Quote:
Originally Posted by bobmarksdale 
In your rant against Christianity, you said (paraphrasing here to make the point) that a group is defined by what they are doing, not their ideals. Which then changes their ideals to what they are doing. Right? Or at least close? Then when talking about man and astronomy, you said that man doesn't want to be bothered by all the trivial crap that comes our way, but just wants to be left alone and discover. But, Since we are concerned about this, than this is what we want. Still good? So man wants to be immersed in this junk constantly, but also wants to be left alone to discover, which are mutually exclusive events. So you either are either lying, using faulty logic, or applying a double standard to man and Christianity. I assumed the last as you seem to be an otherwise intelligent individual, but biased against the religiously inclined.
Feel free to correct me if your implied meaning was different than my interpreted one.
In your rant against Christianity, you said (paraphrasing here to make the point) that a group is defined by what they are doing, not their ideals. Which then changes their ideals to what they are doing. Right? Or at least close? Then when talking about man and astronomy, you said that man doesn't want to be bothered by all the trivial crap that comes our way, but just wants to be left alone and discover. But, Since we are concerned about this, than this is what we want. Still good? So man wants to be immersed in this junk constantly, but also wants to be left alone to discover, which are mutually exclusive events. So you either are either lying, using faulty logic, or applying a double standard to man and Christianity. I assumed the last as you seem to be an otherwise intelligent individual, but biased against the religiously inclined.
Feel free to correct me if your implied meaning was different than my interpreted one.
I said a group is defined by what they are doing and not their ideals. If that group becomes perverse and corrupt, then it doesn't matter what the original ideal was - especially when the ideal was always relative to start with.
I know this bores some people, but God and Jesus are not absolutes, else my statement would be wrong. God and Jesus being absolute, then there would be an original ideal, and there would be deviance from it.
Deviance from an absolute would mean that people calling themselves Christians would be liars, and not Christians at all, because there is an absolute benchmark to measure against.
We dont have this because whatever we chose to learn about Jesus and God is a relative to our environment, our learning and interpretation. There is no absolute benchmark that we can use to decide what the original ideal was and who is complying and who is not.
Deviance from a relative is just a new relative, and should be judged on what is doing today.
Therefore we are in no position to judge who is being a good Christian, or who is being a bad Christian, because we can only ever have a biased interpretation of what Good Christain is. There is no absolute benchmark to take reference from.
Your so-called benchmark, Jesus is not here to give us his opinion, so you rely on your relative interpretation of his ideals. On the other hand if you take the Bibles words as the absolute benchmark, then all Christians are wrong.
So, if someone decides that they are a christian, then they are a christian, and christianity is the sum of all the people who are claiming they are Christians.
Likewise for every group, including Athiests etc.
Now, there might be a group - which I would subscribe too - you might call it 'peace loving hippy' aka 'PLH' group, that just want to learn, discover, and explore.
The sum total of this group is what we would be doing, and that would be learning, discovering and exploring. If the group became perverse and corrupt, then we would be perverse and corrupt, just like any other group ive mentioned.
Now here is the important fundamental difference I would subscribe too.
If the PLH group becomes corrupt, I leave and have nothing to do with it anymore, I abandon all ties and links to the PLH and publicly deride it for being sick. Its not absolute the PLH is always going to stand for the way it was founded regardless of whatever happens.
If for instance we had a charismatic founder or leader, but he wrote stuff down that people later misinterpreted that caused them to act like f.morons, we rip up these words and start again, with something people do understand in this era. Later if in a new era those words cause problems, we rip them up and start over.
Christians, Muslims etc will not do this. Foolishly thinking that they follow something absolute, they're destined to becoming more and more perverse as the passage of time flows from their inception, and their interpretations become more and more corrupted from the original intent.
There is no hope for a group of people thinking they are following something absolute, who are not prepared to toss out the cancer of their corruption because of some godly-elevated idealistic tosspot founder - especially when, if were benchmarking ourselves against a false absolute - absolutely he never was real anyway.
Relatively, all religions evolved from a blend of astrology and philosophy. Something entirely relative since its inception.
You cannot claim an absolute benchmark and then split into 10,000 different sects all with a relative interpretation in regard to eachother of something so-called absolute - at best 9,999 of you are corrupt and perverse and thus wrongful liars.
You cannot claim an absolute benchmark when your founder is either a personified "philosophizing solar entity" or just another human preaching "philosophized astrology". Its utter madness to take it absolutely.
If however Jesus was at inception meant to be symbolic of a mythical relative fluid montage of wisdom for humans to take relatively and fluidly as a guidance through life.....but that is not what is happening right here and now.
