Christian trigger words

[Belacqua]

It's in the OP.  At the bottom.  I also quote the author of John and the author of Revelation.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Right. Eternal life is a part of most Christian belief. 

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

According to most Christian dogma, our current body must die. Then the soul we have now (the form of the body) is transferred into a different kind of matter. What this matter is is not clear -- something magical. This is in keeping with both Paul and Aquinas. 

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

Interpretation of this varies among Christians. The newer type of uneducated believers take Revelation literally. More educated Christians have long known that John is writing in symbols from the Old Testament about the political struggles of the Christians in his own time. In that case, a new world could indicate a society that operates under Christian principles. 

Even if you want to take it literally, interpretation varies. Some have theorized that all of the material world will be redeemed, or in the lingo, "made new." Others with a more gnostic bent think that matter is bad, and want a different type of world made of unfallen elements, as they say will happen with the body.

But I'm not sure yet whether this sentence in John refers to Christian after-death heaven, or just sky. The word in the original, οὐρανὸν, means both. Does anybody have solid philological evidence to read it one way or the other?

[Amarok]

it's a crude mind incapable of recognizing nuance that assumes that genitals are so key to one's essence.

Here both trans activists and Thomists agree: gender is a lot more than genitalia. 

Trans activists say that everything about the body -- genitalia, chromosomes, body type -- can be incorrect in regard to a person's true gender. Thomists probably think it can't, though I've never actually heard that argued.

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I quote Paul to make my points.

Which statements of Paul are you working with, exactly?

Umm the stuff your taking about is sex not gender

[Nihilist Virus]

It's in the OP.  At the bottom.  I also quote the author of John and the author of Revelation.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Right. Eternal life is a part of most Christian belief. 

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

According to most Christian dogma, our current body must die. Then the soul we have now (the form of the body) is transferred into a different kind of matter. What this matter is is not clear -- something magical. This is in keeping with both Paul and Aquinas. 

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

Interpretation of this varies among Christians. The newer type of uneducated believers take Revelation literally. More educated Christians have long known that John is writing in symbols from the Old Testament about the political struggles of the Christians in his own time. In that case, a new world could indicate a society that operates under Christian principles. 

Even if you want to take it literally, interpretation varies. Some have theorized that all of the material world will be redeemed, or in the lingo, "made new." Others with a more gnostic bent think that matter is bad, and want a different type of world made of unfallen elements, as they say will happen with the body.

But I'm not sure yet whether this sentence in John refers to Christian after-death heaven, or just sky. The word in the original, οὐρανὸν, means both. Does anybody have solid philological evidence to read it one way or the other?

Deuteronomy 18 makes it clear that the Bible contains no prophecy of the far future. It basically goes like this:

The people are afraid of Jehovah and don't want to see him or hear him directly as they think they will die. They decide that a mediator should speak to Jehovah on their behalf and then relay the message to the people. Such a mediator would make a prediction and if it comes true, that's the verification that he speaks for Jehovah. False prophets were to be executed.

It directly follows that far-future prophecies were precluded, as a far-future prophecy would not come true in the prophet's lifetime and hence they would execute him for being a false prophet. The last thing they'd do is write down his words, copy them, and preserve them for generations. Particularly when books costed more than cars do today.

So I'm well aware that Revelation was not intended as a prophetic document. But the people I talk to are so freaking stupid that my choices are to drop down to their level or wait for them to evolve. I don't have that kind of time.

[Belacqua]

the people I talk to are so freaking stupid that my choices are to drop down to their level or wait for them to evolve. I don't have that kind of time.

So you're intentionally using false and stupid readings of Bible verses in order to argue with stupid people. 

Is this the only alternative you have?

