(05-25-2017 08:54 PM)Blaster Wrote:  Pagan Origins of Easter

You know, I'll defer to Mage. There is a significant amount of pagan influence in Christianity. That can't be discredited. The holy days all fall on particular days of interest that relate to celestial timings.

However, the level of pagan influence is more on a spectrum. The most influence is found in Catholic and Orthodox churches and this lessens the further you go down on the protestant side.

I do think Mage overstates pagan influence and I wasn't trying to dispute your point about the distinction between Catholics and Protestants.

The lore is similar to what came before.

Jesus however was a bit different being in my opinion a true saint. Christianity also gave value and worth to all life, it said something which was revolutionary at the time - the life of a slave or a poor man is worth as much as the life of a wealthy ruler.

In addition it gave a message of a loving forgiving God to humanity - also quite uncommon.

What was spun as lore around him is in my opinion not that important. The core of the teachings is very positive. I would say the same about Buddha.

Mohammed and Islam is on a wholly different level - it is abject evil, that just copied some texts from the Torah and bible. Sometimes they even copied parts of the passages which do not make sense. For example this one verse that is forever quoted -



First of all the term innocent means in Islamic terms something else than in our terms. Innocent is not a 5yo Christian girl. Not innocent is anyone who did mischief and mischief according to Islam is anyone who refuses to be subjugated to Islam (by paying tax and feel himself subdued) or refuses to convert. So killing 1 mio. non-Muslim children at a concert would be not killing innocents, but just killing non-innocent mischief makers.

In addition the quote taken was from the Torah:





Essentially the story about the killing of "all of humanity" was meant that after Cain killed Abel, then he did not kill just Abel, but all the countless progeny that his children would have. The story only makes sense from that viewpoint and one could say this to be true, since someone in the year 4000 BC could indeed sire entire cities and towns with some of his DNA in it.

Religion may vary over the times and ages. Truth and spiritual experiences of the God-seekers are absolute. There is not a different moral and ethical guideline for the Muslims and the Christians, but Mohammed tells Muslims that there is. That is the biggest difference. Christians broke the divine law by torturing heretics during the inquisition and they broke the divine law by burning witches. But those deeds were not really taken from New Testament scripture or Jesus.

Islamic transgressions of divine law - they are taken from the Satanic Verses of the Quran and from Mohammed. His entire life was a constant breaking of divine laws. That shitshow is not comparable to Christianity and should disappear together with the Cult of Baal and the Aztec Heart-cutters of the sun-cult.

Humanity can live with Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism on a secular level - it cannot live with Islam for a prolonged period and prosper. That is the big difference.

Islam is more akin to the Old Testament than th New Testament. Probably similar to the Talmud as well.

(05-26-2017 05:15 AM)Chris Brown Wrote:  Islam is more akin to the Old Testament than th New Testament. Probably similar to the Talmud as well.

Actually it is far worse than the Torah. As for the Talmud - yes, but at least the Talmud has a different form of supremacism.

There is even a funny theory about Islam. Robert Spencer in his research makes the claim that Islam was created by Jewish tribe, who branched off in the area and got this cult running. Of course it was designed for war and conquest, but it may indeed be a spin-off cult that diverged from a Jewish tribe living in the area, since the biggest religion in the Mecca/Medina area were Jews.

It may be something akin to some extremist Christian cults, albeit a very successful one since the dominant tribes and powers in the region did not recognize the very real danger of it. The Persians should have wiped it out in the early stages - would have saved us some trouble now.

Allah is a master and his believers are his slaves. Jehova is a father and his people are his sons.

As other point on this thread have pointed out, I've always thought Islam and Judaism (at least as it appears in the Old Testament) are more similar to each other then they are to Christianity.

- Both religions place a lot more emphasis on ritual purity such as the emphasis on maintaining a specific diet, halal and kosher are near identical. In Christianity on the other hand in the very beginning of the religion when many of Christ's followers were still alive and kicking you already had a debate on how important rituals such as shunning "unclean' foods and circumcision was with the idea that ultimately they are of no importance.

- Neither religion has a prominent monastic element like Christianity does.

- Both religions see the Trinity in Christianity as a defilement of pure unbridled monotheism.

