[Hack&Lube]

Originally posted by IGGYRULES@Jun 13 2005, 08:08 PM
Normally I don't like to get into debate about religion but this irks me. Why is it that "christians" are right?? I wonder what the folowers of other religions think of christians, quite possibly the same as you wrote Buff. I know you're response to this will be that you're way is the right way, and it's OK to believe that, but I think there is a problem when you condescendingly look at people that don't follow you're faith and feel it is your duty to show them the "right path". I believe that people need to do what makes them happy wheter or not religion is involved in their lives, and I don't believe anyone should push their beliefs onto someone else. It's like a god damn recruiting campaign out there, the church (whichever one it may be) wants your tithes. <----- Bottom Line!!!!!!!!!!!

Christians believe they are right because if you are to believe in a religion, you need the integrity and accountability to not waver from your beliefs. It explicitly states not to have other gods, engage in worldly activities, to separate yourself, etc. Christians push their beliefs onto others because it is part of Jesus' Great Commission...

And I quote from the ever handy but often flawed Wikipedia:

The Great Commission is to evangelical Christians the basis for their worldview and activities arising from it. It is also more generally the primary basis for Christian missionary activity in general. It is given most explicitly in Mark 16:15-16: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every person. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned." This quotation from Jesus suggests that all his followers as Christians have this duty to do, although it was given directly only to his apostles.

Critics note that this portion of Mark 16 is not found in two of the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. The response generally given is that this is immaterial, as essentially the same thing is quoted as having been said by Jesus in at least three other New Testament passages, and that additionally, the passage in question has always been regarded as part of the canon of the scriptures by church leaders of all ages from the 1st century CE to the present.

Evangelicals often contrast this "Great Commission" with the "Limited Commission" given to seventy of Jesus' followers as reported in Luke 10, in which they were to restrict their mission to their fellow Jews, to whom Jesus referred as "the lost sheep of the house of Israel".

Most Christian missionary and religious conversion activities are products of the Great Commission being interpreted as being valid and binding upon all Christians of all eras, not just the 1st century apostles.

That's why Christians work so hard to convince others of their beliefs. Accepting the idea of many truths or many God is contrary to Christian dogma. I know most people cringe and quickly rally to complain about Christian's assertion that they are only ones who are all right and all the rest will burn in Hell. Many Christians are certainly guilty of this. Most Christians would never realize things like how this Commission wasn't includeded in some texts and even if they did, would never question the authenticity of it. What a different religion Christianity would be if this were truely aprocryphal?

Personally, I believe in compassion and compassion but not tolerance of things which are against your personal faith. I myself am working this out and I'm leaning ever more and more toward apostasy because I believe less and less.

Let's just say that I am a shaky Christian who has studied evolutionary biology, geological history, and am interested and read in astrophysics. I definetely believe in evolution and science's interpretation of the Universe.

And I am most certainly not Catholic. Protestant interpretations of the Bible were in their day, the liberal and progressive and secular messages of their time where the Roman Catholic Church was engaged in horrible excess in their hegemony of wealth and power...

But it may interest some of you to check out their offical stance on evolution because it's one concentrated voice (as compared to the hundreds of conflicting Protestant denominations)

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 23, 1996 (VIS) - In a Message made public today to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, meeting this week in the Vatican in plenary session, the Holy Father recalled that Pope Pius XI, who restored this academy in 1936, called this group of scholars "the Church's 'scientific senate'" and asked them "to serve the truth."

The Pope expressed delight on the plenary's theme on the origin of life and evolution, "a basic theme which greatly interests the Church, as Revelation contains, for its part, teachings concerning the nature and origins of man." If the scientifically-reached conclusions and those contained in Revelation on the origin of life seem to counter each other, he said, "in what direction should we seek their solution? We know in effect that truth cannot contradict truth."

John Paul II, noting the academy's "reflection on science at the dawn of the third millennium," observed that "in the domain of inanimate and animate nature, the evolution of science and its applications make new questions arise. The Church can grasp their scope all the better as she knows their basic aspects."

He pointed to the Church's magisterium on the question of the origin of life and evolution, citing in particular Pius XII's 1950 Encyclical "Humani Generis" and the conciliar Constitution "Gaudium et Spes."

The Pope drew the academicians' attention to "the need for a correct interpretation of the inspired word, of a rigorous hermeneutics. It is fitting to set forth well the limits of the meaning proper to Scripture, rejecting undue interpretations which make it say what it does not have the intention of saying."

"'Humani Generis'," he stated, "considered the doctrine of 'evolutionism' as a serious hypothesis, worthy of a more deeply studied investigation and reflection on a par with the opposite hypothesis. ... Today, more than a half century after this encyclical, new knowledge leads us to recognize in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis. ... The convergence, neither sought nor induced, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."

He continued: "The elaboration of a theory such as that of evolution, while obeying the exigency of homogeneity with the data of observation, borrows certain ideas from the philosophy of nature. To tell the truth, more than the theory of evolution, one must speak of the theories of evolution.... There are thus materialistic and reductionist readings and spiritual readings."

"The magisterium of the Church is directly interested in the question of evolution because this touches upon the concept of man, ... created in the image and likeness of God.... Pius XII underlined this essential point: 'if the origin of the human body is sought in living matter which existed before it, the spiritual soul is directly created by God.' Consequently, the theories of evolution which, as a result of the philosophies which inspire them, consider the spirit as emerging from forces of living matter or as a simple epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are moreover incapable of laying the foundation for the dignity of the person."

"Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life and place them on a timeline. The moment of passing over to the spiritual is not the object of an observation of this type, which can nevertheless reveal, on an experimental level, a series of very useful signs about the specificity of the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of the awareness of self and of its reflexive nature, that of the moral conscience, that of liberty, or still yet the aesthetic and religious experience, are within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology extracts from it the final meaning according to the Creator's designs."

There was also tenuous Papal approval of the Big Bang:

In 1951, interestingly, Pius XII (who so grudgingly acknowledged the possibility of evolution) celebrated news from the world of science that the universe might have been created in a Big Bang.# (The term, first employed by astronomer Fred Hoyle was meant to be derisive, but it stuck.)# In a speech before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences he offered an enthusiastic endorsement of the theory: "

"…it would seem that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies."# (ME, 254-55)"

But the Pope didn’t stop there.# He went on to express the surprising conclusion that the Big Bang proved the existence of God:

"Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator.# Hence, creation took place.# We say: therefore, there is a Creator.# Therefore, God exists"

You can see how the machinery of (ironically) the Catholic Church is trying desperately to cope with modernity and science, but I appreciate the fact that these attempts contain at the least, a sentiment of flexibility and an openess to new ideas...Not like those Bible Belt Churches and people who so stubbornly refuse to address ideas they couldn't even possibly understand and even now, regularily bring to court cases of evolutionary teaching in schools and fight to keep monuments of the 10 Commandments in those very courthouses while expousing such closed-minded and ignorant rhetoric.

Personally, the nature of organized religion and the Church has really turned me off of it, as it all seems so ridiculous and full of hypocracy, and I can really only rely on history and science to make my own judgements. But I have also seen the love and joy of many Christians firsthand, and there's something there that I can't give up on yet. What a horrible spokesman for Christ I am...but it really is not in knowledge, but in the love, compassion, sacrifice, suffering, and stirring of the soul that true faith - true religion can be found.