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What is most responsible for Christianity's failure in the West?

See above.

  • The conspiratorial view

    Votes: 2 7.7%

  • The progressive view

    Votes: 15 57.7%

  • The perspectivist view

    Votes: 8 30.8%

  • The economic view

    Votes: 1 3.8%
  • Total voters
    26
HumanBeing said:
The God that Christians believe in unleashed a plague on Egypt. Ten plagues actually, because once is just never enough when it comes to biological terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
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No, that's the god that the jews believe in.

We believe in Christ. Get your fact straight.
 
Rainman05 said:
No, that's the god that the jews believe in.

We believe in Christ. Get your fact straight.
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Same God, no? If it isn't the same God, then who fortold the coming of Christ? And if that's a different God and not the same one, wouldn't that make Christianity a form of polytheism as Muslims like to claim? My understanding is that Christians and Jews believe in the same God and the same book. The only difference is Christians also have an additional book, and believe that Jesus was the "flesh incarnation" of God (but still the same God as the one who wrote the Old Testament). Correct me if I got any of that wrong.
 
HumanBeing said:
Same God, no? If it isn't the same God, then who fortold the coming of Christ? And if that's a different God and not the same one, wouldn't that make Christianity a form of polytheism as Muslims like to claim? My understanding is that Christians and Jews believe in the same God and the same book. The only difference is Christians also have an additional book, and believe that Jesus was the "flesh incarnation" of God (but still the same God as the one who wrote the Old Testament). Correct me if I got any of that wrong.
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Again.

Jewish god = Yahweh + the holy spirit. (?)

Christian god = God (formerly known as Yahweh) + the holy spirit + Jesus Christ.

Therefore,
Jewish god =/= Christian God.

The old testament in Christianity serves to set the stage for the coming of Christ. Without the old testament, Jesus is not the son of God, but some random bloke claiming to be someone who has never been mentioned before. Who would this "god" be that Jesus claims to be a son of.
And why did he die? What are sins? What is the original sin and how does baptism remove it?

The Old testament is like the 5min intro into a movie which sets the stage of the world in which the story takes place. The New Testament is the rest of the movie which has the meaningful aspects in it. It is hence why all the stuff that happens in the Old Testament has but a inheritance relationship to Christianity, but holding Christianity responsible for it is stupid.

It's like, if your father made a fortune and passed it on to you, you now have a fortune, but you do not have the merit of making that fortune with all the consequences of the actions needed to make the fortune.

Of course, I by no means associate the Old Testament with any monetary value. it was just a pure metaphor.
 
Rainman05 said:
Again.

Jewish god = Yahweh + the holy spirit. (?)

Christian god = God (formerly known as Yahweh) + the holy spirit + Jesus Christ.

Therefore,
Jewish god =/= Christian God.

The old testament in Christianity serves to set the stage for the coming of Christ. Without the old testament, Jesus is not the son of God, but some random bloke claiming to be someone who has never been mentioned before. Who would this "god" be that Jesus claims to be a son of.
And why did he die? What are sins? What is the original sin and how does baptism remove it?

The Old testament is like the 5min intro into a movie which sets the stage of the world in which the story takes place. The New Testament is the rest of the movie which has the meaningful aspects in it. It is hence why all the stuff that happens in the Old Testament has but a inheritance relationship to Christianity, but holding Christianity responsible for it is stupid.

It's like, if your father made a fortune and passed it on to you, you now have a fortune, but you do not have the merit of making that fortune with all the consequences of the actions needed to make the fortune.

Of course, I by no means associate the Old Testament with any monetary value. it was just a pure metaphor.
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So Jesus is "part of" the same God who unleashed the plagues, it's something referenced by one of your two holy books. I don't really understand what you think I got wrong. Also if the coming of Christ was a pure metaphor, then how can you claim to believe that Christ is God? Or when you say "pure" metaphor, do you actually mean you believe some bits but not the rest? You can't believe Jesus is God if you don't believe any of the Old Testament. If the Old Testament wasn't the word of God, then Jesus was just a regular dude.

We've gone substantially off topic and off point, but despite telling me to get my facts straight, it doesn't actually seem as though you're disagreeing with my version of the facts. Like you said, the Christian God is Yahweh + others.
 
