what is the greatest threat to christianty toda.Is it the muslim or the enemy within?

[hobbit.]

The greatest threat to christianty today. Is it the muslim or the enemy within?

Christianity is doomed. its that simple, like. but what is the cause?

 

[hotguy1234]

I vote none of the above.

Christianity will contine to exist for a long time

 

[Myrrdin]

Apathy

 

[hobbit.]

Apathy

well said. but is anyone listening?

 

[Wok]

Al Franken?

 

[rimmy]

well said. but is anyone listening?

lol.

Scandal after scandal with the gay priests will eventually take it's toll.


That or Glam will become pope.

 

[unculbact]

Having just finished Augustine's CONFESSIONS and THE CITY OF GOD, and moving on to St. Thomas Aquinas, this question is easy.

The biggest threat are the Christian Zionists here in the U.S. Their teachings are so heretical to what the early Church fathers laid out as Christian values, it's not even recognizable as being the Christian religion.

Talking to them, their ignorance of the New Testament is amazing. I've never met one that could recite a single one of the Beatudes, much less the Two Commandments of Jesus Christ. Christian Zionism is a muddy mix of a twisted Judiasm that defies definition, and Southern redneckism, to coin a phrase.

Re the above statement, in no way, shape or form am I blaming Jews for the CZ's. They are also amazed by them.

A few weeks ago, 12,000 members of the Southern Baptists put their seal of approval on Bush's war in Iraq. Politics aside, that any "Christian" church would praise any war, anywhere, tells you all you need to know.

But, at least their television shows provide an endless source of amusement. I'll miss Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson after they're gone, you can't make up guys like them.

Augustine also recognized internal heresies as being the biggest threat. Confusion is ever so much more effective than overt hostility.

 

[hotguy1234]

I don't see that much of a threat overall.

If one part of the Christian church gets too extreme one way, people just move over to another denomination. it is just they never talk about growing churches in the media, they just show pictures of some cathedral that is close to empty.

 

[MunchinMark]

Free thought.

It should start with the stimying of enquiring minds at school.
Q. How come man gets created twice in Genesis?
A. Shut up

Q. How come a woman has to go and be cleansed of her sin so that the child is not tainted with the sin of her lust, but her man doesn't have to even turn up in church that day?
A. Shut up

Q. How come no-one commented when Jesus did the bread and fish thing for the second time
A. Burn the heretic!

Thinking about it. Christianity should go like extreme Islam and try to kill anyone who disagrees. After all, nothing soldifies faith like the fear of being burned.

 

[hotguy1234]

Free thought.

It should start with the stimying of enquiring minds at school.
Q. How come man gets created twice in Genesis?
A. Shut up

Q. How come a woman has to go and be cleansed of her sin so that the child is not tainted with the sin of her lust, but her man doesn't have to even turn up in church that day?
A. Shut up

Q. How come no-one commented when Jesus did the bread and fish thing for the second time
A. Burn the heretic!

Thinking about it. Christianity should go like extreme Islam and try to kill anyone who disagrees. After all, nothing soldifies faith like the fear of being burned.

If you read a bit from Christian scholars they have already addressed pts 1 and 3

I have never even heard of a need for pt 2 to get cleansed. Is that some old Jewish tradition in the Old Testament. Because I have never heard of a scripture that could even imply that in the new testament.

 

[hobbit.]

Thinking about it. Christianity should go like extreme Islam and try to kill anyone who disagrees. After all, nothing soldifies faith like the fear of being burned.

Joan of Arc!!!!! mistress lady x will like you.

 

[hotguy1234]

2 creation accounts are likely because 2 different accounts of the creation story were merged into one by an author. It is not that unbelievable that there were a few different oral traditions that had been handed down through the years, that were finally recorded in the scripture many years later.

And that fact that both were placed together doesn't make them a less effective story

 

[MunchinMark]

If you read a bit from Christian scholars they have already addressed pts 1 and 3

I have never even heard of a need for pt 2 to get cleansed. Is that some old Jewish tradition in the Old Testament. Because I have never heard of a scripture that could even imply that in the new testament.

It's the reason my grandmother turned her back on Catholicism.

But in truth, any liberal society (i.e. where you are allowed a different view at all) will see people straying from the established religions. If you don't think that's a good thing, you're ideal location is Afghanistan or Bible Belt USA.

 

[hotguy1234]

It's the reason my grandmother turned her back on Catholicism.