^And both deny Jesus divinity. Both stone adulterers. Both Islam and Judaism circumsise the males. Both have weird ass beards. There is no celibacy involved. Both advocate massacre of enemies i.e Gideon and Moab. Yahweh and Allah are war gods.

For anyone willing to compare Jesus vs Muhammad and Christianity vs Islam I suggest this link with a neat comparison in table format (scroll down a bit):


http://thereligionofpeace.com/pages/arti...ammad.aspx

I am not a Christian but the comparison literately brought tears to my eyes.

Wasnt Charlemagnes brand of Christianity similar to Mohammeds? Didnt the Catholic church tortue and kill for centuries?

(05-27-2017 11:23 AM)Chris Brown Wrote:  Wasnt Charlemagnes brand of Christianity similar to Mohammeds? Didnt the Catholic church tortue and kill for centuries?

Get out of this.

There is no "brand of Christianity" based on Jesus and the scripture that rulers have used.
The Catholic church went apeshit only at times when they had been mixed with worldly power and popes and cardinals could buy their positions. There were popes who had veritable orgies in the Vatican.

Don't pin this in Christianity, because you will be hard-pressed to find Jesus telling and doing those things!

What is it with the Muslim apologists who try to mention anything that any Christian had done WHICH HAS NO BASIS IN THE IDEOLOGY!!!!!

If Muslims did all they did while HAVING ZERO BASIS IN THE IDEOLOGY, then we would have to look for other reasons for their behavior.

But hey - IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE IDEOLOGY, because contrary to Christianity Islam condones violence, condones killing of infidels, condones taking slaves, condones raping of infidel women, condones child-marriages.

I wonder how deep this mental sickness goes - even here guys cucking for Islam and pissing on Christianity whenever they find a serial killer who was born a Christian and thus equal it all to Christianity.

(05-27-2017 11:23 AM)Chris Brown Wrote:  Wasnt Charlemagnes brand of Christianity similar to Mohammeds? Didnt the Catholic church tortue and kill for centuries?

I dig it when people take a single culture's behaviour literally thirteen hundred years ago and dance around as if it proved anything about Christianity at large.

It's like asserting that genetics is an invalid science because Gregor Mendel massaged his data relating to the heritability of characteristics of peas.

Charlemagne viewed church and state as allied if not entirely intertwined. And while he was a staunch Catholic, he had pretty firm views about what the Pope's responsibilities were versus his own, as evidenced by his own letter to Pope Leo:

Charlemagne Wrote:Our task [as secular ruler] is externally, with God's help, to defend with our arms the holy Church of Christ against attacks by the heathen from any side and against devastation by the infidels and, internally, to strengthen the Church by the recognition of the Catholic faith. Your share, Most Holy Father, is to support our army with hands upraised to God, as did Moses in ancient days, so that the … name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified throughout the world.

i.e. "Holy Father, butt the fuck out and don't presume to criticise how I go to war."

Let's also add that most of the forced conversions that Charlemagne dictated were conducted against the Saxons. The reason he went to war against them was because the (pagan) Saxons sacked and burned a church in Deventer. The Saxons were on his border and were therefore a continuing and present threat to his kingdom, and it's not like the Saxons ever agreed to stop raiding his kingdoms until roughly 785.

On top of that, even while he conducted punitive expeditions and forced conversions, his advisers from the church -- in particular Alcuin of York, of the brightest sages of the era, later an abbot -- were begging him to show leniency, saying that Christianity should be spread by persuasion, not at the point of a sword. That, indeed, was how Ireland and England had been converted to Christianity in the years prior to Charlemagne's rule in France -- by missionary work from St. Patrick, St. Dominic, and others. Charlemagne's forced conversions campaigns come from him, and him alone. His other campaigns -- against the Lombards and later the Moors -- were, respectively, wars to protect the Pope and to protect Christianity at large from Muslim incursions. At worst you can accuse him of freely mixing his religion with his realpolitik, and it was not a course people under him necessarily agreed with.

