woke

[Alexis Jacobi]

Heh. No, He didn't disrupt the sweet unity that the human race had been enjoying. Conflicts did not begin with Him. You need some history.

You look at the human race, and see unity? There's been no unity in human history. There has been some "forced uniformity," whenever some tyrant or despot could seize control, but no unity. And certainly no peace.

The only unity there ever will be is the unity people can have in Christ. And yet, you resent that. And you gin up your nastiest kind of rhetoric against it?

You've proved the case.

You skillfully avoided all that I said — which is what you always do. But of course I knew and always know that you won’t respond — because you can’t.

Fanaticism has that effect.

[Age]

...look at what he comes to create: the worst divisions and conflicts.

Heh. No, He didn't disrupt the sweet unity that the human race had been enjoying. Conflicts did not begin with Him. You need some history.

You look at the human race, and see unity? There's been no unity in human history. There has been some "forced uniformity," whenever some tyrant or despot could seize control, but no unity. And certainly no peace.

The only unity there ever will be is the unity people can have in Christ. And yet, you resent that. And you gin up your nastiest kind of rhetoric against it?

You've proved the case.

Wow what a Truly small and tiny view of 'the world' you have "immanuel can".

But, then again, you do only LOOK FROM a VERY TINY and SMALL perspective.

[Immanuel Can]

And yet persecution of one sort or another has been practiced pretty much EVERYWHERE temples of any kind have been erected.

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

[Iwannaplato]

And yet persecution of one sort or another has been practiced pretty much EVERYWHERE temples of any kind have been erected.

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I think you know what he meant. Further, given he says 'of any kind' and churches are considered in common usage as a kind of temple...

A temple (from the Latin templum) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism (whose temples are called gurudwara), Jainism (whose temples are sometimes called derasar), Islam (whose temples are called mosques), Judaism (whose temples are called synagogues), Zoroastrianism (whose temples are sometimes called Agiary), the Baha'i Faith (which are often simply referred to as Baha'i House of Worship), Taoism (which are sometimes called Daoguan), Shinto (which are sometimes called Jinja), Confucianism (which are sometimes called the Temple of Confucius), and ancient religions such as the Ancient Egyptian religion and the Ancient Greek religion.

and the early Christians, including Apostles attended Jewish Temples, even after Christ died.
and

Christian temples
Orthodox Christianity

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia.
The word temple is used frequently in the tradition of Eastern Christianity; particularly the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the principal words used for houses of worship are temple and church. The use of the word temple comes from the need to distinguish a building of the church vs. the church seen as the Body of Christ. In the Russian language (similar to other Slavic languages), while the general-purpose word for 'church' is tserkov, the term khram (Храм), 'temple', is used to refer to the church building as a temple of God (Khram Bozhy). The words church and temple, in this case are interchangeable; however, the term church (Ancient Greek: ἐκκλησία) is far more common. The term temple (Ancient Greek: ναός) is also commonly applied to larger churches. Some famous churches which are referred to as temples include the Hagia Sophia, Saint Basil's Cathedral, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia.

Catholicism

Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in Paris
The word temple has traditionally been rarely used in the English-speaking Western Christian tradition. In Irish, some pre-schism churches use the word teampall. The usual word for church in the Hungarian language is templom, also deriving from the same Latin root. Spanish distinguishes between the temple being the physical building for religious activity, and the church being both the physical building for religious activity and also the congregation of religious followers.[19]

The principal words typically used to distinguish houses of worship in Western Christian architecture are abbey, basilica, cathedral, chapel and church. The Catholic Church has used the word temple in reference of a place of worship on rare occasions. An example is the Roman Catholic Sagrada Familia Temple in Barcelona, Spain and the Roman Catholic Basilique du Sacré-Cœur Temple in Paris, France. Another example is the Temple or Our Lady of the Pillar, a church in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Protestantism
Also, some Protestant churches use this term; above main entrance of the Lutheran Gustav Vasa church in Stockholm, Sweden is a cartouche in Latin which reads "this temple (...) was constructed by king Oscar II."

