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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

[MaxTheFox]

In a world before Christ, such a man as you would make a wonderful Jew.

The same man, after Christ, even having witnessed all the portents and signs of the new testament, would clutch his scrolls, glare, and deny himself entry to heaven.

Clearly a forum is equivalent to... whatever was the main form of discussion in that time. "Anywhere" implied "in a public online space". A heart-to-heart conversation, IRL or online, could probably deconvert me if someone has a really good reason for me to deconvert (in fact a Discord DM exchange is what converted me in the first place). But nobody in the what, year of me watching this thread, provided one so I am skeptical. (Also I am not a man.)

Well, what other people said he said, as agreed upon by various organizational consensuses over the centuries, anyway.

Any case, christianity as it exists today only exists because of a lot of things that have very, very little to do with the scripture or its believers, heh. Lot of it doesn't even have anything to do with the religion itself, per se, save insofar as it was used as a sometimes genocidal bludgeon against various governments' designated punching bags.

That's religion for yeh, tho'. You'd think there'd be at least one major one that didn't have that somewhere in their history, but... not as far as I'm aware. Frikkin' jainism, whose primary teaching is nonviolence and the reduction of harm, even had a period where they were the major religion in an expansionist state

Honestly yeah basically. That's why I go full sola scriptura, I want as few people as possible telling me what to believe and I basically made up my own mind.

[Strongpoint]

I had a thought recently. If we assume that an omnipotent being exists... Is it not outright pointless to create anything? This all-mighty wizard can wish into existence anything, making an exact copy of whatever we make. And that means that there is zero value in our achievements, legacy, uniqueness

Also, that being can even create as many copies of us as it wishes.

[martinuzz]

Perhaps it just creates us for it's own online achievements

[MaxTheFox]

I had a thought recently. If we assume that an omnipotent being exists... Is it not outright pointless to create anything? This all-mighty wizard can wish into existence anything, making an exact copy of whatever we make. And that means that there is zero value in our achievements, legacy, uniqueness

Also, that being can even create as many copies of us as it wishes.

Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?

Quoting one of my favorite games aside, our value would be, in the grand scheme of things, completely meaningless even assuming a purely materialistic universe. Realistically as a species we are not leaving this galaxy, even assuming very optimistic interstellar colonization. And the number of galaxies in the Universe is beyond our comprehension.

The solution I take, and that any rational person, atheist or theist, should take: why does it matter if our legacy is "important" to a vast and uncaring universe? Life's meaning is life itself. We can make our tiny corner of it better, so why stuff your head with this "oh boo hoo we don't matter" rubbish?

As for why we would be created... well I guess for the same reasons that when one is playing a "start from nothing" sandbox game like Powder Toy, or playing around with cellular automata in Golly, or idk, Minecraft creative mode in superflat, one generally tends to create things rather than sit around looking at an empty screen?

[Loud Whispers]

I'd find it much more likely that Jesus was born a man, and was homosexual.
I mean, c'mon. A jewish man, in his thirties, no wife, in that time and age? Not to mention spending most of his time with 13 other men?

I don't like this interpretation, just because it feeds further into this venomous idea that homosexuality is a necessary precursor of male homosocial bonding, and that a man may not love a man except in being physically attracted to them. It produces a much colder male world, where a woman may be as close physically with a woman and still both be friends, and no one makes assumptions on their preferences of sexuality. Even a man and woman may be close physically, and not always have any assumptions of being partners. But Sam Gamgee can't carry Frodo in the 21st century without everyone saying friendship without wanting the Baggins in Bag End is impossible and... It's a darker, lonelier world.

[MaxTheFox]

Hey LW, you like SMAC, did you know that I have a whole folder of text files with SMAC quotes sorted by character and by theme?

[TD1]

We have gone full-circle.

From Patroclus being Achilles' roommate to Sam bring Frodo's gay lover.

The sin is the same; the flavour is different.

Edit: Also, sola-scriptura, it's incredibly unlikely that the deity of a faith which holds homosexuality as a sin would himself be homosexual. Though I recognise the point was three-quarters banter.

