Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
Great question. Is Buddhism a religion? Many people say no, including some Buddhists I've spoken to. Nevertheless, people do worship him as Lord Buddha, although he would not have wanted that.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
a) there are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. Like Jesus, the evidence is circumstantial. b) Correct, you cannot base a religion around some one who is not divine. See the definition of "religion." (indeed Buddha was an atheist, so if Buddhism is a religion it's based on atheism). c) Buddha, like Jesus, has been elevated in death to godhood among some - indeed he is revered in parts of the world as Lord Buddha. d) as for hours of comparative religion, that's just silly, no answer needed.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
a) there are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. Like Jesus, the evidence is circumstantial. b) Correct, you cannot base a religion around some one who is not divine. See the definition of "religion." (indeed Buddha was an atheist, so if Buddhism is a religion it's based on atheism). c) Buddha, like Jesus, has been elevated in death to godhood among some - indeed he is revered in parts of the world as Lord Buddha. d) as for hours of comparative religion, that's just silly, no answer needed.
How can Buddha die if he didn't exist? Atheists can't be Buddhists. Buddhism is anti-science.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
a) there are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. Like Jesus, the evidence is circumstantial. b) Correct, you cannot base a religion around some one who is not divine. See the definition of "religion." (indeed Buddha was an atheist, so if Buddhism is a religion it's based on atheism). c) Buddha, like Jesus, has been elevated in death to godhood among some - indeed he is revered in parts of the world as Lord Buddha. d) as for hours of comparative religion, that's just silly, no answer needed.
How can Buddha die if he didn't exist? Atheists can't be Buddhists. Buddhism is anti-science.
What? Buddha, by all accounts was mortal, and he died from eating some contaminated meat. Who said he didn't exist?
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
Buddha, anyone?
There are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. You can't base a religion around someone who may or may not exist. And if he did exist, was he divine? And even if he was divine, how many class hours of comparative religion have you had?
a) there are no contemporary accounts of Buddha. Like Jesus, the evidence is circumstantial. b) Correct, you cannot base a religion around some one who is not divine. See the definition of "religion." (indeed Buddha was an atheist, so if Buddhism is a religion it's based on atheism). c) Buddha, like Jesus, has been elevated in death to godhood among some - indeed he is revered in parts of the world as Lord Buddha. d) as for hours of comparative religion, that's just silly, no answer needed.
How can Buddha die if he didn't exist? Atheists can't be Buddhists. Buddhism is anti-science.
Another person (or maybe the same one) confusing the existence of only circumstantial evidence with denying the existence -- two completely different things.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
You mean, like Joseph Smith?
explain please?
He’s an itinerant preacher who told tales. They formed a whole religion around him.
Does the fact that he now has millions of follows make his tales true?
Trump has millions of followers. Does that make his lies true?
? Christianity is based on the life and teaching (and alleged divinity) of Jesus Christ. The mormons don't worship Joseph Smith and their religion it's not called Joseph Smith-ism or Smithianity. Your comparison is apples and oranges.
They didn’t worship him but, like I said, they formed a whole religion around him and his tales.
Does the fact that he now has millions of followers make his tales true?
Is that the case for all religions? They are all true because some people believe the stories?
It's true only for the people who believe the stories.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
You mean, like Joseph Smith?
explain please?
He’s an itinerant preacher who told tales. They formed a whole religion around him.
Does the fact that he now has millions of follows make his tales true?
Trump has millions of followers. Does that make his lies true?
? Christianity is based on the life and teaching (and alleged divinity) of Jesus Christ. The mormons don't worship Joseph Smith and their religion it's not called Joseph Smith-ism or Smithianity. Your comparison is apples and oranges.
They didn’t worship him but, like I said, they formed a whole religion around him and his tales.
Does the fact that he now has millions of followers make his tales true?
Is that the case for all religions? They are all true because some people believe the stories?
It's true only for the people who believe the stories.
Not sure which side you are on, but that is not what “true“ means.
Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone so far off the rails. Seems like the like the people who want to debate Jesus’ divinity or what “fulfill the law” means need to start their own threads.
Yup.
There is zero evidence of his divinity.
