The Way Christianity

[Kcrazy]

Yea thats why the Nazi commtied war crimes and the Union commited "total war". But thats a completely different topic.

[Bryjnar]

History as a concept is vital: as Kcrazy said, we need to know where we came from, but the problem comes in the practicality, since history is written by the victors, or, more accurately, the powerful. That's harder to do now, with the increasing levels of education around the world, but history should not be taken for granted.

[Sling]

I hate Shakira and I hate you. Fuck off and die.

[cursethemountain]

martin luther formed the lutheran church, which was the first protestant church.
henry VIII formed the anglican church

[Sage Of The Wise]

Ummmm... ok....

[is]

Well said cursethemountain. Luther's most important idea is arguably that of sola fide, salvation by faith alone. Anyone who lives in the protestant world should be familiar with the idea that doing good works does not get you into heaven - only accepting Christ as your personal saviour is. This went against what the Catholic church taught, which as the effective leader of Europe recquired a big long list of sins - a) to burn at the stake troublesome powerful individuals/groups (often by accusing them of satanism*), eg the knights templar and b) to sell indulgences, essentially buying forgiveness for sins, or paying to shorten a loved one's time in purgatory. For every venial sin, the church had a list of the exact amount of days you would spend in purgatory, and the price of repentance.

Luther's ideas completely threatened to overrule that, so he wasn't popular among the Catholics (read his entry in the Catholic encyclopedia) and eventually, along with other factors, such as the increased availability of Bibles, led to the Protestant Reformation.

Luther also removed several books from the Old Testament (the Apocrypha) and wanted to remove Revelations (the book at the end where Jesus comes down on a flaming white horse to cleanse the earth with the assistance of rivers of blood and giant locusts with human heads
- written on an island famous for its shrooms) as he thought it did not portray the same Jesus as the rest of the book - but was persuaded against that. Modern fundamentalist evangelicals practically worship the Bible, but it's validity has already been put in question 500 years ago.

Henry VIII joined the movement when he set up the Anglican Church, as the Pope would not grant him a divorce. The Church had been fond of doing such things as not allowing nobles to marry anyone closer than a seventh cousin, preventing them divorcing childless wives (Henry's wife had just given birth to a girl (Elizabeth I), and Henry wanted a son), adopt heirs, or have sex on various days that amounted to more than half the year, all to prevent wealth accumulating in powerful families by depriving them of heirs. Usually, the deceased wealth would then pass instead to their younger brothers, who usually worked for - you've guessed it - the Church. The establishment of the new church meant that Henry could confiscate much of the monastries' property and melt down all the Catholic metalwork to leave austere Protestant churches (and leave future historians deprived of Medieval church artifacts).

Other than that, the Protestant church has had a tendency to form splinter groups over the years. There is no overarching organisation. It lacks any authority figure, like the Pope. Without a 'pope', few protestant churches venerate saints (no established roll of them) and cannot issue edicts that go against the Bible. For those reasons, the Bible is much more emphasised in Protestantism than it is in Catholicism. Protestants call Catholics pope- and mary-worshippers, whereas Cs call Ps Bible-worshippers. As I've mentioned above, the Bible has already been questioned by protestantism from the start however. Also, try to find in the Bible the name of Joseph's Dad (look in the beginnings of the four Gospels), how many people/angels were at Jesus' tomb (the ends of the gospels), and how Judas died (the ends of the gospels and the beginning of acts.)

If you're interested in the Eastern Orthodox Church, they split in the first millenium, over the issue of whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the father and the son or just the father (the Filoque clasuse).

* It's instructive to note that many jaded libertine aristos of medieval Europe used the Catholic Church's entirely made up guides to Satanism, when they wanted to add some devious sexual spice to their overindulged lives. This was transmitted to other occult groups, and the popular imagination, collected by Anton LaVey in his Satanic Bible. So LaVeyan Satanism is a branch of the Catholic Church (which is, of course, a branch of Judaism).

And so now you know. I spent several months on a Christian forum, which is how I find most of this out. For the record, I'm a hardcore atheist.

[Elachim]

Um... okay.
It's difficult to believe that I actually read all that.

So are you actually going to relate that to the Way somehow? If not, I hereby present you with the award for longest off-topic post ever. Congratulations.

[Sling]

And so now you know. I spent several months on a Christian forum, which is how I find most of this out.

Firstly, I already know all of this and secondly, you spent months on Christian forum to find all that out? Bloody hell, I learned all that at middle school, you could have easily learnt all of this from Wikipedia. That was a blatant waste of several months.

For the record, I'm a hardcore atheist

[Poenaensis]

gratz is: you have learned the art of CTRL+C and CTRL+V

The way is it's own entity, it mirrors nothing directly, but many things bit. which is the nature of an original creation because every person is shaped by their upbringing etc. So Lun has good knowledge of a wide range of topics... quel surprise.

Even J.K Rowling can manage that eg: fawkes the phoenix is named after guy fawkes, doesn't mean harry potter is about bonfire night or that dumbledore has a wosh to take down the magical regime by planting gunpowder in the ministry.

[Sling]

Even J.K Rowling can manage that.

All J.K Rowling ever did was rip off Lord of the Ringd and piss off Christians.

[is]

Firstly, I already know all of this and secondly, you spent months on Christian forum to find all that out? Bloody hell, I learned all that at middle school, you could have easily learnt all of this from Wikipedia. That was a blatant waste of several months.

I didn't join that forum to find out about christianity, I joined it to argue for atheism. I learned most of the above from points brought up during arguments, or from doing my own research for arguments, mostly from wikipedia, AAMF. I could write much more about Christianity from what I learned at CARM but the post was already longer than it needed to be.

I don't know where you went to school but at my school, RE and history education was pretty crap. And I doubt your school would have taught you that the book of Revelations was written on an island famous for its shrooms,or many other fun facts. Other than that, ye, you're right, it was pretty much a waste of time.

EDIT: Although there pretty clever people on there, university professors and so on. I also wanted to make sure I was on the right side... I know all the standard arguments for the existance of God now, and why they're wrong.

[Poenaensis]

Even J.K Rowling can manage that.

All J.K Rowling ever did was rip off Lord of the Ringd and piss off Christians.

I hope ur agreeing with me then... I picked rowling cause though she has a good plot, she can't write well.

[Sling]

Revelations was written on an island famous for its shrooms

Of course I know that. There is just one problem. The guy doing the writing was fasting. The only way he could have ingested it was if he were to take the time and effort to make the mushroom tea, which was unlikely. But you never know...

[Sarcasm]

The Way having no connections to our world!?!? The Way is an analogy of our world for fuck's sake!

[Sling]

The Way having no connections to our world!?!? The Way is an analogy of our world for fuck's sake!

About time someone pointed this out.