Christianity - A Religion of Death Part I

Originally posted by notsofunnyguy


My first thought was "the pastor needs to quit playing dungeons and dragons while smoking crack."

reading what you wrote was worth it just for this line.
Pure gold.

Originally posted by ELahrairah
Awesome you managed to sum up a great deal of thoughts I have had on the issue in well written essay.
I'm really glad that you wrote this and did so in a way that does not seem like attack but opens up the topic for debate.
I have get chills at the idea that the religious right would like to get more power yet they would have no problem with bringing about the destruction of the world because it fits into their belief system

I'm glad that I was able to put to words the thoughts you've been having. I didn't write this to attack Christianity, I wrote it because I feel that people need to be alerted to the dangers that we're facing.

I didn't realize I'd have to do this but I supposed I should have expected it.

I am NOT a Muslim

I haven't studied that faith near enough to speak on it with any sort of authority.

I don't understand why people would jump to the conclusion that I am Muslim.

More importantly, I find it rather sick and also quite indicative of the divisiveness I wrote about.

I practice my own faith based upon my own personal understanding of the divine. I will write about my own beliefs in greater detail in future articles.

reply to post by Shadowflux

If you knew anything about Christian Eschatology...
...you would know that it is the oppressive 'beasts' that are destroyed...
...and the people who give power to them.

Beasts are symbols of human power organizations - governments...
...that profess freedom but who bind, oppress and destroy.

Funny really, I thought that is exactly what we were opposing on ATS.


Contrary to your unenlightened view Christianity is not a religion of death...
...true Christianity is not a religion at all...
...these human organizations called 'Christian' are also beasts or they 'ride the beast'.

Christianity is about life...
...that whosoever (includes you) believes in Jesus name will have life...
...so Christianity is about resurrection from death, about continuance.

Whatever way you look at it you are road kill...
...few make it past 80 years, even less past 100...
...so the current human order is about dying.

You are offered life by believing in the name of Jesus...
...but this is too simple for most.

reply to post by troubleshooter


You try to convince me that I am wrong, that what I have said is false, yet you, like many others, are offering me the very same option that I have written about:

Believe in Jesus and live or die and suffer damnation

You, and others, proclaim that Christianity is about life, that it offers life to it's followers, yet in the same paragraph you, and others, explain that those who don't believe will die and suffer a wrathful judgment.

I fail to see how repeating the same things I have written about is supposed to convince me of my misunderstanding and, in effect, convert me to Christianity.

Originally posted by Openeye
Very good post. However I do believe in needs to be said that all Christians are not fundamentalists.
]

I would agree with a lot of what you say, Openeye. In fact I'd go further, and point out that most Christians in the world are not fundamentalists.
Vicky

Some points:

There seems to be no basis in the Bible for these beliefs of the fundamentalists.

All religion is always degraded by fundamentalist literalist.

A fundamentalist Hindu murdered Ghandi

There are Fundamentalist Jews in Israel gleefully murdering Arabs

And of course we know the fundamentalist nuts in Islam by now who are prominent because the politics of today revolves around many of them.

But this post while having much validity, because the literalist fundamentalist Christians are at a low level of understanding and have truly ugly sectarian beliefs.

As do the Muslim fundamentalist and Jewish ones, as well.

They all think God ONLY loves their particular sect, and every body else is going to hell but them.

How absurd!

But fortunately there are many sane, decent non fundamentalist Christians who don’t believe in the nonsense of the evangelical crazy Christianity that says God only loves them and will dam forever everybody else.

There are what I call sane and good Christians with fairly reasonable beliefs

Some Unitarians
Gnostics
Quakers
Mystical Christians
Integral Christians and even today some Catholics are saying that other faiths will go to heaven.

So though there is the dark anti-love and anti-human Christianity of the evangelical type there is also many positive and decent Christians who don’t believe in the sectarian ignorance and bigotry of the kind of Christianity that the OP talks about.

We should try to tell about the good with the bad and not paint
any group as all bad.

Originally posted by Shadowflux
reply to post by troubleshooter

 

You try to convince me that I am wrong, that what I have said is false, yet you, like many others, are offering me the very same option that I have written about:

Believe in Jesus and live or die and suffer damnation

You, and others, proclaim that Christianity is about life, that it offers life to it's followers, yet in the same paragraph you, and others, explain that those who don't believe will die and suffer a wrathful judgment.

I fail to see how repeating the same things I have written about is supposed to convince me of my misunderstanding and, in effect, convert me to Christianity.

You are going to die anyway Shadowflux...
...you are in an ocean of time and will drown in a few years from now...
...I am throwing you a life-preserver...
...and you think I am bringing you death.

I am offering you life now and continuous...
...but you prefer to become road-kill in the current system.

reply to post by Shadowflux


I live in the Bible Belt and the one thing you don't do, is go against the grain here.
I definitely got told off by a little woman that came to my house to hand me some literature. I told her I had my own beliefs and some of mine were at odds with hers and she said we should study the Bible and find out why I thought that.
I told her I knew all about her religion because I had been in it for a year before moving on to another one. Actually, I have now been into quite a few different ones.
She corrected me according to her, that her belief was not a religion, but the Truth. And every word of the Bible is the truth and inspired by God and religions are evil and are lies of Satan to lead them astray from the Truth. I love the fact that people like her really believe the way they do. I respect her for her Truth as she sees it. I am hoping at this point she is where she should be in her beliefs, because she is happy in it. She departed, but not happy that one of their own had defected to an evil religion. Actually... I am in between religions at the moment.