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, following the Enlightenment, some Protestant denominations in France and elsewhere began to use the word temple to distinguish these spaces from Catholic churches. Evangelical and other Protestant churches make use of a wide variety of terms to designate their worship spaces, such as church, tabernacle or temple. Additionally some breakaway Catholic churches such as the Mariavite Church in Poland have chosen to also designate their central church building as a temple, as in the case of the Temple of Mercy and Charity in Płock.

and then....you cited a part of the Bible where temple is used, as being in the body. That's a metaphor. Well, then we can use erected as a metaphor also.

So, respoding to his point like you did is the equivalent of correcting a grammar mistake and remaining silent about the meaning of the sentence.

I don't think you'll find justification for that in the Bible. It's just evasive.

[Immanuel Can]

And yet persecution of one sort or another has been practiced pretty much EVERYWHERE temples of any kind have been erected.

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I think you know what he meant...A temple (from the Latin templum) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice.

I don't think you know what Christianity teaches about "temples," or about "churches." Biblically, they're not at all the same...and "church" never refers to a building of any kind, but to a gathering of persons.

The building of religious edifices, with the calling of them "churches" or "temples" of special significance, is characteristic of non-Christian and pseudo-Christian religious practices, but is not Biblical, and has nothing to do with real Christianity. Check it out, and you'll see I'm telling the truth.

Meanwhile, has it occurred to you that there are quite a few Christian groups who have NEVER been involved in the creating of wars, persecutions, inquisitions, crusades, or other forms of violence and coercion? Good luck finding Mennonites, or Quakers, or Anabaptists, or any one of dozens of other conservative, private-conscience-type groups who ever did ANY of the things Gary wrongly tries to tar them with.

[Iwannaplato]

I don't think you know what Christianity teaches about "temples," or about "churches."

Oh, I do and I checked, hence the resources I put in my post that you ignore here for some reason. Yes, I know the distinction between the terms and how Jesus intended the word through several translations to church would be used: gather in his name and so on. My point was that despite all of that Christians often do in fact call their gathering places temples, and you knew what he meant, and this is obvious because you respond to what he meant in your reponse to me.

Instead of responding to his meaning, you pick responded to just a tiny piece. You certainly could have pointed out his error, though in fact the way you did it was simply confusing in your response to him.

IOW you also ignored from my post the point I made about knowing full well what he meant and what you say below about some churches never causing X, would have been appropriate in a respectful response to his post. THAT would not have been evasive. And THAT would be an appropriate response to his post and not to mine.

Biblically, they're not at all the same...and "church" never refers to a building of any kind, but to a gathering of persons.

The building of religious edifices, with the calling of them "churches" or "temples" of special significance, is characteristic of non-Christian and pseudo-Christian religious practices, but is not Biblical, and has nothing to do with real Christianity. Check it out, and you'll see I'm telling the truth.

And by the way: we really don't know what Jesus said. Obviously he didn't say 'church'. And he didn't say 'ekklesia'. What Aramaic word he used I don't think is known.

And if, as part of your reaction to all this, is to say that these Christians who use 'temple' today and in the past for their churches are not real Christians or any line like that, which you should take up with him and not me, THAT also would have fit in a respectful response. Though it too misses his point. That should actually create ground you have in common with him. If you think people who are doing things he doesn't like or who call their churches temples are not real Christians, well, that can lead to shared criticism between you. IOW highlighting Jacobi's point that you may be pushing people away from Christianity by the way you post and communicate. And you know what he means, again, because you actually start responding to his point here in a post to me.

The fact that you start responding to his point in a post to me is also confused. You are assuming that if I point out what you did there, my point is somehow that he is right. I was pointing out what I think is a tendency in your posting with people.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't think you know what Christianity teaches about "temples," or about "churches."

Oh, I do and I checked, hence the resources I put in my post that you ignore here for some reason.

I "ignored" them? No, I find them wrong, so don't agree with what they way. And the Bible, if you check it, will only support my view, not theirs, you'll find.

IOW you also ignored from my post the point I made about knowing full well what he meant

I didn't, actually. I pointed out that it was not true of Christians. There are major groups who never caused a single pogrom, witch hunt, inquisition, war, or any other such thing, but have, from the beginning of their history always been pacific.

