Understanding the religious mindset

[Walker]

We're never going to have a viable Christian morality without faith in Christ.

The informal, formal secular refutation …

Pentecostals are noted for evangelism, a.k.a., they always be pestering you for your own good, much of that emanating from the US bible belt. Pentecostals key on the spirit of God moving through the body which is given intellectual validation by the bible, which is clarified by this preacher or that, many of them quite entertaining. Music and singing are usually lusty (not lustful), although some of them do get into scandals.

Catholics are more about the hierarchy of the church and an obedient flock following along with what the next in command says. That whole concept has fallen on recent hard times because I remember a generation of the loyal who did as commanded, as opposed to today’s prominent abortion advocates double speaking their identity into being devout Catholics and the unquestioning, incurious media saying sure, why not, it’s all relative.

The question is, have times ever been harder for Catholics?

The religious mindset has given that religion a long life that has survived much. The religious mindset has given Judaism a life thousands of years longer than that.

There must be something to that religious mindset.

The Catholic priest and the hierarchy above the priest are the shepherds who understand, and pass on that understanding. The rituals and their meaning transcend time, place, and the human shortcomings of any particular shepherd. Same religion without the focus on celebration on the fervent divine spirit elevating and moving through the body.

However, seems like forgiveness and redemption are not faith-bound, yet are crucial to Christianity.

In secular, psychological terms, forgiveness is transformative for all who practice in a positive way, positive defined as causing peace of mind. Redemption that is actually peace of mind here and now, for both forgiver and forgiven, seems less a matter a faith and more a natural, efficient and effortless way of being resulting from forgiveness, as natural a process as water flowing its natural course according to the laws of physics.

Thus, the forgiveness that causes redemption and peace of mind is inherent to human nature because in evolutionary terms, it results in the most efficient and reliable propagation of the species made possible by cooperative effort. Resentful women take note.

Faith is certainly a trigger for this inner, natural mechanism to jump start, and as the faithful know it becomes a perpetual engine independent of any desirable or necessary alternative to faith, and the individual life-force, including the intellectual apprehension of phenomena, becomes fuel for that engine.

It’s not so much that Christianity created this, as that it tapped into this natural physics of being a human, by pointing out absolute truths of being a human, which would account for the long-life that has seen all matter of intellectual disagreement, often vituperative if not violent.

Interesting to note that Christ lived in times far more brutal and yet this natural, evolutionary-beneficial realization occurred in those harsher times.

Yes or no?

[Immanuel Can]

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “... everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. ...”

Hebrews 11:12&13 "... so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith ...

Excellent. Thanks for that.

In a way, you've just troubled Lace's world, if she's 'listening' and thinking. I thought of mentioning that fact myself, because it leads to exactly the necessary question.

When Jesus promised "life" to people, one thing is very clear: He certainly knew that physical death wasn't disappearing in the immediate. He even told people like his disciples that they would die, despite being His disciples, and prophesied that many of his followers would be put to death. He, Himself foretold His own death, for that matter. And certainly, as the Hebrews passage pointed out, the Old Testament figures all died.

So what "life" and what "death" can He have thought He was talking about? It very clearly cannot have been what most people think of immediately when they hear the word "death," can it?

Well, what do you think?

[Lacewing]

Well, none of those mean what you claimed...

Well, I pretty much knew you'd say that. But you're wrong, actually.

I could argue that with you, of course, and could show why that is. But I'm actually not convinced anything -- no matter how precise -- would convince you.

It doesn't matter whether you convince me. Explain your claim with as much precision as you can.

You said: Jesus saves humans from death... in all its forms.

That's quite a statement, so you can surely explain it better than simply pointing to Bible verses that mention life or death, but that do not say what you said.

[Lacewing]

When Jesus promised "life" to people, one thing is very clear: He certainly knew that physical death wasn't disappearing in the immediate. He even told people like his disciples that they would die, despite being His disciples, and prophesied that many of his followers would be put to death. He, Himself foretold His own death, for that matter. And certainly, as the Hebrews passage pointed out, the Old Testament figures all died.

So what "life" and what "death" can He have thought He was talking about? It very clearly cannot have been what most people think of immediately when they hear the word "death," can it?

So what were all the forms of death you were referring to?

[Immanuel Can]

You said: Jesus saves humans from death... in all its forms.

Follow what I said to RC, and you'll get it...if you want to get it.

[Immanuel Can]

We're never going to have a viable Christian morality without faith in Christ.

The informal, formal secular refutation …seems like forgiveness and redemption are not faith-bound, yet are crucial to Christianity.

Well, really, the question is not what the Catholics, or the Pentecostals think, or even what IC, in some view of his own, thinks. The question is only "what's true?"

What does God offer as the basis of forgiveness and redemption?

After that, the opinions of men are surely nothing...be they religious or secular.

[Lacewing]

You said: Jesus saves humans from death... in all its forms.

Follow what I said to RC, and you'll get it...if you want to get it.

You and RC "get" what you "want to get", and you suggest that somehow demonstrates an applicable and accurate explanation of your previous claim.

[seeds]

Well, I'm waiting.

This is the first time you've asked...so I can only imagine the wait has not been long.

The term "original sin" is an invented label, really...it appears nowhere in the Bible. Not that that's wrong: we need some word to summarize an idea, but we can go wrong if we misapply the word "original," so the label isn't entirely clear. But here's what the Bible does actually say:

"The person who sins will die. A son will not suffer the punishment for the father’s guilt, nor will a father suffer the punishment for the son’s guilt; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself." (Ezekiel 18:20)

So then, you apparently agree with me that the standard Christian story of Adam and Eve being the source of an "original sin" that affects their descendants is mythological nonsense.

