Paying for sins makes total sense! It’s the American Way! Perfectly reasonable.
Using murder as a loophole requires both taking God very seriously and believing that He is a complete idiot.
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Is this how the Poophole Loophole was invented?
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Touché
Only if you’re my proctologist.
Sure, let’s not get too caught up in words. I don’t think “purpose” is a terribly good word because in modern usage it tends to be separated from what that thing does. A car mirror’s purpose is to let us see what is behind us, which is different from what it does, which is to reflect light.
As opposed to “temporary”. This rules out reincarnation, for example, in which time spent in heaven would be a temporary reprieve before going back to Earth. It also implies that we will be perfected, and no longer choose anything but God, and the nature God intended us to have, which is exemplified by Jesus.
This is certainly the “orthodox” Christian position, and I was not meaning to contradict it with my original post.
Sure glad we are working this out, here, in the Roe v Wade thread.
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Are you saying the good and evil bible talk should be aborted?
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Yup:
27And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
…
And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
My religion teaches that we were literally created in the image of God, and are intrinsically good.
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That’s interesting. I think that most Christian denominations hold that we are born with Adam and Eve’s original sin. We are still being punished for it (kept out of the Garden of Eden, have to toil, pain in childbirth).
“Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
Psalms 51:5 NRSV
Yes, most Christian denominations posit humanity beginning as good creations in God’s image, then by eating the forbidden fruit bringing original sin into all of humanity. Thus for a Christian, we are born sinners and die sinners regardless of our works. Obviously, some sects and periods within sects (see: Catholics, indulgences) got weird about this.
This gets some uncomfortable responses regarding “very good people” who weren’t Christian, but most devout will stick to their guns that those people are unavoidably evil and went to Hell. The “Holiday Christians” will likely waffle and say God is good and knows best.
I am less familiar with Judaism but seems they reject the idea of “original sin” and find each human to have the capacity to choose to act on their inherent good nature and therefore choose God.
Judaism holds that Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience, but not that we are born with a damaged soul.
This article is reasonably close to what i was taught:
literature of the Talmudic period gives us images of body and soul in harmony. “Just as the Holy One of Blessing fills the world, so does the soul [neshamah] fill the body. Just as the Holy One of Blessing sees but cannot be seen, so does the soul see but cannot be seen… Just as the Holy One of Blessing is pure, so is the soul pure” (Berakhot 10a).
There are lines about the purity of the soul in the regular prayer services.
Yes, exactly this.
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+1 for Judaism IMO. As an atheist that jives with my worldview nicely. We all have equal capacity to be shitty.
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Mormons also don’t believe in original sin.
I think they believe Jesus took care of all that with Gethsemane and/or that cross thingy.
Funny how the littleist things are some of the biggest.
There’s a whole religion that schism’d from mine (as born into), because for us the bread and wine is literally also body and blood, but obviously not like physically, more in a metaphysical “it’s also that way if you imagine it”.
But if you think it merely represents blood and flesh, well buddy, you’re literally going to burn in Hell. Go buy your own church if you don’t like it.
This use to confuse me too. I think it is because we look at them out of cultural context. Usually they tend to represent big issues at the time they are controversial.
This debate was not really about metaphysical and theological details concerning communion.
The Roman Catholics believed that the bread and wine became the blood and body because of the authority of the priest. In other words, God’s grace was mediated through the institution of the Church.
The Lutherans held that the faith of the individual believer was responsible. This shifts a great deal of power to the prince/secular state.
This was the real issue: the role of the individual against secular and ecclesiastical power. This is still a big issue today. Arguably, it is still very much related to abortion rights, for example.
I was thinking of different Protestant sects, but didn’t name them as I knew I wasn’t certain of which I was thinking. I knew that Catholics also believe in transubstantiation, at least broadly similarly albeit perhaps not identically to some Protestants.
I’m reading all of this, and thinking of a question one of the kids lobbed yesterday:
“Do you think Jesus was autistic?”
And the priest gets that authority from Christ Himself. We believe in transubsantiation because of Christ’s own words: “take and eat, this is my body” … “take and drink, this is my blood” … Is. Not is a symbol or representation of. So the priest acts in the person of Christ, and doesn’t actually serve anyone himself (which is also why it’s technically not proper to refer to the Mass as a “service”).
“You guys aren’t biblical” is thus a strange criticism for (some) Protestants to lob at us. For many reasons, but the most important being that literally everything we do has a basis in Scripture.
I’m not sure it’s fair footing to discuss theology of the Catholic church with an atheist since my core belief is “well it’s all made up contradictions in the end.”
However, I’d push back on papal infallibility as being Biblically-rooted. Yes, there are some words supporting the establishment of a church. Papal infallibility was first floated around the 1200s-1300s and from my understanding was gradually agreed upon by a number of councils over centuries, more building on traditions of man than the Bible.
Interestingly, it looks like the Pope could infallibly order or forgive a regicide until 1793, when kings decided, “Yeah, maybe… maybe you can’t infallibly order me executed. I order that you need to swear you can’t have me legally executed or you can’t be Pope.”
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