I'm always amazed at how skeptics grab onto the groups who called themselves "Christian" and did such things, such as the big, institutional religious organizations who call themselves "churches," and completely disregard the faithful gentleness of the great numbers of real Christians who just got about the business of following Christ, who have done more good for the world than any other single entity in human history.

You won't find the Atheists running out to feed the poor, or the agnostics giving aid to Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims around the world, or Nietzscheans risking their lives in malarial swamps to save tribes of lost people, or working in the prisons to reach criminals and transform their lives, or feeding the mentally-ill and addicted on the streets, or giving family counselling, or saving the lives of infants, or providing education, food, medicine and opportunities to people in the Developing World. But if you go to any places where these people are found, you'll find Christians doing them; and more than any other group ever, by orders of magnitude.

But where is the mention of any of that, one the skeptic speaks about "Christians"? It's like he's completely forgotten it all. Because he's chosen to forget it. He doesn't want to know about it. It doesn't help his skepticism.

But all of that is covered in the 9th Commandment. So we can let that be what it is.

To disagree is not to "ignore." It's to disagree. And since the only evidence that matters is on my side, it's to disagree with good reason to do so.

One is not obligated to accept somebody else's false premise merely because they floated it.

And by the way: we really don't know what Jesus said.

"We" don't have to agree with this either. The adoption of the first-person-plural pronound also isn't a way of proving a statement. It's a vague appeal to bandwagon fallacy, maybe...

Obviously he didn't say 'church'. And he didn't say 'ekklesia'. What Aramaic word he used I don't think is known.

The "church" concept, whether in its Greek, its English or its Aramaic, will give you exactly the same result if you trace it through the text: there is no warrant at all for calling a building a "church." That's a Western mistake, not a theologically accurate usage.

Again, if you check it out, you'll find out I'm telling you the truth.

[Gary Childress]

And yet persecution of one sort or another has been practiced pretty much EVERYWHERE temples of any kind have been erected.

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I was referring to places of worship for just about any religion.

[Immanuel Can]

And yet persecution of one sort or another has been practiced pretty much EVERYWHERE temples of any kind have been erected.

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I was referring to places of worship for just about any religion.

For the Christian who is following Scripture, there is no special "place" of worship. There are only the people.

And what you say of them is utterly untrue. Name all the Mennonite witch-hunts, the Baptist pogroms, the Quaker inquisitions, the Brethren persecutions, and the Salvation Army wars... You can't, because there were none.

But what about all the good Christians have done in the world...in public education, medicine, education, public health, research, charity, prison reform, feeding the homeless, giving to international aid, founding universities, setting up water projects and business aid loans in the Developing World...?

It seems you can't remember any of that...I wonder why...

[Gary Childress]

Christians don't have "temples". (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I was referring to places of worship for just about any religion.

For the Christian who is following Scripture, there is no special "place" of worship. There are only the people.

And what you say of them is utterly untrue. Name all the Mennonite witch-hunts, the Baptist pogroms, the Quaker inquisitions, the Brethren persecutions, and the Salvation Army wars... You can't, because there were none.

But what about all the good Christians have done in the world...in public education, medicine, education, public health, research, charity, prison reform, feeding the homeless, giving to international aid, founding universities, setting up water projects and business aid loans in the Developing World...?

It seems you can't remember any of that...I wonder why...

The same can be said of many governments that call themselves "socialist". a lot of the technology we have today was created through public spending and research programs. I'm just following your lead, IC. Let's do away with persecution and get rid of religion.

[iambiguous]

There is no such thing as a decision with no consequences. Only Leftists seem to think there ought to be.

I find this statement interesting. Partly because of the relationship between *ideas* and *consequences* that Richard Weaver focused on in his work Ideas Have Consequences.