There is some evidence that he “most likely” existed in history.
I just don't see how the two issues can be separated. If the OP asks where did Christian theology come from? it has to assume the historical figure was divine or there wouldn't be any "theology." No one builds a religion about some itinerant preacher who spoke in nice parables and beatitudes.
You mean, like Joseph Smith?
explain please?
He’s an itinerant preacher who told tales. They formed a whole religion around him.
Does the fact that he now has millions of follows make his tales true?
Trump has millions of followers. Does that make his lies true?
? Christianity is based on the life and teaching (and alleged divinity) of Jesus Christ. The mormons don't worship Joseph Smith and their religion it's not called Joseph Smith-ism or Smithianity. Your comparison is apples and oranges.
They didn’t worship him but, like I said, they formed a whole religion around him and his tales.
Does the fact that he now has millions of followers make his tales true?
Is that the case for all religions? They are all true because some people believe the stories?
It's true only for the people who believe the stories.
Not sure which side you are on, but that is not what “true“ means.
Anonymous wrote:Let this thread die and NOT be resurrected.
+100. OP’s original premise, that Jesus existed and there was some cabal who made him up, has been soundly debunked. OP may even have been posting ironically to show how ludicrous that proposition is. LOL at all the atheist bigots demanding people justify their faith by proving divinity or denigrating other faiths, but no sane poster would engage with that and it’s a total derailment anyway. Die, thread, die.
Read again. No one asked anyone to “denigrate” other religions.
The request was to expand upon this statement:
“after a baseline of evidence, people go with the religion that makes the most theological/philosophical sense to them.”
What is the process you used to select your own religion over others?
DP, but I went through a process and chose a religion, so I'm happy to speak to that experience, though it may differ from what PP had in mind.
I was raised in a conservative Protestant denomination that never made any sense to me. I gave it up for a while in middle school and high school and then in college started trying more liberal Protestant denominations. What I found in my church-hopping was that my problem wasn't just with the conservatism, but with Christian theology as a whole. The Trinity doesn't make sense to me. The focus on sin (original sin, daily sin, heaven and hell, etc) is off-putting. I remember I went to a Presbyterian Church on Mother's Day and the sermon was about how our earthly families are just a shadow of our relationship with Jesus, and that was my last straw, because it was just one too many times that Christianity had downplayed the importance of family and people in our lives, and it turns out that is a core value of mine.
Sorry, my point is not to take issue with Christianity here, but just to say that my experience with Christianity across the Protestant spectrum (and some Catholicism through my dad's side of the family and Evangelicalism through some friends and cousins) proved that it was not the right fit for my own beliefs. Visiting all of those churches that weren't right for me really helped me figure out what I did (and did not) believe. When I started to look outside of Christianity, I found a spiritual home in Judaism, and have been here happily for a long time now.
All that said, I think PP's point is over-exaggerated. I don't think it's common for people to go through a process of evaluating the beliefs in which they were raised, especially if their religion doesn't really play a major role in their lives (secular-style Christmas and maybe church on Easter). People generally don't spend time evaluating something with a minor regular impact on them. My brother spends more time thinking about being left-handed than he does about being Christian.
Well yay, someone took the bait and trashed other peoples’ religion. Happy, atheist pp?
PP here. I'm not trashing Christianity, just citing examples of why the theology didn't work for me to answer the question about the process of choosing a theology. I'm sure that the Trinity and original sin and the elevation of the relationship with the divine over earthly relationships is meaningful for Christians. It just isn't my beliefs, and so I'm not Christian anymore.
You’ve got that wrong. Jesus took adherence to god-dictated Levitical rules and made them more personal and interior. Don’t just like your neighbors and co-religionists, love your enemies too. Don’t just give to charity, give the beggar your coat. And many more examples.
The above is another example of a person who cannot tolerate different points of view when it comes to religion. Christianity is right; anything else is wrong, in pp's opinion.
Many religions, not just Christianity, promote that thinking. You must believe what dogma tells you to believe or suffer eternal consequences.
NP: PP didn't say Christianity is right. PP said the specifics point PPP made about elevation of the divine in Christianity is not what Christianity actually professes. Pointing out that PP's statement of a fact was incorrect is very different from saying Christianity is right and everything else is wrong.
