Religion Thread 3

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Vick
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Post by Vick »

Vishy_mulay wrote:Did Christ said that? OR is it Pauline version endorsed by Pope Leo? Can you give me the verse from which this came. Thanks.
John 14:6, Mark 8:31, Mark 10:33, John 6:43-51, John 8:12 & 23-30, &34-38, John 10:11, John 10:17

It's late and I probably missed a few passages.

Last note before I turn in: Everyone deserves to be treated respectfully, regardless of creed or anything. But knowing what I know and believing what I believe, I cannot acknowledge any god other than the one triune God of the bible. That doesn't mean that I am going to go throw pork at a mosque or beef at a temple or go and kill an unbeliever.

One last last note: Please don't judge Christianity by the actions of people, judge it by the life and teachings of Christ. He was not a marauding army general with concubines bent on the expansion of territory. He took no life but gave up His own, willingly and without challenge and died the death of a criminal. He was a carpenter who said and did profound things, either one believes those sayings and doings at face value or one doesn't. What people do in His name is between them and God and they will have to give an answer for every moment, action, and thought of their life to God.
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Post by Alok_N »

Amber G. wrote:
The west has stood for science and rationality, and yet, most mainstream Xtian websites seem to have a firm belief in Demons

In what way is belief in Demons any different from belief in Djinns ?
Well as Alok_N will say - West's science , the second law of thermodynamics is based on Maxwell's demon.
Hi Amber, I was scanning the thread and I caught this ... I can't tell who you are responding to because the "quote" has no member name in it ...

a belief in Djinns, Demons, Bhoots etc is a natural response of human frustration that wants to cling to "magic" in order to circumvent the frustrating problem of logical fallacies ... on this thread we have seen several members throw in the towel and resort to the age-old defence of "some things are faith based and hence not logical" ...

it is a cop out and we know it ... and they know it ... it is inferior, IMO, to the standard defence of "dog ate my homework" ... both are equally irrefutable, but at least in the dog defence one can investigate whether the claimant actually has a dog or not ... in the case of faith there are no investigative channels possible ...

as for Vick, may I remind him that a gauntlet was graciously presented as "pesh hai" ... feel free to pick it up ... if not, I run the risk of being accused of harrassing a member off his beliefs ...

however, if a member voluntarily agrees to discuss chritianity, I am game ... let's make sure that it is not christianity versus hinduism ... it is christianity versus Alok_N ... :)
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Post by Vick »

ramana wrote:Vick you know the admins have a 24/7 watch on this thread and have warned people as needed. And you have been with us from a long time.
Are you warning me for any of my posts? If it is, please let me know, I will either explain or apologize.
Raju

Post by Raju »

I believe he is reassuring you.
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Post by Alok_N »

Raju wrote:I believe he is reassuring you.
yes, he is ... Alok_N, otoh, is challenging you ...

if you really wish to express your thoughts as you have done in this thread and have them available for analysis, I merely request that you ackowledge this procedure ...

establishment of such a procedure would negate any perception of one member berating another for no reason at all ... please provide a licence for "reason" ... thanks ...
Last edited by Alok_N on 23 Mar 2007 09:28, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by saumitra_j »

Vick wrote:One last last note: Please don't judge Christianity by the actions of people, judge it by the life and teachings of Christ.
No sire - this is not about Christianity - it is about Christianity as practiced by the EJs that we are debating.

And I think Ramana is actually trying to assure you that the Mods are keeping an eye on the threads and will make sure that it doesn't get personal so that discussion may ensue :)
Raju

Post by Raju »

Alok_N wrote:
Raju wrote:I believe he is reassuring you.
yes, he is ... Alok_N, otoh, is challenging you ...

...
I decline your challenge at this point... :lol:
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Post by Vishy_mulay »

Vick majority of people on this forum respect Christ and his teachings. Our (SDFs) problem is with the bazaar of soul harvesting and social engineering of EJs which you have also denounced. For me Faith is neurosis (Alokji has encouraged me :D ). Thanks for the references, trying to understand few things about the True Faith.
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Post by Vick »

Raju wrote:I believe he is reassuring you.
If it's reassurance, then I appreciate it. Thanks.

Alok_N, discussion is fine with me. If the admins want us to take it offline, then I can do that as well.
saumitra_j wrote:No sire - this is not about Christianity - it is about Christianity as practiced by the EJs that we are debating.
Absolutely but for a while it was getting very difficult to differentiate between what people meant by EJs and Christians.

Again, let me make my stand explicitly clear, anyone who uses Christianity as a tool to do their or their master's bidding in India is repulsive and deserves to be held legally accountable under Indian law.
Last edited by Vick on 23 Mar 2007 09:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Alok_N »

Raju wrote:I decline your challenge at this point... :lol:
oops, sorry about misformatting .. the challenge was for Vick ...

I know better than to challenge Raju boss who is slipperier that the slipperiest ... :)
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Post by Prem »

Raju wrote:
Vick wrote:The way this thread was/is going, it appeared that anyone who is a Christian was considered a EJ or a possible EJ.
You need to tread on this thread carefully, some people are baiting so do not indulge them.
This thread is about EJs and their willingness to apply all possible not so good means to achieve their napak objectives. This is not about prevalent Christianity or teachings of Christ. Vick is confusing and defending both.
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Post by ramana »

Vick, its reassurance if you needed.
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Post by Prem »

shiv wrote:
Prem wrote: Hindus have no problem in what you believe, it is the pimping of your beliefs by using fradulent means which is disliked . Keep your beliefs to your self and do not grant yourself the right to intrude upon us
Prem I compliment you upon your robust defence of vulnerable Hindus - but kindly edit your message and I will remove this message.

