I think the nature of Islam and Christianity breed imperialism.

[TSA]

If you're a part of a faith that believes there is 1 way to god, and you have that way..and you look around at the rest of the world in all its diversity, its easy to see why spreading your faith is almost always going to feel like a divine calling. It also creates a mentality that you are more god like or closer to god then others and therefore more human, making it easy to hurt and oppress others cause in actuality you have just dehumanized everyone that isn't like you.

sure ppl try to take a pluralist approach to faith, but these religions specifically say there is one way to god. Christianity the most. The concept of hell is one to wrestle with when you believe those that aren't like you are going to hell and realize nobody is like you in the world.


Judaism is excluded cause the jews believe the jews are the jews, period, and there's no adding real need to add cause they chosen ppl have been chosen.

This is the problem with monotheism, the mental struggle it creates in its followers when dealing with a diverse world.





I often see ppl say monotheistic faiths are more...advanced..then polytheistic, or closer to the truth, but if that's so its an ugly, ugly, unfair truth.


a religion like hinduism sees other faiths and says to its self 'we're talking about the same thing, homieh."

then tries to tie links based of common goals and beliefs.

all polythesitic religions take this nature.

When the romans encountered the germanic peoples they saw their horned god, Thor, and wrote back to the emperor that they were a cult of Mercury, their own Roman horned god.

there nature of polytheism is 'we're talking about the same thing' when it comes to other faiths.


Understanding this makes it easy to see why a monotheistic believer isn't easily converted to another faith, and tends to aggressively spread their own (with exception of judaism cause there's the 'exclusive' element to it), and why polytheistic people are less resistant to change, less xenophobic, and less likely to conquer in the name of spreading religion.

[ALLAHNDRZUWUNIGA]

i agree with you strongly, in that the mental complex imposed upon ¨monothesitic¨ belivers is a heavy trip. I can remember back when i was very chiristian, i used to spend a lot of time trying to come to therms with how all my friends who werent belivers were damed to hell and how other religous truths were explicitly opposed to my religous beliefs.

On the other hand, the monothiesm of christianity can be plausibly reconciled with islam, as both embrace one god, who depending on who you ask might be concidered the same in both religions including the jewish face.

The difference between the abrihamic faiths and hindu for instance seems to be that islam christianity and jewdisism are baithed on myths of relations with men and jehova, while hindu religions seem more mentaly oriented on meditation and god that resemble visions of an acid trip, but hinduism and even egyptian myths still have like the omm, the one supreem god, which can be compared to allah, which is what the arabian christians called god.

The conflict that interests me aside from that between jews, christians, and muslims, is that beteween muslims and budhists. Like taliban who blew up the statue of budha in afganistan.

one can see the comparison between visions of god in all reliions, even the parallel between the various gods in polythiism, and the profits and angels in islam, but budhist saints came with a compleatly different vision of the spiritual univerce so one wonders how it is possible to have such a consitant view of the hevens and just on exception, budhism, which has gods, but sees them as part of the body of beings stuck in the wheel of karma, and recognizes no one god, but rather anihilation of self as nirvana

[TSA]

REAL SPIT '09

do you think the turn to secularism in the west is become mentally christianity is really hear to deal with?

i believe a peoples shaped by their religion (and economics) more then anything else.
infact those 2 are the foundations of everything and we're powerless to the destinies their constructs bestow on us.

I think confucism for instance makes it ok for such heavy handed governments in chinese history, and if china was to switch to democracy it would have to be a meritocractic one or else it would be incompatable with the culture. It will also still take the same assholic and cuntarific nature as almost all chinese governments have including the present.


I also think protestantism was the real direct cause of western democracy and have read the original arguements for western democracy by ppl like locke and hobbes.

you would think they were teaching sunday school with how religiously rooted their arguement was.


religion and economics control us 100%. its stupid to deny one or the other and anything not rooted in either wont last.

[ALLAHNDRZUWUNIGA]

really cant front on chinese culture, its proably been around longer than recorded history literally. Its actually a testement to their independence as a nation that they choose a form of gvt. that is incompatble or at least incongruous with the rest of the global paradigm- communism.

