John Kerry on religion: "Not the Way I Think Most People Want to Live"

originally posted by: amazing

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater
a reply to: amazing

Just pay close attention to the first few words of your post and you will be OK.

what do you mean? Maybe I shouldn't have said, on the surface, but I didn't want to take any of Kerry's words out of context so... I was just commenting on the surface words, which were-"religion: Not the Way I Think Most People Want to Live" and I agree with that statement so I singled out the basic tenants of the Abraham religions and stated what why I didn't want that.

Or you okay?

You are surely not that stupid, so I won't respond until you are intellectually honest.

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater

originally posted by: amazing

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater
a reply to: amazing

Just pay close attention to the first few words of your post and you will be OK.

what do you mean? Maybe I shouldn't have said, on the surface, but I didn't want to take any of Kerry's words out of context so... I was just commenting on the surface words, which were-"religion: Not the Way I Think Most People Want to Live" and I agree with that statement so I singled out the basic tenants of the Abraham religions and stated what why I didn't want that.

Or you okay?

You are surely not that stupid, so I won't respond until you are intellectually honest.

Um...still not sure what you're talking about? Are you agreeing with me/disagreeing with me/ have a problem with one of my points? Apparently I'm not a genius like you and don't understand your complex, coded replies. I need you to spell it out for me. Thanks!

a reply to: amazing

Then read over your last post, acknowledge where you played dumb, and apologize for pretending that I am dumb enough to believe that you are dumb enough to believe what you posted.

a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

1. The Jews are the ancient Hebrew people, in this context, God's chosen people of the OT. The bloodlines that recently returned to Israel and reformed it. Are you dim or messing with me?

2. You are guilty of being a watcher of the times, which God specifically warned about. Comparing the cyclic nature of humans to prophecy is sin. The cycle of history is not perfectly cyclic. Prophecy always is perfectly accurate.

3. Say what about Rumsfeld? How old are you? That has 0 to do with anything.

4. Nothing new under the sun is referring to the cyclic nature of history, as in human sin and ideology. 2000 years ago, there was some guy like you arguing with some guy like me.

In my opinion, your entire post exemplifys Kerry position of individual interpretations of 1000 to 2000 year old plus text trying to tell the rest of us what to think and how to think. You want to emphasize division as if it's divine because the Bible says so.

Christians like you have no commitment to society or our children's future. Everything your ilk does is in respect to the next world. You keep hoping and praying for more wars, more volcanoes and natural disasters, more destruction to hasten the end of the world as we know it. This is the problem with 1000 to 2000 year old doctrine being taken seriously today, it's dangerous and non-productive. Too many evangelicals are out there trying to promote Armageddon!

I don't want to live like that, and I don't think anyone else really does either. Got to agree with Kerry on this one!

originally posted by: windword
a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

1. The Jews are the ancient Hebrew people, in this context, God's chosen people of the OT. The bloodlines that recently returned to Israel and reformed it. Are you dim or messing with me?

2. You are guilty of being a watcher of the times, which God specifically warned about. Comparing the cyclic nature of humans to prophecy is sin. The cycle of history is not perfectly cyclic. Prophecy always is perfectly accurate.

3. Say what about Rumsfeld? How old are you? That has 0 to do with anything.

4. Nothing new under the sun is referring to the cyclic nature of history, as in human sin and ideology. 2000 years ago, there was some guy like you arguing with some guy like me.

In my opinion, your entire post exemplifys Kerry position of individual interpretations of 1000 to 2000 year old plus text trying to tell the rest of us what to think and how to think. You want to emphasize division as if it's divine because the Bible says so.

Christians like you have no commitment to society or our children's future. Everything your ilk does is in respect to the next world. You keep hoping and praying for more wars, more volcanoes and natural disasters, more destruction to hasten the end of the world as we know it. This is the problem with 1000 to 2000 year old doctrine being taken seriously today, it's dangerous and non-productive. Too many evangelicals are out there trying to promote Armageddon!

I don't want to live like that, and I don't think anyone else really does either. Got to agree with Kerry on this one!

roflmfao I am so moving to Russia.


Strangely enough, I blame the Republicans.

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater
a reply to: amazing

Then read over your last post, acknowledge where you played dumb, and apologize for pretending that I am dumb enough to believe that you are dumb enough to believe what you posted.

