The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

He was pretty infamous for breaking the Sabbath, for one. Which is kind of one of the big ten.

@ Fighteer: Do you think that "political groups" and "religions" are functionally identical, and that an apolitical faith can exist?

Maybe referring to his stement that "the Law was made for man, not man for the Law"?

@Greenmantle and De Marquis: An entire faith cannot necessarily be lumped together as a unified political group; what matters is how they operate.

Evangelical Christians in the United States, for example, function as both a religious and political group. They do their best to make Christianity look insane to the rest of the world. If you identify as Christian and do not disavow such lunatics as Pat Robertson, Ken Ham, and the WBC, then you are part of the problem by reason of your silence.

Again, I must stress that I am an empiricist. If you identify as a Republican and vote Republican, then I'll consider you to broadly agree with Republican tenets, including all the nasty ones, unless you prove otherwise.

Even if you haven't heard of them and are part of a different denomination, such as a Catholic in Rio de Janeiro or a Russian Orthodox in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky?

Hey guys, were learning about Sikhism in class, and one of the five parts of the Khalsa is that Sikhs can't cut their hair. It wasn't really explained why, so I looked it up, and apparently it's a symbol of their connection to god . I also found this article http://www.realsikhism.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1248364871&ucat=7 . I'm kinda sceptical about the science the article cites, tho

I'm quite certain that I said something about "in the United States" there.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:29:57 AM by Fighteer

Maybe, but it did sound like that you think that the people mentioned in my examples should care about American Churches^note  Which, like a lot of things in the US, are different to anywhere else.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:33:15 AM by Greenmantle

Well, if Britain has crazy fundie antics that go uncriticized by the members of their claimed denominations, then the same would apply there. Religious stupidity (like stupidity in general) is hardly a phenomenon restricted to one country.

It's a bit like the Catholic Church and their long-running child abuse problem. The Church, by deliberately and knowingly covering it up and even helping the priests in question relocate and continue molesting kids, made itself an accomplice to their crimes. The Church is morally, ethically, and criminally liable for the acts of those priests.

Now, most ordinary Catholics reacted with horror to the revelations and condemned their leadership for their actions, so they can indeed claim to not condone the behavior.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:45:27 AM by Fighteer

Sort of helps that the crazy fundies have a disgusting amount of pull in politics here in the US.

Or rather it doesn't help.

You know what I mean.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:43:09 AM by LeGarcon

We had a bunch of those once. Then we stuck them on a boat and shipped them across the Atlantic.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:46:48 AM by Elfive

Yeah, thanks a bunch for that.

Really, though, my point is that you can't separate the politics from the religion when the religion functions as a political movement. The simple fact that the U.S. Republican Party has made evangelical principles part of its core platform is object proof of my assertion. If you're a Christian in America, and you vote Republican ^note Depending on which candidates you vote for, of course — some are less repulsive than others, then you become associated with them by proxy.

edited 18th Mar '14 8:14:02 AM by Fighteer

The original verse was specifically the Sabbath and not the Law. But yes, similar thinking.

edited 18th Mar '14 9:38:27 AM by Pykrete

"If you identify as Christian and do not disavow such lunatics as Pat Robertson, Ken Ham, and the WBC, then you are part of the problem by reason of your silence."

I am assuming that you arent aware of the potential for abuse here. Just because you arent aware of disagreements within the Christian community doesnt mean they arent there. The same thing happened to Muslim Americans after 9/11: denunciation after denuciation by prominent Muslim leaders went unreported in the American media, so everyone presumed that they were complicit by their silence. You shouldn't judge anyone, Gay, Muslim or Christian, primarily as a member of a group. Everyone deserves to be treated as a unique individual.

That said, Pat Robertson, Ken Ham, and the WBC are lunatics.

Isn't anyone who enforces the "no working" rule on the Sabbath also technically breaking the rule themselves?

Enough about Christianity. Anyone want to discuss the historical parallels between Kabalistic, Gnostic, and Hermetic magic practices?

@De Marquis: As a last clarification, of course you cannot blame people for things that they cannot reasonably be aware of. That said, we live in an era where ignorance is almost as much of a sin as complicity. About the only way to evade blame there is to note that the ignorance is being deliberately cultivated by those in power. Still, that doesn't erase the responsibility of individuals to inform themselves.

Mindlessly marching in lockstep with the people manipulating you doesn't make you less a part of the problem.

edited 18th Mar '14 9:58:01 AM by Fighteer

You misunderstood. I was accusing you of not being informed. Denunciations have happened, yet you seem unaware of them.

