Thank you Giles, for saying so well exactly what I was thinking. My reply would have said:
We are all sinners
We SO are not!!!!
That paragraph of Ace's in a nutshell is what IMO is wrong with Christianity. We are all sinners. What total tosh! Jesus, in whose historical being I do believe, came to bring love.
However, as I believe I've said before on these pages, I'm not sure he succeeded too well.
I once had a job taking an African church group out for the day to Stonehenge and Bath. On the way I was telling them the latest archaeological findings that posited the possibility of Stonehenge having been a place of worship and possibly healing. The pastor wasn't having any; he took the microphone and told his congregation that the poor heathen souls who built Stonehenge (at least 2000 years BC) could not have gone to heaven because they didn't know Jesus. But, I protested, Jesus wasn't even born then; did that therefore mean that God also didn't exist? He brushed that aside and went on to proclaim that Jesus came to bring peace and I simply could not resist muttering, fairly loudly 'Well, he didn't do a very good job then!'
We are all sinners? Bah, speak for yourself Ace.
xxx
I do so agree Sunanda and Giles! When I did some considerable research on Christianity because I found the anomalies so difficult to come to terms with, I discovered how Christanity was set up as the 'official' religion at the Council of Nicea in 325AD in order to unify the Roman Empire, which at the time was in danger of disintegration.
It's well worth investigation - Jesus was VOTED to be God - as were past Emperors of Rome. In my opinion, he either was or wasn't, so if it had to be voted on ... ???? (That does not diminish the good that he did, or his concepts as a prophet, preacher and healer.) They also took dates, festivals and concepts from other religions and put them under one umbrella for this 'New', official religion.
They were working in Latin - Jesus's teachings were in Aramaic, translated into Greek (and other languages) and then into Latin. Words in each language have different connotations and do not necessarily translate appropriately with those connotations attached. This was pointed out very well by Professor Barbara Thiering in her book 'Jesus the Man'. Also reading the Nag Hammadi Tractates one starts to realise that modern Christianity has a very different perspective from those in the first century AD.
Following setting up this new Christianity, the original writings were then edited to fit all the concepts agreed at Nicea, (as one would) and the powers that be (Christian) burned most of the ancient Library at Alexandria (and anywhere else they could) in order to have control over knowledge in the Empire. Power and control became part of their ethos - "Do as I say, or else ..." and "You must have Faith and believe what we tell you" "You are all sinners" - even though some of it is nonsense! Writings have been altered down the centuries to fit the then current perspective.
I was well taught from an early age about Christianity, but it is only in the last 15 years that I have come to question things more closely and change my mind about so much. One needs to keep an open mind and not be spoon-fed.
The consequence of burning all the books was that an enormous amount of knowledge was lost in Europe (hence the Dark Ages - the Empire collapsed anyway, and only the preachers were allowed to teach), and it wasn't until the Moors invaded Spain a thousand years ago that knowledge of mathematics and medicine was brought back to us from the ancient Greeks and the Middle East - it filtered through Europe very slowly and was 'rediscovered' during the Renaissance. The Alexandrian Library had a copy of every book in existence at that time - burning it was a disaster! Then the Islamic activists in the 7th century destroyed what was left - in case it had Christian books in it! The Coptic Church is an interesting source of information too and a different take on things.
Sorry about the mini-dissertation, but it is a subject that occupied me for some time!
Or maybe that was year 1. There was no year 0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero
In fact it's mainly because of religious beliefs that zero was not accepted as a number for many centuries. Zero also implied inifinity and the church would not accept the infinite as that would mean that the church was not the centre of things. (That's a very brief summary, if you want to know more, I would suggest reading [url]"Zero, Biography of a dangerous number"[/url])
All Love and Reiki Hugs
It was in fact the astronomical evidence that I was referring to, so I think that using the number 0 is valid.
We are all sinners, as sin came into the world with Adam and biting out of the apple in the Garden of Eden.
I don't accept that I'm a sinner because a very long time ago someone bit into an apple.
If you were to say though, that the Adam and Eve story is a deeply symbolic account of the contraction of Divine awareness into an awareness that only experiences the illusory world, then that would be another thing.
Was Jesus God? We're all God, that was his message.
I don't accept that I'm a sinner because a very long time ago someone bit into an apple.
If you were to say though, that the Adam and Eve story is a deeply symbolic account of the contraction of Divine awareness into an awareness that only experiences the illusory world, then that would be another thing.
Was Jesus God? We're all God, that was his message.
Meta agrees