Radorth

Quite right, oh unbiased one. You definitely found a witch this time. I was honestly confused by the statement though and did ask for an explanation.

Thankfully my "weird little friend" M. Scott Peck is taken seriously by approximately one million times as many people as yourself. I'm sure you keep bringing him up and insulting him because he is presents a dilemma. Just when you think Jesus is dead and buried, a widely read psychologist with extraordinary insight, who can be accused of no bias whatsoever, becomes a Christian after trying everything else. Being an open-minded person, he attended seveal excorcisms and, at the risk of losing 5,000,000 readers and his publisher, declares demons are real.

It must be heartbreaking.

:boohoo: Rad

lpetrich

Sir Francis Bacon was covering his rear end about religion -- his career would have gone on a nose dive if he had rejected the Church of England.

Sir Isaac Newton was an Xian but a rather heretical one, rejecting the Trinity; he kept that belief secret to avoid hurting his career. And he wrote volumes on Biblical prophecy.

Sir Robert Locke was an Xian but not a very fundie sort of one. He thought of government as something to be separated from religion, and he did not like religious fanaticism -- he had no taste for the Wars of Religion that had wracked Europe in (then) recent centuries.

He even developed the "social contract" theory of government, where government exists by virtue of agreement of its citizens. This theory, stated in the US Constitutions's Preamble, is totally contrary to any theory of government mentioned in the Bible. The only theory in the whole Bible is that government exists by divine command. Period.

Such governments as those of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Taliban-era Afghanistan are much closer to the Biblical conception of government than the US's government.

Radorth

What Ip says about Locke, Bacon and Newton is partially true, but the conclusions are wrong. They did not have to speak of Christ, the cross, the atonement and his kingdom as much and as often as they did to "help their careers." There is no evidence for that, and accuses them squarely of a lack of integrity and surrepticious behavior.

Er, well no. God did not want to make Saul king, but gave the people what they wished- I assume because he chose to let them learn by mistake. At some point yes he will appoint the ideal government by divine command. As long as he permits free will, and this dispensation to continue, he will take the lesser of two evils. His blessing rests on America for one reason IMO- because it does not hinder the Gospel. If God helped as much in the war as Washington, et al, claimed, it was for that reason.

Well no. Jesus will never rule over anything but willing servants. "The meek will inherit the earth." There is nothing meek about those folks and they'll happily take unwilling servants.

Rad

Fiach

You left out the rest of his comment, "but didn't kill Communists because they were Atheists."

He is completely wrong about that. Hitler killed lots of communists and he asumed that they were all communists. He frequently (estimated 100+ times) used the term "Godless Bolsheviks" and also had that in his Mein Kampf.

As a matter of comparison, he killed few Christian Socialists than communists, because his major objection to Communism was not his totalitarianism which he admired, or its socialism, which he flirted with, but the Atheism which he hated. He killed commies mainly because they were Atheists. He also killed many Atheist university professors and writers for being Atheists who were not communists.

Crikey! I actually agreed with you on something, Rad. Will wonders never cease?

Fiach

Radorth

I hope not, being as it were, a theist.

Rad

lpetrich

Radorth:
What Ip says about Locke, Bacon and Newton is partially true, but the conclusions are wrong. They did not have to speak of Christ, the cross, the atonement and his kingdom as much and as often as they did to "help their careers." There is no evidence for that, and accuses them squarely of a lack of integrity and surrepticious behavior.

Radorth reveals his ignorance of history, because back then, one had to be a member of the Church of England in order to get some official position in that nation. Let's imagine that he went back in time in a time machine to visit these gentlemen. And he decided to get some official position in the British Government. Would he have been willing to subscribe to the Church's Thirty-Nine Articles in order to do so?

And BTW, these gentlemen were at least nominal Anglicans, which makes me wonder when Radorth will become an Episcopalian (the American branch of that church).

And as to professing some religion to help one's career, Plato and Machiavelli would have endorsed that action, because they both had advocated pushing religions they considered false but socially useful.

God did not want to make Saul king, but gave the people what they wished- I assume because he chose to let them learn by mistake.

Which is absolutely pointless and dangerous. Would you want your little kids to learn from experience that they can get electrocuted? Or hit by a car?

And if free will leads to sin, one ought to follow Jesus Christ's teaching about what to do about body parts that lead one to sin. That is, get rid of free will.

If God helped as much in the war as Washington, et al, claimed, it was for that reason.

Washington never claimed that. And he was also an Anglican, though apparently only a nominal one. So when will Radorth convert?

... Jesus will never rule over anything but willing servants. "The meek will inherit the earth."

