Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Baffler]

Yeah, it's not like there's much difference between yesunim raising nasalo from the dead, Eashoa raising Lazar from the dead, and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. They're the same people doing the same thing, after all.

[XXSockXX]

I meant that they translated it out of archaic languages that arent generaly spoken into what that name is in (whats the word im looking for) modern? languages

Yeah, it's something like that. In German the evangelists are called Matthäus, Markus, Lukas and Johannes, which is somewhat closer to the Latin versions of the names. There are some differences to the anglizised version though, for example James and Jacob both translate to Jakob in German.

I'd be curious on the numbers of actual believers if you stripped out the social aspects of religion.

It would be a lot lower, about two thirds of the German population are members of either the Catholic or Protestant church (probably due to some local pecularities), but polls show that only 50% believe in a personal god, and church attendance is consistently under 10% (of members). Now if you subtract those who don't agree with everything the church says (which for Catholic German church-goers for example should be the majority), the percentage of "actual believers" becomes ultra-tiny.
In other religions like Islam that are not as centralized and dogmatic as most forms of Christianity this might even be worse, at least in variety of beliefs, not necessarily in complete lack of belief (in Islam probably not, in some Eastern religions maybe).

[penguinofhonor]

Okay, source time. Irish Times published a poll in 2012 saying that only 26% of Catholics in Ireland believe in transubstantiation, but it's behind a paywall so I can't get to it. That's the most similar statistic I can find, but my religion teacher was wigging out about this back before 2009 so I know it's not the same one.

I also found this Pew poll from 2010 that says 45% of American Catholics think the church's official stance on transubstantiation is that the bread and wine are merely symbols.

[Frumple]

Yeah, it's not like there's much difference between yesunim raising nasalo from the dead, Eashoa raising Lazar from the dead, and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. They're the same people doing the same thing, after all.

Well... except in cases like John, where... well, in english, John is by and large just a name. Yohanan, on the other hand, has a very distinct meaning that actually changes in subtle ways depending on how you spell it/which way it's translated. Regardless, you'd think folks wouldn't be quite so passe about just idly changing words in supposedly holy text, heh. If the text is supposedly divinely inspired, there is a hell of a difference yesunim and "Jesus", because one of the two was given to man by God and the other... wasn't.

And there's big differences in other things, like the KJV's decision to translate retzach to "kill", which pretty close to completely mistranslates the notable commandment

[Graknorke]

Okay, source time. Irish Times published a poll in 2012 saying that only 26% of Catholics in Ireland believe in transubstantiation, but it's behind a paywall so I can't get to it. That's the most similar statistic I can find, but my religion teacher was wigging out about this back before 2009 so I know it's not the same one.

I also found this Pew poll from 2010 that says 45% of American Catholics think the church's official stance on transubstantiation is that the bread and wine are merely symbols.

Transubstantiation really confuses me.
I mean, they say that the bread and wine are literally the body and blood of Jesus, except they of course aren't and they say they aren't. It's... eh. Kind of a doublethink thing as far as I can tell.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think I found a decent way to describe it: The bread and wine remains molecularity bread and wine, but the true name of the bread and wine becomes Jesus.

[penguinofhonor]

I think transubstantiation is a silly belief based on taking one of the most obvious metaphors in the Bible literally. Protestants ditching it was a good move.

It's in a weird place where it's very important to the more theologically aware Catholics (including everyone in the leadership) and completely unimportant to most average Catholics.

[Gnorm]

I've always found it odd that, whereas for most Bible passages the Catholics will take a "contextualist" or "symbolic" approach, they've decided to choose the part about transubstantiation as the one to take literally. I've only really had interactions with the lefties of the Roman Catholic Church, but even they claim to believe in the literal transformation from bread to flesh.

[TheDarkStar]

My church uses a combination of baptism and a confession of faith (basically standing up in front of the congregation and saying you're a Christian) to become a "member" of the church. It's not necessary for salvation, but it is necessary if you want to participate in communion (the bread and wine thing), or have a book of phone numbers for other members sent to you every month or so.