But in truth, any liberal society (i.e. where you are allowed a different view at all) will see people straying from the established religions. If you don't think that's a good thing, you're ideal location is Afghanistan or Bible Belt USA.

well I don't pay much attention to Catholicism, personally, if I had to go to a Catholic church to be a Christian I would likely choose not to go.

They tend to change very slowly. They are still not letting their priests get married, took how many years to do mass in English. Resisted the idea of letting Catholics read the bible themselves for many years ...

 

[unculbact]

It's the reason my grandmother turned her back on Catholicism.

But in truth, any liberal society (i.e. where you are allowed a different view at all) will see people straying from the established religions. If you don't think that's a good thing, you're ideal location is Afghanistan or Bible Belt USA.

The values of the Taliban and the values of the Christian Zionists are awfully darn close to each other. A merger in the future?

 

[unculbact]

If you read a bit from Christian scholars they have already addressed pts 1 and 3

I have never even heard of a need for pt 2 to get cleansed. Is that some old Jewish tradition in the Old Testament. Because I have never heard of a scripture that could even imply that in the new testament.

Augustine had an interesting thought on the Creation, the "how" not being as interesting a question to him as "the why" and "the when".

God is perfect and therefore unchangeable, since any change would be away from perfection, and He exists independent of the property of Time, which He created.

Using his Platonic training, Augustine concluded that act of Creation was something that was always there.

While Creation does have a beginning, and apparently an end too, at least for parts of it, there was never a "time" when God did not will the Creation. God made no sudden decision after eons of existence to execute the Creation, for that would mean that there had been a change in God's will, and that isn't possible.

This answers the question "What did God do before creating the Heaven and the Earth"?

There was no "time" before the Creation. God always willed the Creation.

 

[hotguy1234]

Augustine had an interesting thought on the Creation, the "how" not being as interesting a question to him as "the why" and "the when".

God is perfect and therefore unchangeable, since any change would be away from perfection, and He exists independent of the property of Time, which He created.

Using his Platonic training, Augustine concluded that act of Creation was something that was always there.

While Creation does have a beginning, and apparently an end too, at least for parts of it, there was never a "time" when God did not will the Creation. God made no sudden decision after eons of existence to execute the Creation, for that would mean that there had been a change in God's will, and that isn't possible.

This answers the question "What did God do before creating the Heaven and the Earth"?

There was no "time" before the Creation. God always willed the Creation.

The focus in creation in Genesis is that the source of all things came through God. What pattern or theory you make after that doesn't matter that much you could be an evolutionist and it doesn't matter.

As long as a person believed similar to what you said that the source of the matter was God then it can work with the account in Genesis

 

[Darkest Lord]

I hate religion. I hate the arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity that it breeds. What is this stupid notion among christians of needing to be saved, or trying to save others that don't want to be saved? Religion is about nothing more than power and control. The human race would have been much better off without religion than they are with it. To me, christianity has created a train load of bullshit long enough to fertilize the entire Sainai Desert.

 

[shoulderblade]

Augustine also recognized internal heresies as being the biggest threat. Confusion is ever so much more effective than overt hostility

I could go with this, at least as part of the problem. The large number of 'species' of Christianity does not lend weight to its credibility.

Also leaves members of each individual sect preoccupied with where they stand relative to everyone else.

 

[hotguy1234]

I hate religion. I hate the arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity that it breeds. What is this stupid notion among christians of needing to be saved, or trying to save others that don't want to be saved? Religion is about nothing more than power and control. The human race would have been much better off without religion than they are with it. To me, christianity has created a train load of bullshit long enough to fertilize the entire Sainai Desert.

All institutions have people in them that try to control people and influence their thought.

It is not something that is held by religions alone, it is more of a result of what happens when you place people in a position of power.

Politics, education... may things have people that are as dogmatic in their views and closed minded

There are people in education that cause hate to others, the same in politics and that is as detrimental to society as the bad aspects of religion.



You can't toss away a concept like religion because of a few, or you need to apply that concept to all things in the world. If you discount everything that exists if you find a case or 2 of corruption you will be left with absolutely nothing.

 

[Hikari]

The biggest threat to Christianity is truth and logic. The more scientists discover, the more the bible looks like church propaganda passed off as fact.


Noah's Ark is a sumerian tale and the earth never flooded. There was a big flood, but nothing hugely monumental. There was no boat of animals, only a man and his family on a small boat.


More and more proof of human beginnings sends us to Africa, instead of in search of a magical garden of eden.


