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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Teneb]

Bit of an honest question...  My dad and I visited a Roman Catholic Basilica (of St. Lawrence) when he visited, and he cross'd my forehead with the holy water before we left.  Is that... bad?  Did it mean anything in particular?

Doing that is pretty normal, as long as you did not feel offended (since you are atheist and all).

But the true question is: did he cross it left-to-right, or right-to-left? /s

[TheBiggerFish]

@Rolan:Nah, it's just a traditional thing to do.

[TempAcc]

Been reading a book by Huberto Rohden about Paul of Tarsus, basically a biography, and its pretty interesting how it mirrors my ideas on where the catholic church went wrong on continuing the teachings of Jesus, and how it strangely seems to fit my ideas and feelings prior to my period of research on various religions which eventualy led me to spiritism, or at least a more spiritualist view of christianity as a whole.

Its a pretty great book if you want to know about Paul of Tarsus (easily the most interesting apostle due to the fact he was a strong persecutor of christians and never actualy knew christ in person, but ended up being the main reason to why it spread so far and strongly in the west).

As a philosopher, wether or not anyone agrees with his views (specially on religion), its pretty unquestionable that Rohden was clearly ahead of his time.

[Orange Wizard]

It's basically like a corporate meeting. A giant corporate meeting with a couple hundred people.

Oh yeah, I went to a RCNZ synod a year or so ago. It was basically like that. Admittedly the chair was trying to push things along, but this one guy was intent on dragging it out. It was pretty funny, he even yelled "nay" (to make up for lack of numbers) when the chair asked for a yea or nay on skipping over his objections entirely. The yeas won.
Honestly the best thing about it was how good-natured everyone was. Sure, they disagreed, and in some cases like with that one guy it almost got heated, but afterwards they'd go back to cracking jokes and ribbing off one another.
Also, it wasn't just 13 hours. It was more like 13 hours a day for over a week.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, they do probably happen all around us, but people just explain away like it was a conspiracy, or they just don't believe them, or they don't care enough to look for them.

Occam's Razor, man. Much easier explanation than all the baggage that comes with 'it was God, and specifically the Abrahamic God, and not any other God, and specifically this one interpretation of the Abrahamic God, and also Mohammed was a liar, but Jesus wasn't, and..."

Saying 'you're all just conspiracy theorists' when someone says 'that probably didn't happen (that way)' is...an interesting approach. It requires Faith because it can't be proven. But before it was believed it couldn't be proven, people came up with a lot of things they believed to be proofs. I don't really care if God is real or not, because it makes no difference to my behavior. *shrug*

[martinuzz]

The Dutch Protestant Church (PKN) issued an official statement in which it distances itself from the antisemitic views of it's founder, Martin Luther. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther)

In 1543 Luther called upon his followers to 'set fire to synagogues', and he even wrote a tractate on 'the Jews and their Lies'.
"Jews are nothing but thieves and robbers, and there isn't a crumb of their daily food, or a thread in their clothing that they did not steal from us through their accursed usury", he wrote.

Last june, the orthodox rabbi Raphael Gevers, the liberal rabbi Menno ten Brink and the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CiDi) joined forces to ask the protestant church to publicly distance themselves from their founder's hurtful remarks.
In 2017 there will be a celebration held for the 500 year anniversary of the Reformation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation), and according to them, it would be good if the protestant church would distance themselves before that event. So now, that has happened.

Rabbi Evers responded in the Trouw newspaper, saying this is a clear, self-critical analysis. CiDi called it 'a step in the right direction'. Muller said the PKN needs to keep ensuring that Luther's antisemitism has no place in their church.

[Orange Wizard]

In 1543 Luther called upon his followers to 'set fire to synagogues', and he even wrote a tractate on 'the Jews and their Lies'.
"Jews are nothing but thieves and robbers, and there isn't a crumb of their daily food, or a thread in their clothing that they did not steal from us through their accursed usury", he wrote.

I can't imagine any mainstream churches would agree with Luther on this. Obviously there'll be some ultra-right-wing arseholes but no-one cares about them. "Publicly distancing" from the statements is essentially pointless, he's remembered for being an important reformer of the church, not for being a perfect person.

Muller said the PKN needs to keep ensuring that Luther's antisemitism has no place in their church.

"Keep ensuring"? What, are protestants going to turn into antisemites if we don't keep rooting it out?

I dunno, this guy just sounds like he's trying to get offended by irrelevant nonsense.

[Frumple]

... considering the state of the largest concentration of protestants on earth, I'd say it's more likely than anyone would like. Kinda' have to remember that the nature of the protestant churches means there's a fair chunk of those right-wing-arseholes squirreled away behind the pews, and there's still quite a lot of general xenophobic (anti-jew or not) sentiment among them.

[Antioch]

I don't believe in physical miracles. Period. I have actually found ways to explain the Resurrection without physical miracles. (Basically, I think if anybody "saw" Jesus after his death, it was God-induced hallucination. It's not like such a thing hasn't been written about (albeit by crazies) today.) Anything special about the Resurrection (geez how could I write that phrase) came from a combination of spiritual stuff, figurative stuff, and basically showing people "this is what to do."

(what religion am I? To quote the cliche, "it's complicated." Catholic, but more a homebrew than most people's religions, and pretty agnostic at times.)

Plottwist: What if Jesus had a twin brother.

[origamiscienceguy]

Wait, I'm confused. You think that God can hallucinate 500+ people, but not raise someone from the dead?

[Frumple]

I'unno, seems fairly reasonable to me. I could hallucinate 500+ people, too. We have gases for that. Liquids, too. Even good ol' social engineering... pretty sure there's been some fun experiments in that area, convincing large numbers of people they saw something they didn't.

Bringing back someone that's been dead for a while is somewhat less possible, to state it mildly.

[origamiscienceguy]

What about everybody else? The ones who didn't see Jesus alive, but knew that his body had mysteriously disappeared. That was pretty much all of Jerusalem. It's not like the disciples could have stolen it because of the roman guard.

[Egan_BW]

Depends what powers you ascribe to the thing. Making people forget where he was buried, making them think he was buried in a place where he wasn't, probably easier than reviving someone, but still no small feat.

Of course, assuming that god didn't have the power to raise the dead, but wanted to appear to be able to.

[TD1]

Also, "everyone in Jerusalem" is an interesting way of putting it. I'd assume it to be the rumour mill going around. Gossip and distortion of fact.

I don't believe in physical miracles. Period. I have actually found ways to explain the Resurrection without physical miracles. (Basically, I think if anybody "saw" Jesus after his death, it was God-induced hallucination. It's not like such a thing hasn't been written about (albeit by crazies) today.) Anything special about the Resurrection (geez how could I write that phrase) came from a combination of spiritual stuff, figurative stuff, and basically showing people "this is what to do."

(what religion am I? To quote the cliche, "it's complicated." Catholic, but more a homebrew than most people's religions, and pretty agnostic at times.)

Plottwist: What if Jesus had a twin brother.

I think there was some talk of a brother, James. Josephus wrote about him before some Gospels did.

[i2amroy]

What about everybody else? The ones who didn't see Jesus alive, but knew that his body had mysteriously disappeared. That was pretty much all of Jerusalem.

Do you have a reference for this? I always thought it was the case where a small group of people found out that the body was gone first (the bible is pretty straightforwards about the idea that a group of women found out first, though the four different accounts vary in terms of how many women and why they were going there) and then the knowledge spread quickly throughout by basic word of mouth, not that there was some sort of superhuman revelation to all of Jerusalem where they all suddenly knew the body was gone.