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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

[Angle]

Besides...Hundred Years War wasn't what I would call 'enriching'.

Assuming you mean the Thirty Years War, that was more political than religious. Though it's hard to draw the line when church and state is so deeply intertwined.
It's more an argument for separation of the powers than it is an argument against theological discourse.

Also Ireland. Sectarian violence is not fun. Discourse is good, but my point is that Christianity's competitive marketplace of ideas opened whole other cans of worms in the past.

Ireland was also pretty political - it had as much to do with how the english exploited the Irish as it did with protestantism vs catholicism. That said, there were plenty of nasty fights over religious differences, and I certainly hope to avoid that. As for philosophy, most of it is too obscure and innaccessible for most people. I was hoping that these books could serve as a means of easy entry, helping give people a step up before they encountered the more difficult and inaccessible subjects.

[Orange Wizard]

my point is that Christianity's competitive marketplace of ideas opened whole other cans of worms in the past.

Yes, when politics is/was involved. A state church wants to maintain its temporal supremacy, etc. This stuff is not indicative of the religion itself.
Obviously the religion doesn't help, but any group that claims to be Christian but advocates violent aggression is, in my opinion, blasphemous.

As a tangent, it's an interesting parallel of enlightenment Europe and the modern Islamic world. We can see the effects of aggressive religious fundamentalism right now, and it's not pretty.

This is kind of rambly, but my point is that religion+politics=bad, fundamentalist religion+politics=horrendously bad, free speech +religion = less fundamentalism, and so on.

[Rolepgeek]

Matthew 10:34. Plenty of people will find reason to commit violence. I'm saying that sectarian differences, and while yeah there's often a lot of politics involved, point remains, tribal differences mean tribes go to war. Whether that war is with words and memes and getting people fired, or with guns and swords and getting people on fire, is another matter.

[Orange Wizard]

Matthew 10:34.

If I wanted to justify violence by taking passages out of context I could do it all day. I'd also need to ignore all the times Jesus explicitly endorsed non-violence, but that's exactly what I was criticising.

Whether that war is with words and memes and getting people fired, or with guns and swords and getting people on fire, is another matter.

In other words, the difference between theological discourse independent of politics, and as part of politics?

Seriously, find me an example of religious violence that isn't political.

Islamic terrorism? Political. They want to dominate the infidel and enforce sharia law.
US fundamentalism? Political. They want to place God and the Bible at the head of the American government.
Ireland? Political. Supporters of the union with GB and separatists who want an independent nation.

All of these things have religious justification, but serve as an example of what happens when religion is used as a political ideology. Many are largely indistinguishable from other forms of ideological violence, like the socialist/communist revolutions in Eastern Europe.
It's easier to get more extreme when religion is involved, perhaps, but that doesn't change that the underlying factor is not the religion itself but its political/ideological involvement.

[Rolepgeek]

It's intertwined, OrangeWizard. Religious differences cause political ones as often as the other way around, if not more. Bloody Mary. Religion is ideology, and it is philosophy, same as anything else. Just saying 'go wild' as to splitting up a tribe to try and get more competitive marketplace results in conflict, whether it be livelihoods or heads being lost. The underlying factor is not politics, either, it's just plain old tribalism. Which, if you want to define politics as, religion is politics too. Any organized religion, anyway. Find me an organized religion that isn't political in some way.

Bible's self-contradictory in many places, besides. If someone wants to rile up a crowd, it's not hard. If someone is already angry, it's not hard to find justification in the religion. I'm not trying to criticize Christianity for this specifically, I'm trying to say that if you want to create divides, you're gonna get some clashing. And it's not always pretty.

[TD1]

Besides...Hundred Years War wasn't what I would call 'enriching'.

Assuming you mean the Thirty Years War, that was more political than religious. Though it's hard to draw the line when church and state is so deeply intertwined.
It's more an argument for separation of the powers than it is an argument against theological discourse.

Also Ireland. Sectarian violence is not fun. Discourse is good, but my point is that Christianity's competitive marketplace of ideas opened whole other cans of worms in the past.

Ireland was also pretty political - it had as much to do with how the english exploited the Irish as it did with protestantism vs catholicism. That said, there were plenty of nasty fights over religious differences, and I certainly hope to avoid that. As for philosophy, most of it is too obscure and innaccessible for most people. I was hoping that these books could serve as a means of easy entry, helping give people a step up before they encountered the more difficult and inaccessible subjects.

It was almost wholly political at the start. It just so happened that Unionism and Nationalism fell under broad patterns of Protestant and Catholic, and even then at the start the respective movements had representatives from both sides. But that's beside the point.

[TD1]

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%201:13-18

So....he calls hell Hades? I think this probably shows a definite move on the authors to convert contemporary pagans.