I'm not pretending and I stand by my points. I don't want to live in a country like that. If you are saying that you are a Christian and that you disagree with my points because you don't think they have merit. Well I disagree. Or you could just play the ...I'll keep posting cryptic statements game. I don't enjoy it as much as you do though. I'd be happy to debate any of those points though.

originally posted by: amazing

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater
a reply to: amazing

Then read over your last post, acknowledge where you played dumb, and apologize for pretending that I am dumb enough to believe that you are dumb enough to believe what you posted.

I'm not pretending and I stand by my points. I don't want to live in a country like that. If you are saying that you are a Christian and that you disagree with my points because you don't think they have merit. Well I disagree. Or you could just play the ...I'll keep posting cryptic statements game. I don't enjoy it as much as you do though. I'd be happy to debate any of those points though.

Oh I get it, you think you can bait me if you play dumb for long enough. AHAHA clever. But not clever enough.

a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

Bait you for what? LOL

I won't bait. I have serious issues with Christianity. I don't really want to live in a country governed by Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Those are the three Abrahamic religions. I also clearly laid out a couple of reasons for that. I thought they made good sense. This is a serious reply. and look nothing cryptic about it. I'm very clear.

originally posted by: amazing
a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

Bait you for what? LOL

I won't bait. I have serious issues with Christianity. I don't really want to live in a country governed by Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Those are the three Abrahamic religions. I also clearly laid out a couple of reasons for that. I thought they made good sense. This is a serious reply. and look nothing cryptic about it. I'm very clear.

Oh, I see.


Sorry.


I didn't realize you were medicated this afternoon.

originally posted by: DrinkMoreWater

originally posted by: amazing
a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

Bait you for what? LOL

I won't bait. I have serious issues with Christianity. I don't really want to live in a country governed by Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Those are the three Abrahamic religions. I also clearly laid out a couple of reasons for that. I thought they made good sense. This is a serious reply. and look nothing cryptic about it. I'm very clear.

Oh, I see.


Sorry.


I didn't realize you were medicated this afternoon.

Wow. Okay. So, what I'm getting from you is that anyone that says anything to be perceived as uncomplimentary about Christianity deserves your insults. Is that correct? And further more if I have something to say about Christianity the replies will be cryptic and non specific so as to render the discussion non existent. Hmmm. So taken a step further. There can be no discussion of Christianity in your presence. Got it. And that is why I don't want a Christian in charge of my country.

I don't like Kerry and it's really none of his business if people are religious or not.
What I don't get is how one people(jews) think they're "the chosen" and that everybody else are animals(goy, heathens, gentiles) put here to serve them! lol It's all fantasy with one group trying to get a leg up on another. It's racism. I would never except it. At 12yo that's how I felt. Preachers wouldn't or couldn't answer my questions and it made them look down their nose at me. If they want to be a servant to jewish people then hey, go for it. I serve no one and call BS when I see fit. I do, however, have respect for religious people when I'm around them as long as they aren't trying to shove that crap in my face. I think religion DOES make some people better people and I would hate to try and break someones faith and they turn into a criminal or something. lol But I do think that year after year religious people get fewer and fewer.

a reply to: edmc^2

So to lump ALL Christian religions into one as "held[ing] mankind back more than any other religion" is really ignorance on your part.

Maybe you should do a little research on just how much Christianity has done to deny scientific research over the ages.

a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

1. The Jews are the ancient Hebrew people, in this context, God's chosen people of the OT. The bloodlines that recently returned to Israel and reformed it. Are you dim or messing with me?

Can you prove these bloodlines? Of course they are going to God's "chosen ones" they wrote the OT so who else would it be?

2. You are guilty of being a watcher of the times, which God specifically warned about. Comparing the cyclic nature of humans to prophecy is sin. The cycle of history is not perfectly cyclic. Prophecy always is perfectly accurate.

Perfectly accurate huh? The bible says God would return the Israelite's to Israel but God didn't the UN did. So where is the Messiah? After all the prophecy says he is supposed to lead them back to Israel. So could you at least show something that proves the Messiah has returned?

a reply to: DrinkMoreWater

1st. You just said you are talking outside of Genesis, which you just now specified. I do not remember you ever saying you exclude Gensis for this discussion.

I never said not to include Genesis . . . Reading comprehension can be your friend. I said "outside of Genesis" all mythology can be no older than the time of Moses, which is 1200 B.C.E. Actually, I specifically discussed Genesis and it's generous borrowing of Sumerian and Canaanite myth.

Did you really just say Genesis is a retelling of Sumerian and Canaanite mythology?

