Yadda wrote on Aug 26^th, 2016 at 9:52pm:


You put so much time into these walls of text, who are you trying to convince? Not I, my position is clear. The dead Sea scrolls do not mention a virgin giving birth, that is a Greek thing, she was not a virgin and for Jebus to be of the house of David, Joseph must have been the one that did the deed. He's not the Messiah, he just the illegitimate son of very naughty parents.

Yadda wrote on Aug 26^th, 2016 at 10:50pm:


I was!

Yadda wrote on Aug 26^th, 2016 at 11:51pm:


And? I'm sure there is a point.

Assurances of God's existence, at least in Abrahamic terms, is a relatively modern idea. I hesitate to call it a belief, because we can go flying off on the tangent nature of belief itself. However, belief is the word that Atheists, Agnostics, and the God lot are happy to throw around undefined.

Earlier preachers often used the phrase to describe the faithful as those who “fear the God of Abraham.” Historically, belief seems to have been a later concession to sensibilities, and public relations in spreading Christianity. But fear remained an important tool in the Christian Church until the Renaissance and humanism began to chip away at institutionalized religion.

Fear, of course, is the bedrock of crowd control. It has always been used gain the upper hand. Early Christians among Pagans, did not use the sword to spread what they called the truth. They may have beaten their children into line, but then most people did. However, the Ten Commandments would not have been very effective without a way of enforcing them, and that's where fear comes in. Fear the God of Abraham; why? Because of the threat of violence. That is why the concept of an afterlife is so important to Christians. They needed a place away from public scrutiny where a Father figure could cause excruciating pain.

There is one essential ingredient in the Abrahamic use of fear and the acceptance of its authority; that is a sense of guilt. Making people feel guilty for Christ's pain is a tidy way of doing it, because like the afterlife, it can not be verified.

It seems that the fires of hell, and eternal damnation by a vengeful God have gone out of fashion in most Christian circles. They prefer to talk about faith than fear. I think that just shows the evolution of their religion which is as much under the influence social change as any other aspect of the human story.

Christianity once combined with monarchical and imperial power to justify each other. The threat of violence in the present and the hereafter were an invincible combination for centuries. But like all negative concepts, it could only last so long. The problem was that at some deep level, people don't forget being threatened, and they don't forget being held guilty. It gives them a kind of dirty, confused feeling, and they resent it. When artists, poets and writers started questioning their guilt five hundred years ago, one of the pillars of Christianity was found to be rotten, fear was the next one to go. And by mid twentieth century, the scolding father figure, who will beat you, if you do not do as you are told, could no longer be credited as the master of the Universe.

John Smith wrote on Aug 26^th, 2016 at 8:09am:


I can't hear you with your wife's strapon in your mouth.

For the record, I am not Christian. I am merely throwing out a few morsels, to see who's got the arsenal to play.

So what have these strap-ons got to do with this thread? Are we just too inarticulate to put our own thoughts into words?