[Loud Whispers]

Hey LW, you like SMAC, did you know that I have a whole folder of text files with SMAC quotes sorted by character and by theme?

I freaking love SMAC. I practically know all the quotes off by heart, there's just so much love... Blew my mind when I was reading the game manual and they were giving a recommended reading list and telling what the atmospheric composition of Planet was

We have gone full-circle.

From Patroclus being Achilles' roommate to Sam bring Frodo's gay lover.

The sin is the same; the flavour is different.

I think it helps that Greek language has many variations for the word love, each clearly specifying what kind of love they are talking about. English has more ambiguity with every form of love sitting under love. But the love you have for your partner, your friend, your parents, your cat, the sunset, your transcendental love of Dwarf Fortress, all are different forms of love. Unless you get weirdly freudian

[TD1]

It always fascinates me how we let language channel the direction of our thoughts, even our societies. To some extent it's a chicken-and-egg scenario, but I think in practice it's most often language controlling culture, society, people.

Which falls outside the remit of this thread, but ah well.

[Loud Whispers]

It always fascinates me how we let language channel the direction of our thoughts, even our societies. To some extent it's a chicken-and-egg scenario, but I think in practice it's most often language controlling culture, society, people.

Which falls outside the remit of this thread, but ah well.

I think there are also things that transcend language. One of my earliest memories ever is of standing on an overpass bridge age 2, and my mother rushing to grab me, commenting that I must've thought the far away cars were the same size as toy cars due to forced perspective. I remember thinking - without words to express these feelings, indignance that they thought I was so stupid. Many of my early memories are like this, full of thoughts without words to define them. There was a very cool interview with a girl who basically went feral when she ended up stuck in the woods for years, and she likewise expressed similar "thoughtforms." Like looking at the moon and thinking "my parents could beat the moon in a fight" without the words to define that. Like people who can "see" sounds or associate smells and tastes with certain memories. People who can imagine an entire scene or have a constant internal monologue whilst others do not. The way people think, and each person thinks so differently from the next, is honestly beautiful and a credit to life itself.

I'm reminded of the USSR trying to remove words like holiday from the dictionary. But you can't remove the intrinsic desire to feel "fuck this I want to leave" ;]

[TD1]

'Many of my early memories are like this, full of thoughts without words to define them.' This fascinates me. One of my early memories is asking my dad how creatures like wolves and dogs think without words, and him simply answering that they don't. But to me, life is a narrative made of fragmented and often-times patchwork phrases and words. The idea of a 'thoughtform' to me is synonymous with emotion - because I can't understand how one rationally thinks without some form of mental-vocal narrative.

Likewise with the visualising a movie/(more accurately) an audio-book thing. I have a fairly good imagination, but again it works outside thought in that I merely experience, however vividly, whatever world was crafted and then internally ascribe words to understand that experience.

It's one of those questions which has quietly bubbled inside me since childhood.

But you can't remove the intrinsic desire to feel "fuck this I want to leave" ;]

No, and they weren't trying to. What such action does is confuse the execution of an intrinsic desire.

Language aids imagination. In this way 'feck these bastards' can be channeled into a different... cultural symbol? Here my language ironically fails me, perhaps in itself indicating insidious thoughtforms lurking beneath the conscious surface??? ... anyway, a different symbol. 'Feck the man' can become 'feck him by doing well at work and getting a promotion ((capitalism I'm looking at you)), or it can mean 'feck him by going on holiday.' The difference is emphasis on language, culture, imagination. The three are enmeshed intrinsically.


The above mostly constitutes a stream-of-consciousness reply, in case you hadn't noticed. It was nice not to have to write something structured anally ahaha.

[Strongpoint]

I think it helps that Greek language has many variations for the word love, each clearly specifying what kind of love they are talking about. English has more ambiguity with every form of love sitting under love. But the love you have for your partner, your friend, your parents, your cat, the sunset, your transcendental love of Dwarf Fortress, all are different forms of love. Unless you get weirdly freudian

Yeah, in Ukrainian we have a separate word for the sexual attraction type of love and it makes things more convenient compared to English. Or Russian.

