There are many tales about the Romans throwing Christians to the lions. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, maybe they just threw everyone to the lions, I don't know. If they'd had Fred Phelps, they could have thrown the lions to him just to change the entertainment for a day.
We have lions in the UK. I've been to Longleat, I've seen them. They didn't eat any Christians in those days but that was a while back. Long before Mr. Bean, the Archbeard of Canterbury, declared that maybe we should give Sharia law a try. Before Dawkins, the Prophet of Nothing, launched his all-out attack on Christianity as if it were the only religion in existence.
Our official government line is that there is no concerted attack on Christianity but every time Christians come up against Muslims or gays or anyone else, the Christians always lose. Always. No exceptions. I am not religious at all, neither am I gay, so I see this from a detached observer's viewpoint. What I see is pretty much the standard denormalisation procedure, all over again. Pick a group and slap them down at every turn until there's nowhere left to go because everyone thinks they are evil. This time, the group is not so easily isolated.
Recently, the BBC employed a wench who has apparently spent her career studying religion even though she is an avowed atheist. Quite why anyone should choose to become expert in a subject that holds no interest for them at all is something that could be the subject of an entire post on the lunacy of the population, but not this post. This wench claimed there was a Mrs. God (Doris God, in pinafore and hairnet, demanding to know where Mr. God has been till this hour and has he been out getting omnipotent with his pals again) and many other bizarre things, all very strange claims to come from someone who doesn't believe in any of it. How can you believe in Mrs. God but not believe in God? I can't rip it apart from a Christian viewpoint so I'll direct you to Marmalade Sandwich, who does just that.
She links Christianity to Baal worship which annoys me and will infuriate Baal, if I'm right about him. She'd better watch her step. Baal likes to play games.
Realstreet notes that the first option in the census religion question is 'none'. Doesn't bother me, my religion is 'other - smoker' but it is an interesting observation. Why break with tradition and make 'none' the first instead of the last choice for this question? It's a small thing, a trivial thing, but small things can be significant.
Hot on the heels of this comes a man who never gets blood on his shirt collar because a) he doesn't shave and b) he doesn't wear anything with collars. I speak of none but the great non-prophet Bart D. Ehrman, who declares that parts of the Bible are forged.
If you're not Christian, Jewish or Muslim, it's all forged, because either you believe something else or you believe in nothing at all. If you're Jewish, the Old Testament is kosher, the New Testament is the ramblings of deranged goyem who had bad dreams from eating lasagne. If you're Christian it's all true and depending which type of Christian you are, Jesus was either the direct Son of God or was a prophet. If you're Muslim, it's all true and Jesus was a prophet. It all depends on where you start from but it's either true or not true. Claiming it's true apart from some bits is going to get you laughed at from all quarters. Although dressing like that and forgetting to shave for a few days could have that result too. Look, Bart, if you're that paranoid about blood on your collar, shave before you get dressed. Ad hominem, yes, but you can't expect to be taken seriously as an expert on a worldwide religion when you look like the extra slumped in the corner of a spaghetti-western saloon.
I mean, come on, I don't take the Archedeyebrows of Canterbury seriously on the subject. I am not going to take a Rab Nesbitt lookalike more seriously, now am I? "And the Lord spake unto the heretic, saying, 'I will tell you this, pal, I will tell you this. See you. See deid. Aye.' And lo, he smote the unbeliever with the empty Bells bottle of damnation". Nope. Not working.
I think the anti-Christians have missed something important. These are not atheists, by the way, pal (slaps face to remove Nesbitt influence), No, they are specifically anti-Christian. The BBC has never dared ridicule the blue-skinned multi-limbed gods of the Hindu, nor the beliefs of Jainism nor the teachings of the Buddha. They have not picked fights with the Satanists nor with the followers of Pan or even of Baal, although having read up on Baal I wouldn't mess with him either, just in case. They would never dare disparage the Torah or the Q'ran but... they just did.
The Old Testament is central to the Jewish faith. The entire Bible, and Jesus as a prophet, is within the Muslim faith. Sure, their Q'ran supersedes it in their religion but Moses, Abraham and all the rest are still part of that religion.
So the anti-Christians are insulting not just Christianity in their tirades but also Jews and Muslims too.
If they're not careful, they are going to be responsible for an obesity epidemic among lions.
Mr. Longleat will not be at all pleased.
12 comments:
"Recently, the BBC employed a wench who has apparently spent her career studying religion even though she is an avowed atheist."
I can trump that, I know a University Religious Studies lecturer who is herself atheist.
I also know quite a bit about Baal worship, all of it unedifying and not for the faint hearted.
Baal is one dangerous idea among many. As I've argued with those who scoff at devil-worship before, whether the devil is real or not is irrelevant. His worshippers are real and they really do what it says on the tin.
I looked up a lot of detail for the novel-writing because getting details right is ingrained in me now. There's a lot of detail I'd be happier not knowing.
As for an atheist Religious Studies lecturer... to me that's like having a Creationist lecturing on Evolution or vice versa.
Why do people insist on studying subjects of no interest to them?