[Angrboda]

It's another side of the fact that Christian forums consider anything that offends them to be against the rules, regardless of whether you are making a valid point or whether there is anything else wrong with what you have written. Apparently, unlike things which do cause bad consequences, hurting the feelings of Christians is considered a serious enough consequence to justify censoring anything that does so. They value their privilege not to be offended above that of free speech. That's their choice, certainly, but it just goes to show the ridiculousness of what Christians think is moral and right. Not demonstrating the proper respect for their religious beliefs being an example of real harm in their book. It's simply a part of an institutionalized effort to prevent people from making criticisms of their beliefs, so that only good things are said about what they believe. It's a form of newspeak, preventing people from saying certain things so that other people won't be tempted to think those things. It's nothing more than an attempt to control people's thoughts, which is not surprising given the religion is based upon a thought crime. Oddly enough, they don't have a problem with people criticizing atheism, humanism, or secularism, while often arguing that these, too, are religions. It just points up the blatant hypocrisy of Christians, and how they will engage in immoral behaviors so long as they and their religion benefits.

[Brian37]

Firstly, let's establish that every Christian believes they have a soul. The soul, in fact, is their actual being. A Christian's body is just a vehicle and the soul is the driver.

But what is a soul?

A soul is a transdimensional, immortal, non-physical entity which will be placed into a new body on a "new earth."

Thomas Aquinas, who was a Christian, defined the soul as the form of the body. 

Following Aristotle, he said that every material object has both matter (hyle) and form (morphe). 

Form, in this view, is more than just shape. It includes the workings of a particular thing. So the form of the human body includes the ability to do the things that bodies do -- breath, eat, etc. A human body which couldn't do these things would in some way lack its proper form. 

Christians who follow Aquinas posit that this form is an intrinsic part of who we are. The only supernatural thing they claim about the soul is that it can be transferred after death to a different type of matter. But the form that you are, plus the matter which the form forms, is what you are. 

Therefore, the idea that a man's soul is detachable and can be transferred into a woman's body at will, or vice versa, would go against what a person's true form is. They define violence as that which opposes the flourishing of the form one has, in an effort to make it do something against that flourishing. According to them, if you are born with the form of a man, it is doing violence to yourself to attempt to change that form into something else.

There are a lot of arguments why people should be able to be trans if they want. As far as I personally am concerned, I think it's up to them.

But if we want to attack the Christian position we should attack the real position they have. I suspect that the definition you give here, and the obvious problems it presents, would not be relevant to, say, the Pope, who knows what Aquinas wrote as the official dogma of the church.

Aquinas was an idiot. He did more to stifle rational thought than anyone else of his age, by masking his crap calling it "logic".

I cannot begin to tell you over the years how many theists bring that guy up. 

It is always the same argument.

"Aquinas was a smart man".

Me, "So? Smart and having evidence for what you claim are two different things."

Theist, "So if you admit he was smart, that means my God exists, and he believed in the same God I do".

Me, "No, I did not say that. I said smart and factually correct are two different things."

The theist is doing what every religion's apologists do worldwide of every religion.

They retrofit way after the fact, to make the ignorance of the past match modern science. Aquinas had no damned clue about the things we know now, nor does it mean in any case that one god is more real than any other god claim in the world.

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To be somewhat fair to theists here. I also think Plato got a lot of ideas right. But he also fucked up logic inadvertently in one idea. 

Plato valued the idea of questioning. But the one thing he could not have benefit of back then, was that of modern method, in our modern science of control groups. His idea of "essence" wasn't an idea of testing and falsifying like we have today. His horrible idea of "essence" was the idea that if you simply thought about something long enough, you could find that "perfect thing", IE, "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair'.  That according to Dawkins in "The Greatest Show On Earth", gave rise to the popular chase for utopias in forms of politics and religion. 

So just like Plato, Aquinas was not basing it on any objectivity, but like Plato, was fishing for excuses to hold a position. Plato was an apologist long before Aquinas and that is not anything close to modern objective method, where you go where the evidence leads, and not fish for a path you want something to go.

[Angrboda]

Aquinas was an idiot. He did more to stifle rational thought than anyone else of his age, by masking his crap calling it "logic".