[Rolan7]

Well, what other people said he said, as agreed upon by various organizational consensuses over the centuries, anyway.

Any case, christianity as it exists today only exists because of a lot of things that have very, very little to do with the scripture or its believers, heh. Lot of it doesn't even have anything to do with the religion itself, per se, save insofar as it was used as a sometimes genocidal bludgeon against various governments' designated punching bags.

That's religion for yeh, tho'. You'd think there'd be at least one major one that didn't have that somewhere in their history, but... not as far as I'm aware. Frikkin' jainism, whose primary teaching is nonviolence and the reduction of harm, even had a period where they were the major religion in an expansionist state

Honestly yeah basically. That's why I go full sola scriptura, I want as few people as possible telling me what to believe and I basically made up my own mind.

Makes sense.  I personally doubt the scripture (not that I can read it directly) but not nearly as much as I doubt all the politics that went into the selection and translation of, say, the King James version.  Or even the first Council of Nicaea.
I really respect wanting to minimize that manipulation and get to the deeper, more original truth of it.  I think my own spirituality works in a similar direction.

(I do like playing Biblical Literalism "games" to expose the hypocrisy of supposedly Biblical bigots.  It doesn't convince the bigots, but I hope there's value in pointing out when they literally make shit up and claim it's Biblical.  It's also cathartic for some reason.)

I'd find it much more likely that Jesus was born a man, and was homosexual.
I mean, c'mon. A jewish man, in his thirties, no wife, in that time and age? Not to mention spending most of his time with 13 other men?

I don't like this interpretation, just because it feeds further into this venomous idea that homosexuality is a necessary precursor of male homosocial bonding, and that a man may not love a man except in being physically attracted to them. It produces a much colder male world, where a woman may be as close physically with a woman and still both be friends, and no one makes assumptions on their preferences of sexuality. Even a man and woman may be close physically, and not always have any assumptions of being partners. But Sam Gamgee can't carry Frodo in the 21st century without everyone saying friendship without wanting the Baggins in Bag End is impossible and... It's a darker, lonelier world.

Same.  Jesus's whole thing is loving everyone (platonically?).  I think it'd be weird for God Manifested to be in romantic love with anyone, even several people.  There's literally a power gap and age gap for one thing, and I don't just mean that as a joke.

For him to experience the whole range of human experience I would understand if he's romantically attracted to *everyone*, but I don't think there's much basis for that.  And it'd be weird if he acted on it.  His love is depicted a that of a teacher and parent, which is appropriate.

On the other hand he did wash people's feet.  I'm not implying that's sexual, but it's rather intimate.  I think a weakness in Jesus's story is that he only appeared in a very tiny area of the world, and was closely involved with people there, but nowhere else until after his ascension.  Mormon Jesus is a hilarious band-aid on this serious issue.

Hey LW, you like SMAC, did you know that I have a whole folder of text files with SMAC quotes sorted by character and by theme?

I freaking love SMAC. I practically know all the quotes off by heart, there's just so much love... Blew my mind when I was reading the game manual and they were giving a recommended reading list and telling what the atmospheric composition of Planet was

Ooh really?  I have to get my hands on that manual sometime.   I'm obviously a fan too, though I rely mostly on in-game descriptions and the Paean: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/

Why would I want anyone to be "screwed" in this life or the next? That would bring me no joy. (Although I admit, I feel selfish pleasure when I see a traffic offender get pulled over. So I'm not really as good as I seem on TV.)

I don't get it either, but a lot of Christians seem to revel in it or at least accept it as "justice".  Particularly the rich ones who explicitly have a miniscule chance of reaching heaven themselves.  Modern Christianity is very strange sometimes.

I guess that's what happens when a Roman Emperor establishes a Christian theocracy which then violently suppresses all the "heretics" living in simple communion as Jesus preached.
And even when its empire crumbles, as all do, the most successful "reformations" retain either the greed or the hatred or both.

There were exceptions though, and I think more Christians every day are returning to the original gospel of egality and fraternity.

As I'm reading about "Religious Freedom" being the stick with which to beat the LGBTQ community, I wonder if the following statement would be protected under Free Speech and Religious Freedoms:

Jesus was born a woman, and self-identified as a man.