Look, on so many of these threads lots of people say "X religion says Y," and often that is incorrect information. Often is is even a stereotype or a bigoted remark (like your last sentence). It is important to correct these misstatements because a lot of people use those misstatements to develop misinformed opinions. The point was not to offer an opinion about PP's beliefs, or to change PP's mind about how she feels about faith or the faith she chooses, but to correct a mistake of fact that she asserted.
PPP here (I think? I'm the Jewish one). I've expressly stated that I based my decision to leave Christianity on my experiences with it across different Protestant denominations. I'm not arguing "facts" about Christian theology. I don't ascribe to it and don't claim to be all that knowledgeable about the theological underpinnings of it. It never made sense to me when I tried to learn it. There is an element of faith to any religion and I just didn't have faith in Christian doctrine. What I'm saying is that in my life, I sat through many sermons and Sunday School lessons about Jesus being our Father superseding our own earthly family. I understand that may not be what Christianity is actually supposed to say and there are plenty of things people say and do in the name of religion that could be argued as counter to the religion's actual teachings; often it's a matter of interpretation and emphasis.
While we're talking about misrepresenting the facts of a religion, 09/22/2022 10:16 said "Truly a far cry from the rape, incest, murder and genocide of the Old Testament." The Tanakh (the books that more or less make up the Old Testament) is replete with laws and commandments against those things. Love your neighbor as yourself, take care of the widow and orphan, do not murder, do not steal, don't marry your sister - all of those are in the "Old Testament." I'm so tired of the "vengeful God of the Old Testament" trope in Christianity, as if the only messages of love and caring are in the New Testament.
DP. But the Tanakh God IS vengeful. Just ask the Canaanites, Amorites, and others whose land he wanted for his people. Just ask his chosen people, whom he punished again and again (Noah’s flood, temple destructions) and sent into exile in Babylon for not adhering strictly to his laws or even worshipping Baal.
Pp’s are also saying that Jesus took the “be nice to your neighbor” commandment further into “love your enemy.”
You may have sat through sermons and Sunday School as a kid, but as you say those are your individual experiences based on your particular church as a kid. Sunday School is pretty different from the adult education that goes on in churches, too.
What I’m trying to say is that I agree with other pp’s that your understanding of Christianity is flawed. I wish you peace in your chosen faith. You would help yourself, though, if you stopped basing your choice on a flawed understanding and then kept trying to promote your flawed understanding.
Also a DP and a Christian, but this is honestly an anti-Semitic trope that Christians need to excise from how we talk about God. It fails on both counts, because
1) The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is loving and merciful; it's a big focus of a lot of the Prophets, paired with his judgment. Nehemiah calls him "ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," Isaiah says his "steadfast love will never depart from you." God's love and mercy is there throughout.
2) Jesus teaches to love your enemy, but he also teaches judgment and God's anger. He's very clear about the punishment of the unrighteous and it's weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness, eternal fire.
There's genuine tension here and it takes some theological thinking to make it work, but Marcionism isn't it.
Jesus offered grace to individuals who repent. He stayed out of the business of conquering foreign lands or sending entire generations into exile.
If you're Christian, Jesus literally is the same God as the Old Testament God so actually very much was in the business of sending entire generations into exile. Meanwhile Israel was offered plenty of opportunities to repent and avoid exile. That the Babylonian Captivity is punishment for Israel's sins is very clear from the text of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus’ new covenant between God and Man. Paul in Hebrews puts it well: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
PS. I find this criticizing others’ religions to be really distasteful. The atheist who kept proposing it, and the Jewish poster who took it up, should be ashamed. But as another poster said, facts are important.
Liar. I asked a PP to explain their decision process.
You can't explain why you selected your religion without trashing other religions? Or post without lying? Seems like a you problem.
Well Jewish pp took your post as a request to trash other religions. So there’s that.
Jewish PP back again. I haven't trashed any religions. I noted that I never felt connected to the Protestant denomination I grew up in, I became agnostic, then I tried a bunch of different denominations of Christianity as an adult. Central parts of the theology, like the Trinity and Original Sin, did not make sense to me and didn't fit with my worldview.
