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peaks2paddles
Mountain climber
Avon, Co
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Jun 14, 2006 - 12:42am PT
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Smitty
Your idea of "fun" is lame. You try and appear intelligent but you're just another fool in the crowd of "bandwagon jumping liberals" You dont pick on the Jews,Bhudist's, Hindu's or other religions cuz thats not "cool" and you'd be called a bigot but go ahead and pick on the "dumb"christians! Wow, how original!!!
Just to set things straight, I'm not a religious person but I do have beliefs, and one of them is to not let as#@&%es like you just run wild without at least saying something for those you find so much fun in attacking. Climbing should open your mind, free your soul, widen your horizons. Where is the tolerance, the positive energy, the open minds in your forum? None found...
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smitty
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Ca
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Jun 16, 2006 - 12:15pm PT
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Hey!! I thought I was being ragged on, then I realized I never wrote on this topic. There's apparently another smitty around here.
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Ouch!
climber
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Jun 16, 2006 - 12:32pm PT
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"Ever see that Mel Gibson movie and what kind of a death Jesus had?"
LOL! Janet, if you are choosing a squirrel for an example, why not go all the way and choose that mental giant Tom Cruise.
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peaks2paddles
Mountain climber
Avon, Co
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Jun 16, 2006 - 02:45pm PT
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Smitty in Santa Cruz,
Not You, sorry.....
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dirtbag
climber
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Jun 16, 2006 - 02:52pm PT
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"For all of those out there who have no religious beliefs or any spiritual wherewithal, why don't you come right out and tell us what life is all about without defaulting into some candy-ass, woe-is-me, faux corrageous nihilistic shuck and jive."
To reproduce and carry on the genetic line.
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Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Jun 17, 2006 - 07:36am PT
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 17, 2006 - 08:41am PT
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The practice of any faith is likely to change subject to time, culture, politics and human nature, and therefore it's beneficial to people of faith to question where their beliefs and practices come from and if they represent the Spirit of the faith.
It's also understandable when a faith dominates a culture, like say, Islam dominates many middle eastern cultures, that folks who become subject to the political influence of that faith might question the values and laws that emerge from that. I could understand why some folks might rebel against the influence of fundamentalism in our laws and government these days.
Still, in a dialog about faith, it's more productive to recognize that folk's beliefs are closely held and dear, and therefore hard to question in an environment that not understanding, compassionate, and inclusive.
So the issues raised in the original post and the Dr. Laura letter are generally points that Christains might do well to think about and investigate relative to their own views and practices, but that ain't gonna happen if the issues are raised in a mocking way.
I wish everyone well in finding peace, love and truth on whatever path/non-path you take. I don't believe we get those things by blind acceptance of any system. A change within is needed to make it real.
and if the change within is real, the symptoms are peace within and love for others. Fussing and fighting just signify a change in thinking, not heart.
Peace
Karl
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Jun 17, 2006 - 08:55am PT
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Chaz, I can't see it.
Hey Smidogg, if you don’t want Christians affecting your rights then I challenge you to denounce the first amendment. Practice what you preach why don’t you! Freedom of speech is a Biblical value. Paul exhorted to believers in the Roman Empire not throw away your “confidence”. That term was a Greek political term. It means in addition to confidence in what you believe but also the right to speak it. It’s in the Constitution because it’s in the Bible.
LEB, I think that your problem with Christianity is not doctrine but that you think you know the answers already. You seem confident that all paths lead to the same place. The problem with that hypothesis is you haven’t been to the top. By what authority do you have faith in such an idea?
Second, have you studied church history? Have you actually done any research on your own to figure out the authenticity of the bible? You have many “beliefs” about this stuff but you’re not correct, even about things that are easily understood by simple research. For one, you don’t even know which language it was written in. Only bits of it at best were written in Aramaic. Sure Aramaic was a common language in Israel after the return of the Jews from the first exile up until roughly 70 A.D, especially in Jesus’ time and around northern Israel. However the New Testament was written in Greek because it was the official language of the Roman Empire. The evidence is the plethora of Greek terminology and phrases often times worded in Hebrew logic of which I gave you one example above.