What you should notice is that the ancient religions were really up front about their violence and even recorded it in books so that people could remember it for centuries. Today we think we are more civilized. But this is a blue pill delusion. We are actually more violent because technology magnifies our violence. The sanctions on Iraq killed over a half million Iraqi children. And the bombs from drones, most of which miss their targets, kills innocent people. We are never allowed to see the actual gory result of what Western bombs do. It is 100% censored from our view. So we can continue the delusion that we are civilized and better than others, like Muslims. Total blue bill. Appreciate the ancient texts. They put everything up front in writing instead of censoring it. They allow you to see what the US media censors from your view. The Bible and Koran are as red pill as you can get.

(05-27-2017 09:00 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(05-27-2017 11:23 AM)Chris Brown Wrote:  Wasnt Charlemagnes brand of Christianity similar to Mohammeds? Didnt the Catholic church tortue and kill for centuries?

I dig it when people take a single culture's behaviour literally thirteen hundred years ago and dance around as if it proved anything about Christianity at large.

It's like asserting that genetics is an invalid science because Gregor Mendel massaged his data relating to the heritability of characteristics of peas.

Charlemagne viewed church and state as allied if not entirely intertwined.

I wish the general public was more educated about the Middle Ages. Even a lot of people who would be considered well-read and educated view the time period in cliches and crude stereotypes with one of the most common being that the Middle Ages was ruled by theocracies. Last year I read "A History of Medieval Europe" by R.H.C. Davis and it really showed me how the power of the Church and kings/emperors were no where as absolute a lot of people think it was. A constant theme described in the book was the constant jostling for power between the temporal and spiritual authorities. People typically imagine bishops and other religious leaders as being these spiritual dictators that could ignite heretics and non-conformists with a word and a lot of the pop culture depictions of the Middle Ages or of fictional worlds that are meant to resemble the Middle Ages keeps the public in the dark about what it was really like back them.

If you want to find a real example of a theocracy you would have to look at another religion that is put on a pedestal by "woke" Westerners who consider themselves too intellectually advanced for the faith of their fathers. That religion would be Buddhism. Buddhism, at least of the Tibetan variety mixes the priesthood and the statesman together. The European equivalent would be if the Pope was also the Emperor of Europe.

(05-27-2017 10:22 PM)Sherman Wrote:  What you should notice is that the ancient religions were really up front about their violence and even recorded it in books so that people could remember it for centuries. Today we think we are more civilized. But this is a blue pill delusion. We are actually more violent because technology magnifies our violence. The sanctions on Iraq killed over a half million Iraqi children. And the bombs from drones, most of which miss their targets, kills innocent people. We are never allowed to see the actual gory result of what Western bombs do. It is 100% censored from our view. So we can continue the delusion that we are civilized and better than others, like Muslims. Total blue bill. Appreciate the ancient texts. They put everything up front in writing instead of censoring it. They allow you to see what the US media censors from your view. The Bible and Koran are as red pill as you can get.

I'll say the same thing to you as I said to dear old Kavi when it comes to this false equivalence between the Bible and the Koran, Sherman: find me the section of the Bible in which Jesus advocates cutting off people's heads. Or raping captured female prisoners. Or where Jesus said it was cool to marry and then fuck nine year olds, something Mohammed not only endorsed but actually did.

And as for the Old Testament? You can quote every recorded Israelite massacre you like, but it still doesn't override the Ten Commandments that lie at the heart of Judaism: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, etc.

Frankly your reasoning around religion isn't much better than your reasoning about North Korea's Lil' Kim being, and I quote, "a good man."

The death toll Muslims enacted on other religions and on each other across fourteen hundred years far outweighs any death toll Christians enacted on Muslims, even allowing for modern technology. And let's not forget a fair proportion of that Christian vs. Muslim death toll is enacted in self-defence, i.e. due to hordes of Muslims who can't stay the fuck in the desert and prefer to go get Spanish, Bosnian, Croatian, Greek, French, Russian, Indian, and Italian pussy.

(05-27-2017 10:52 PM)Wutang Wrote:  If you want to find a real example of a theocracy you would have to look at another religion that is put on a pedestal by "woke" Westerners who consider themselves too intellectually advanced for the faith of their fathers. That religion would be Buddhism. Buddhism, at least of the Tibetan variety mixes the priesthood and the statesman together. The European equivalent would be if the Pope was also the Emperor of Europe.