For more about my decision process, I'll say that Judaism felt absolutely like my soul coming home. It wasn't like an epiphany all at once, but like a slow falling in love. First, I loved the melody of Lecha Dodi, which is sung on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath. Then I loved the encouragement to learn and question the text. Then I loved focus on community and tikkun olam (making the world a better place). Then I loved the holidays and rituals. And so on until I went to the mikveh and became officially Jewish. The theology and community match my own beliefs about humanity and the world, and provide me with spiritual meaning and a connection to God.
Anonymous wrote:Let this thread die and NOT be resurrected.
+100. OP’s original premise, that Jesus existed and there was some cabal who made him up, has been soundly debunked. OP may even have been posting ironically to show how ludicrous that proposition is. LOL at all the atheist bigots demanding people justify their faith by proving divinity or denigrating other faiths, but no sane poster would engage with that and it’s a total derailment anyway. Die, thread, die.
Read again. No one asked anyone to “denigrate” other religions.
The request was to expand upon this statement:
“after a baseline of evidence, people go with the religion that makes the most theological/philosophical sense to them.”
What is the process you used to select your own religion over others?
DP, but I went through a process and chose a religion, so I'm happy to speak to that experience, though it may differ from what PP had in mind.
I was raised in a conservative Protestant denomination that never made any sense to me. I gave it up for a while in middle school and high school and then in college started trying more liberal Protestant denominations. What I found in my church-hopping was that my problem wasn't just with the conservatism, but with Christian theology as a whole. The Trinity doesn't make sense to me. The focus on sin (original sin, daily sin, heaven and hell, etc) is off-putting. I remember I went to a Presbyterian Church on Mother's Day and the sermon was about how our earthly families are just a shadow of our relationship with Jesus, and that was my last straw, because it was just one too many times that Christianity had downplayed the importance of family and people in our lives, and it turns out that is a core value of mine.
Sorry, my point is not to take issue with Christianity here, but just to say that my experience with Christianity across the Protestant spectrum (and some Catholicism through my dad's side of the family and Evangelicalism through some friends and cousins) proved that it was not the right fit for my own beliefs. Visiting all of those churches that weren't right for me really helped me figure out what I did (and did not) believe. When I started to look outside of Christianity, I found a spiritual home in Judaism, and have been here happily for a long time now.
All that said, I think PP's point is over-exaggerated. I don't think it's common for people to go through a process of evaluating the beliefs in which they were raised, especially if their religion doesn't really play a major role in their lives (secular-style Christmas and maybe church on Easter). People generally don't spend time evaluating something with a minor regular impact on them. My brother spends more time thinking about being left-handed than he does about being Christian.
Well yay, someone took the bait and trashed other peoples’ religion. Happy, atheist pp?
PP here. I'm not trashing Christianity, just citing examples of why the theology didn't work for me to answer the question about the process of choosing a theology. I'm sure that the Trinity and original sin and the elevation of the relationship with the divine over earthly relationships is meaningful for Christians. It just isn't my beliefs, and so I'm not Christian anymore.
You’ve got that wrong. Jesus took adherence to god-dictated Levitical rules and made them more personal and interior. Don’t just like your neighbors and co-religionists, love your enemies too. Don’t just give to charity, give the beggar your coat. And many more examples.
The above is another example of a person who cannot tolerate different points of view when it comes to religion. Christianity is right; anything else is wrong, in pp's opinion.
Many religions, not just Christianity, promote that thinking. You must believe what dogma tells you to believe or suffer eternal consequences.
NP: PP didn't say Christianity is right. PP said the specifics point PPP made about elevation of the divine in Christianity is not what Christianity actually professes. Pointing out that PP's statement of a fact was incorrect is very different from saying Christianity is right and everything else is wrong.
Look, on so many of these threads lots of people say "X religion says Y," and often that is incorrect information. Often is is even a stereotype or a bigoted remark (like your last sentence). It is important to correct these misstatements because a lot of people use those misstatements to develop misinformed opinions. The point was not to offer an opinion about PP's beliefs, or to change PP's mind about how she feels about faith or the faith she chooses, but to correct a mistake of fact that she asserted.
