Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

A problem with institutional religion is lack of commitment to principles.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-07-18, 08:34:18

A problem with institutional religion is lack of commitment to principles.

Ah, Protestantism.

For that I am going to start a lodge in Lisbon.  

By the way, how is it going with the child-molesting priests? The issue is being simply let fade away?

And do you have any opinion on Russian Orthodoxy that sees Moscow as Third Rome? I.e. the real Rome currently is Moscow, not Rome 

Quote from: ersi on 2014-07-28, 05:46:40

By the way, how is it going with the child-molesting priests? The issue is being simply let fade away?

That I know, at civilized places crimes are investigated by the police and judged by courts according to the Law, not with the masses lynching driven by atheist/protestant media. I'm no policeman or judge.

You know perfectly where's the difference, at a deliberate attack and insult on one thousand million Catholics.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-07-28, 05:46:40

And do you have any opinion on Russian Orthodoxy that sees Moscow as Third Rome? I.e. the real Rome currently is Moscow, not Rome 

Politically, the Orthodox Church had no other escape but not to be too much frontally against the atheist soviet regimen, theirs members being for all effects hostages of such regime.They did the best they could.

From a religion point of view, I don't consider them, in any way, the enemy of Rome Protestantism is.

But I also know the scandal (i.e. the scale of the crime) was not so small. The implications are not imaginary.

The doctrine of the Third Rome emerged when Constantinople (the Second Rome) fell to Ottomans. It's not some Soviet doctrine, but ancient and ingrained, an inseparable trait of Russia's national psyche.

Because the Orthodox are on the other edge of the continent? Or is there some other specific reason? What makes Protestantism worse?

All needed measures were already, immediately and without contemplations taken by Pope Benedict XVI and reinforced by Pope Francis.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-07-28, 09:22:38

The doctrine of the Third Rome emerged when Constantinople (the Second Rome) fell to Ottomans. It's not some Soviet doctrine, but ancient and ingrained, an inseparable trait of Russia's national psyche.

I was answering to a vast criticism about the Orthodox Church relating the Soviets, a bit like you can still hear criticism against the Papacy relating the Nazi German.

...I agree with you on your above words "but ancient and ingrained, an inseparable trait of Russia's national psyche."
It's a geographical, traditional and cultural thing, not a deep dogmatic division. They aren't so much different from Catholicism.

Protestantism always were a social/economical/political movement disguised with religious "arguments" with the main objective of destroying the connection between the Catholic Church and society.

Protestantism is very much the "Materialism" (philosophical meaning) of religion.

In the words of the current archbishop of Sweden, the church is like Ikea. It cannot get any lamer than this.

These are not comparable. The Pope's relationship with Nazi Germany was just a tiny diplomatic episode, whereas the Orthodox Church's relationship with the state is like that of a married couple. Specifically, marriage Russian style. When the czar seems valiant and galant, the church outright worships him. When the czar turns abusive (as during the Soviet era), the church submits to the abuse, because they cannot do anything against the higher power. The higher power here is the fact that caesaropapism (the view that the czar is a quasi-Christic theocratic leader) is official church doctrine. Right now the Russian Orthodox church thinks they have a good czar again.

Being at a safe geographical distance, you of course have no feel of these things

except that I believe that the early Reformers were sincere in that they thought that they were leading some genuine kind of spiritual and social awakening. The more politically astute counts and kings however immediately seized Reformation as an opportunity to justify plundering on ideological grounds, and the Reformers became witless pawns in the game. It's the fault of Reformation that it easily lended itself to such abuse.

caesaropapism

Holy Virgin and whatever it's called,

...I'm sure that who the Reformation served wasn't Counts and Kings but a new social class, bourgeoisie and commerce in the first place.

To Caesar what belongs to Caesar, to God what belongs to God seems to me a good principle our days if not used for extirpating society from religion.

Modern kings are simply lifelong presidents overseeing a republic - overseeing in a detached way, not participating.

Nowadays this is called populism.

If you don't give to Caesar, Caesar comes to take it anyway.

Hardly anyone would acknowledge there's something in them that belongs to God.

But where's God so that one could give?

Christian theology borrows from philosophy all the time and I just finished a very long modern text book chapter on this subject--nothing of what we are discussing is mentioned or even hinted at.  Now you might say, 'that's because the bible does not speak directly to it' which is true, but in teaching theology, ideas from philosophy are discussed all the time, especially if they support a Christian concept and even though they can never be made official church doctrine.   

Tell about the book you read. What did you get out of it? What did it tell?

The three primary schools of thought on the makeup of human beings have been:
1.   Trichotomism, which states a human is composed of three elements—body, soul and spirit.  The body is the physiological part, the soul is the psychological part and the spirit is the religious part, which can perceive spiritual matters.  
2.   Dichotomism, which maintains that the human is composed of two elements, a material part (the body) and an immaterial part (the soul or spirit).
3.   Monism, which insists that humans are not to be thought of as, in any sense, a composite of parts or separate beings, but instead as a fundamentally unitary being or self. 

There is much philosophical discussion of eschatology in terms of the body and soul and even comparisons made to animals and plants, but not even the liberal theologians mention anything of immortality being related to nature's instinct of survival.

I will admit however, that there several chapters in part 10 which discuss salvation in much greater depth, but I won't have access to those chapters until later in the year.

You made a nice summary, but you didn't tell at all what you are getting out of it.

As an atheist, I simply believe that the forces of nature in this universe is the highest power that there is.

A Nature of spontaneous creation... opps, there's a Nature.... it popped out of nothing.
To each one his beliefs.

Quote from: Belfrager on 2014-08-01, 19:56:44

A Nature of spontaneous creation... opps, there's a Nature.... it popped out of nothing.
To each one his beliefs.

Precisely.  Moreover, it is much simpler and logical to assume that our universe came into being spontaneously than it is to believe that an infinitely complex and powerful entity popped into being without a cause, to create everything.

Pulling a supernatural and inexplicable God out of a hat to explain this universe is logically less satisfying of an answer than a self-creating universe that started out consisting almost entirely of Hydrogen, the simplest and most basic element there is.    

God is simpler than hydrogen and therefore a simpler explanation. God is also conscious and therefore qualifies as an explanation, in stark contrast from hydrogen.