "thou shalt nots," which, surprise!, are mostly applied to things other people do that they don't personally like. I'm not Christian; if I were, I'd lean towards Catholicism, despite its bloody and brutal history. At least there's some history and consistency there, as well as some beautiful rituals. For example, while they are anti-choice, they are also anti-death penalty (now, anyway, not in the past) - consistency. Protestantism contains a mess of extremism and outright nutty ideas. Pastors adhere to no common canon and often make things up as they go along. While Catholics do beat their children, Protestantism turns beating children into an art form with the whole "spare the rod, spoil the child" business. Cults all over the USA are victimizing children, legally, as we converse here. I've seen and experienced real brutality from this mindset. When I confronted my mother about the violence visited upon me and my siblings (violence never used by her own parents), her only response was "I did the best I could and Jesus forgives me," never bothering to ask for forgiveness from the those she harmed or to even acknowledging that harm. I'm likely biased, but that, to me, is the essence of Evangelicalism. There is precious little self-awareness or self-reflection involved.
Seems we share experiences somewhat
Let me start by explaining why Christmas and the Bacchanalia are celebrated on Dec 25th
After the summer solstice the sun , from the point of view of the ancients, starts it's descent into the grave. The ancients, as far as I know, thought they earth was flat, and the place that the sun went every night was the underworld or the grave.
After the solstice they days got progressively shorter, and by Dec 21st there is the winter solstice All of this you and everyone else knows.
However the ancients, neolithic peoples, who were farmers knowing nothing of celestial mechanics and thinking that the sun, moon and stars were gods. (ex: Mercury the messenger, has, what appears from earth, a retrograde orbit, meaning that it appears to move between Mars and Jupiter hence messenger of the gods). Were fearful that the sun was dying and descending into the grave. This would occasion pleas, sacrifices (sometimes human). To prove that they loved "god".
Then on Dec 21st the sun stopped it's descent, lay three days, in it's grave, then praise ye Ia (Ya) or Halleluia , the son arose from the grave and started it's ascent again And there was tthe promise that so long as the son rises, there will be everlasting life. So every Dec 25th there was a massive celebration, the Greeks called Dionysia and the Romans the Bacchanalia.
Originally Dionysus was the Greek god of fertility. Later, he came to be known chiefly as the god of wine and pleasure. The Romans called him Bacchus. Dionysus was the son of the supreme god Zeus and Semele, the daughter of a king.
In Greek Dionysos (Dionysus) means son of god (god being Dios, (familiar huh, as in Gracia Dios) we know Dios as Zeus.
The Roman's chief god was named Jupiter, not Zeus, I guess there is a limit to how much you can crib from another culture, so you integrate theirs with yours.
There is one characteristic that Dionysos and Jesus have in common. Dionysos was the god of wine, and both are said to have changed water into wine. (Actually the Greek philosopher Heron invented a vessel that you could fill with water, then pour at as wine, via a hidden chamber.
And there you have the reason behind Dec 25th. I agree though that the cult of Rome needed something to supplant the Bacchanalia, so it preempted it with Christmans, leaving them a quandary later on, as to how to celebrate the birth.
The polytheists providedd a solution, coopt the fertility rites of the Greeks, Celts, Germans, a rite that often included human sacrifice, and took place in late spring, when the ground warmed enough to sow seed. The hare (Easter bunny ) was the totem of the fertility rite, because of its prolific reproduction. The Goddess that brought fertility was Easter in the north of Europe, Also known as Astarte, Astar, Ashera, Esther. and to the pre Islamic Arabs as al Uzza.
Different names for the planet Venus, besides fertility she was the most fearsome and feared goddess of War in the pre Roman world.
I want nothing to do with the Catholic cult. I spent 7 years as a trad Catholic. I too converted to marry, at first cognitive dissonance took over and I became a traditional, ()Latin mass) Catholic even joined the Catholic Truth, subscribed to the Wayfarer (a trad Catholic paper, that called Pope John Paul II, the anti Christ.
It took some time for the nonsense to wear off. I must confess I enjoyed Latin Masses, sang in a choir even, (Latin songs), but when the priest, after finishing his homily, said "That is the word of god". my prefrontal cortex was being nudged into awakening, and I realized that these people who stood in front of a congregation lecturing them were using something they called God as a marionette, I prefer the modern term of sock puppet.
The true religion is the "TRUTH", whatever it is. We can all believe whatever we want to believe, but if it is not true it is worthless. Liars are allergic to the truth, so they create phony religions to placate themselves with. IMHO, Buddhism is more of a philosophy, I consider that the closest to the truth. God is good, phony religions are evil, which is pretty much all of them.
Belief in God is a choice. It really doesn't have anything to do with day-to-day life. Religion. in the main, has little to do with this choice. It's a system of control and grift. That's all it's ever been from the earliest days when priests told people they had to sacrifice their children or the sun wouldn't rise the next day.
The believers and the non-believers should all agree that God is good. If there is no God like the atheist believe, it won't matter anyway. Just getting the Trump cult members to acknowledge God is good, would be a giant step. Quite frankly I'm agnostic or a none, and only care about what can be proven. We need to all unite against evil, which is liars and lies, that is probably why I dislike the GOP so much, honesty doesn't matter to them, that makes them evil not neutral.