PPP here (I think? I'm the Jewish one). I've expressly stated that I based my decision to leave Christianity on my experiences with it across different Protestant denominations. I'm not arguing "facts" about Christian theology. I don't ascribe to it and don't claim to be all that knowledgeable about the theological underpinnings of it. It never made sense to me when I tried to learn it. There is an element of faith to any religion and I just didn't have faith in Christian doctrine. What I'm saying is that in my life, I sat through many sermons and Sunday School lessons about Jesus being our Father superseding our own earthly family. I understand that may not be what Christianity is actually supposed to say and there are plenty of things people say and do in the name of religion that could be argued as counter to the religion's actual teachings; often it's a matter of interpretation and emphasis.
While we're talking about misrepresenting the facts of a religion, 09/22/2022 10:16 said "Truly a far cry from the rape, incest, murder and genocide of the Old Testament." The Tanakh (the books that more or less make up the Old Testament) is replete with laws and commandments against those things. Love your neighbor as yourself, take care of the widow and orphan, do not murder, do not steal, don't marry your sister - all of those are in the "Old Testament." I'm so tired of the "vengeful God of the Old Testament" trope in Christianity, as if the only messages of love and caring are in the New Testament.
DP. But the Tanakh God IS vengeful. Just ask the Canaanites, Amorites, and others whose land he wanted for his people. Just ask his chosen people, whom he punished again and again (Noah’s flood, temple destructions) and sent into exile in Babylon for not adhering strictly to his laws or even worshipping Baal.
Pp’s are also saying that Jesus took the “be nice to your neighbor” commandment further into “love your enemy.”
You may have sat through sermons and Sunday School as a kid, but as you say those are your individual experiences based on your particular church as a kid. Sunday School is pretty different from the adult education that goes on in churches, too.
What I’m trying to say is that I agree with other pp’s that your understanding of Christianity is flawed. I wish you peace in your chosen faith. You would help yourself, though, if you stopped basing your choice on a flawed understanding and then kept trying to promote your flawed understanding.
Also a DP and a Christian, but this is honestly an anti-Semitic trope that Christians need to excise from how we talk about God. It fails on both counts, because
1) The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is loving and merciful; it's a big focus of a lot of the Prophets, paired with his judgment. Nehemiah calls him "ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," Isaiah says his "steadfast love will never depart from you." God's love and mercy is there throughout.
2) Jesus teaches to love your enemy, but he also teaches judgment and God's anger. He's very clear about the punishment of the unrighteous and it's weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness, eternal fire.
There's genuine tension here and it takes some theological thinking to make it work, but Marcionism isn't it.
Jesus offered grace to individuals who repent. He stayed out of the business of conquering foreign lands or sending entire generations into exile.
If you're Christian, Jesus literally is the same God as the Old Testament God so actually very much was in the business of sending entire generations into exile. Meanwhile Israel was offered plenty of opportunities to repent and avoid exile. That the Babylonian Captivity is punishment for Israel's sins is very clear from the text of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus’ new covenant between God and Man. Paul in Hebrews puts it well: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
PS. I find this criticizing others’ religions to be really distasteful. The atheist who kept proposing it, and the Jewish poster who took it up, should be ashamed. But as another poster said, facts are important.
Liar. I asked a PP to explain their decision process.
You can't explain why you selected your religion without trashing other religions? Or post without lying? Seems like a you problem.
Well Jewish pp took your post as a request to trash other religions. So there’s that.
Jewish PP back again. I haven't trashed any religions. I noted that I never felt connected to the Protestant denomination I grew up in, I became agnostic, then I tried a bunch of different denominations of Christianity as an adult. Central parts of the theology, like the Trinity and Original Sin, did not make sense to me and didn't fit with my worldview.
For more about my decision process, I'll say that Judaism felt absolutely like my soul coming home. It wasn't like an epiphany all at once, but like a slow falling in love. First, I loved the melody of Lecha Dodi, which is sung on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath. Then I loved the encouragement to learn and question the text. Then I loved focus on community and tikkun olam (making the world a better place). Then I loved the holidays and rituals. And so on until I went to the mikveh and became officially Jewish. The theology and community match my own beliefs about humanity and the world, and provide me with spiritual meaning and a connection to God.
