evince (02-16-2020)
evince (02-16-2020)
the religion thing is just a mask for the corporate whores to wear
USFREEDOM911 (02-16-2020)
USFREEDOM911 (02-16-2020)
Isaiah 6:5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Most societies developed 'gods' out of magic hunting-dances when they were forced to take up farming and desperately needed to believe in something better than this ghastly world run by armed thieves, - it made some sort of sense, first to believe in lots of gods, one for each particular 'force' or activity, then slowly to shrink these down to one good God who was all-powerful and would put things right. In other words, the growing knowledge and hope of the human race slowly concentrated on the power to change the world. With Paul's view of Jesus the Roman idea that powerful humans became divine attached itself to the Good God, who had taken human form ready for the total revolution that should change everything - and Jesus' ideas suited such a God. Unfortunately, it is we who will have to move: supernatural intervention seems less and less likely, and as we know more about the vastness of the Universe(s), the existence of a God figure grows less and less likely. Nothing has as yet contradicted the hypothesis of evolution, whereas the god-hypotheses put forward by early societies are extremely difficult to defend - a full-time job, I'd say. 'Faith' and scientific enquiry belong to different thought-worlds, and it seems entirely pointless to pretend otherwise.
Last edited by Mott the Hoople; 02-17-2020 at 07:24 AM.
You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic!
Iolo/Penderyn (02-17-2020)
Cypress (02-17-2020)
You are right, and that is why I said Luke/Acts was practically a communist manifesto, not literally one.
Communist political theory did not exist in the first century CE. But the concept that rich people need to share their property and wealth with the poor, and that property and wealth should be shared collectively by communities of people have been with us for 2000 years. And in my opinion, that concept of inclusion of the poor and oppressed is Christianity's greatest contribution to the Western philosophical tradition
Iolo/Penderyn (02-17-2020)
Yup - everything depends on the state of human development. American Republicans, for instance, have not developed to the point when they can even conceive of socialism. On the other hand, from very early on, many, many people knew that the codswallop the bosses had made of Christianity was exactly that. Way back in the Fourteenth Century they were saying,
'When Adam delvEd and Eve span
Who was the gentleman',
and they were far from the first. Knowing what's wrong inevitably precedes knowing how to put it right, and people knew something was wrong from the moment they were first made to pay 'rent' for the land they thought God made.
Cypress (02-17-2020)
"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!"
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
Iolo/Penderyn (02-18-2020)
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