[Loud Whispers]

Or shows how they spoke Greek and you're reading a translation

[TD1]

Surely in that case they would have used a different name for their different hell? They could have thought of something, I'm sure.

Either that or they saw them as one and the same. Which still raises issues.

[TempAcc]

The first widespread versions of biblical texts were published in greek, by people who probably didn't have the best grasp of the full meaning of several words in greek. The bible is so damn hard to read because it was written and translated from greek, latin, and hebraic, three VERY distinct languages with different syntax and word morphology. Its pretty acceptable to assume that the original greek version used hades because the writer thought hades just meant a general place where the unhappy dead go.

Mind you, multiple translations (translations of translations) and politics have changed the texts quite a lot through the ages, so much that only the very core of the teachings has actualy sort of survived. Pretty much every serious non-political biblical scholar, ancient or not, is against interpreting or taking bits of the bible literally.

Hell, Paul the Apostle, a once persecutor of christians, was very much against taking written words of holy texts literally, which is why he wrote his famous "For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" line. This was written in the context of Paul trying to convince the jews that the new testament was the natural sequel to the old testament, and that it isn't necessary for someone to partake in the judaic rituals (circumcision, eating only kosher stuff, etc) to achieve salvation, and that ultimately only faith, love and charity mattered.

Mind you, using terms and notions already known by pagans was a thing done by the early church to more easily attract converts. Paul himself tried to use the athenian notion of the "agnosto theo" (the unknown god) to try to convince the athenians that they had a notion of true god for a long time, which was now revealed through Jesus Christ. It didn't work that well at the time, but it worked rather nicely in other places.

As for an example of how politics has inserted erroneous facts into christian canon, there's the whole "peter as the head of the church" thing. The popular church enforced version of this says that Peter was appointed as head of the church by Christ himself, though there's basically no real evidence of this. They also say Peter led a full congregation of christians in Rome during Nero's time, of which there's zero actual evidence (in the letters Paul sent during the two times he was imprisoned in Rome, to christian congregations in the east, he mentions several other christians that are also in Rome, but never actualy mentions Peter, one of the apostles whom he personally knew, meaning that, if Peter was in Rome at the time, Paul somehow didn't know of it, despite keeping constant contact with the local congregation) and is also something that would basically be impracticable at the time, given that the christians were blamed for the fire that consumed most of Rome and used as a scapegoat by Nero, who persecuted them a fair bit. The only time Peter was actualy in Rome was during his execution.

[Harry Baldman]

Surely in that case they would have used a different name for their different hell? They could have thought of something, I'm sure.

Either that or they saw them as one and the same. Which still raises issues.

Hades is the underworld. If an equivalent was the intention, it would likely be Tartarus or something like that. Hades is more like Sheol.

Besides, what name would that be? Do bear in mind that "hell", for instance, comes from "Hel", which really isn't that much better than calling it Hades to begin with.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

On the topic of hell, are Christians required to believe that there is a hell that God kicks people to if they're bad?

Just wondering because my home-religion-experience is very homebrew. For instance, my belief (when I'm actually feeling beliefy) is that there is no hell. Does the Vatican or stuff say "infidel! heretic! you are not a true believer" for that or something?

[TheBiggerFish]

At least for Catholics, "Hell" is generally just considered to be "not being with God".

So, sort of?  God doesn't kick anybody there, but the idea of a hell is a thing.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

...well would you look at that.

Go Catholicism - I've independently derived one of your conclusions!

That's basically what I think of hell. It's that if you hate love, to be with love would be abhorrent, so would a loving person force an abhorrent thing on someone?

But then that begs the question of would it be hell if that's what you want? Wouldn't a loving God thus do whatever would bring you the most happiness by that logic? Come to think of it, it would probably be better in the long run to be with God. Can't souls change over time? Otherwise, souls are either intrinsically good or evil - that I reject. So even that makes no sense.

aaaaaaand now I'm feeling agnostic again.

Spoiler: begs the question (click to show/hide)

I am done being a prescriptivist nazi! Grammar and spelling, yes, but not words that are defined counter to their intuitive use. So I figured I would rebel against the Nazi Communist Fascist prescriptivists and use a word incorrectly.

[TempAcc]

Welp, the whole conclusion of souls being things that can and do change is what brought me to spiritism, which is essencialy christianity without the whole fatalistic notion of death and basically no rituals or hell/heaven, just a very compelling argument towards trying to be actualy useful to everyone you can help and genuinely trying to love them. Also, ghosts.

Its kind of funny how lots of religious figures/scholars/priests/whatevers, after genuinely studying religion and the concept of God and afterlife for decades, always sort of gravitate towards some form of philosophical spiritualism, at which point they basically give up on rituals and other trappings to try and actualy become a better person. Huberto Rohden, for example, after being a jesuit priest for a while, went on to become one of the precursors to universal spiritualism, wrote about 65 books and taught in Princeton and the Washington DC American University.