Yes . . . for example Psalms is a reworking of the Canaanite poetry found at Ras Shamra

The discovery of the Ugaritic archives in 1929 has been of great significance to biblical scholarship, as these archives for the first time provided a detailed description of Canaanite religious beliefs, during the period directly preceding the Israelite settlement. These texts show significant parallels to Biblical Hebrew literature, particularly in the areas of divine imagery and poetic form. Ugaritic poetry has many elements later found in Hebrew poetry: parallelisms, metres, and rhythms. The discoveries at Ugarit have led to a new appraisal of the Hebrew Bible as literature.

The Israelites appropriated their literary and artistic higher culture from the Canaanites. The channel was either the scribes, architects and artists of local cities such as Jerusalem, whose Jebusite-Canaanite population remained in the city after it became the Israelite capital, or from the Phoenician cities of present-day Lebanon whose Canaanite culture flourished unbroken from the Middle Bronze age until Hellenistic times.

And here is info on the Sumerian side . . . which is so widely know it's not even really debatable.

A common hypothesis among biblical scholars is that the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch (the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy) was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BC (the Yahwist source) and that this was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source) into a work very like the one we have today. (In the creation narrative the two sources appear in reverse order: Genesis 1:1–2:3 is Priestly and Genesis 2:4–24 is Yahwistic). Borrowing themes from Mesopotamian mythology, but adapting them to Israel's belief in one God,[8] the combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism.[9] Robert Alter described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends".

Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization in the West, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires

2nd. 1200 BC is not the starting point for the truth that is found in the Bible, and no Hebrew would have claimed that the Word that is in the Bible is from 1200 BC up. Many of the stories are of human settlements that existed before Babylon.

There was no such thing as Judaism before 1200 B.C.E. I was raised a Jew, I think I understand about my family's cultural history, despite the many ways Christians try to revise and claim it as their own. Exile in Babylon was initiated after the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians, who had rule of Judah, at the time.

Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem, his capture of King Jeconiah, his appointment of Zedekiah in his place, and the plundering of the city in 597 BCE as described in 2 Kings in the Bible are confirmed by a passage in the Babylonian Chronicles

According to the book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE,[10] the year after he captured Babylon.[11] The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE

3rd. Assertions and insults are all you have made, although the insults are veiled.

I'm seriously doubting your education level, if you don't understand what an "assertion" is or what constitutes an insult.

But I do give you credit for admitting that the basis of your perspective is not in "scientific fact," but instead in that you do not accept the proposition laid out in the Bible - more specifically the NT.

Scientific fact of what? The timelines, chronologies, dating methods, etc are all scientifically sound. My opinion that the "truth" of the bible, or any other supernatural claims contained within, is BS is based on not "accepting the proposition". However, we are talking about biblical scholarship and history here . . . not the message.

I seriously question if you believe what you write or if you just blindly defend in the face of contrary evidence.

I don't think you can just simply lump all religions together. What the Christians preach of love and hope is a good thing and at least give people something to live for. At this point, we don't really know enough about history to judge whether Jesus did exist or not. Bible inerrancy suggests that he did exist, and according to a channeling I've read, which I believe to be very accurate, as it was impossible for this girl to know anything about superstring theory at the date that she received them, Jesus is a 5th dimensional being.

For now, all we can say is that whichever religion is violent should be abolished, or at least made to conform, and that is Islam In fact, Islam has killed more people than atheists and Christianity have, combined.

originally posted by: windword


In my opinion, your entire post exemplifys Kerry position of individual interpretations of 1000 to 2000 year old plus text trying to tell the rest of us what to think and how to think. You want to emphasize division as if it's divine because the Bible says so.

Christians like you have no commitment to society or our children's future. Everything your ilk does is in respect to the next world. You keep hoping and praying for more wars, more volcanoes and natural disasters, more destruction to hasten the end of the world as we know it. This is the problem with 1000 to 2000 year old doctrine being taken seriously today, it's dangerous and non-productive. Too many evangelicals are out there trying to promote Armageddon!

I don't want to live like that, and I don't think anyone else really does either. Got to agree with Kerry on this one!

I totally get where you are coming from. Many Christians just aren't that interested in helping or advancing society because they are too wrapped up in hoping for Armageddon. It always bothered me, as a Christian myself, how many of my fellow "believers" simply have no interest in the betterment of society, as if hastening the trend toward 'Armageddon' would bring about a self fulfilling prophecy, if we all just tried harder to break the system irreperrably.