In regard to the Tanach it is highly unlikely that any of it was originally written in the relatively modern Aramaic language. One of them, the Book of Ester was actually written in a Persian text, but not Aramaic.
You may be aware that the oldest biblical texts ever found are from the ruins of Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls). 90% of the scriptural texts found there are of Hebrew script or Palio-Hebrew script (Phoenician). Only 7% are Aramaic and 3% Greek, and likely so because the scribes in those days commonly translated the texts so people didn’t have to know the traditional language of their ancestors. Why so much Hebrew? It was by then a specialty language for priests, scribes and students of the law as is today; modern Hebrew is quite different.
About the rewriting of the texts, why do you assume it had changed over and over again? Many people assume that but there is no evidence. The remarkable thing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is they outdate the previous known oldest texts by 1300 years! The other the remarkable thing is that they are more than 98% accurate to the Masoretic texts (the current baseline Old Testament text used since the 9th century). There are several ways in which those differences can be categorized. Some are mere organizational discrepancies. This is not unexpected since the Masoretic texts were knowingly reorganized in order to catalog chapter and verse. We see the results in both Jewish and Christian texts today. This was done in order to enhance study and reference techniques and has been a huge success. Another primary source of discrepancy is that there were two copies of the book on Jeremiah, one 1/8th smaller than the other. However one does match the Masoretic texts. Other differences in the texts actually line up with the Septuagint (the standard Greek version dating back to 2nd century B.C. some of which was found in Qumran). And some differences are numerical, for example Jacob went to Egypt with 70 men in today’s Bible but a scroll found in Qumran says 75. But again no surprises, it has long been known that some trivial numerical issues exist in the book of Chronicles. What’s even more astonishing is that the Dead Sea Scrolls have been scrutinized by Christians, Jews and Atheists from both conservative and liberal backgrounds and they all agree that none of the discrepancies found equate to a single ideological conflict with today’s standard text. This is profound proof that the texts have not changed over the centuries. On contraire, the texts have remained the same, even in the hands of organizations such as the Catholic Church who have at times grossly misinterpreted meaning or stepped outside biblical doctrine altogether. I personally have a copy of the English translation of the Dead Sea Scroll bible and I have not discovered a shred of real difference between it and all the other versions I have with the exception of word choice and phrasing.
If anyone is interested there’s a plethora of recent information about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Search the internet, you’ll find it. There are several laymen books available as well. One that was recommended to me personally by Shalom Paul, Director of Bible College Hebrew Univ. Jerusalem is “The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls” by James VanderKam and Peter Flint. You should be able to find it on the Amazon. Also there is a museum exhibit that is currently migrating through the United States.
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UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
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Jun 17, 2006 - 11:37am PT
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Jay,
What you say is right on. The "bible" was/is a real thing that has been zealously protected over the millennia.
It has some good, real life lessons in it. How to get along on this earth with everyone else.
What the problem is, is the divinity, the supernatural, the spiritual aspect.
If you want me to give any credence, what so ever, to that aspect of the bible and the christian faith, equal credence needs to be leveled to the other religions of the time the bible was written.
Now days one would be chastised if they claimed faith in Roman, Greek or Egyptian gods. And those religions are referred to today as "myths".
Shouldn't the same label be affixed to christianity or just about any other religion for that matter?
What makes christianity so special to be free of the label "myth"?
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phoolish
Boulder climber
Athens, Ga.
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Jun 17, 2006 - 03:30pm PT
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Largo:
For all of those out there who have no religious beliefs or any spiritual wherewithal, why don't you come right out and tell us what life is all about without defaulting into some candy-ass, woe-is-me, faux corrageous nihilistic shuck and jive.
I don't know if I quite meet the qualifications here, but I'll have a go anyway.
