[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

ps- it was not nero but THE CHRISTIANS that burned rome. what a rabble!!

they might have been just a little bit pissed about being enslaved, impaled, crucified by kangaroo courts & being forced to fight wild beasts & even each other to the death at the Circus Maximus.
Diocletian & Caligula were exceptionally evil. there's that word again. You better believe that evil does, in fact, exist.
It doesn't make the burning of Rome right though & it's certainly something that Jesus would not have supported. When Jesus had the "army" of 10,000 & chose to ride peacefully into Jerusalem on a donkey & do nothing but throw his fit in the tabernacle with the money changers, it upset Judas quite a bit & that's why he was betrayed. Judas was over a barrel with the Hebrew clergy who were out to save their own hides & also, at that very point, realized that Jesus was completely non-violent & that he (Judas) could best accomplish his agenda of freeing the Hebrews from the Romans easier if Jesus died as a martyr.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Daycare Nation

True Christianity though is not an institution, it is a way of living.

Exactly...that's the whole point of the New Covenant & the New Testament. The body is a temple. There is no need for animal sacrifices & no need for the church building except for edification if one chooses to attend services & finds a church they like.
These days, you either get fire & brimstone trying to scare you into giving money, or at the other end of the spectrum, some hippy-dippy cultish new age bullshit.
There seems to be no happy medium among any churches I've ever attended. The people in churches seem to me to be scary, insincere automatons that creep me out severely. You just know that they use the church to cover their multitide of sins & that they are mostly fucking freaks. It upsets me to see little kids being forced to go to these churches as some kind of "good thing" & rather involuntarily being brainwashed & having their minds warped.

[!@#$%!]

so "good christianity" is some sort of unavailable utopia, huh? wonderful. and he shall live in the land of utopia, forever and ever, amen. in the meantime, we humans have to deal with the trash that's scattered all over right here. it's only an evil world because it's full of evil-finding christians.

[nomadicfollower]

Gotta add this for !@#$%!:


"The Christain resolve to find the world bad and ugly has made the world bad and ugly"
-Nietzsche

(probably not exact as it comes from my memory)

[!@#$%!]

^^ yes yes yes. thank you.

--
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to nomadicfollower again.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so "good christianity" is some sort of unavailable utopia, huh? wonderful. and he shall live in the land of utopia, forever and ever, amen. in the meantime, we humans have to deal with the trash that's scattered all over right here. it's only an evil world because it's full of evil-finding christians.

i thought the world wasn't evil, !@#$%! ?
...that Adoplh Hitler fellow (who parodied Christianity with his Blood Flag sect), I suppose you'd have to agree that he was evil, no?

Kierkegaard:
This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness . . . they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

What every religion in which there is any truth aims at, and what Christianity aims at decisively, is a total transformation in a man, to wrest from him through renunciation and self-denial all that, and precisely that, to which he immediately clings, in which he immediately wants his life. This sort of religion, as 'man' understands it, is not what he wants.
- Attack Upon Christendom
The 'once' of suffering is a transition, a passage-way. Thou must go through it, and though it were to last as long as life, and though it were as hard as a sword which transfixes your heart, it is yet only a passage-way. It is not true that it is the suffering which goes through thee, it is thou that goest through it in the eternal understanding of the case, entirely unharmed.
- Christian Discourses
Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent then shall the rest be added to you.
- Christian Discourses Sin, then, belongs to ethics only insofar as upon this concept it is shipwrecked with the aid of repentance.
- Concept of Anxiety

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so "good christianity" is some sort of unavailable utopia, huh?

you seem to be deliberately twisting my words. What I wrote specifies that the New Covenant makes Christianity more available than ever...True Christianity is a ideological choice, not an institution, just like Daycare Nation (& Soren Kierkegaard) wrote.
this is what I wrote (it shows that I'm right there with you when it comes to criticisms of the church their typical christian congregation):
Exactly...that's the whole point of the New Covenant & the New Testament. The body is a temple. There is no need for animal sacrifices & no need for the church building except for edification if one chooses to attend services & finds a church they like.
These days, you either get fire & brimstone trying to scare you into giving money, or at the other end of the spectrum, some hippy-dippy cultish new age bullshit.
There seems to be no happy medium among any churches I've ever attended. The people in churches seem to me to be scary, insincere automatons that creep me out severely. You just know that they use the church to cover their multitide of sins & that they are mostly fucking freaks. It upsets me to see little kids being forced to go to these churches as some kind of "good thing" & rather involuntarily being brainwashed & having their minds warped.

