Seeker196

"Otherwise, such statements are just expressions of personal preference and this whole process is a worthless enterprise - don't you think?"

That had to have been the greatest summation of what an agnostic thinks about Christianity that I have ever heard...bravo!

hinduwoman

simple; Christianity attacks hinduism declaring that it alone is the valid path to salvation and hindus are devil worshippers. .

Ipetrich, many hindus think of Jesus as a great spiritual guru.If the church had not been so arrogant then by this time he would have been enshrined as another avatar.

hinduwoman

In the first place atheism deos not tell you anything about the individual's standing in regard to the state, or that communism is the best way of life.

Secondly, what about the second part of the question: why do you deny that committed christians in a christian culture who burns non-christians to psread the greater glory of christianity are not real Christians?
After all Torquemeda would tell you that youare not a real Christian either, or whatever sects of Christinity to which you do not belong.

FarSeeker

lpetrich IS trying to twist my post in order to change the subject to something he can attack and distract everyone from the point (strawman / red herring). But that doesn’t matter to other Atheists does it.
.
But hinduwoman said:
posted January 05, 2002 04:26 PM I was asking why -- if Jesus is "only" another avator -- were Hindus burning the Christian churches, beating and killing them? Do Hindus do this regularly to their fellow believers?

Have Hindus become Thags?

…
I'll score Jesus Christ:
[b] I will re-score: (original judge having been biased) [B/]

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while
0.5 - Mary is a virgin, of course, but she has no pedigree, except if one accepts the apologetic that Luke's genealogy goes through Mary - Luke traces JC to King David

(2) his father is a king, and
0.5 - Joseph, according to Matthew, is descended from King David.
That’s a stretch but I’ll allow it

(3) the father is related to the mother.
0.5 - implied by the Luke apologetic above.
Another stretch, considering the DNA checks on mitochondria, the entire human race is related. But I’ll allow that one too.

(4) The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence
1 - Need I say more?

(5) he is reputed to be a son of a god.
1 - He is not only the Son of God, but the Second Person in the Christian Trinity (either God or 1/3 of God).

(6) Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but
1 - King Herod tries to kill him by killing lots of baby boys.

(7) he is spirited away to safety and
1 - His parents flee to Egypt

(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,
0 - He is raised by his "real" parents.

(9) we learn no details of his childhood until
0.5 - There's a story of his precocious learning, but that's about it.
Double Standard! Below you count the Apocrypha, but here you do not!
Penalty! Awarded: 0

(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where
1 - He returns to Galilee.
Wrong, the world will be his kingdom. Israel was his land, Galilee was his “hood”: 0.

(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast, and
1 - He resists the Devil's temptations, such as rule of all the kingdoms of the world.

(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and
. 0.5 - He's single in the NT, but a noncanonical Gospel pictures him and Mary Magdalene as having a close relationship, in agreement with many later speculations.
Apocrypha writings come too late to be acceptable. Mary Magdalene was far from a princess: 0

(13) becomes king himself.
1 - He becomes a famous prophet.
He was a servant, not a ruler: 0 I should deduct even more for this blatant error, but I gotta be fair.

(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully,
1 - Correct.
Attempts to stone Him, plots on His life, friend dies, Apostles fail Him, one betrays him, etc., should your life be so “uneventful.”: 0

(15) promulgating laws. But
1 - His teachings may be considered laws.
His teaching were teachings. The Law was The Law: 0
Matthew 5:17
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

(16) he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and
1 - He gets put on trial by the authorities and a lynch mob wants him dead.
He was turned over to the Pharisees by Judas, tried in secret by a 3 authorities: 0

(17) is driven from the throne and the city and
1 - The authorities find him guilty of blasphemy.
Didn’t have the temporal throne of that land: 0

(18) meets with a mysterious death,
. 1 - His crucifixion.
There’s nothing “mysterious” about that, remember the 2 thieves at his side. Crucifixion was a commoners execution: 0

(19) often atop a hill.
1 - That's where his cross was.
Executing criminals in old times was always done on a high point, be it a hill or scaffolding. Ubiquitous nature renders point irrelevant: 0

(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him.
1 - He has no appointed successors.
His apostles are appointed to spread the Good News to all nations: 0

(21) His body is not buried, yet
1 - He rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven.
His body was buried: 0 Whether it stayed that way or not is irrelavent.

(22) he has one or more holy sepulchers.
1 - He had resided in one before rising from the dead.
There was/is nothing Biblically Holy about the sepulcher (only by extra-Biblical HUMAN tradition), it plays no part in the Holiness of Jesus other that a stopping place (like where he rested at the well while speaking to the womanote): 0

My score is 18.5, which is not much different from AD's score.
Corrected score: 6.5. (or did I miscount?)

According to Raglan and Dundes,

Oedipus: 21 Theseus: 20 Moses: 20 Jesus Christ: 19 King Arthur: 19
Dionysus: 19 Romulus: 18 Hercules: 17 Bellerophon: 16 Gilgamesh: 15
Jason: 15 Robin Hood: 13

Among well-known real people, Alexander the Great has this high score: 7

Excellent URL: <a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm</a>


Hey, you mean similarities mean mutual non-existence?!
Wow! Have I got one for you:

Hero-Myth of the National Savior: Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy

1. Both were second children born into their families.
2. Both Lincoln and Kennedy contains 7 letters
3. Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
4. Lincoln was elected President in 1860. Kennedy Elected President in 1960.
5. When Lincoln became president, in 1861, one of the persons most worried about his safety was John Kennedy, Superintendent of Police in New York.
When Kennedy became president in 1961, one of the persons most worried about his safety was Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary.