Asking what life is all about is a fundamental error of category. To search for some external purpose, some goal off in the distance that is outside of life itself is to debase life. To live your life towards the purpose of some external thing (Nirvana, Heaven, Ragnarok, what have you) suggests that life is like a paying job, in that you have to do certain things to get something that you want that is unrelated to your efforts. Thus, your life here is not your focus, but rather merely an effort toward some external thing.
However, (I speak for myself here, YMMV) the greatest joy comes from things done without a view toward external purpose. When I go climbing, I do it because I really do love to do it, and that's the extent. Likewise with my studies (I'm styndall on that other board, whom you know well enough to know what those are about), there are goals set in them, but there's sufficient purpose in the thing itself to make it a pleasant experience. When I worked in Yosemite, to contrast these things, I scooped ice cream not because I got joy out of it, but because it allowed me some external rewards (ea sunt: living in yosemite, time to climb, money to build up a trad rack, etc.). Based on this, I can set up a spectrum of actions that are important to me, based on the degree to which any activity has some goal external to itself. i.e. less goal --> greater goal
For me, it goes something like:
reading for pleasure and climbing ---> reading for school ---> school-based research ---> gainful employment
You could set up your own quite simply also.
Now, we just have to look at the same kind of thing, but compare a life that is lived as an end in itself to a life that you must live with some goal in mind.
Life in itself ---> life partially for itself, but with external goal kept in mind ----> life lived wholly to gain Heaven, Nirvana, what have you...
A lack of external purpose doesn't hurt living. Rather, for me at least, it helps. You get to think less, for one, and that certainly seems to make me happier.
A quick parable, for PTPP and others who like them:
A town has a pie eating contest, and a bunch of men sign up. As they're sitting down, a random tourist wanders up and plops himself down at the pic-nic table, totally unaware that a contest is going on. The servers bring out plates of pie, and the knowing contestants, wanting to win the $200.00 grand prize, begin eating in earnest, working as hard as they can towards eating the most pie. The tourist who just sat down is mystified about why someone just brought him a big slice of cherry pie, but he sees everyone else eating away. He picks up his fork and tucks in, enjoying the plump cherries and flaky crust, oblivious to the prize that might be waiting.
Of course, our tourist doesn't win the prize, but he sure did enjoy his pie much more than those knowing contestants.
I hope that's lacking in whining and nihilism enough for you.
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smidogg
Trad climber
berkeley
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2006 - 03:41pm PT
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This Response is for Peaks To Paddles
You may think my idea of fun is lame. But really I have been having a great time. And just so you know, I am critical of pretty much all organized religeons. That is just how I feel. There is no liberal bandwagon that I'm jumping on. I'm not trying to be cool, and I never said christians were dumb. I feel as though I have provided fodder for an extensive debate and have made valid and educated points on my side of the argument. I think that your comment that I have just come out to blindly pick on Christians is short sighted. I have come to my conclusions over the years through my own experiences around the world. So here I will elaborate on my side of the debate for you.
I feel that everone is entitled to their beliefs.
I do level most of my criticism at religeous groups that outwardly try to influence government and are overzealous in spreading their beliefs (Ie missionaries). This would be why I am most critical of Christians, Mormons, and Catholics (I'm a baptised Catholic by the way).
When I lived in Africa, I watched missionaries do some of the most F*#ked up things in villages. One missionary forceably took a bunch of condoms from a teenage girl saying they were tools of satan and abstinence was the only way. That woman has since contracted AIDS and will eventually leave behind her Children. Abstinence or death right. But hey no worries the missionaries will take care of them right. I'm sure they will grow up to be fine Christians. Sometimes its hard not to think there is not some convoluted plan behind this. That is just one isolated incident of many which I witnesse in which pushy missionaries decided it was their way or the highway and basically took a sh#t on another culture in the name of God.