We also don't believe in purgatory (is there a Bible verse?) and Hell is eternal - not lasting for X thousand years depending on how many kiloNazis your Evilness scale raked in.

Fun fact about baptism that people may not know(my girl friend sure didn't)
Getting baptized in my faith doesn't save you but it shows to the community that you have given yourself to Christ

What saves you is true faith in him
So baptism is just the public display of it

In my church, it is vital to be baptized (along with other stuff including repentance/living right). We also believe, similar to what II says, that purgatory doesn't exist and and that you don't suffer punishment for X time based on how evil you were. We do have semi-public displays of faith (testimony meetings, meaning people talk about their church-related experiences, and prayers for meetings), but the majority of what we do is private (most prayers, fasting, any kind of donation).

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Wednsday night church fun info block

There is a job at colleges and such for people who interpret the really hard stuff in the bible like what we are doing and may, nay will be doing later in the thread
They are (I may be a little off) theologians and their living is made interpreting and answering hard questions about the bible


The rapture and second coming are two seperate events
The rapture is Jesus coming and getting all the believers
The second coming is Him taking, boots to ground so to speak, Jesus will walk the earth and (a little iffy on this part) the trials/ tribulations start


More info later, hail/possible tornado coming through

[Orange Wizard]

We have group prayers during sermons (lead by the minister), but most prayer is done alone AFAIK. Donations are kind of public - we have a bag that gets passed around during the service - but most people put their money in an envelope.
Fasting is rarely done. We kind of overlook most of the supernatural-type stuff, actually. Particularly of note are the several sermons we've had lately about how it's great to trust in God and all, but if you want something to happen, it's usually most productive to go and do it.

I think the official stance on all the end-of-days stuff is that we can't know when it's going to happen, and it when it does happen, it's not really going to matter if we didn't get the memo, because you know, it's literally the end of the world.

[Frumple]

Heh. Yeah, academic theology encompasses considerably more than just bible studies. Admittedly, a lot of it in the US doesn't step very far outside the major abrahamic traditions, but a decent degree in the subject will have you pretty conversant in theology/religion in general, its major patterns, and the specifics of whatever your specialty is.

It can actually be pretty fun stuff, but not something I'd recommend getting in to if you're actually strongly attached to... whatever your particular denomination's beliefs are. Unless you're involved with a program that's specifically hosted by/about that group (Protip: Those programs are honestly kinda' shit, generally. Dogma is the death of theology Go for the more cosmopolitan ones.), I guess. Part of the process of getting a decent degree in theology is going to be tearing your own beliefs right to hell and back, and from what I've seen quite a few folks don't come out of the study believing what they did going in, assuming they finish at all.

Also, job prospects for it's kinda' terrible.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

What my youth leader was saying was there are some theologians that is just for Christianity/bible

[Frumple]

Some are, sorta'. Modern ones like that tend to be hella' boring, imo, but there's definitely specialists in the abrahamic stuff. Decent theology program is still going to have a fairly solid grounding in comparative theology, though. Christian theologian worth the title kinda' has to be with regard to some of the older/historic religions, given how much judaism and christianity ripped 'em off, heh.

Mind you, there is quite a fair number of... I guess you could call them scare quote "theologians". Folks that claim the title, and probably have some kind of barely-recognized degree, that don't really cut it in genuine academic or sizable-church level theology. They write books, maybe have a congregation or TV show, but... well, the actual theologians, and even quite a few of the plain clothes ordained priests, I've had the privilege of talking to don't have terribly much nice to say about that sort

[Gentlefish]

The raptor and second coming are two seperate events
The raptor is Jesus coming and getting all the believers
The second coming is Him taking, boots to ground so to speak, Jesus will walk the earth and (a little iffy on this part) the trials/ tribulations start


More info later, hail/possible tornado coming through

This is what I get for skimming.