General Chat

Eldrick


religion, or temple, can also be used in a non-religious sense


as in something in which you believe, a credo if you like, that you live your life by.


as such, I think you have a religion of non-religion :-D


some people, mainly vain women but also vain men, make a temple of their body :-D :-D :-D

In the same way, I find it difficult to believe in the Bible .







............... there are too many things at odds with what I know from science to blindly believe, or to try to bend modern knowledge to fall in line with the bible.


It is the way in which fanatics and fundamentalist christians deal with the bible .............. the mormons who still believe in polygamy take their authority for it directly from statements made in the OT.

Yet, the fundamentalist Mormons who believe in polygamy, and in marrying girls off at a very young age, and in kicking teenage boys out from the colony because they might be competitors for the women, are disdained by the vast majority of Mormons who have embraced monogamy

Sylvia

Stop bullying me. I shall cry.

John, you are taking the wee now. Fair one, i asked for it.

Hang on...while Google comes up an answer

....adulterated ;-)

Eldrick


you have a wonderful ability to turn people's words against, and to fit your own self-thought superiority.

You asked a question, I rtried to answer to the best of my ability


You have nothing good to say about anything to do with religion .......... only bad things, and disparagements.


and, yes, you can always find the melodramatic events to illustrate what you think is wrong


I'm tired of the way in which you make fun of anyone who does not think as you do.

You display a vehemence in the way in which you defend, or support, your beliefs, that is at odds with a man comfortable in his own skin



I'm not religious, but it is everyone's right to have the beliefs they wish .................. and everyone's right not to be mocked for it.

Some people are 'Black & White'....................Sooooo saaaaad

Eldrick I wish you wouldn't keep saying I am not worthy of debating with about religion. 324 posts now on a thread about women bishops. Several between you and me. So I would hate to debate with you if you thought I was worth debating with.

Surprised someone has not yet said we are both sad and lonely :-)

I see the wider picture through the Bible, of course. Anything that appears to contradict the Bible, I try to see whether the Bible was as clear as I thought it was.

And anything that appears to agree with the Bible I treat with some scepticism. I am not naive, at least if I am noone has ever told me.

Examplesd that lead me to believe Bible truth are the doubt over accuracy of carbon dating and the world being billions of years old, the doubt over Einstein's relativity theory, the doubt over much of The Origin of Man, the death in Shropshire in a huge flood of many prehistoric species and the discovery of that ark on the mountain in Turkey.

You surely cannot maintain there is no controversy over these matters. I like to study them as well - but from the standpoint of the Bible as that is the only true starting point in my view.

Jesus provides me with true answers, you will only find more and more complications if you try to go it alone.

Ann

Whenever a religious group ......... baptists are just as bad here if not worse than JWs or Mormons ............. knocks at my door, I just say "I do not talk religion or politics at the door, thank you"


and shut the door.

I do the same to politicos.


The funniest was some years ago when I answered a knock, and saw these 2 middle-aged Chinese ladies standing there.

One looked askance at me, and said "OH, you're not Chinese"

No, says I

Then she tried desperately to peer round me into the house, and said

"But are there no Chinese living here?"

"No", sez I. " and never have been for the last 40 some years"


She went away shaking her head in disbelief.

I'm sure she thought I was hiding some poor little Chinese man or woman at the back of the room!


She was from the neighbourhood Baptist Church, a building which actually has 3 churches that meet and conduct services there ................ Canadian Baptist, Chinese Baptists, and Filippino Baptists.


One or more of those proselytizes every now and then


JWs and Mormons have not actually been around here for many years.

Sylvia, you seem to think that i have some sort of religion. You refer to my religions. What are you talking about? I dont have any religion whatsoever! I laugh at all of them, lol

Characters in the bible being known as true? Noah? Adam? Lot? Purleeeeessseee!

John, sorry mate, its a draw. Your bible quoting is just getting on my nerves.

I know its a load because barti slartfast told me in a dream last night when he was discussing it with the great penguin in the hat.


:-D

OMG......Sea Scrolls?



Hang on, I'll 'Google' and change the odd word!

I am disappointed, sylvia, that you think i aspire to any religion of any flavour. I have no time for anything supernatural. Men in frocks amuse me. Hysterical celibate male virgins are not natural.

Melodramatic? You take my breath away! How you can dismiss members of your sex being mutilated for merely being what they are. I never said all religions were women hating, but specifically refer to the origins of the three monotheistic abrahamic religions. If you think they werent and still arent then you arent looking hard enough. If you think islam is woman friendly then you are seriously mistaken big style. Have you ever been to Saudi? I have.

I laugh at bishops. They are equally entitled to laugh at me, but then again, im not a woman so they probably wouldnt.

Hayley


thank you for correcting that


sorry if you thought I was abrupt in the way that I stated it would be a shame to rr the wrong person.

I didn't think it was abrupt ................... but that is you and I differing in our views of it.

