(June 5, 2016 at 2:42 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Although how you can be a "trinitarian" and a "non-trinitarian" at the same time absolutely escapes me.

Christianity seems to a mixture of lunatic ideas, ideas that are compromises between different lunatic ideas for the sake political expediency, and sophistry. 

How humans can believe anything that is on this level of idiocy is a good question, but not a rhetorical one. We're kinda lucky to be walking upright and manipulating objects with opposable thumbs, so if a great many of us have trouble distinguishing between different quantities of imaginary persons, I'd say we're not doing that bad.

Although we've recently discovered that animals like crows can count. So maybe we are fucked...

From Bart Ehrman's neat book "Lost Christianities."

Quote:The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theological
beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of
Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who
believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two.
Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been created
by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled
with such misery and hardship?) Yet other Christians thought it was worse than
that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a
place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
the Jewish Scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”) was inspired by the one
true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not
the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed
it was not inspired.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians
who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them,
divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a
man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was
a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself
divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two
things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ,
who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left him
prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering
in its aftermath.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians
who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the
world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died.

The best thing about imaginary beings is that they can be whatever the person wants them to be.

(June 5, 2016 at 4:34 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The best thing about imaginary beings is that they can be whatever the person wants them to be.

It's almost as if the term 'ad hoc' was created to be a synonym for 'Christian apologetics'.

Boru

(June 5, 2016 at 3:58 pm)Gemini Wrote: Although we've recently discovered that animals like crows can count. So maybe we are fucked...

I for one welcome our new counting crow overlords.

(June 5, 2016 at 4:21 pm)Minimalist Wrote: From Bart Ehrman's neat book "Lost Christianities."

Quote:...

In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who
believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two.
Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.

...

I had to laugh at 365 Gods. I should read that book

(June 5, 2016 at 5:07 pm)Gemini Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 4:21 pm)Minimalist Wrote: From Bart Ehrman's neat book "Lost Christianities."

I had to laugh at 365 Gods. I should read that book

I wonder if its 366 in a leap year

(June 5, 2016 at 5:09 pm)madog Wrote: I wonder if its 366 in a leap year

It's a shame the "calendarian" Christians or whatever they were didn't prevail. That would be funny. They could have a special service for the Leap Year God on February 29. Call is Ad Hoc-mass, maybe.

(June 5, 2016 at 5:13 pm)Gemini Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 5:09 pm)madog Wrote: I wonder if its 366 in a leap year

It's a shame the "calendarian" Christians or whatever they were didn't prevail. 

LOL ... careful you know how easy it is to turn a fairy tale into a religion

(June 5, 2016 at 5:16 pm)madog Wrote:

(June 5, 2016 at 5:13 pm)Gemini Wrote: It's a shame the "calendarian" Christians or whatever they were didn't prevail. 

LOL ... careful you know how easy it is to turn a fairy tale into a religion

I'll excuse myself by saying, "But I was drinking at the time introduced this theology to the world!"

Which might well be the reason behind most of the lunatic ideas religious people take for granted.