6. Both Lincoln and Kennedy were confronted with civil rights problems (yeah, an understatement).
7. Both lost a son while serving as president.
8. Both were elected on November 8th for the term in which he was assassinated.
9. Both were shot on a Friday, in the head, from behind, with his wife present. (4)

10. Both succeeding vice-presidents were named Johnson (Andrew and Lyndon).
11. Both Andrew and Lyndon were southerners.
12. Both Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson have 13 letters.
13. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908.

14. Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was born in 1839.
Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was born in 1939.
15. Both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were southerners.
16. Both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were best known by their full names.
17. Both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald have 15 letters
18. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and escaped to a barn (a storehouse).
Oswald shot Kennedy from a storehouse and escaped to a theatre.
(Gotta love the irony)

19. Both assassins were killed before their trial.

Just think, American history is myth. I wonder what REALLY happen!

FarSeeker

No, Atheism tells you that there is no God, ERGO there are no God given Laws, rules, or whatever. The result of that is that you can either make up your own, or accept someone else's made up ones. Marx did the first; others did the second.

So tell me, why is what Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Deng, Pol Pot, etc. did, wrong under Atheism? Your opinion is your opinion. You can't force your opinions of right and wrong on them, that would be authoritarianism. Under their own rules, they did nothing wrong. If you want to claim something about cultural values, they would claim their own cultural values. The BIG question is why should those Atheist leaders bow to your opinion.

What is a Christian? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Read the Books. Jesus said if someone rejects God or Him, shake the dust of their town of your sandals and leave them to God's judgment. This is explained in at least two different ways in the Gospels. The only possible reasons you don't understand it is that you haven't read the Books or don't care about the what Christians really believe. If you haven't read the Books, how can you make an honest judgment of Christianity? A little scholarship here please.

As for those who committed those claimed acts, they weren't doing them under the teachings of the Bible, but for selfish reasons. The acts of the above mentioned Atheists are completely consistent with "Freethinking" Atheists.

As for Torq'd-off, this is just another "well you did it first" whine that the Atheists hate when some fallible Christian uses it. -- Would you like a little cheese with that whine? <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> - But my response is: Christians vastly outnumber Atheists in the U.S.A.; if the Bible really told us to act like Torq-d-off, do you think there would be any?

Conclusion: your assessment is in error.

FarSeeker

Since you seemed to have missed this the first time:

Originally posted by lpetrich: lpetrich IS trying to twist my post in order to change the subject to something he can attack and distract everyone from the point (strawman / red herring). But that doesn't matter to other Atheists does it.

But hinduwoman said:
posted January 05, 2002 04:26 PM I was asking why - if Jesus is "only" another avator - have Hindus been burning Christian churches, as well as beating and killing them? Do Hindus do this regularly to their "fellow Hindus"?

Have Hindus become Thags?

hinduwoman

The christians are being burned and beaten because of their arrogance. The missionaries go on saying that hindus are devil worshippers; they ask christians to forsake all contact wioth their hindu relatives. in one village, I know personally, the christians stick their fingers in their ears when templebells are rung to prevent themselves from hearing heathenish sounds. Many christian fundamentalists threaten hindus with violence if they celebrate hindu festivals.

Add to that is their active meddling in politics; they support armed insurgents who wish to secede from India and set up christian state.

finally, the habit is to attribute everything to religious conflict. Even if christain's house is burgled it become a communal issue.

lpetrich

"If there is no God, then everything is permitted" -- but what gives Mr. G. any moral authority?

Adolf Hitler claimed to be doing the will of "the Almighty Creator". What kind of "atheist" would do that?

The others are Communists, who believed that what is objectively good is what is good for the working class, as they understand the working class. Even if that means killing all supposed members of the capitalist class.

???

Mike Montgomery

Hinduwoman, your handle would indicate familiarity with Hindu precepts, but your post indicates otherwise. Hindus are not "ready to swallow practially anthing about religion". Their beliefs are very strongly rooted in their culture and in their caste system. The Hindu view of god as impersonal is about as close to Agnosticism as it is to the personal god of Christianity.

One of the basic tenets of Hinduism is that the visible reality is an illusion. It is very hard to pursuade anyone with this basic belief about anything, since all history or evidence one might bring to bear is illusionary. Although the system has many obvious logical contridictions, it is not easy to get a Hindu to accept this logic and reject Hinduism, whether to accept Agnosticism, Atheism, Christianity, or anything else.

Buddism has the best chance, because it is an offshoot from Hinduism to begin with, and hold many tenets in common with Hinduism. But it has even more logical contradictions.

hinduwoman

No, no you are missing the point. When I say they are ready to swallow anything about religion, I mean show them any new god with any absurd attributes and a new religion, they will happily start worshipping it. If you present the IPU then many ---particularly among the illeterate --- would start bowing to her as well.

Secondly, the West had focuses too much on 'Adityavad' school of philosphy which holds that all is illusion. But it is only one school. Other schools oif philosophy are not of this view and nor are the general laws about daily life.

Illusions is not the correct translation of maya, though that is how it is done because Englishmen did not knew how to handle it. If you read the Upanishads and other later texts, you will find that this world is real in the concrete material sense, but God is the Greater Reality which is hidden in every concrete object. A man's duty is to seek out this Unity, instead of only being concerend with this world.
The texts also state clearly that to seek only this world and not the other will result in hell; but he who ignores this world for the sake of knowledge of the other world will be cast into even DEEPER hell. similalry Gita's chaper on Works is very lengthy constantly emphasising that men must do works and he who tries to ignore this world in favour of meditating on God is a hypocrite.

Finally these are the four aims of a hindu householder's life applicable to all castes:
Dharma --- righteousness
Artha --- money
Kama --- satisfaction of desire, with particular emphasis on sexual desire.
Moksha --- salvation.

If hindu religion at the core had not been practical we would not have been able to survive far less build a civilization.