Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Raze]

Does nothing inherent in Christianity about supporting Israel. America was always Christian and didn’t care about evicting Palestinians until the 20th century. Christian Zionism is a relatively recent phenomenon. 

Edited yesterday at 07:22 AM by Raze

[bazera]

@Leo Gura Just watched that Christian history video, it was informative, thanks for sharing. 

I have one question, what do Christians mean with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In your understanding, what was the original idea behind those? Why are they making those distinctions? Well, Holy Spirit sounds like what you call Consciousness, but what about Father and Son? Also they say all three are God, then they say that Jesus is God (son) but his father is also God, gets messy real quck, and historically those distinctions caused disagreements and branching off into countless denominations.

Edited yesterday at 03:34 PM by bazera

[Leo Gura]

Father = Infinity

Son = Jesus the human

Holy Spirit is not Consciousness. Christians believed that God has a spirit, similar to how humans can have spirits. Holy Spirit is like a ghost of God. It's a weird invention which has no correlate in my work.

Christians have never understood what God is, so they invent all sorts of silly things.

Edited 21 hours ago by Leo Gura

[enchanted]

@Leo Gura awesome posts about Christianity in the blog! 

The same goes for Mohammad and the Buddha right? They are just inventions in the minds of the followers?

Also something that Christians love to say is that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy. So many of the stories about what Jesus did are there because of that. 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by enchanted

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, enchanted said:

and the Buddha right?

No, that's not the same.

Although those who worship the Buddha are making a similar mistake.

[trenton]

I have been reading about the history of Christianity as well. I noticed this pattern with Christians confidently siting narrow verses while ignoring the rest of the Bible that would be taken seriously given consistently applied logic. I found a few examples I found instructive.

1. Slavery is the most commonly sited example. The abolitionist position won out by appealing to higher moral intuitions which exceeded the text. I also discovered that Aristotle defended slavery while invoking natural law. "natural" is a word that I have grown very skeptical of in religion.

2. Exodus 22:18 "you shall not permit a sorceress to live" was used in the Salem witch trials.

3. Capital punishment was seen as justified for minor offenses such as Sabbath breaking. Interestingly, there were societies before the Bible that were even more brutal than this such as ancient Assyria. In ancient Assyria, they would skin you alive and use mass public beheadings. If you think the Bible is brutal in the old testament, there is definitely even worse that came before it.

4. The Amalekite command in Samuel was used to justify genocide and religious persecution. "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” I find it odd that commands referring to completely different groups of people are taken out of context as if they justified prolonged abuse of some other unrelated group of people. This happened with slavery as well.

5. There was a legal ruling in 1959 in Loving v. Virginia. The judge argued that God placed races on separate continents because he intended not to mix them. The tower of Babel was commonly sited to argue that people of different colors were supposed to be segregated, making interracial marriage "unnatural."

6. The Divine Right of Kings doesn't make much sense to me. If we take at face value "there is no authority except from God" then when did the Bible actually say that the King is God? If the King is God, then why would Jesus be special for being God? It sounds like Jesus being God wasn't metaphysically necessary for Christianity.

7. Psalm 104:5 states "He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved." This was used to argue for the Geocentric theory, making it sound like we have a flat earth sitting on pillars with the pillars standing on a Giant Space Turtle. This was later reinterpreted as poetic rather than literal despite centuries of insisting on literal interpretation.

8. Pain relief for childbirth was considered "unnatural." Genesis 3:16 states "in pain you shall bring forth children." The debate ended with Queen Victoria used chloroform. The divine right of the monarch means that chloroform must be okay. My question for Christianity is what happens if a monarch or a pope says "the bible isn't true?" This sounds like what would be necessary for actually making the contradiction impossible to brush away.

9. Marry the Rapist laws which predated Islam are included. "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." This is Deuteronomy 22: 28-29. Women were considered property, but nobody in their right mind would defend this anymore unless we go to the Middle East where this is still a thing.

In spite of all of these verses, Christians still confidently argue "whoever spares the rod hates his child" or "men shall not lie with men." There are continued appeals to what is natural despite the absurd history that makes it hard to take these arguments seriously. These verses are taken seriously because they match a moral conclusion the person has already drawn while giving them a way to say "see it isn't because I say so, it's because the Bible says so." In reality the majority of Christians never read the Bible and they instead get told a curated version of it from the church which feels more palatable to them.

When you dig into the history of religion, this is what makes it feel unbelievable to me. The philosophical implications would be catastrophic if applied consistently. On top of that things like Satan look more like a recent cultural trope than something metaphysically necessary to the religion at all. If you add the politicized process for selecting the Biblical canon, it starts to feel impossible to believe that "the holy spirit guided the creation of the Biblical canon." This is an additional leap of faith beyond just that Jesus is God. There are numerous radical leaps in faith required to keep Christianity coherent. If any of these leaps fail, the religion collapses. Also the Bible never said that there would be a selection process for which books are canon centuries later.

I was stopped by Catholics earlier who were making exactly these arguments. They are poor arguments, yet they seemed confident anyway.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

Why exactly is Christianity a doomsday cult ? I feel as if such a label definitely applies to the Jehovah's Witnesses, but the Catholics or Orthodox? 

[Joseph Maynor]

The thing that is really unfortunate is when you manipulate someone's language.  

[eos_nyxia]

@Leo Gura Not sure if this is up your alley (or anyone else's), but Dr. Justin Sledge's channel covers Western mysticism/ occultism in a scholarly way.  Some topics are more general and some are very niche with difficult to track down information (like even if you scoured a few decently-sized university libraries, you would still have your work cut out for you).  I really wish that this type of information was more easily available when I was younger, esoteric circles tend to be like the New Age when it comes to interpreting history lol. 

https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel/ 

[Joseph Maynor]

If we are going to do troof; let's do troof.  What are we waiting for?  Let the show begin!

[Thought Art]

I wanted to share a good piece of literature for understanding how myths around religions are spun is A Canticle for Lebowitz. I thought this would go nicely with Leo’s posts on Christianity. In this book all books and educated people were destroyed. Many years later a schematic and bunker is found. This is a major deal for the monks set with the task of preserving what little knowledge humanity has left. When this schematic is found it is a big deal for everyone in this order. However, soon many myths, stories and untruths begin to spread about what actually happened beyond what actually happened and was shared by the monk who found the schematic. 

This is an interesting book that may feed your contemplation on the origins and epistemic corruption within religions. It goes to show how important truth is, education is, epistemology is and how important is is to defend it. Yet, also how easily corrupted is almost like a fact of nature. 

 

This video explores some different themes than what I personally got from it. But, is a good introduction.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Thought Art

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, eos_nyxia said:

@Leo Gura Not sure if this is up your alley (or anyone else's), but Dr. Justin Sledge's channel covers Western mysticism/ occultism in a scholarly way.  Some topics are more general and some are very niche with difficult to track down information (like even if you scoured a few decently-sized university libraries, you would still have your work cut out for you).  I really wish that this type of information was more easily available when I was younger, esoteric circles tend to be like the New Age when it comes to interpreting history lol. 

https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel/ 

I second that, his channel is superb and I haven't found another like it for quality.