[ALLAHNDRZUWUNIGA]

do you think the turn to secularism in the west is become mentally christianity is really hear to deal with?

.

what did you mean by this?

[TSA]

well christianity, with its concept of eternal hell, is hard to deal with. In fact it sucks. and more christian nations a secular non practicing (for the most part) cultures today. I just wanted to know if you saw a connection

[whitey]

well christianity, with its concept of eternal hell, is hard to deal with. In fact it sucks. and more christian nations a secular non practicing (for the most part) cultures today. I just wanted to know if you saw a connection

and this is why humans are retarded. they believe this shit. they go to war over this shit. did people go to eternal hell before the bible was written?

i know i took the shit off topic a bit, my b. i just had to put that in.

(im not calling out people in this thread. im speaking in general terms.)

[TSA]

yeah, the concept of hell to me is retarded, its basically to christianity what We Celebrate is the Big Dough Rehab, a fly on your icecream.

part of the original concept of hell was you would be eternally blissful watching everyone else burn from heaven just glad it isn't you in there.

[Memory Man]

part of the original concept of hell was you would be eternally blissful watching everyone else burn from heaven just glad it isn't you in there.

that's very true. in fact, the modern cocept of hell with satan ruling an underworld (borrowed from the greek hades) only began in the last thousand years as a result of parishoners' prurient interest in the punishment of the damned. hearing the details of hell's tortures is what put butts in pews, and that was catered to in the theology. no such descriptions of hell exist anywhere in the bible.

[TheBoarzHeadBoy]

Yeah, this is why I'm an alien worshiping pagan... (well not worshiping)

All the evidence points to humans or human like beings from somewhere else (another planet) directing our ancestors achievements.

I mean you have to look at things like in Peru where neolithic Indians apparently carved perfect geometric interlocking walls with 800 ton boulders using a type rock that only diamonds can cut.

The fact that entities all around the world as so similar. That ancient peoples accomplished things (and I'm not calling them stupid at all) even we can't do.

The bible if read from an alien force perspective actually makes sense instead of being all whilly nilly magic.

God speaks of creating man in the shape of his own, the aliens that we see as gods tend to be humanoid if not human. Perhaps ancient man encountered the force that set us on our path towards our current forms and having learned from them turned the stories of the alien race into a mythology that eventually evolved and shifted away from its origin. Theres just so much stuff that is odd. In India there were flying fortresses that burned the land with beams of energy piloted by gods. The greek gods had flying chariots ect. The Jewish alphabet ect. was given to Enoch by God when he got taken to heaven or something like that.

It may be false, but its a solid possiblity.

[ALLAHNDRZUWUNIGA]

One thing people overlook when they consider the alien interpretations of the bible, is that the "deep theological" views of the bible still need to be incorperated into the world view that is being garnished. Some people might question the "deep theological" aspects of the bible's validity, but it is a fact that such ponderings into the nature of good and evil, the illustaration of divine character from job for example, and illusstrations on the sinfullness of men, and the way of the rightous are all fundemental parts of the bible.

So while I consider the alien interperetations to be a considerable posibility, the teachings of the bible on the nature of man, and his relationship to existance still need to be accounted for.

On another note, a lot of people dismiss the profound moorings of religious teaching as if they were antiquated relics of ancient ignorence. Certainly religous hypocracy and stupidity abound in the world today, but from my experience, some of the people who blanket the whole religous mindset as stupid, are missing something very tangible. I mean, even people who sit though church sermons that are compleatly based on falicy still walk away feeling rejuvinated and renewed, so there is definately a place for spirtuality in the modern world. It will be interesteing to see if in the future people find a way to reconcile science with spirtuality.

[TheBoarzHeadBoy]

I don't think the bible is wrong. I agree that there is a lot to it in the sense you describe, but that doesn't discount that those morals may have been instilled by the superior race (my term for the fatherly alien culture as to make them sound less malevolent) to the younger race. Those stories may be based on events that happened, or they may not have happened and have been invented by man based on the ancient oral traditions describing the encounters with the superior race, or they may have been fables told by ancient people or (more compellingly) by the superior race to the younger race (humanity.)