Is that correct?

In other words, you apparently agree that no human should suffer any consequences (good or negative) for anything that the mythological (nonexistent) Adam and Eve may have done.

Is that also correct?

And if all of that is so, Immanuel Can, then you really need to get busy and mount a campaign to disabuse the following sources of the lie they are perpetuating:

According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica...

Original sin, in Christian doctrine, the condition or state of sin into which each human being is born; also, the origin (i.e., the cause, or source) of this state.

Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants.

According to Wiki...

Original sin is the guilt of disobedience to God passed on from Adam and Eve to all subsequent generations....

...Not only do individuals inherit a sinful nature due to Adam's fall, but since he was the federal head and representative of the human race, all whom he represented inherit the guilt of his sin by imputation.

According to Christianity.com...

Original sin, also described as ancestral sin, is a Christian view of the nature of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man. Original sin arose from Adam and Eve's transgression in Eden, the sin of disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The list goes on and on.

And let's not forget the incalculable number of Christian preachers who push from their pulpits what you so clearly (and justifiably) believe is a false narrative.

Now of course there are sources that disagree with that specific definition, however, they're not the ones that you need to set straight.
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[RCSaunders]

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “... everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. ...”

Hebrews 11:12&13 "... so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith ...

Excellent. Thanks for that.

In a way, you've just troubled Lace's world, if she's 'listening' and thinking. I thought of mentioning that fact myself, because it leads to exactly the necessary question.

When Jesus promised "life" to people, one thing is very clear: He certainly knew that physical death wasn't disappearing in the immediate. He even told people like his disciples that they would die, despite being His disciples, and prophesied that many of his followers would be put to death. He, Himself foretold His own death, for that matter. And certainly, as the Hebrews passage pointed out, the Old Testament figures all died.

So what "life" and what "death" can He have thought He was talking about? It very clearly cannot have been what most people think of immediately when they hear the word "death," can it?

Well, what do you think?

I think it's a fudge of an obvious contradiction.

[Lacewing]

All of the qualities that human beings are naturally born with and capable of are not dependent on whether or not a person ever hears of, or believes in, a god. Does anyone here not agree with that?

Claims which cast non-theists as doomed for not subscribing to the belief of a god, seem obviously to be the work of humans who, themselves, cannot perceive or fathom perfect magnificence throughout all, greater than their own small thoughts and fears.

[Immanuel Can]

...you suggest that somehow demonstrates an applicable and accurate explanation of your previous claim.

You haven't see where our discussion's going yet.

Too impatient. Not listening.

[Immanuel Can]

Is that correct?

Neither. Even the people who take it as a mythos don't take it as "nonsense." You're missing the point.

You're still misunderstanding the term. "Original sin" we might say, is something like inheriting a gene for a dread disease like cystic fibrosis: you might not have actually committed a sin at birth, -- how could you? -- but you will. Everyone does.

That's what "original sin" implies. It's not "original sins," as if you inherit the penalty for all Adam's particular misdeeds; it's "sin," singular, meaning the propensity and inclination, the nature of sin. And it's manifestly inherent in all of us, so the empirical evidence for it is awfully strong.

[Immanuel Can]

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “... everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. ...”

Hebrews 11:12&13 "... so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith ...

Excellent. Thanks for that.

In a way, you've just troubled Lace's world, if she's 'listening' and thinking. I thought of mentioning that fact myself, because it leads to exactly the necessary question.

When Jesus promised "life" to people, one thing is very clear: He certainly knew that physical death wasn't disappearing in the immediate. He even told people like his disciples that they would die, despite being His disciples, and prophesied that many of his followers would be put to death. He, Himself foretold His own death, for that matter. And certainly, as the Hebrews passage pointed out, the Old Testament figures all died.

So what "life" and what "death" can He have thought He was talking about? It very clearly cannot have been what most people think of immediately when they hear the word "death," can it?

Well, what do you think?

I think it's a fudge of an obvious contradiction.

Well, let's see if that hypothesis makes sense.

You'd have to suppose that Jesus was either a) unaware death existed, b) deceived about his ability to do anything about it, c) deliberately misleading people, d) being purely metaphorical, or e) meant more than just the death we all have at the end of life.

Of course, a) and b) are pretty implausible, c) requires one to assume that Jesus was not at all the kind of moral exemplar most take Him to be, but the sort of person who might do that...very hard to sustain, d) is possible, but begs for a lot of elaboration if one opts for it...and if you aren't going to opt for one of those, or some other you want to suggest, we're left with e).

What do you think?

[Lacewing]

...you suggest that somehow demonstrates an applicable and accurate explanation of your previous claim.

You haven't see where our discussion's going yet.

Too impatient. Not listening.

Let's see... you said you could explain, but it wouldn't convince me... so you didn't explain. Next you threw a bunch of bible scriptures at me and told me to find more myself. Then you told me to follow what you SAID (past tense) to RC (which I saw) -- but you didn't say much other than throwing out a question of what Jesus meant by "life" and "death". So how was I being impatient and not listening? Are you now saying that you're going to say something more that actually explains why you said "Jesus saves humans from death... in all its forms?" Great! That will be more refreshing than your avoidance and blame games.

[seeds]

Furthermore, I am especially interested in your explanation of why it's called "original" sin?
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What's important, your understanding or another's understanding?

If it's another's, wiki has a rather extensive entry by today’s standards. It begins with pithiness and then expands according to various interests, and I don’t lisp. Take ye exception with any or whole of the wiki entry?

How does this relate to the point I was making with Immanuel Can?
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