I still unironically believe this, actually, as the most reasonable interpretation of the scriptures.
Though I'd adjust the phrasing: Jesus has existed for all of time as a man, and incarnated as a clone of Mary.
So yes, basically a trans man.

It just makes sense to me.
I think we can posit that Jesus received *some* genetic material from Mary.  She's famously his mother.  Also, there's no mention of Jesus looking unusual for someone of Judah, so his body is presumably ethnically similar to his family rather than some average of all humanity or special divine ethnicity from the dawn of time.

If he's partially of Mary's genetics, is there another half that God Himself created just for this?  I don't think so.  For one thing it's just weird for God to create a gamete specifically for this purpose.  If He did, wouldn't it be something special that made Jesus stand out?  I guess He could have chosen a gamete from Joseph, but that would make Joseph a much more notable figure than he is.
Also, I don't think God had sex with Mary in any sense.  Even the most clinical.

So yeah, I think Jesus is genetically a clone of Mary.
A lot of Catholic artwork seems to vaguely agree... but that's metaphor and kinda squicky and offensive, so I'd rather not get into it.  Also it's the Catholic Church, booo.

[Superdorf]

I had a thought recently. If we assume that an omnipotent being exists... Is it not outright pointless to create anything? This all-mighty wizard can wish into existence anything, making an exact copy of whatever we make. And that means that there is zero value in our achievements, legacy, uniqueness

Also, that being can even create as many copies of us as it wishes.

Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?

Quoting one of my favorite games aside, our value would be, in the grand scheme of things, completely meaningless even assuming a purely materialistic universe. Realistically as a species we are not leaving this galaxy, even assuming very optimistic interstellar colonization. And the number of galaxies in the Universe is beyond our comprehension.

The solution I take, and that any rational person, atheist or theist, should take: why does it matter if our legacy is "important" to a vast and uncaring universe? Life's meaning is life itself. We can make our tiny corner of it better, so why stuff your head with this "oh boo hoo we don't matter" rubbish?

As for why we would be created... well I guess for the same reasons that when one is playing a "start from nothing" sandbox game like Powder Toy, or playing around with cellular automata in Golly, or idk, Minecraft creative mode in superflat, one generally tends to create things rather than sit around looking at an empty screen?

God is love.
Love spills over, demands an object of affection. How could such a God not create?

...

I could see Jesus being aro/ace, or not. All we're told in the Gospels is that He could be tempted, but not overthrown.

[TD1]

As I'm reading about "Religious Freedom" being the stick with which to beat the LGBTQ community, I wonder if the following statement would be protected under Free Speech and Religious Freedoms:

Jesus was born a woman, and self-identified as a man.

I still unironically believe this, actually, as the most reasonable interpretation of the scriptures.
Though I'd adjust the phrasing: Jesus has existed for all of time as a man, and incarnated as a clone of Mary.
So yes, basically a trans man.

That's a reasonable treatment of Jesus in the same way as Mormonism's reimagining is.

A mixture of faith with historical statement. On faith, say what thou wilt. On the second... the social and cultural context refutes nearly any possibility of that being the case, especially without any commentary by contemporaries.

But we are of course talking here about Mary-God-Clone-Baby, soooo I'm guessing we're well into the bounds of 'faith' and away from 'fact.'

Though on the point of faith - - -

'Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.'

It seems that God's power 'overshadowed' her, the Holy Spirit did...something within her womb. That wasn't necessarily the formation of a gamete/sperm/whatever, but it seems apparent that some admixture occurred within the body of Mary between divine and mortal. And, as Jesus is a man in every single relevant source, not a 'clone' of Mary - - - it seems likely that some of that was on a genetic level. Needa get that Y chromosome from somewhere, eh?

Your argument that

'If He did, wouldn't it be something special that made Jesus stand out?'

doesn't really hold water because God can do whatever the feck he likes. Also you seem to be forgetting the magic powers Jesus had, which probably count as 'something special.' 

So.... yea, it's not the most reasonable reading of Jesus' life (by scripture or historical reality), but if it's an article of faith for ye then run with it mate.