Your words actually accuse forum member Vick of "pimping" his beliefs.

Please do not get personal. Your comments are by no means general and do not indicate that you are speaking of anyone else.
I have editied the post . It was not a personal comment at all but in same vein Vick refered to himself in first person and his own personal beliefs which grant him certain rights in regard to Non-Christian heathens.
Last edited by Prem on 23 Mar 2007 10:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Alok_N »

Vick wrote:Alok_N, discussion is fine with me. If the admins want us to take it offline, then I can do that as well.
awww ... offline is no fun ...

I assume your response to mean that you are agreeing to a public debate ...

very well, the first topic of discussion is one that you raised ... it has to do with a linear model for human after-death condition versus a cyclic one ... christianity believes in a linear model in which some mythical entity labelled as "soul" is fed into a binary output of "heaven" and "hell" ...

right so far?

I assume the affirmative ... lets now address the issue of when this system got installed ... one would assume that it was at the time when "eve" ate an "apple", or some such mythical "time-zero" ...

what follows is that prior to this eve event, heaven and hell were empty ... they were commissioned by "god" about 5-8K years ago ...

now, "god" must have planned for an expansion model for H&H ... being omnipotent and all, surely he can do that ... however, it is clear that as human population continues to grow, the capacity of H&H must grow as well ...

if left to its own devices, this growth problem diverges and is non-unitary in nature ... hence, an event to cap the growth rate is desired ...

fortunatley, we have "second coming" and "rapture" as concepts that reduce this problem to the finite regime ...

I assume that you agree with such principles ...

however, the problem starts with the post-rapture situation ... what happens to physical reality? ... does it just evaporate as so much "puff"? ... or, some remanants of physical reality remain? ...

your considered response to this didactic problem would be apreciated ...
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Post by Bade »

Almost all non-hindu religious beliefs are inclusive as in the faithful believe in the same entity as well as have a sense of brotherhood and considers it as ones duty to save others. Hinduism is not inclusive contrary to what many have said here, since it is based on individual spiritual experience. So you cannot spread your spiritual experience or transfer it. When Jesus died on the cross to save the sinners as the faithful believe and state, it is indicating a transferable spiritual experience. In Hinduism such a concept does not exist as far as I know. People are confusing IMO the allowance of multiple paths within Hinduism to reach GOD as inclusivity. So to a Christian, Hindu beliefs will always look exclusive since it has to be experienced at the individual level. There will be people who are at different levels of spiritual experience and hence society will look stratified to the non-hindu.

There is another interesting angle to this chain of thought in the context of conflict of interest between ones religious beliefs and allegiance to nation states. A Hindu will/should not feel the dilemma of serving two masters since his religious/philosophical self is individual and self-contained, hence can be at ease being a Indian national or a BD, Pakistani or US national. :shock:

But if your religious beliefs has a brotherhood concept due to the transferable spirituality then there is a potential conflict with the concept of nation state built into it. This must have been the need to separate the church and state explicitly for political expediency in the west at least.

Individuals have to resolve this dilemma as Christians/Moslems/etc being at the same time say, a Nepali or Chinese or Indian national for lack of a choice but it surely will make them less of a Christian/Moslem etc when pitched against similar believers in a conflict like war. Isn't killing of Christians by Christians a sin and a straight ticket to hell ? Ditto for Moslems.

The collective versus the individual spirituality is what really separates the core of Hinduism with all others. The stress on the individual experience is what leads to extreme ills like casteism in society. These are the pros and cons. One is exclusive and extremely flexible while the others are rigid at their core but inclusive of all believers.
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Post by Vishy_mulay »

Alokji for you
Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, Final Exam question for May of 1997. Dr. Schambaugh is known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, We postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.

Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:

If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic."

The student, Tim Graham, got the only A.
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Post by Alok_N »

vishy, I have seen such posts before ... they are mostly tongue-e-cheek ...

however, debating the fundamental tenets is very much a straightforward proposition ...

Vick may or may not respond to the queries ... yet, it is fruitful to put out the difficulties of such restricted philosophies ...
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Post by Vishy_mulay »

Alokji my intention was to just make you smile :D that's all.
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Post by Johann »

Bade wrote: Isn't killing of Christians by Christians a sin and a straight ticket to hell ? Ditto for Moslems.
- Christians do not have special duties towards fellow-Christians elsewhere, unlike Muslims.

- Christianity does not come with an in-built view of itself as a trans-national political community.

AFAIK in Christianity murder is murder, whatever the religion of the victim.

For a period the Catholic Church was in to intercessions - ie you give them enough money and theyd wipe away your sins.

Then came along the reformation.

The idea of 'Christendom' (equivalent to the ummah) was something the Romans tried to promote and was ultimately abandoned at the end of the medieval era.

Although the Roman Catholic Church is a transnational organisation, it does nothing to prevent two Catholic countries from fighting each other, althouh should they want to negotiate the Church provides a ready-made channel.

Islam on the other hand continues to claim that it forms a universal commonwealth, all Muslims are brothers, *special* obligations to all fellow-Muslims wherever they may be, etc.
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