Last thing I'll say about Christianity for a while, but has anyone ever heard of pseudepigrapha? It just means when texts have falsely attributed authors, usually intentionally. For example, some of the texts of Socrates that were actually written by Plato (or attributed to Plato and written by Plato's students...). I have read a theory on a blog critical of Christianity about how some or all of the Gospel writers were trying to reform Judaism radically and so were using Jesus as a mouthpiece (the theory lent that there was a historical Jesus about whom supernatural claims were made) for those ideas. It's supported by the wealth of verses where Jesus chides Pharisees or teachers of the Mosaic law about how the law should be followed (or as the theory would have it: the new reformed law). It also seems plausible given how the authors of some of the Gospels try to shoehorn supposed Messianic prophecies to talk about Jesus, when they are clearly taken out of context or not even Messianic prophecies to begin with. Of course, the granddaddy of all reasons to start taking what this Jesus guy was saying seriously was the purported resurrection. "Hey, he must be the Son of God! That means we should do everything he says!" Not to mention the original Hebrew (or Aramaic?) name of Jesus translates literally to "He saves".

It's an interesting theory, I'd like to see where the poster on that blog could go with it.

edited 18th Mar '14 11:01:18 AM by digaagwariz

Also, about that omnipotence thing you guys were talking about earlier, I don't see how that could work. Imagine it in the form of a trading card game. God #1 plays a card that destroys all the opponent's cards and God #2 plays a card that protects all of his/her/its cards. And due to a quirk in how the game works, they both legitimately play the cards at the same time. What happens?

I'm not sure but I have a bad feeling it could break something in the space-time continuum.

The time-space continuum hasn't been invented yet, so we're fine.

@De Marquis:

And yet they haven't noticeably affected the political rhetoric coming out of evangelical Christianity (or radical Islam, or orthodox Judaism, or whatever), and people still vote for them. This is my point. You can say anything you like about the personal, private nature of faith, and that's well and good for you as an individual. But when one turns that faith into the need to proselytize and compel others to act as one believes they should, even indirectly, one has forced the issue of the credibility of one's beliefs into the public arena.

At that point, it matters very much whether one's ideas about how the universe works are founded in anything resembling reality.

Rephrased slightly, you can believe in invisible dragons all you want, but when you start telling me what the invisible dragon wants me to do or think or say, then I have an interest in pointing out that there ain't no such thing.

edited 18th Mar '14 12:13:11 PM by Fighteer

@demarquis and Fighteer, from last page: >_> <_< Now I feel dumb. What I think I was trying to say yesterday is that yes, objective sciences should be answered with science and the others by religion. Any question that science doesn't(can't?) answer falls on another majisterium. A better example of question: does God exist? Now that is a question that falls on the magisterium of religion and not of science. So it... Shouldn't be studied with science? It feels weird to type that.

@Fighteer: I disagree that people who follow a political or religious system are to be blamed by the actions of others in said group. With that, I mean, someone who claims to be, say, Catholic, and you have another group of Catholics comitting homophobic acts, you can't blame the individual for the actions of the other group unless s/he had any means of knowing and preventing it. If said group of Catholics live in an entirely different region, the individual couldn't known anything about it, so s/he can't be of blame. Of course, if the group goes to the same church as s/he, then s/he isn't necessarily to be blamed unless s/he knew what they were doing, as going to the same church don't mean you know all of the people there. S/he could still think of their actions as wrong but as s/he can't prevent them from entering the church because they have the right to hear the priest's (God's?) word as much as him/her. I think I could go on more possibilities but I don't feel like going with that big of a Wall Of Text. Reminds me of a blogger/vlogger/podcaster/twitter(er?) guy I follow who did a video explaining why he doesn't identify himself as an atheist anymore, because of how people saw the atheist community (and how they were) and how he didn't think it made much sense linguistically. Lastly, acting like that towards religious and political groups sounds like a non-racial kind of prejudice.

Which is not to say they shouldn't take action against them, but it seems for me that, people as a whole tend to think something but not do any action to put them in practice. For example, thinking how sad it is that kid they see on TV not being able to receive a new heart but not signing up for organ donation, or that a generic other should help the poor but not donating money or clothes.

First, the whole concept of "magisteria" strikes me as an intellectual cop-out. It's just a slightly fancier version of the "God of the gaps" fallacy. Just because science can't answer the philosophical question "why" doesn't mean that it's automatically the purview of religion.

Second, I'm not saying those people are culpable — like they should be blamed for the acts of the crazies. Of course that is not true. But when they exercise their political franchise to support candidates and causes that are promoted by the crazies, they voluntarily associate themselves with said crazies.

edited 18th Mar '14 1:01:06 PM by Fighteer

Yes, but then you're supposed to get to know them before assuming they support the crazies. In another word: prejudice, a previous judge of character.