And have you read about these Christian Doctors who refuse to treat Homosexuals or provide birth control?! It will only be a matter of time before we hear about some poor man or woman dying in some ER down south because some Christian Doctor refused to offer them medical assistance on religeous grounds. Then you will hear about how badly Christians are persecuted in this country because this doctor will go to jail for "practicing Christianity". Would you support a doctor who did something like this?
And these people are trying to institute these beliefs into our constitution and legal system (debated in my next response to jay). Don't I have a right to stand up and say I don't believe in this and explain why.
I usually leave Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Bhudists alone because they usually do not push their beliefs on others. Matter of fact they discourage it and believe that "God" will touch those whom he pleases. Obviously there are those within these faiths that will be more pushy about it but there is no institutionalized system to grow the numbers of thier churches. However I have initiated debates on the many faults of all of those religeons and think most of them have done and do things that are equally as bad a Christians. I will be happy to debate the merits of those faiths with you any time.
So in my mind if you are putting yourself out there and pushing your beliefs on people then you are setting yourself up for critisim. Especially from me. Christians Just happen to be one of the most vocal and influential religeons in our country today. I have no problems with most of the beliefs endoctrined in Christianity, especially the fundamental belief that humans should be good to one another. But their stance on many social issues in my mind is archaic and detrimental and the push to make laws of them is worse. Denial of common sence in the name of god.
So you said something to the "as#@&%e run wild" and that is my rebuttal. Next time instead of just calling me names and trying to pull that You are a "Liberal so your opinions are automatically whack" card on me, why don't you actually make a case for the other side. And the whole "poor defenseless Christians be persecuted in this country" holds no water with me by the way. You want to see persecution, go to Rawanda.
Thanks.
Smitty from NYC now Berkeley
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smidogg
Trad climber
berkeley
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2006 - 03:56pm PT
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This Reply is For Jay from SC
I will respond to your post with a broader debate on the fact that our constitution and country were not founded on Christian Values.
The Constitution never once mentions a deity, because the Founding Fathers wanted to keep their new country "religion-neutral." Our Founding Fathers were an eclectic collection of Atheists, Deists, Christians, Freemasons and Agnostics.
George Washington, the Father of our country, and John Adams (Second President of the USA) CLEARLY stated in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli: "The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion.”
G.W. rarely attended church and instead followed a popular 18th century philosophy called Deism—a Star Wars-esque philosophy that believed in a cosmic energy or big-ass universal "Force." The dictionary says that Deism is "a system of thought advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation," that had nothing to do with Christian principles.
James Madison, original mastermind of our Constitution, was an Atheist to the core who loved skewering Christianity. In 1785 he wrote, "What have been [Christianity’s] fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
Thomas Jefferson, who sat down and authored The Declaration of Independence, rarely missed an opportunity to laugh at Christianity. In a letter to John Adams in 1823, he wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
More ammo: In 1814, Tommy J. wrote about the Bible's Old and New Testaments, "The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful -- evidence that parts have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds.”
In fact, it was President Jefferson himself who first wrote (to a Baptist church group in 1802), "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State." Therefore, when Jefferson talked about “Nature’s God,” the “Creator” and “divine Providence ” in the Declaration that he wrote, he was being a hippie and referring to a general cosmic energy-- not the Christian God.
America is not a Christian nation. Period. Our Constitution derived from the post-Christian Enlightenment values of reason and truth....
The bible can be interpreted to mean a lot of things. To say that Freedom of speech is a biblical value may or may not be the origin of the belief, however our founding fathers obviously had different intentions with the concept. To say it is in there because it was in the bible is obviously false. I think it may have more to do with the fact that those who immigrated to our country were persecuted for saying anything bad about the crown or the church for that matter. Matter of fact if it is indeed a biblical value, it is one of the most undersupported ones by the church today and throughout history. Think about how many people in history were tortured and killed by the church for standing up for what the believed in contrast to what the church had to say.
Smitty
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Jun 17, 2006 - 04:12pm PT
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George Washington definitely was a Freemason: He buried a Masonic axe in the foundation stone of the Capitol.