There are 7 different denominations within a 4 mile diameter of where I live. In the little village 8 miles away, there are 4 within a straight mile stretch!!
It is hard to go against someone like the little lady that had the Truth ..according to her.

reply to post by inforeal


I will agree that there are those with in any group of people who are rational, peace loving individuals. The problem is that many of these people, while they may believe in the teaching of Jesus as laid out in the Gospels, while they may believe that the Judeo-Christian God is one of compassion, love and unity, will still belong to a Church which has, at both it's heart and origin, this doctrine of death and destruction.

There are those who have broken off from the mainstream varieties of Christianity for the very same reasons that I illustrate in these articles but these people are in the minority. The majority of Christians are members of a Church who may use flowery language, may have made their symbols and rhetoric more socially acceptable but still operate on the divisive teachings that only the believers will be saved and the rest will be destroyed and will suffer torment.

reply to post by troubleshooter


You’re not offering him anything but your own dogma. And you can’t prove to him that you yourself are saved so why should he listen to your religious dogma.

This is not Christianity, this is all the religions of mankind, to various degrees. Islam and Christianity are the most dangerous in this regard. No doubt in my mind, the next great war will be a holy war. We will all pay for mental illness of the ignorant, weak minded, hateful masses. Evolution will do it's finest work.

reply to post by troubleshooter


We will all die, regardless of the faith we practice, because that is an unavoidable part of life. You are simply threatening me with the fear of the permanence of death which is something I don't believe in to begin with. You, and others like you, will not cause me to waver in my knowledge of the truth with simple scare tactics.

Its not quite so easy to get someone to submit when they truly think for themselves and carry with them a knowledge of the real truth.

reply to post by ellieN


There are certainly parts of this country where one must be careful what they say in public. There are places where the density of "true believers" is quite high and to practice a different faith is to ensure that one is ostracized and, often times, directly persecuted.

While I would ordinarily admire someone's strong conviction in the validity of their beliefs, I find it quite worrisome when their beliefs involve the total destruction of all life on this planet.

Originally posted by Shadowflux
reply to post by troubleshooter

 

You try to convince me that I am wrong, that what I have said is false, yet you, like many others, are offering me the very same option that I have written about:

Believe in Jesus and live or die and suffer damnation

You, and others, proclaim that Christianity is about life, that it offers life to it's followers, yet in the same paragraph you, and others, explain that those who don't believe will die and suffer a wrathful judgment.

I fail to see how repeating the same things I have written about is supposed to convince me of my misunderstanding and, in effect, convert me to Christianity.

I wasn't going to comment on your thread my friend, as you raise some valid points. However, seeing as you have been offered salvation by others and rejected it, well I felt compelled to jump on in the band wagon.

In the name of Christ I offer you salvation as he would offer it.

Salvation

It is my second comment in the thread. I link to it so as to not take away from another fine thread.

The only thing I ask is if you accept it, you extend it to all others in Christ's name.



With Love,

Your Brother

reply to post by Shadowflux


I agree with you that this is a destructive belief system . . . and I am not disagreeing with your premise about this branch of organized sectarian Christianity.
But all I am saying is that there are Christians such as the Gnostics, mystical Christians, and other non evangelicals who have as you say rational beliefs and don’t try to impose their beliefs on others. You may be correct about the numbers, I don’t know.

The reason for this is that Christianity has become a clerical religion. Its clerics who have over the years concocted these crazy beliefs like the rapture, which BTW has no basis in the Bible.

Most of the clerics are basically ignorant and know nothing about the real Jesus or what he taught.

Originally posted by Shadowflux
reply to post by troubleshooter

 

We will all die, regardless of the faith we practice, because that is an unavoidable part of life. You are simply threatening me with the fear of the permanence of death which is something I don't believe in to begin with. You, and others like you, will not cause me to waver in my knowledge of the truth with simple scare tactics.

Its not quite so easy to get someone to submit when they truly think for themselves and carry with them a knowledge of the real truth.

You started this thread...I didn't.

You see these people are trying to impose their faith on others and trying to “save” others because there is a doctrine in their religion that tells them to go out and do this.

The comedy of this is that they themselves aren’t saved!

Some cleric told them they were saved, or pointed to a verse in the Bible that they interpret as saying they are saved.

reply to post by Shadowflux


That's just the way "some" of them see it. In fact the early apostle taught that ALL men were redeemed by Christ. This hell fire thing came about only a couple hundred years ago. It's rubbish. I believe but I certainly don't believe the way your laying it out. And your rights its religion and its worse. Did you know that in the book of revelation it actually names the corporate "rich men of the earth" the military industrial complex and the drug cartel"(pharmakia) as the ones responsible for bringing about destruction on the earth. Well? Isn't that exactly what or who most people on this website say are responsible for all the chaos in our present day world? But yet the religious choose to translate it as "God" thats doing it. Oh it also mentions some heavenly objects wreaking havoc on the earth as well.

So how are you choosing to believe? Are you buying the religion yet you claim that you don't believe it? Yet your buying it too. And it's not even what he bible says. While your thread is put together well and you mean well, your information is just so wrong in so many ways I don't know where to start really. That why true believers always try to point out the difference between having a relationship with our creator through Christ the manifested creator versus just being religious! It is a crying shame what religion has done to the most incredible story of the universe. Oh well it will all work out and one day we ALL WILL be out among the stars but unless your get a few things straight in this life I would venture to say most of the planet owners won't be the ones that own most of the things in this life.

reply to post by IAMIAM


I have not rejected salvation, my friend, I have rejected subjugation to dogma and doctrine.

I don't need to ask for salvation, no one does. From what do we need to be saved?

More importantly, I outright refuse to reject the truth in which I believe to adopt a belief system which I not only don't believe in but feel is at odds with what I know to be the truth.