The terms we are compelled to use (left, progressive, liberal in the negative sense) are terribly inadequate when applied to the progressive-egalitarian trends that have come to dominate our thinking, our vision, our believing. To say that Leftists believe that there are no consequences to decisions (meaning, specific decisiveness in regard to social issues, established hierarchies, power relations, etc.) is simply absurd. What has to be understood is that they are influenced by different sets of idealism. When one examines such thinkers as Weaver -- an arch-conservative -- one discovers that these types tend to favor the older hierarchical systems that dominated our cultures but are now being supplanted and overturned. They define *all that* as a good and they put all their weight on the side of overturning established orders. They see the older systems as being repressive and therefore consequential insofar as they believe in liberating people from prior (arbitrary) restraints.

It is really a question of the Vision one has about what social life is supposed to be and what sort of life is ideal and best.

It is therefore unfair to say that "Leftists" believe that ideas do not have consequences. So we are left with the sticky and difficult task of defining better what 'wokism' refers to. It must be a sort of perversion of Left-idealism, no? But then 'perversion' must then become the topic of conversations since, certainly, the political Right in our own day and time is just as susceptible to perverse influences.

It seems to me at times that when we examine the bitter conflicts of the present we are seeing the results of the loss of the capacity to think and reason well by all or most parties. Then, everything turns into emotional battles by bickering people who show themselves incapable of understanding any other perspective that is not their own.

This explains the endless bickering that goes on in this forum BTW. The absolute lack of a will to find common ground. The reign of absolute disagreement.

But you are still not a Christian. So clearly, nobody's forcing you or compelling you. And mention of eternal damnation itself fails to move you. So for now, you're just fine...as free as a bird...nothing is compelling you to anything.

Note that you do an excellent job of driving people away from even considering Christian philosophy as worthy and emulatable. If you are such a Christian -- God help us all!

My sense about your sort of statement is that it also encapsulates a type of perversion. It is true beyond any doubt that genuine and original Christian dogma is grounded in absolutism and a thorough intolerance. As we discussed at length in the Christianity thread this intolerant absolutism arose within the Hebrew context. Once one understands the human, not the divine, origin of this absolutism, one sees more clearly that Christian absolutism has far more to do with social control (some of which is quite valid) more than it has to do with any sort of 'beyond'.

But this, in respect to Iambiguous, is tendentious and unfair: "So for now, you're just fine...as free as a bird...nothing is compelling you to anything". You use it, obviously, as just one more psychological tactic in an effort to influence him to your absolutist decisions, and this reveals how deeply you are enmeshed in all of that. But to say that Iambiguous is not concerned about 'consequences' would be unfair.

He is concerned about different aspects of what is consequential!

But every decision comes with consequences. And I guess we'll both see if that's true or not.

There it is again! You know what I have said, right? That this is really the sum total of your argumentation! This sums it up.

True it is: all decisions have consequences, so you got that right. So we had all better pay attention to the consequential. But to assert that those who do not accept your specific absolutist tenets will, as a result, end their existence in an eternal hell-realm is where you show yourself engaged, and deeply so, with a vicious psycho-metaphysical manipulation tool. And as I say your argument begins, and ends, with that.

Way, way, way, way up in the intellectual contraption clouds of course.

Note to IC:

Just out of curiosity, was Jesus Christ [God] of Northern European white stock? Can a black liberal Jew get into Heaven?

Oh, and what has happened to henry quirk? Did he put himself in the penalty box?

[Immanuel Can]

But what about all the good Christians have done in the world...in public education, medicine, education, public health, research, charity, prison reform, feeding the homeless, giving to international aid, founding universities, setting up water projects and business aid loans in the Developing World...?

It seems you can't remember any of that...I wonder why...

The same can be said of many governments that call themselves "socialist".

It can't.

What the world's only actual Socialist governments (meaning those that don't depend on "Capitalist" funding for their very existence, as the merely pseudo-Socialist Nordics all do, whom today's advocates for Socialism like to pretend are genuinely Socialist, because the real Socialist governments are so utterly embarassing) have given us are: gulags, starvation, economic collapse, tyranny, human rights violations, re-education camps and mountains of corpses.

If you want to stand on that mountain of evidence, you will have to kick some skulls aside as you climb to the top.