Eldrick


what about the Dead Sea scrolls?


the ones that have been transcribed have to a certain extent supported what has come down to us from oral tradition which was then written up as the Scriptures 300 or 400 years after the events.


It is also true that oral tradition is a huge part of the history of First Nations ............. and in Canada it has now been accepted by the highest court in the land that oral tradition is to be accepted as a legal argument.


Could we ever see that happen with regard to parts of the Bible?

I do not know.


I do know that I can only accept what is in the Bible if I translate it in my mind from what is stated as happening in 6 days and "on the seventh, God rested" ............. if I think of one of those days as being at least a millenium.


The characters in the Bible are known historical figures ........... that is not a lie.

What is missing is any degree of information written down at the time.


But that also applies to Mithraism, to the Druids, to paganism, etc etc ...................


so your religions are just as much a matter of misinterpretation and lack of knowledge as christianity.

JW's knock my door at their peril - I have a notice banning all church groups from coming to my door following an unpleasant altercation with a patronising JW a few years back - they knock my door at their own risk

my son's friend has a particular dislike for JWs so when informed by a neighbour further up the road that they were making their way down to his house he dashed upstrairs, took off all his clothes and when they knocked the door he answered it stark naked - they never called again :-D

my father on the other hand - a committed atheist - much to my mother's distress, used to invite any religious callers into the house and spend hours arguing with them till they gave up in desperation and asked to leave

Sylvia Many thanks for explaining Mithras. I find trying to understand other religions very difficult, and a lot of Christianity is way beyond my simple mind. I note that the greatest Christian thinkers never get anywhere close to understanding everything. Fortunately, if our aim is to secure a life everlasting, the Bible answer is very very simple, thank God.

I know a little about numerology, and in the Authorised Version (King James) of the Bible a lot of effort seems to have been put in by the 54 writers to link numbers. And 3, 7 and 12 in particular kept coming up (Trinity, seven churches of Asia, 12 tribes of Israel etc). And is is the Mormons (LDS Church) who talk about seventh heaven?

How you must enjoy JW's coming to your door, dear Eldrick. Most people just shyly take a booklet and say something like "I have my own church thankyou". I say to them "I am a Jehovah's Witness - I believe in Jehovah the Father, Jehovah the Son and Jehovah the Holy Spirit" One told me I was an idiot :-D

But they see everything in OT as fact and you would so wind them up Eldrick. :-D

As regards the activities of the Taliban, or others that throw acid in the face of young girls, shoot girls to stop them going to school, or keep women in burkhas


let's stop being melodramatic, shall we?


You should know, just as do I, that those who preach such things, and commit such dreadful acts, are not true representatives of their religion ...... and are in fact condemned by many of their fellows.

Most of us find their acts disgusting!

They are fundamentalists of the worst degree ..................... just as are some of the fundamentalist christians


The religions to which you aspire have had just as many bloody events in their past as any other.


You don't mention other religions that encourage the education of women, or the raising of women to high positions in a religion .................. I think of those all the time.


The Sikhs who believe in education of females

The Ismaili religion where education of girls is paramount ... they are Muslims


There are always counter arguments to what you profess.

John, you are trying to debate with someone who uses rational argument and logic to support a contention.

Quotes from a bible mean nothing to me, i dismiss them totally and am able to do so because neither you nor anyone else is able to support them in any way at all. What can be Asserted without evidence may safely be dismissed without evidence. In other words, ignored.

Do you not think that it would broaden horizons by contemplating the big picture as opposed to the insular microcosm of blindly ignoring anything that doesnt fit cosily into the contradictory books of a committee edited volume of mythology? I speak in general terms, not aiming particularly at you, even though your arguments are contradictory by using selecitve quotes when it suits and ignoring texts when it doesnt support a contention.

:-D :-D

Cynthia my sincere apologies, I have sent you a PM to say so,

Sorry my post was directed @ Sylvia in Canada not Cynthia ...and as you so abrutly pointed out Sylvia in Canada it would be a shame to RR the wrong person :-D

Eldrick

Matriarchal societies in England ............. from the docklands of Liverpool, to cotton mill towns in Lancashire, to medieval society.

Druids ................. the priestesses may well have been superior to the male priests

First Nations in North America ............... many of those are matriarchal ............. the council of matrons ruled, always have, and still do now.



and no, I do not believe that you have the right to make fun of Bishops .........

........ others believe in bishops and christianity, and that gives no-one, not even you, the right to make fun of them, their beliefs or the people who lead their church..

Eldrick It was the men in frocks who have voted overwhelmingly for women in last few Synods. It was the women in frocks who voted against (or voted "for" at less than the required percentage).

Have you seen some of those in frocks of a more female persuasion in the Church of England. They can be quite fearsome and would certainly tell you to buck your ideas up.

They would disprove gravity by sending a flower vase horizontally.

Only gentle leg pull - in case there are any militant church flower arrangers watching this thread, I mean no offence :-D