Have you actually read Aquinas?

[Brian37]

Aquinas was an idiot. He did more to stifle rational thought than anyone else of his age, by masking his crap calling it "logic".

Have you actually read Aquinas?

Read enough of his apologist fans to know all they are doing is what I said in my prior posts.

Aquinas fan, "Aquinas was a smart man, he believed in same God I do, there for my God is real."

I could care less if we were talking about the book "Evidence That Demands A Verdict"  by Josh McDowell

I could care less if it were a Muslim arguing that the Koran matches science. An apology is an apology no matter who is making the attempt or the club they are trying to point you to.

Aquinas was using his status to con himself and others into thinking that constitutes evidence for a Sky Wizard. 

But he had far less knowledge about the nature of reality that we have now.

I have read the bible, and not only is it historically spotty at best, it most certainly is throughout scientifically absurd when it comes to the countless fantastic claims it makes. So it really does not matter to me how smart Aquinas was. An apologist is not objective.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

Another issue is that Christianity doesn't demand any unfair treatment of others based simply on moral objections.

Is there another Bible I'm unaware of?  The one I know says to kill homosexuals, that you can own slaves, and it is pervasively racist and sexist. Just to name a few things.

---

Here both trans activists and Thomists agree: gender is a lot more than genitalia. 

Trans activists say that everything about the body -- genitalia, chromosomes, body type -- can be incorrect in regard to a person's true gender. Thomists probably think it can't, though I've never actually heard that argued.

---

Which statements of Paul are you working with, exactly?

It's in the OP.  At the bottom.  I also quote the author of John and the author of Revelation.

Nothing  clearly racist or sexist.  If you feel there is, maybe specify what you think is, and why you feel that way?  Now there are times things are reported, but that doesn't mean they are supported.  It's just talking about people and their traditions at a set time.  "Slavery" was also viewed very differently than in modern times.  There were slaves and masters, but there were guidelines to having slaves.  The slaves were often such because they owed a debt.  During the year of jubilee, the slaves were to be released.  Some wanted to continue working for their master, and if they chose to, their ear would be pierced which was symbolic of their dedication to their master.  If you're thinking of the Egyptians, then slavery was more brutal, but that's not something that was being supported, but rather reporting a historical account.

[Nihilist Virus]

the people I talk to are so freaking stupid that my choices are to drop down to their level or wait for them to evolve. I don't have that kind of time.

So you're intentionally using false and stupid readings of Bible verses in order to argue with stupid people. 

Is this the only alternative you have?

Lol, I suppose so.

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Is there another Bible I'm unaware of?  The one I know says to kill homosexuals, that you can own slaves, and it is pervasively racist and sexist. Just to name a few things.

---

It's in the OP.  At the bottom.  I also quote the author of John and the author of Revelation.

Nothing  clearly racist or sexist.  If you feel there is, maybe specify what you think is, and why you feel that way?  Now there are times things are reported, but that doesn't mean they are supported.  It's just talking about people and their traditions at a set time.  "Slavery" was also viewed very differently than in modern times.  There were slaves and masters, but there were guidelines to having slaves.  The slaves were often such because they owed a debt.  During the year of jubilee, the slaves were to be released.  Some wanted to continue working for their master, and if they chose to, their ear would be pierced which was symbolic of their dedication to their master.  If you're thinking of the Egyptians, then slavery was more brutal, but that's not something that was being supported, but rather reporting a historical account.

Don't be ridiculous. I can sniff your indentured servant lies a mile away. Jewish men could only be a slave for 7 years. Women and foreigners would be slaves for life. That's racism and sexism right there. Also, certain races were not allowed into the temple. You could charge foreigners interest but not Jews. Imagine if white people got interest-free credit cards and blacks never could get those. The fact that I have to spell this out for you in 2019 is ridiculous. Old news that you are pretending to not know. What is your problem?