We have lions in the UK.
Rotarians as well I believe.
Christians are considered dangerous all over the world, probably because our ways are not the ways of this world and its tyrants.
In China, if you don't belong to one of the four (I think) government authorised denominations then you have to go 'underground' and risk arrest.
In Muslim countries there are atrocities committed against Christians every day. Lately, in Ethiopia, whole communities of Christians have been run out of towns. I don't have telly any longer, but I doubt the BBC reports much on all of this.
Next door in Eritrea, Christians are locked in steel shipping containers until they recant their faith, which most don't.
In Catholic Latin America, evangelical Christians are persecuted.
And now, in the West, it seems to be our turn. We are against political correctness (well, some of us!) - and this is one of their major tools to re-engineer society, so dissent must be dealt with.
Christians and families are the enemy because they offer strength and belonging outside of government control.
"The truth will set you free."
And governments don't want us to be free. They want us to comply with their globalist ideals and accept their new concocted morality.
Of course, everyone will suffer because you cannot have a happy society where some people are persecuted.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage gave us fair laws and a reasonable amount of freedom. Take that away and the government can make any new laws it likes (and is).
Even one of the most beloved groups - homosexuals - will suffer because they are just being used to usher in this new system of tyranny. They will find themselves as despised as the rest of us when they have outlived their usefulness.
They will probably end up being persecuted when tyranny is ripened. And they will expect those who they have persecuted to help them.
And I guess we will.
Bur Erhman is correct. Parts of some of the gospels (or certainly one) were left out as it depicted Jesus doing something odd which did not sit well with the gathering of church fathers at Nicea. Computer analysis has shown multiple authorship of certain bits when only a single author is credited. Christian scholars know this. Biblical scholars know this. It's not new.
As for this woman theology expert....why does she assume a deity has a sex?
I can't understand how a Christian would believe in Evolution but there are many who do.
Either the world was made in 6 days or it emerged from the big bang which started 13.8 billion years ago.
They can't both be right. And if they believe in evolution then why would their God put dinosaurs on the planet millions of years before he thought about putting humans on the planet ? Maybe it was a wee trial before trying humans 'in his likeness'.
Oh and if God created the world then who created God ?
Oh also , Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in any Gods ( not just Christian Gods). He mentions the other faiths in his book 'The God Delusion' which is worth reading.
"Why do people insist on studying subjects of no interest to them?"
They don't. There are plenty of people who study - for instance - the 3rd Reich who aren't interested in becoming a Nazi, but it's interesting to them nevertheless. I'm an atheist who takes an interest in religions. The reason why Christianity is under attack (and it certainly is) might be two-fold. Firstly, it's a unifying force and rallying point against Statist excesses against the individual. Secondly it's adherents are enjoined to turn the other cheek and are therefore safe targets (unlike Islamists who suffer a dangerous sense of humour failure when their religion is attacked.) The Christian mindset is inconvenient for tyranny as the Roman Empire found out, not because Christians are hard but because they're soft. The Nazarene may have had a point about the meek; the State can always fight a populist uprising but it can't fight an idea which doesn't present an armed target - except by non-physical means which are, as you have pointed out, manifest and abundant - the standard de-normalisation proceedure as you say.
A couple of quick comments.
Creation in six days. No doubt many fundamentalist insist on our modern meaning of the word 'day', but they should not. 'Day' is just an ancient way of saying 'stage' - "The first stage was the creation of matter.." What is 'the big bang' other than the creation of matter? But let us not get hung up on that.
The New Testament is four different versions of what happened to Christ. They were written some hundred years after the death of Christ. This is not surprising, since the Apostles were mere fishermen, and therefore almost certainly illiterate. It may interest people to know that the great philosopher, Plato, was almost certainly illiterate - his discourses were written down by his students. One of the chief pieces of evidence for the existence of Christ is the fact that four different 'witnesses' told different stories (for lack of a better word) about their experiences.
What really annoys me about modern clerics is that they are watching the propaganda and the denormalisation just as we are, but saying nothing. I wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury and received the usual non-committal reply.
It is all very confusing.
I wouldn't worry about the muslims being offended about anti-christian sentiment - They've only been massacring coptic christians and jews for years.
"May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of the prophets." - Mohammed. Nice guy.
I can only second what Stewart Cowan said, I personally have a renewed interest in the christian faith after tracing it as the cultural root of individual liberty in the west.
What will "they" do about the ongoing rise in numbers within the Evangelical Churches which are, of course, predominantly Black? Sort of reverse Victimhood Poker?
Interestingly, "religion" is an anagram of "I, Leg-iron".
I put myself down as 'smoker' on the Census form as agreed. I think this was originally your idea or from the comments here but I can't remember the exact post. Any thoughts?
I'm also a religious smoker. Perhaps I should take Smoky Orders and wear the yellow dog-collar of the faith.
I'm still picking at that census. Why do they need the full address, including postcode, of my lab? I just put 'I work from home' and skipped the rest.
The only job description I could think of was 'Rogue scientist'. If this information falls into the wrong hands it could send some interesting work my way.
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