Orthodox_Freethinker

The Spirit of Orthodoxy transcends our national divisions, the differences from one Orthodox Church to another are mainly cultural and superficial.
The Spirit has led to the Church to where we may find salvation. That does not mean, however, that it's members will never make mistakes. All have fallen short of the glory of God.

Peace.

Mageth

O_F, start from any terminus on that graph, and trace it back...

Orthodox_Freethinker

All other Christians sects are only tangents of Orthodoxy and therefore were not founded by Christ and the Apostles.

Peace.

Mageth

BTW, "Orthodoxy" essentially means "believing what my particular sect believes."

Mageth

"Your 'Orthodoxy' Sect" is only a tangent of ["Orthodox" Sect X] and therefore was not founded by Christ and the Apostles.

John A. Broussard

Care to cite me some partriarch's protests against the vicious pogroms of the Russian Tsarist regime? How did your church react to the killing of Jews because they were "Christ Killers?"

My objection to Christianity in general (I want you to understand that I single out the Orthodox Church only because it happens to be the subject at hand) is not so much it's history of brutality, greed and encouragement of human ignorance and suffering, but the fact that Christians are hypocritical enough to claim they believe in a loving god while they perpetrate the grossest of crimes.

RUmike

"Faith is no excuse for ignorance! Adherence to any tradition in disregard for textual evidence is sheer superstition."
- my NT professor

pharoah

You could just as easily argue that true Christianity was wiped out thousands of years ago with the Ebionites. Or that Paul completely hijacked the religion, strangling it at birth.

motorhead

But why would this all-powerful God allow error at all? It doesn't make sense. This God "inspires" the text (whatever that means) to be a guide for all mankind but allows errors to be included in the text. Why?


But there's a wide array of opinions within the Christian faith on what exactly God requires for salvation. Most denominations and sects get their views on salvation from the Bible. So, apparently the Bible is not clear on what God requires for salvation. By the way, you know how God could've made this very clear? By not allowing errors into the text he allegedly "inspired".

Furthermore, faith can take us nowhere as a species. Faith is believing in things that cannot be proven to exist. How does this help us as a species? It only ties us to an ancient worldview which is no longer valid in our age.

But who decides the correct interpretation of the Bible? Why are the Bible literalists wrong? Why is your interpretation correct?

But as someone has already pointed out, we get our info on Christ from the Bible, which has already been admitted has errors. How do we know the Bible is correct on Christ? Above, you said the Bible is a revelation but now somehow it's not the "final Word". So, what is the Bible exactly?


Hey, don't be so quick to dismiss that bronze age mythology, which I'm assuming is the contents of the OT. Your savior firmly believed in that mythology as absolute truth.

John A. Broussard

That's to test a person's faith. If one believes when there's overwhelming evidence to support that faith, then there's little credit for holding on to that faith. In fact, there's no need for faith at all. The proof is all that's needed.

Now, believing where there's no evidence is good.

Believing where there is overwhelming evidence demonstrating the falsity of the belief is best of all.

I hope that helps to clarify OF's position.