Are you OK with the fact that there’s little archaeological evidence for much of the Torah?
Anonymous wrote:Let this thread die and NOT be resurrected.
+100. OP’s original premise, that Jesus existed and there was some cabal who made him up, has been soundly debunked. OP may even have been posting ironically to show how ludicrous that proposition is. LOL at all the atheist bigots demanding people justify their faith by proving divinity or denigrating other faiths, but no sane poster would engage with that and it’s a total derailment anyway. Die, thread, die.
Read again. No one asked anyone to “denigrate” other religions.
The request was to expand upon this statement:
“after a baseline of evidence, people go with the religion that makes the most theological/philosophical sense to them.”
What is the process you used to select your own religion over others?
DP, but I went through a process and chose a religion, so I'm happy to speak to that experience, though it may differ from what PP had in mind.
I was raised in a conservative Protestant denomination that never made any sense to me. I gave it up for a while in middle school and high school and then in college started trying more liberal Protestant denominations. What I found in my church-hopping was that my problem wasn't just with the conservatism, but with Christian theology as a whole. The Trinity doesn't make sense to me. The focus on sin (original sin, daily sin, heaven and hell, etc) is off-putting. I remember I went to a Presbyterian Church on Mother's Day and the sermon was about how our earthly families are just a shadow of our relationship with Jesus, and that was my last straw, because it was just one too many times that Christianity had downplayed the importance of family and people in our lives, and it turns out that is a core value of mine.
Sorry, my point is not to take issue with Christianity here, but just to say that my experience with Christianity across the Protestant spectrum (and some Catholicism through my dad's side of the family and Evangelicalism through some friends and cousins) proved that it was not the right fit for my own beliefs. Visiting all of those churches that weren't right for me really helped me figure out what I did (and did not) believe. When I started to look outside of Christianity, I found a spiritual home in Judaism, and have been here happily for a long time now.
All that said, I think PP's point is over-exaggerated. I don't think it's common for people to go through a process of evaluating the beliefs in which they were raised, especially if their religion doesn't really play a major role in their lives (secular-style Christmas and maybe church on Easter). People generally don't spend time evaluating something with a minor regular impact on them. My brother spends more time thinking about being left-handed than he does about being Christian.
Well yay, someone took the bait and trashed other peoples’ religion. Happy, atheist pp?
PP here. I'm not trashing Christianity, just citing examples of why the theology didn't work for me to answer the question about the process of choosing a theology. I'm sure that the Trinity and original sin and the elevation of the relationship with the divine over earthly relationships is meaningful for Christians. It just isn't my beliefs, and so I'm not Christian anymore.
You’ve got that wrong. Jesus took adherence to god-dictated Levitical rules and made them more personal and interior. Don’t just like your neighbors and co-religionists, love your enemies too. Don’t just give to charity, give the beggar your coat. And many more examples.
The above is another example of a person who cannot tolerate different points of view when it comes to religion. Christianity is right; anything else is wrong, in pp's opinion.
Many religions, not just Christianity, promote that thinking. You must believe what dogma tells you to believe or suffer eternal consequences.
NP: PP didn't say Christianity is right. PP said the specifics point PPP made about elevation of the divine in Christianity is not what Christianity actually professes. Pointing out that PP's statement of a fact was incorrect is very different from saying Christianity is right and everything else is wrong.
Look, on so many of these threads lots of people say "X religion says Y," and often that is incorrect information. Often is is even a stereotype or a bigoted remark (like your last sentence). It is important to correct these misstatements because a lot of people use those misstatements to develop misinformed opinions. The point was not to offer an opinion about PP's beliefs, or to change PP's mind about how she feels about faith or the faith she chooses, but to correct a mistake of fact that she asserted.
