The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Basically, yes. This isn't necessarily that weird a concept, though. Humans, for example, are actually made up of multiple semi-intelligent parts that communicate and negotiate with each other (this includes the human mind itself).

Edited by Protagonist506 on Oct 31st 2018 at 12:06:31 PM

Well, even angels are wierd. Cherubim have four faces (a human, an ox, a lion and a bird) and other craziness.

Of course, you're talking about a (seemingly) omnipotent being and its function. Humans not fully understanding it maybe part of the point.

Edited by TerminusEst on Oct 31st 2018 at 12:10:35 PM

I’d note that belling in the Trinity and understand what the hell the Trinity is do not have to go hand in hand. One can simply just have faith.

The Trinity is one of those Serious Business elements of faith that is arguably focusing on the trees for the forest.

To be fair I would argue there are good reasons for it being Serious Business. IE, Arians weren't all that liked by Paul IRC because his death and resurrection are supposed to be things we too can achieve.

Personally, my own opinion on the topic is (basically) that Jesus was physically a normal human, but his "soul" was God and he had the same personality as him. It's a subjective opinion and I'm not really an expert theologian, but I view that as a pretty sensible way of looking at it.

Is that how those avatars of Vishnu work in Hindu stuff?

It seems like a fairly similar concept.

I do have to say that I also agree I don't really get the logic. "Sooo wait, why did God have to incarnate itself and have that incarnation die for sins of humans in order to God forgive their sins? Couldn't God just have, you know, forgiven the sins?"

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 5th 2018 at 1:36:39 PM

One explanation I've heard for that is that God can't break his own rules/promises, and had to resort to a form of Loop Hole Abuse. ("I can't forgive humanity unless they make a good enough sacrifice. They can't do that. I'll create/become a perfect sacrifice and do it for them!")

That sort of brings God's omnipotence into question though. Among other things.

The theology students of Helsinki University are holding a talk called "Satanism and Occultism" with our very own theistic satanists coming to talk. They work in a society called Star of Azazel described thus in their constitution:

Can't wait.

Edited by TerminusEst on Nov 5th 2018 at 5:18:51 AM

I took it as people trying to make the sacrifice mean something specific versus somthing general.

God is there.

God is real.

Word of God unfiltered: "do not be a jerk. I don't like rich people. I don't like violence in my name. I don't like violence period"

Then showing he's willing to die for us.

That just confuses me though since isn't reason why death is considered scary because you can't return from it?

<_< Like, God itself can't apparently die and Jesus returns from death anyway. Unless implication is that dying itself is just that horrible that its worthy showing of sins being forgiven?

Mind you, it would mean physical death, but you'd still keep going on. So the promise of a reward at the end of it lessens the mournful reality of death.

Edited by TerminusEst on Nov 5th 2018 at 11:28:00 AM

I've heard some pretty old interpretations being that Jesus "died" so that He could pay a visit to the then featurless afterlife place (Hades sometimes) and wreck it. Pretty roundabout of Him.

That's one of those False Equivalence things because Jesus is also pointing out that death is not the end in a fairly dramatic way.

In other words, "There's nothing to be afraid of."

So that would mean Jesus' dying thing point was to be like "Yo I came back from heaven to say its really nice there, no need to worry"?

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 5th 2018 at 10:04:07 PM

My understanding is that Jesus's death and rebirth is to set precedent/pave the way for humanity's rebirth. As humans, we die. However, because Jesus was a human who came back to life, we now can to.

That, unfortunately, is what makes Christianity and other similarly structured religions (the Abrahamics most prominently) inherently lend themselves to massive amounts of toxicity, even despite the best efforts of the most decent believers.

Because as long as even those decent believers can't agree amongst themselves exactly which things we should and shouldn't do in 'this' life if we want to be rewarded or avoid getting punished in the next one we're apparently supposed to get.

Especially if you're part of the subset of believers who claim that literally all that's required to get rewarded is belief. Because then you can fucking well justify any atrocity. After all, this life is just temporary, the next one is eternal. You can murder entire cities and not, by the internal logic of that belief, do any real harm to anyone. After all, all the ones you kill who believe will simply be freed from this temporary arrangement to live a perfect life for eternity, so you're certainly not harming them... And all the ones who don't believe? We'll yeah, they're going to be tortured forever, but that's not you fault either, they, after all, were the ones who chose not to believe. They did it to themselves. They deserve it.