[Sculptor]

Rod Serling sixty years ago.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4AEEYDoLOU

These days he would be attacked as a wokie moron..

How far have we descended into hatred?

[Gary Childress]

But what about all the good Christians have done in the world...in public education, medicine, education, public health, research, charity, prison reform, feeding the homeless, giving to international aid, founding universities, setting up water projects and business aid loans in the Developing World...?

It seems you can't remember any of that...I wonder why...

The same can be said of many governments that call themselves "socialist".

It can't.

What the world's only actual Socialist governments (meaning those that don't depend on "Capitalist" funding for their very existence, as the merely pseudo-Socialist Nordics all do, whom today's advocates for Socialism like to pretend are genuinely Socialist, because the real Socialist governments are so utterly embarassing) have given us are: gulags, starvation, economic collapse, tyranny, human rights violations, re-education camps and mountains of corpses.

If you want to stand on that mountain of evidence, you will have to kick some skulls aside as you climb to the top.

The Soviet Union wasn't truly socialist. Mao's China wasn't truly socialist. Cambodia wasn't truly socialist. They were no more "socialist" than the People's Democratic Republic of Korea is "democratic". Nowhere in socialism does it say anything about killing or enslaving citizens, quite the opposite. HOWEVER, if the moral record of Christianity is only to be found in "true" examples of Christianity, then maybe you have a point. Maybe Christians aren't so bad at heart. Poor guys want to do good. Of course, the world is still a dumpster and your God still has an enormous body count and a pretty bad record with who he'll "save" and who he won't. Heck, maybe Stalin and Mao are in heaven for all I know. (well maybe not, their only crime was being atheist. Had they been believers, they could have killed even more). But that's more a matter of what sort of god Christians will worship and I suspect it's more fear than admiration that compels most Christians to worship Yahweh.

[Immanuel Can]

The Soviet Union wasn't truly socialist. Mao's China wasn't truly socialist. Cambodia wasn't truly socialist...

Yes, I've heard this sort of escape claim before...it goes, "Real Socialism has never existed, yet real Socialism is wonderful."

Well, if it's failed, and failed horribly, every single time it's been tried, then why should we accept the claim that it's wonderful? And how long should we go until we ask why it fails 100% of the time? Even more importantly, we might want to ask ourselves if we can risk getting it wrong again, since it kills more human beings than any other ideology in history -- by orders of magnitude.

If we don't love death, we should not love abortive tries at Socialism. But since it's "never existed," how can we dare even try again?

I also have to ask, what makes Gary so much smarter than all the Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Cubans, Venezuelans, Romanians, Ukrainians, Albanians, Lithuanians, North Koreans, and other nationalities that all tried this wonderful thing called "Socialism," all failed (according to Gary), and all killed hundeds of millions of people in the process of trying? Are you just so smart, and all those hundreds of millions just so stupid?

And is what you're saying that if it was Gary in charge of the program, then it would suddenly start to work?

None of that makes a lick of sense, Gary...and it's really, really arrogant to believe. So I'm sure you don't believe it. The chances are awfully good that you'd be a delusional megalomaniac if you did. I think it must be the case that you're just saying something incredibly naive...and dangerous.

Nowhere in socialism does it say anything about killing or enslaving citizens, quite the opposite.

And yet, as I said, they've done it 100% of the time. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself why it never turns out any other way. And until you have that answer, should we try the disastrous experiment again? How many people would we be willing to see dead, in order to find out we're wrong again?

HOWEVER, if the moral record of Christianity is only to be found in "true" examples of Christianity, then maybe you have a point. Maybe Christians aren't so bad at heart.

Statistically and factually, it's the single greatest charitable ideology on the planet, ever.

Have you ever heard of a person being saved from alcoholism, drug abuse, criminality, spousal abuse, sexual and social dysfunction, poverty, and hopelessness through his or her conversion to Atheism? But how many can say that Christianity was their lifeline?

"By their fruits you will know them," Christ said. You will know the right ideology by what it has done. That's a great rule. The immense pile of foul and rotting "fruit" that lies beneath the tree of mankind's failed Socialist attempts tells you all you need to know about it.