Long quote... let me phrase my response and then clean up the quote. Really, the forum is messing up my quotes almost all the time.
1) the bibles accuray:
Yes, that is what I meant. Okay, maybe I missed the last 10 years of development around those scriptures. Yet, AFAIK, rome still hasn't opened all its archives to the puplic. They are still a secretive as ever. If they had ANY interest in making people LESS suspicious about their claims of the bibles accuray, it would just stop trying to keep its history a secret.
We know of most of the bad parts... how much more bad must there be in the archive to still keep them closed in 2016?
Now, it might be that the bible hasn't changed all that much in 2000 years. But: the church HAD 1000 years where it COULD have changed it to their hearts content. They kind of did it too, most of it might just not have been put into the bible. Nobody outside of the church would have been able to do much about it.
It might actually have happened, and then was rolled back thanks to the protestant movements, IDK...
The fact they could just make up the whole hell and devil crap based on very vague statements in the old testament and use that to oppress the people, without anyone until in modern times actually questioning that part of the faith is kind of remarkable.
But to be honest, I did get way offtopic there. Suffice to say, it doesn't matter how accurate a historical text like the bible is compared to its origins. The alterations that might have gone into the text are also part of a living history.
Important is what people do with it. If you read the bible as a historical text, good. If you view it as a holy book, as interesting points of view of holy men that could help you form your own, good.
If you take it literally when it was either written intentionally vague, or so long ago that the original meaning was lost to most, not so good anymore. this is where interpretation and selective reading is entering the stage, and a holy book can be abused to rationalize all kind of crimes.
2) "The reason that Christianity seems moderate is because we believe you have to God-given right to choose for yourself what you believe, and we don't try to kill you if you leave the faith like Islam does."
Source? Really, when you make statements like thos, you should back it up, else it just seems to be rightwing hate speech.
It might be that the Koran says that. Or that the Koran could be interpreted to say that. Doesn't mean that this is enforced, other than by religious nutjobs. Again, christians burned heretics at the stakes... seems they also found ways to legitimitize it. Western society got beyond that, not thanks to the christian religion, but thanks to showing religion their place. Which is in everyones private life, not in politics.
3) Christianity being at war with <insert current target of hate here> ...
Really, is christianity at war with the islam? Or is the US just too much fiddling in other parts of the world and roused the sleeping tiger? Just as europe did in the 19th and 20th century?
Is this really about religion? All I see is people trying to get money and power, to get the ultrareligious to vote for them, to manipulate people into doing their bidding. Religion might be abused to get there, it still is not about religion at its core.
You could say it was always like this. Religion is about religion as long as its personal spirituality... as soon as people start applying their religions moral standarts to themselves or others, start making religious practices and rules it stops being about spirtuality and starts being about oppression, politics, money, power over others.
From the Islamic perspective, Islam replaces Christianity and replaces Jews, Jews are an abomination, Christians got it wrong, and Islam has to correct everything by wiping out the other religions (even if most Muslims don't know what the Quran teaches).
Some things that Christians have done in the name of their faith is messed up. But it's counter to the teaching of the Bible (even when the majority of Christians don't know what the Bible actually says). You don't have to go counter to the Quran to be an extremist.
Hyper-conservative "extremist" Christian views are in-line with Bible teaching (e.g. you consider my views extremist), but if anyone uses violence to further those views, that goes against the Bible's teaching.
Yes, I got to admit you got a point there.
Though, well, actions count more than words. The ACTIONS of christianity in the past where the same as what muslim extremists do today. As long as extremists had the say in rome and europe, they never had troubles justifying their acts.
Same with muslim countrys.
I would guess its a matter of time until the muslim faith will HAVE to accept reforms to their religious rules. Though I am pretty certain thos reforms need to come from inside. Like what was done with christianity in the middle ages, where it needed a new christian sect to break the monopoly of the catholic sect.
They weren't looking for a monotheistic replacement. It came to Rome, and they had to deal with it, and so they eventually made it the state religion (after hundreds of years of trying to suppress it) and then tried to control it and wield it (with mixed results, depending on the people in power).
Christianity reached Rome within 20 years after Christ's death (Christ died in 33 AD (IIRC), and Paul reached Rome in AD 50 and found Christians already there). For the next >200 years (until 311-313 AD) it was illegal, and punishable with death. Only in 391 AD did it become the state religion and paganism outlawed.
Yes, which does not contradict with what I was writing. Roman emperors DID see a very fitting religion in christianity for thei dictatorship. Else they could have just accept it as an alternative religion to the official faith.
They didn't. And as far as I read my history book, the emperors who converted where not all that religious to begin with. They saw a religion more fitting for their style of rule, and took the opportunity.
Actually, prior to Christianity becoming the state-religion of Rome, the emperors set themselves up as gods. Accepting Christianity forced the emperors to (at least publicly) adhere to church teaching and to not be worshiped - i.e. it undermined their authority and legitimacy.
It was later on that non-Roman empowers caught on and realized they could use Christianity to give themselves legitimacy.
Your history of Christianity and Rome seems to be a little off... You must have overlooked the whole having Christians torn apart by dogs or burned alive for entertainment - as witnessed and recorded by non-Christian Roman historians.
Well, the general pulbic had dozens of other gods to pray to. When you are not limited to a single god, there is always a "second opinion"... don't like the teachings of Apollo? Well, I'll just join the sect of this other god that suits me better! (I know its a Greek god, but really, different names, same gods).
Christianity never made the powerful any less powerful... and we KNOW how much even the popes adhered to christian teachings (not at all. Either they where chast and violent, or nonviolent and having many offsprings. Of course who I am picking out here might have been black sheep)... what makes you think any roman emperor would adhere to christian rules other then for show?
No, I know very well how the christians were hunted in the first few centuries. Which makes the fact on how quickly the table turned when romes fate started to change for the worse quite remarkable.
When emperors were grabbing for straws to make rome great again, they got hold of christianity among other things.
That entirely depends on where and when you look.
Sure, America is mostly a "prosperity gospel" nation (*vomit*), but even within America, there are many churches that teach otherwise, and in nations like China, where state-sponsored atheists wanted to kill every Christian, it absolutely wasn't prosperity-focused, and looked alot like the first few years after Christ.
Do you know what Christianity looked like in the early days? On what are you basing your claim? Depending on what variables you are measuring, I either agree or disagree.
All I know is that Jesus according to the bible loathed the temple, and preached wherever he was.
Yet today, most christians cannot live their faith without "the temple".
I agree that there ARE sects that are getting closer to the ideal of christianity (by not meeting in pompeos golden temples of decadence like the catholics). It's just that MOST christians, at least here in good old europe, are still part of the catholic or some old fashioned protestant sects. Both of which are particularly bad at that.