And since everything happens is, ultimately, the will of God, you couldn't even be convinced that killing them is denying them the choice to convert later in life. After all, if God wanted them to have that choice, he wouldn't have let you kill them. He could have stopped you if he wanted to, but he didn't. You were right to kill them all. It was just.

At the risk of sounding dismissive.

No.

Not even close. Not limited to Christianity. Not limited to communism.

Not limited to Spongebob Squarepants.

Death of the Author and Death of the Fan is everywhere in every single idea since we all bring ourselves into everything we experience.

Yeah, except that communism and Spongebob don't tell their followers that this life is ultimately meaningless because it's just a brief, difficult period before you spend the rest of eternity in unending bliss and contentment (or getting infinite punishment for the, by necessity, finite number of mistakes made during a period of at most about 100 years).

Edited by Robrecht on Nov 5th 2018 at 11:49:56 AM

To illustrate my point, Christianity teaches that human life is incredibly important and meaningful because it does ascertain your entire post-life existence. Also, depending on your domination, the Kingdom of Heaven will merge with the Kingdom of Earth.

Ben Carson (as well as his group) also states he believes hell is annihilation and people took the Lake of Fire to mean eternally burning versus Cessation of Existence. C.S. Lewis also believed that Hell was a place of distance from God versus torture and became purgatory if you repented.

Mind you, I'm a Catholic in belief due to miracle studies as well as philosophy and I am disgusted with my faith's organization so I'm in a off spot.

Also, really, are we saying Christianity is worse off philosophically to communism?

Tommy Lee Jones sideeye

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 5th 2018 at 2:57:55 AM

Nah, all I'm saying is that the idea that this life is just a very brief blip on a person's total existence, that makes it a lot easier to justify grossly mistreating or killing other people. After all, this life is brief and impermanent, the next life is forever. Any suffering inflicted on people, up to and including death, is as nothing compared to eternity.

And if they were deserving, they'll spend that eternity in bliss and contentment... And if they weren't, well then they deserve what they get any way.

Especially when combined with the doctrine of Sola Fide, where no actual actions you take during life impact one's state of Grace, all that matters is that you had faith.

This is also by no means limited to Christianity or even to Abrahamic faiths. The Buddhists who attacked and continue to attack the Rohingyas in Myanmar know that persecuting those Muslims goes against dharma (and The Dharma). But they do it, because they believe that they won't achieve Nirvana in the current life anyway and at least eradicating the Rohingyas will mean that their souls will be unable to be tempted by a false faith in their next lives.

Considering Samsara, won't they go to Naraka for that? Sure, they won't stay there forever but it's still incomprehensibly long.

Hey. Many christians did thought that they were sending their victims to hell and didn't care. The same thing happens here.

Now. I laught at the weirdness seemingly contradiction of mentioning Christian atrocities while also being annoyed at how a Satanist author that I used to follow (Dude knew his Sci fi and fantasy) become a Anti-SJW and spended his Castlevania analysis to compare the Millitant Church with the so-feared SJW.

I'm not the only one that wish that there was a Church that explicitly choose Knight Templar Holy Is Not Safe aesthetic to promote Social Justice ideas?

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 5th 2018 at 10:39:06 AM

Just to be clear, the "belief is the only thing necessary" thing is more of a Protestant belief, the Catholic Church teaches that not only faith, but actions as well are required to pass either to Purgatory or Heaven depending on your relationship to God.

Basically, it means squat if you pray to Jesus if you don't live by his teachings as well since that makes you a Hypocrite in His eyes, and it also means that so long as you endeavour to fix the mistakes you made, the only sin that can't be forgiven is the one you don't want to be redeemed from.

Edited by raziel365 on Nov 5th 2018 at 7:37:11 AM

Its not even a particularly common thing....outside of America.

It is very specifically an evangelical protestant Baptist derived thing.

Calvinists believe in predestiny Catholics believe in a mixture of works and God's blessing