Being an unwilling servant could make one meek. And Jesus Christ also taught that one should consider making oneself a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

lpetrich

I don't know if Hitler really objected to Communism on the ground that it strongly featured atheism, but allegedly inventing Communism he considered yet another example of Jewish depravity, along with being crooked capitalists, loansharking bankers, corrupters of culture, lusters after nice Nordic women, etc.

Biff the unclean

Radorth

I clearly said it stopped because people were reading the Bible and finding out what Jesus really wanted his followers to do and not do.

That's funny. My daughter is taught evolutionary theory in Christian school.
I took that second quote out of sequence because it illustrates how varied, contradictory and fragmented the teachings of all the thousands of Protestant sects is.
I'm glad that your child is allowed to learn facts in Christian school, many require superstition be taught instead. If the teachings are so varied how can they all be the teachings of the early church? How can there be so many it they haven't changed?

I clearly said several times that they did them before 300, and after 1700.
And you just as clearly didn't back up what you said.
You made a vague claim about the Acts of the Apostles. But faced with the horrendous behavior of the Christians described in that book most American Protestants would call the police on them. The only other records of the early church comes solely from the Roman Catholics and describes people behaving like good Roman Catholics (what else would you expect?)

That was the whole point, but if you once acknowedge it, your argument is dust while mine has historical and factual support.
By all means turn my argument to dust. Historical and factual support would be a welcome change from your usual myths and fairy tales.

You're just paranoid, like a surprising number of other Jesus-mythers, who I think I can now spot after listening to them for 5 minutes.
Oh I'm much worse than a Jesus-myther; I'm a Jesus-fictioner.
Since the Jesus story is comprised solely of Hellenistic myths that were current and extremely well known at the time of it's inception I am of the opinion that the Jesus story was constructed-like any work of fiction. And not evolved-like any myth.

They had reasons for wanting church and state separated. Still do.
They had many very good reasons. The Divine right of Kings, and the shenanigans of Oliver Cromwell are two that spring to mind.

And I suppose you should just be able to blather on, based on one single tortured verse, without anyone arguing with you as well.
A single tortured verse? Nice try, and a very funny alternate history about the wonderful Prods and their good deeds. No, I'm blathering on with all of European History form the death of Julian the Apostate to the present day.

Biff the unclean

the_cave
Agh, this is very compicated...I understand your point, but it's not a matter of Christians changing the labels on statues (though I suppose this could have happened from time to time...)
That's percisely what it is in the catacombs. Apollonius, Mithra and Dionysus all become Christ (Amos was right on the money about the church statement that theses were paintings of a conceptual Christ instead of the earthly Jesus) and Hercules becomes John the Baptist.
But they aren't claiming that the Hellenists painted these pieces of art and that when they took them over they renamed them. They are claiming that the early Christians painted them. And that is what doesn't ring true.

If someone makes a statue of Isis holding Horus, and I make a statue of Mary holding Jesus, I have every right to label my statue "Mary and Jesus", and then that's what it is in fact a statue of!
Yes, but if you were a Christian who thought that Isis and Horus were devils why would you make a statue of them instead of Mary and Son? You wouldn't, not in a million years. These were the Pagans who denied Christ and were throwing you to the lions!! And yet there they are in living color. All the art that the church claims was painted by the early Christians, of intellectual visions of Christ, is paintings of the "Pagan devils." Something isn't right.

If someone sees a painting of someone awful like Hitler looking "noble", and thinks "This is crap, I'll show them who's noble!" And then makes a painting of someone they actually admire looking noble, the second painting is a painting of the someone they admire, and it is rightly a painting of that someone looking noble (in contrast to Hitler, who was not.)
But that isn't what is happening. You are trying to concoct a story that makes sense but in doing so you are ignoring the facts--which don't make sense.
If someone showed you a painting of Hitler and told you the Jews had painted it and it is a intellectual vision of Moses you would know that something was wrong.
The church shows us paintings of Apollonius of Tyana and tells us the early Christians painted it and it is an intellectualized version of the Christ we know something is wrong.
And when we find that all the art that is called early Christian is likle that we know that something is really wrong.

Biff the unclean

If God helped as much in the war as Washington, et al, claimed, it was for that reason.

"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....
"Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism."
-- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E. Remsberg, "Six Historic Americans," second sentence quoted in Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15


"I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, February, 1800, quoted from Jefferson's Works, Vol. iv., p. 572 ("Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the Constitution of the United States; he was a member of the Continental Congress, a United States senator from New York, and minister to France. He accepted, to a considerable extent, the skeptical views of French Freethinkers." -- John E. Remsberg, Six Historic Americans.)