It will fall because of truth and true wisdom. The world will fall because of religion and land. That's all I have to say about the topic.

 

[hotguy1234]

The biggest threat to Christianity is truth and logic. The more scientists discover, the more the bible looks like church propaganda passed off as fact.


Noah's Ark is a sumerian tale and the earth never flooded. There was a big flood, but nothing hugely monumental. There was no boat of animals, only a man and his family on a small boat.


More and more proof of human beginnings sends us to Africa, instead of in search of a magical garden of eden.


It will fall because of truth and true wisdom. The world will fall because of religion and land. That's all I have to say about the topic.

The bible does not need to be literally correct in order for it to remain.

Based upon it's philosophical concepts it is quite an impressive piece of literature.

There are in fact many people that have always believed that not all events occured in the bible, but that some of them were just stories told to illustrate the point. And you look past that actual story to find the meaning in the story and that is it's value

 

[Hikari]

The bible does not need to be literally correct in order for it to remain.

Based upon it's philosophical concepts it is quite an impressive piece of literature.

There are in fact many people that have always believed that not all events occured in the bible, but that some of them were just stories told to illustrate the point. And you look past that actual story to find the meaning in the story and that is it's value

Yes but I don't think it was Jesus's objective to start a group that condemns anyone who does contrary to that book as a sinner. Jesus hung out with people that had done horrible things, but they were just people in his eyes. They were all equal to him in the eyes of god, they had only sinned. To many radical christians anyone who does not go to church every sunday has turned their backs on god, and that kind of attitude will not survive. A religion can not survive on fear forever. All other religions survive on belief and humbling one's self completely.


My father always told me that fearing god was the beginning of wisdom, but in the end I found something else. It is not fear that brings wisdom, it is understanding. It is understanding that none of us have true power in this world. Power here is illusion. We might clear a whole area and make a busy metropolis, but the weather can destroy our work just as easily. By realizing you really have no power you find the beginning. By becoming content with that you find wisdom..

 

[Mistress Lady X]

Joan of Arc!!!!! mistress lady x will like you.

I beg to differ. You hobbit. are the one with the fixation!

 

[unculbact]

My father always told me that fearing god was the beginning of wisdom, but in the end I found something else. It is not fear that brings wisdom, it is understanding.

Plato goes into this in THE REPUBLIC, and Augustine liberally borrows from him. Without fear, nobody will seek the truth. It's not necessarily fear of God's wrath that drives people to the truth. When the Platonists first sought, intellectually, to discover what good is - for whatever seems good on this earth, like in math, you just add one more good thing to it and you have something even better - they came up with the concept of the Ultimate Good, for which nothing is better. A completely ontological proof of the existance of God, and they decided that this was the highest pursuit that man could engage in. Failure to engage in this pursuit would render a man's life worthless.

This is why fearing God is the beginning of Wisdom. Not so much fear of his wrath, but fear of exclusion from the Ultimate Good and slavery to deception motivates men to seek out the truth. Both Plato and Augustine agree - if God is the Ultimate Good, there being nothing more perfect than him, he is also The Truth. If you think of the fear of God as being the fear of ignorance, it begins to make sense.

Notice the shift in emphasis in this Platonic definition. It's not fear of something bad happening, but fear of losing something, that you will fail to attain something good, a proactive stand that turns it's back on passivity. FEAR of ignorance drives us to understand, since understanding is hard work, that few would engage in unless they had a powerful motivation to do so.

So, to put it in a quotable nutshell, fear of God is fear of ignorance. This is everywhere in both Testaments - God is Light, sin is Darkness. The farther we are from the Light of God (Truth and Understanding), the further we are into The Darkness (Ignorance and Uncertainty).

Augustine in fact, says that evil has no positive nature, and is simply the darkness. We may say that we "see" darkness, or "hear" silence, but in fact, what we are noting is the lack of anything there. In the same way, Evil has no nature of it's own, but like darkness, is simply the lack of The Light, and that is to be feared.

One reason why my greatest contempt is for those that wallow in ignorance, and find it bliss. That's the subject of a whole thread.

As for why we need to be saved, it is because we are prisoners of our vices. Even the best of men can do little more than make sure that his vices are kept in check by his virtues, an eternal war that makes even the happiest of men miserable.

We can keep our vices in check, but we can't get rid of them. Augustine - I wish I could publish the whole passage, but it's pages long - says that this is the salvation God promises. Once free of our vices, we are free to enjoy our virtues without distraction.