These fuckers can't make up their mind. Our culture is either wildly unbiblical and needs to get right with jesus - or magic book is foundational to our culture. It's amazing when you think about it. Christianity has been so wildly appropriative that it's tried to claim our culture..kicking and screaming against our culture, the whole way. It's been so effective at appropriation that even atheists uncritically say christianity's stupid shit out loud as though it makes a lick of sense.

(August 3, 2023 at 2:19 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: These fuckers can't make up their mind.  Our culture is either wildly unbiblical and needs to get right with jesus - or magic book is foundational to our culture.

That is true  in a very specific way. 

One of the problems is that what is "Biblical" changes radically, over the years / centuries. 
For example, Israel was a monolateral-polytheist culture, (they accepted there were many gods, but they had a covenant to worship Yahweh first, and he was their main god). 
Also called henotheism, (I think). Before Hezekiah kicked out the images of all the foreign gods, there were many gods in his capitol. 

Then a drastic change happened, and it did not come from an internal source. 
The Greeks, in a number of "waves", invaded the Levant, and brought with them the notion of "individualism" which is still with us to this day. 
Before that identity was rooted in "family lines" and immortality was the continuation of male family lines. That's why monotheism was insisted on, by the prophets. 
That changed formally when Artaxerxes sent the high-ranking Jews back to Israel to reestablish a cohesive state to serve as a buffer between him and the invading Greeks. 
We have Artaxerxes to thank for the "bible" as he knew he had to send with the Jews a law code and "national history" just like all "nations" need, that tells the *story* of the nation. 
The Persian Emperor is responsible for the first 4 books of the Bible. A story, and a code of law.

Then it happened again and again, everywhere christianity marched to. The culture we live in today, as westerners, owes more to european pagans than magic book. The things that people think about christianity..ffs, have more to do with european pagans than magic book.

We cribbed our government from greeks and romans. We cribbed our legal system from germanics. We cribbed our music and our food from..well..everywhere. We don't believe what the magic book says...and havent for quite some time, if it's really accurate to say that we ever truly did. For the better part of christian history™, the vast majority of christians had no idea what was in the damned thing to begin with...and the christian authorites had their hands entirely full telling people to stop believing what they did and stop living like we do, usually under pain of death. It's downright filthy to then suggest that we owe this to magic book - but that's the effect of multigenerational conditioning and propaganda.

(August 3, 2023 at 2:06 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote:

(August 2, 2023 at 8:00 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I take seriously Blake's view, when he says that while the Bible is a founding document for our culture, any great book is an expression of God's word and deserves respect. His idea is that God is and acts through people (an old minority tradition in mystical Christianity) and that the sum of human knowledge (including math and science, as well as Homer and Shakespeare and Proust) is all the word of God. But you're right that it takes time for people to work things out, so there are bound to be sentences in the Bible which we shouldn't take as true, just as there are scientific theories which used to be popular but aren't any more. 

The action of the Holy Spirit may be ancient, but it's actually mainline, and was never a minority view and is current dogma in mainline Christian communities.

There are differences between Blake's view and that of the mainline Christian communities which I find significant and fascinating.

(August 3, 2023 at 5:51 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(August 3, 2023 at 2:06 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: The action of the Holy Spirit may be ancient, but it's actually mainline, and was never a minority view and is current dogma in mainline Christian communities.

There are differences between Blake's view and that of the mainline Christian communities which I find significant and fascinating.

Great. List them.

(August 3, 2023 at 5:56 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote:

(August 3, 2023 at 5:51 pm)Belacqua Wrote: There are differences between Blake's view and that of the mainline Christian communities which I find significant and fascinating.

Great. List them.

I'll let you do your own research.

(August 3, 2023 at 6:55 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(August 3, 2023 at 5:56 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: Great. List them.

I'll let you do your own research.

I knew you were going to say that. 
I knew you were just blowing hot air. 

None of the other points addressed. 
You aren't just a fraud and poseur are you ?

(August 3, 2023 at 7:01 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote:

(August 3, 2023 at 6:55 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I'll let you do your own research.

I knew you were going to say that. 
I knew you were just blowing hot air. 

None of the other points addressed. 
You aren't just a fraud and poseur are you ?

I copied and pasted that sentence from a reply you made to me.

(August 3, 2023 at 7:13 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(August 3, 2023 at 7:01 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: I knew you were going to say that. 
I knew you were just blowing hot air. 

None of the other points addressed. 
You aren't just a fraud and poseur are you ?

I copied and pasted that sentence from a reply you made to me.

Of course you did. Did I not say I knew you were going to say that ? 
But despite your further attempt to not answer the question, you still have addressed none of the points above about the Holy Spirit.
The long list of non-believing musicians was a long project, and took some work to do.
The only one we couldn't find a self-statement for, ... was Beethoven, but his non-belief was affirmed by Hayden.
It's also affirmed by the poem he used by Schiller, which is the text of the chorale in the last movement of the 9th symphony.

BTW, Belacqua was a comic figure.
You seem to have no shred of a sense of humor.

The idea comes from the fact that blakes christianity would have been deemed heretical in his own time. That mainline churches today aren't far off from his beliefs is down to the creeping post-christian character of contemporary mainline denominations.