PPP here (I think? I'm the Jewish one). I've expressly stated that I based my decision to leave Christianity on my experiences with it across different Protestant denominations. I'm not arguing "facts" about Christian theology. I don't ascribe to it and don't claim to be all that knowledgeable about the theological underpinnings of it. It never made sense to me when I tried to learn it. There is an element of faith to any religion and I just didn't have faith in Christian doctrine. What I'm saying is that in my life, I sat through many sermons and Sunday School lessons about Jesus being our Father superseding our own earthly family. I understand that may not be what Christianity is actually supposed to say and there are plenty of things people say and do in the name of religion that could be argued as counter to the religion's actual teachings; often it's a matter of interpretation and emphasis.
While we're talking about misrepresenting the facts of a religion, 09/22/2022 10:16 said "Truly a far cry from the rape, incest, murder and genocide of the Old Testament." The Tanakh (the books that more or less make up the Old Testament) is replete with laws and commandments against those things. Love your neighbor as yourself, take care of the widow and orphan, do not murder, do not steal, don't marry your sister - all of those are in the "Old Testament." I'm so tired of the "vengeful God of the Old Testament" trope in Christianity, as if the only messages of love and caring are in the New Testament.
DP. But the Tanakh God IS vengeful. Just ask the Canaanites, Amorites, and others whose land he wanted for his people. Just ask his chosen people, whom he punished again and again (Noah’s flood, temple destructions) and sent into exile in Babylon for not adhering strictly to his laws or even worshipping Baal.
Pp’s are also saying that Jesus took the “be nice to your neighbor” commandment further into “love your enemy.”
You may have sat through sermons and Sunday School as a kid, but as you say those are your individual experiences based on your particular church as a kid. Sunday School is pretty different from the adult education that goes on in churches, too.
What I’m trying to say is that I agree with other pp’s that your understanding of Christianity is flawed. I wish you peace in your chosen faith. You would help yourself, though, if you stopped basing your choice on a flawed understanding and then kept trying to promote your flawed understanding.
Also a DP and a Christian, but this is honestly an anti-Semitic trope that Christians need to excise from how we talk about God. It fails on both counts, because
1) The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is loving and merciful; it's a big focus of a lot of the Prophets, paired with his judgment. Nehemiah calls him "ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love," Isaiah says his "steadfast love will never depart from you." God's love and mercy is there throughout.
2) Jesus teaches to love your enemy, but he also teaches judgment and God's anger. He's very clear about the punishment of the unrighteous and it's weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness, eternal fire.
There's genuine tension here and it takes some theological thinking to make it work, but Marcionism isn't it.
Jesus offered grace to individuals who repent. He stayed out of the business of conquering foreign lands or sending entire generations into exile.
If you're Christian, Jesus literally is the same God as the Old Testament God so actually very much was in the business of sending entire generations into exile. Meanwhile Israel was offered plenty of opportunities to repent and avoid exile. That the Babylonian Captivity is punishment for Israel's sins is very clear from the text of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus’ new covenant between God and Man. Paul in Hebrews puts it well: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
PS. I find this criticizing others’ religions to be really distasteful. The atheist who kept proposing it, and the Jewish poster who took it up, should be ashamed. But as another poster said, facts are important.
Liar. I asked a PP to explain their decision process.
You can't explain why you selected your religion without trashing other religions? Or post without lying? Seems like a you problem.
Well Jewish pp took your post as a request to trash other religions. So there’s that.
Jewish PP back again. I haven't trashed any religions. I noted that I never felt connected to the Protestant denomination I grew up in, I became agnostic, then I tried a bunch of different denominations of Christianity as an adult. Central parts of the theology, like the Trinity and Original Sin, did not make sense to me and didn't fit with my worldview.
For more about my decision process, I'll say that Judaism felt absolutely like my soul coming home. It wasn't like an epiphany all at once, but like a slow falling in love. First, I loved the melody of Lecha Dodi, which is sung on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath. Then I loved the encouragement to learn and question the text. Then I loved focus on community and tikkun olam (making the world a better place). Then I loved the holidays and rituals. And so on until I went to the mikveh and became officially Jewish. The theology and community match my own beliefs about humanity and the world, and provide me with spiritual meaning and a connection to God.
Are you OK with the fact that there’s little archaeological evidence for much of the Torah?
DP, but I doubt it. Everything pp mentions that they like about Judaism is how it make them feel, not its authenticity.
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