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Amaris
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*picks up folding chair*
What religion/faith are you?
- Thread starter PhaserLightShow
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I wonder what's the Christain take on the people that lived before Christianity and I am not talking about the Hebrews. I am talking way before like say 7,000 and more years ago. Whatever happened to these guys, were they sent directly to Hell? did they get a pass of some sort?
I mean that's thousands and thousands of generations of our ancestors whose fate is apparently unknown.
I've often wondered about that but never got a clear answer from anybody, not even priests!
Now how about the Neanderthals? are they considered like humans, in which case you have to wonder why they were kept out of the loop until they went extinct or are they just dismissed as being "not quite human"?
I mean that's thousands and thousands of generations of our ancestors whose fate is apparently unknown.
I've often wondered about that but never got a clear answer from anybody, not even priests!
Now how about the Neanderthals? are they considered like humans, in which case you have to wonder why they were kept out of the loop until they went extinct or are they just dismissed as being "not quite human"?
You're demanding answers to questions that have preoccupied people for centuries, believers and nonbelievers alike. There's bound to be gaps in everyone's knowledge and nobody has to have all the answers.
If you are looking for a Christian biblical perspective, the biblical teaching is that all descendants after the first pair of humans are judged for the lives that have lived, according to the light they have received and responded to.
Yes, but archeologist have discovered that there were more fifty different species of human beings, and all went extinct, but one, ours. the common ancestor to all human species looked much more like an ape with opposable thumbs than like... us. and that common ancestor was already a descendant of hominids (also extinct) that as you go back in time look less and less like what we would call a human being. It would really be arbitrary to say, THIS is the first human being, and definitely not scientific. Evolution takes thousands of years even for minuscule steps. So I really don't understand how you guys can still talk about a "first pair" of human beings. There is no such thing.
One of the standard answers is that people who were born before Jesus, or who were born afterwards but remained uncontacted by missionaries of the One True Faith (TM) for the course of their lives, were considered "safe" by virtue of having heard no true message that they could then willfully reject.
Which led quickly to the obvious joke:
Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?'
Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.'
Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?'
No no--that needs to be a new season of PREACHER.
You're thinking Depeche Mode, but that was another battle....
Which makes me wonder about the people who did bad things, I mean not only things that the Christian religion disapprove of but really bad things, like human sacrifice, cannibalism... Are they safe too?
I can't deny any of that except I must point out that scientists do have some evidence that all humans alive today descended from two people.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/new...-are-descendants-one-man-and-woman-who-021536
https://www.livescience.com/38613-genetic-adam-and-eve-uncovered.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/new-studies-suggest-an-adam-and-eve-link.html
Not at the same time, one after the other.
Not at the same time one after the other. Not really that strange to have happen, one branch then another
There's some weird shit about Batman! He's always listed with the superheroes but he doesn't have any superpowers!!! I mean what the hell is going on here? I hear he's a billionaire so maybe that's that. I mean rich people get away with anything!!!
That's still amazing.
But not as amazing as someone who gets to make the valedictorian speech in two great schools successively!
I think you're way overgeneralizing and ignoring huge swaths of people who say up front and in no uncertain terms that their religious upbringing made them feel horrible about themselves, not special, not unique. Think about it. There are two basic tenets you must accept in Christianity. One, that man is inherently sinful from day one, Original Sin, including infants just drawing their first breath. Two, that man cannot be saved by works alone. It is only through the blood of Christ and acceptance that one needs saving from his/her/their own sinful nature through Christ's forgiveness and sacrifice that one can then go on to join the big guy in the sky after death.
If you don't accept the first part, that second part is meaningless. If you do accept that first part, it's hard to have a big ego about your own nature, considering you're so filthy you deserve to burn in Hell just for existing. I'm not weighing in on whether any of it makes sense or not, but to say that basic tenet of inherent awfulness is ego is a huge stretch, to the breaking point. Also, I'm speaking of true believers, not the people using religion to prop up their own bank accounts or status in their jobs or society.
Yea, Wicca was way easier.
The only down side with Wicca was EVERYONE wanted to tell EVERYONE else what to think. ( yes, even more so than other religions I believe )
Yea, Wicca was way easier.
The only down side with Wicca was EVERYONE wanted to tell EVERYONE else what to think. ( yes, even more so than other religions I believe )
I spent a few years in Wicca. It was my exit strategy from Christianity and served one good purpose for me, deprogramming a lot of the toxicity and freeing me to move on without such a need for structure. The in-fighting in the pagan/New Age community on the whole has always been kind of a shit show, and lately white supremacy has been making some pretty disturbing inroads into many of those communities. I think you're going to see a lot of volatility in any neo-pagan reconstructionism, just like there was a ton of volatility in early Christianity. Everyone has their own ideas about what should or shouldn't be canon/doctrine, and until one pov reaches critical mass, every group pulls from the center.
My big question when I was little was "If animals have no soul, how come there are animals in heaven?" My Sunday School teacher never gave me an answer.
I mean, are the animals in heaven just fakes? Or are they the souls of exceptionally important animals, like Lassie or Koko?
I mean, are the animals in heaven just fakes? Or are they the souls of exceptionally important animals, like Lassie or Koko?
I think maybe people are surprised/impressed because it's not like you can just transfer from one to the other. As far as I understand it you can do both, but when you leave one for the other you start all over again from scratch. There's no "credit" involved.
Like you get to choose. Your chaplain is the chaplain assigned to your command. In US forces, Chaplains are about 90% Protestant or Evangelical Christian, 7% Catholic and 3% everything else. If you are Jewish, you may well go 20 years without a Jewish chaplain in your command. Chaplains have a mission to support personnel of all faiths, regardless of their own, and have training to accomplish that. For more faith-specific needs, they often rely on volunteers to assist. I don't know why a non-believing professional who respected all religions could not fulfill that role. Most of the time I didn't know what denomination a chaplain was, anyway, though I didn't spend much time with them.
I don't know what it's like today, but 30 years ago the navy relied a lot on the chaplain's office for personal problems. There were career counselors, who were more like school guidance counselors, who told you what to study for a test you need to take for a promotion, etc. There were medical officers, but going to them was considered basically an indication of mental illness (I think this has improved, hopefully). So if you were maybe drinking too much, having trouble with the wife, or just needed some adult advice like a lot of young kids away from home do, you could either go to someone senior in your unit and trust that they wouldn't tell their boss (and they might have to) or go to the chaplain's office. And a lot of times kids just needed someone to talk to, even if they didn't attend divine services.
Like everything else, US military chaplaincy has been politicized in the last decade or two, with the religious right loudly supporting chaplains who rebelled against the traditional neutral/ecumenical/non-denominational standard and wanted to use their position to proselytize. If I was ruler of everything, the chaplaincy would be completely disconnected from organized religion and focused on being a neutral organization supporting the mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of all service members, including supporting religious practice of any kind. Sort of like Counselor Troi after they dropped her feelies-on-the-bridge functions.
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Amaris
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There's significant pushback in the pagan community against white supremacists trying to co-opt Norse mythology as a foundation for their bigotry. Hopefully, we can all keep them from gaining a foothold. Norse mythologies are too damned cool to be taken over by Nazis.
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