maybe I should try some "black" churches...

let's compare it to a Kierkegaard quote:
For believe me that there is nothing, no heresy, no sin, nothing whatsoever so abhorrent to God as the official. And that thou canst well understand; for since God is a personal being, thou canst well conceive how abhorrent it is to Him that people want to wipe His mouth with formulas, to wait upon Him with official solemnity, official phrases, etc. Yeah, precisely because God is personality in the most eminent sense, sheer personality, precisely for this cause is the official infinitely more loathsome to Him than it is to a woman when she discovers that a man is making love to her---out of a book of etiquette.
- Attack Upon Christendom

What makes the world "bad & ugly" is that we are born with an instinctual character defense mechanism to block out conscious contemplation of our eventual personal death. We have been hard wired this way for evolutionary survival. It is up to a person's choices to discover self-knowledge & move beyond their denial of death (their life "in error"). the Bible & Christianity deals with this subject through poetic metaphorical symbols. To dismiss it all as a complete crock is very reactive. For instance, C.G. Jung was a sun-worshipper & he didn't dismiss it completely. Instead, he found the relative value of Christianity's message. Read his essays, "Christ as a Symbol of the Self" & "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass".

Whoever consciously denies the existence of the unconscious (i.e. Eternity, God) is in fact assuming that our present knowledge of the psyche is total. & that's precisely what everyone who is wrapped-up in their own ego-consciousness does every waking hour; thankfully, we all have to go to sleep sometime & to dream or else all would be lost.

[!@#$%!]

yes but i am way more bellicose than jung. besides, i am not trying to write an essay here. i will however say i haven't read mr. churchyard. about the ideological choice: strip christianity of its officials, its institutions, and you still have a denial of this world and the longing for some inexistent neverland. that is more of a denial of death-- "eternal life". i don't need the consoling illusions of the afterlife. i embrace my death joyfully. it's what makes me drink life to the last drop, as im sipping this fucking excellent espresso. i don't need to wait to die to be ALIVE.

--
and the fact that there are idiots in this world like hitler does not mean that life as a whole is not a magnificent thing.

[atari 2600]

maybe you're taking the afterlife symbolism too literally. don't fall into the same trap as a fundamentalist would. life is indeed wondrous & brimming with possibility for those that choose to seek it, but there are too many people living unexamined lives in need of the salvation of self-knowledge= that will never find happiness & will only find diversion after diversion leading to ennui. Christianity isn't the only way to find self-knowledge, that's for sure. Jesus said: "No man may come to the Father, but by me" but I don't think it means (if it was translated accurately at all) that Christianity is the only true religion. Rather, it means one must have the resilient spirit & passion for the truth like he had. Most Christians' misunderstandings of their own religion make them a target ripe for apt criticism as well, but you simply cannot dismiss it all & be rational at the same time.
Is rationality of the upmost importance?
No, sometimes it's good to be highly irrational.
I simply stated that I felt that as a western white man & a Kierkegaard devotee that my unconscious was more stimulated into conscious activity by the Bible as a book of wisdom moreso than with any other book of wisdom, so the merits of the Bible were presented. It's not an easy task, since so much of it is a history of a glorified tribal religion in the old testament (not all of the OT is to be dismissed either though) & bloody as can be. the church (all denominations) have their own dogmatic problems & hang-ups.
the new testament is not without it's literary flaws, but it's mighty profound as well, so that's what I mainly chose to concentrate on it.

anyway...
back to our current diversion:
Girls Vs. Satan
Poll: Who's got the tuffer titty?
Girls
Satan
Queen

View Poll Results

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

anyway...
back to our current diversion:
Girls Vs. Satan
Poll: Who's got the tuffer titty?
Girls
Satan
Queen

View Poll Results

hah, i already voted for saturnine who is both girl & satan

but this one comes a close second:

 

[atari 2600]

that man has some big time pipes!

& he liked his pipes big too, or so the rumors go...

"they" say no one threw parties like Freddie.

[alyasa]

I'm surprised Queen didn't win...

[atari 2600]

It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
- Albert Einstein