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d-know
Trad climber
electric lady land
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Jun 17, 2006 - 04:17pm PT
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google Cornel West. Here is a christian that I can listen to and hear.
how many folks think that jesus really looked like the image chaz posted.
I would bet he looked more like osama bin laden than the common representation.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jun 17, 2006 - 04:36pm PT
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"Better to be in the mountains thinking about God, than to be in church thinking about the mountains."
Magnar Pettersen, 1940s era Norwegian climber
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Ouch!
climber
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Jun 17, 2006 - 04:43pm PT
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Everyone has their story, limited only by their imagination.
Fundys provoke controversy because they believe they are told by God to convert everyone else to the particular brand of religion they have constructed. When they see politics as religion, they become obnoxious and dangerous.
The real problem comes when they cannot see that religion is only a part of a total person and everyone else also has a story to tell.
When they pray, I wish they would go into a closet and stay off my front porch.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Jun 17, 2006 - 05:05pm PT
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I live right next door to a Jehovah Witness coven. Their Grand Wizard has been by twice, both times with a couple of fat, ugly chicks that he was obviously trying to sell me for a real estate deal on my house. "Let's negotiate"!: Sex, power, religion, money, property (real obvious). The real problem is that they're so dirty. Evidently, since Armageddon is going to happen sometime soon, that gives them carte blanche not to weed or paint or clear garbage from the front yard. But I've fought back: I got the city permit office on their case. Registered letter from City Hall. On-site inspection for building code violations. Now they lay low and, the Lord willing, will sell out and leave town. My property values will finally go up! Praise the Lord!
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smidogg
Trad climber
berkeley
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2006 - 05:26pm PT
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God How could I forget Jehovia's Witnesses!
This is probably going to get me even more flamed but I have to tell this story. When I was in college they were very prevalent in our town. They used to come by on a weekly basis no matter what you said to them or how mean you were.
First we were nice.
Second we were annoyed
Third we asked them firmly not to come back
Fourth we asked them angrily to stay away
All to no avail. So we got creative.
My roomate got a copy of the necronomicon, and I mean a hard bound ornate version with a big blood red pentogram on the front.
The next time they came by, my housemate opened the door while holding it above his head and started screaming random jibberish "in tongues". Then began to scream "May your soul become one with Satan" as he ran out on to the porch.
The way they ran away looked like they were shielding themselves from a fire hose or bright light. They were both covering their eyes, running and stumbling all the way to the street.
Hilarious
They even dropped one of their little record books on our front porch. I still have it.
One of the instructions is to mark down the addresses of anyone who exibits "Sheepish" characteristics.
Scary.
Needless to say we were not paid another visit.
Like I stated before. I really hate it when people push their religeon on me. Especially when politely telling them you are not interested does not work.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Jun 17, 2006 - 11:51pm PT
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Styndal--
You´ve tried to answer the question by explaining it away with a scholastic mental construct. But look at it this way. What does life mean doesn´t arise in our experience as an idea, or even a question, but from beings cry into the night when the road runs out. We wonder what we´re doing, where we´re going, what we can do if anything. But unless we´re totally unconscious we´ll ask something.
There´s no answer to the construct or the question that is satisfactory. The answer, IME, is in being itself, but the question often gives us the incentive to initiate some inner shift to where the question is no longer important--because being is all that matters. All spiritual tradition are geared to getting us embedded in being, in the present moment, a placer much greater than merely thinking about it. Then the questions die off.
That´s pretty much it so far as I understand how it all works. There´s no formula and no answer but the questions are important because they arise from our experience and cannot be answered by our minds--at all.
JL
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Ouch!
climber
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Jun 18, 2006 - 12:15am PT
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The most learned man and the most ignorant one are equal in knowledge of the ultimate question. Both can offer only belief in opinions, based on hearsay from earlier opinions.
Whatever gets you through the day.
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