There's also the problem of the theme of the Scriptures, as it relates to how one should live. If I really believe what the Scriptures say, then why would I endorse things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church and it's populace control dogmas, etc.? Yes, it is possible to be a Christian and recognize that not every one who claims to speak for your chosen deity actually does. In fact, Jesus spoke that in the "End", there will be a good many who think they are just fine who actually will find out they didn't make the cut. I hope I am not one, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I know many simply use religion as a tool to control people, or prop themselves up through works based merit systems, or whatever.

I guess my point is that just because there are a good many who use religion as a tool to do some terrible things, that does not prove any thing false, or certainly doesn't make all religious folk guilty by association. Lord knows we have atheistic figures throughout history that have also committed some pretty great atrocities, but I certainly would not judge all atheists as monsters just because a few of them did some terrible things. Christians tend to get railroaded in to doing what their leaders say because large sections of religious leadership becomes corrupt and pounds "spiritual authority" and twist it into a cultist frenzy, and the followers don' know enough of their own Scripture to refute them.It's a systemic problem that comes from human need for control and power, not an inherent flaw in the system. That's pretty sad, though, I agree.

There are actually some of us believers that think we should be doing everything we can to better our planet, our society, our selves, even if that means we have to do things without proselytizing. We believe that our actions do much more to advance our cause than anything we say. We have no interest in hastening the "end", but seek to manifest the "kingdom" here on earth through our choices to live as responsible citizens, and show love to those around us. After all, the two greatest commandments Jesus left us with, after doing away with the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were, to be succinct, "Love God, Love everyone else like you would love yourself". Sounds cliche, but most of us don't realize how much we love ourselves until our lifestyle is threatened. That's the level I strive for. There are many like me, but our voices get drowned out by the religious doom-porn and naysayers and hypocrites and judgers. I pray I am never lumped in with those goats.

I stand by my original points.

I don't want a world where we HATE people for no reason. See all the hatred of Gay people by Christians.
I don't want a world where women are supposedly less then men. Second class citizens. Old Testament and New. read Paul.
I don't want a world where young earth creationism is given priority over Science. Way too much of that crap going around.
I don't want a world where we only care about our on flocks and we have deadly wars against other sects of our religions. Protestants and Catholics killing each other.
I don't want a world were I'm judged by other people because I've "sinned". What is sin? Murder, sure, but what about all the little things like coveting your neighbors wife. Really easy for nut job congressmen to twist those things around.
I don't want that world. Kerry is right.

a reply to: Everlastingknowitall

Thanks, it's nice to be heard and understood. I don't think of all Christians in that way, that's why I said "some Christians and your ilk. I know most Christians don't worry about or pray for the coming of Armageddon and Holy Wars and don't condone crusades or inquisitions.

But as far as Kerry's quote and some people's religious views and interpretations of ancient texts being held as "this is what you must believe and they way you must act or else", those aforementioned kinds of Christians fit the bill, in my opinion. If you, or anyone else reading is NOT one of those kinds of Christians, that leaps for joy when they hear of another bombing or earthquake, then you are not the kind of religious fanatic that I, or Kerry imo, is talking about.

a reply to: windword

I appreciate the clarification. It's actually hard to be the type of Christian I try to be in today's divided world. There is an old saying among us developing theologians: If you are one step ahead of the majority of the "church" you are a cutting edge revolutionary and inspired mind. If you are two steps ahead you are a heretic that must be burned at the stake.

I like to think I swing toward heretic more than revolutionary.

a reply to: windword

Why must you resolve to generalizing Christians in a discriminatory way? Do you think the thought of punishment eternal to be my wet dream?

This is pretty insulting, but I'm certain you'll get away with it.

Also, did those people also see Yeshua coming on the clouds? You might want to read the context of the book you quoted. The disciples asked three questions to Yeshua. It is reasonable to suggest that all three were answered at once.

I propose what my dad proposed to me: If I am wrong, and I live my life according to the morals present in the Law, do I lose anything upon death? Will my life of happiness and contentment lead me to feeling dismayed? Will my life somehow not possess the value of others who did not follow it? The answer to all three is no.

Now consider this: if in fact I am right, and the Bible is the word of G-d, I have everything to gain, as the Bible refers to a resurrection, a being made new. A new heaven, a new earth. And fellowship with the most beautiful, precious spirit.

Therefore, I lose nothing. I gain everything. Literally. So what is it to you? Why the hatefulness? Have I personally wronged you? Do you know who I am, even? If you don't, consider why you would so passionately despise a believer. What is it that cause you to feel this way? I'll give you a quote from Mathew:

"You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved."

Consider that, in this way, you have confirmed the Bible's authenticity.

Have a nice day.