Don't have to go that far east. Islam is a theocracy. Shari'a is the legal system by which that theocracy is enforced; there is no separation of church and state, look at what happened to that poor bastard Abdul Rahman in "constitutional" Afghanistan that I mentioned on the previous page. Muhammad purported to wield supreme spiritual and secular power, that's why his followers and his family -- the Sunni and the Shia, respectively -- started fighting over the subject right after he died.

(05-27-2017 11:14 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(05-27-2017 10:22 PM)Sherman Wrote:  What you should notice is that the ancient religions were really up front about their violence and even recorded it in books so that people could remember it for centuries. Today we think we are more civilized. But this is a blue pill delusion. We are actually more violent because technology magnifies our violence. The sanctions on Iraq killed over a half million Iraqi children. And the bombs from drones, most of which miss their targets, kills innocent people. We are never allowed to see the actual gory result of what Western bombs do. It is 100% censored from our view. So we can continue the delusion that we are civilized and better than others, like Muslims. Total blue bill. Appreciate the ancient texts. They put everything up front in writing instead of censoring it. They allow you to see what the US media censors from your view. The Bible and Koran are as red pill as you can get.

I'll say the same thing to you as I said to dear old Kavi when it comes to this false equivalence between the Bible and the Koran, Sherman: find me the section of the Bible in which Jesus advocates cutting off people's heads. Or raping captured female prisoners. Or where Jesus said it was cool to marry and then fuck nine year olds, something Mohammed not only endorsed but actually did.

And as for the Old Testament? You can quote every recorded Israelite massacre you like, but it still doesn't override the Ten Commandments that lie at the heart of Judaism: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, etc.

Frankly your reasoning around religion isn't much better than your reasoning about North Korea's Lil' Kim being, and I quote, "a good man."

The death toll Muslims enacted on other religions and on each other across fourteen hundred years far outweighs any death toll Christians enacted on Muslims, even allowing for modern technology. And let's not forget a fair proportion of that Christian vs. Muslim death toll is enacted in self-defence, i.e. due to hordes of Muslims who can't stay the fuck in the desert and prefer to go get Spanish, Bosnian, Croatian, Greek, French, Russian, Indian, and Italian pussy.

You are missing the point. The interesting thing is that they actually recorded the violence to be studied forever instead of censoring it like we do. That in itself is impressive. Why were they honest, and we are so deceptive and censor everything? They accepted a red pill world. We live in a blue pill bubble.

(05-24-2017 08:25 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(05-23-2017 06:30 PM)kavi Wrote:  

(05-08-2017 09:29 PM)Robert Rule Wrote:  Ive fell a few times and was lukewarm, but I keep coming back to Christ. The struggles of being poor and in difficult situations strengthened my trust in god. And he showed me I can only have joy and life through him.
Im on my own, just me and god, and he will judge me for my actions and my heart. So I'm staying pure before god and living my life for him.
It's difficult to not pursue sex, or comfort. Too not give up and be lukewarm.
I cant, ive had the joy, and peace of the lords fruit. My life will be to leave everything and live my life for god. This is not my home.

This is a post from another thread. Change the world God above and replace with Allah. Still works right? Now imagine our Manchester suicide bomber saying this before the act. Still works doesnt it. Look at the last line, how does that not sound like the last words of a suicide bomber.

Because Robert Rule expresses a desire to live his life for God. Not end it, which is what an Islamist suicide bomber does -- by definition. That's kind of a rather important quote from Jesus: "I came that you might have life, and have it to the full."

As I've said elsewhere: a fundamentalist Christian, following the literal words of Christ as expressed in the New Testament, is more likely than not to end up with an existence looking a lot like that of Francis of Assisi: no earthly possessions, giving all he has to the poor, praying to God, loving his neighbour as he would himself.

As we have seen even today, a fundamentalist Muslim, following the literal words of Mohammed as expressed by the Quran, is likely to end up killing a lot of people and then himself in the process ... with the option of having raping women "gained by his right hand", i.e. captured in battle.

Couldnt have responded better

David Wood (Christian) has a lot of good videos on Islam on his Youtube channel.

Not from this channel but he summed up Christianity vs Islam in a short clip from a live debate here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3fw7iHMXk