HumanBeing said:
So Jesus is "part of" the same God who unleashed the plagues, it's something referenced by one of your two holy books. I don't really understand what you think I got wrong. Also if the coming of Christ was a pure metaphor, then how can you claim to believe that Christ is God? Or when you say "pure" metaphor, do you actually mean you believe some bits but not the rest? You can't believe Jesus is God if you don't believe any of the Old Testament. If the Old Testament wasn't the word of God, then Jesus was just a regular dude.

We've gone substantially off topic and off point, but despite telling me to get my facts straight, it doesn't actually seem as though you're disagreeing with my version of the facts. Like you said, the Christian God is Yahweh + others.
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No, the coming of Jesus is not the metaphor. The metaphor was about the inheritance part. The one with the money.

Christ is God. he is the third part of what makes God as the Christian God.
There is no Christian God without Jesus.

I never said that the Old Testament is not the word of God. But it's the word of the jewish God. The other God. Not the Christian God. For it to be the word of the Christian God it needs to have Christ... which it didn't in the Old Testament. Get it? It's really not that hard.
 
99percenter said:
LOL. Their symbol is a cross. Its a christian organization alright. By your logic al qaeda isn't a muslim organization. Just one made up of muslims.
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Actually, the symbol of Christianity is a crucifix.

No, al Qaeda is definitely a Muslim terrorist group. Religious violence is their agenda. Where as with the Klowns, racial violence is their agenda.

There's a difference, believe it, or not.
 
Rainman05 said:
No, the coming of Jesus is not the metaphor. The metaphor was about the inheritance part. The one with the money.
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No, you said the Old Testament was a "pure metaphor", that's what I was referring to. Check your post again. If the entire Old Testament is metaphorical, then so was the coming of Christ, which means Jesus was just another random hippie.

hrist is God. he is the third part of what makes God as the Christian God.
There is no Christian God without Jesus.
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No one ever said there is no Christian God without Jesus, that wasn't what I said, and it wasn't what we were debating. I said the Christian God is the same God who dictated the Old Testament, and therefore the same God who unleashed the plagues.

Your money analogy is patently false. You just said Jesus is God. At best, you could claim it's like being bi polar and finding that your evil alter-ego robbed a bank, and then your "good" side works out what to do with the money, but it's still the same person.

Edit: My bad, I re read your post and you're right, the money was the only thing you said was a metaphor. As I've already stated, it's an irrelevant and demonstrably false analogy. It's not an inheritance if you're the same person. It's also false because Jesus always says his father is greater than him, so to claim Jesus is "better" than Yahweh is to ignore the word of Jesus himself. He also said they are "one".
 
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Rainman05 said:
No, the coming of Jesus is not the metaphor. The metaphor was about the inheritance part. The one with the money.

Christ is God. he is the third part of what makes God as the Christian God.
There is no Christian God without Jesus.

I never said that the Old Testament is not the word of God. But it's the word of the jewish God. The other God. Not the Christian God. For it to be the word of the Christian God it needs to have Christ... which it didn't in the Old Testament. Get it? It's really not that hard.
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You are confused. Jesus was Jewish and believed in the Old Testament bible too. Christians believe he was the SON of the God in that bible.
 
iguanaman said:
You are confused. Jesus was Jewish and believed in the Old Testament bible too. Christians believe he was the SON of the God in that bible.
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Jesus was a Judean. there is no evidence of him being Jewish, as in, the adept of the judean faith. He didn't keep any of the jewish celebrations, he didn't hold the rabbi order in any high regard and there is no evidence of him ever being of the jewish religion.

He was the founder of Christianity.

Let me make it clear about what Jesus was in concern to his divinity and to clear the whole part as to why the Christian God is not the same God as in the Old testament in as simple terms as I possibly can. A simple cause and effect relationship.

In order for there to be a Christian God, you need Christ. No Christ, no Christian God. Since Christ didn't exist till the New testament, anything that is in the Old Testament is something other than the Christian God. Got it? I can't make it any more simple than this. I really can't.

HumanBeing said:
No, you said the Old Testament was a "pure metaphor", that's what I was referring to. Check your post again. If the entire Old Testament is metaphorical, then so was the coming of Christ, which means Jesus was just another random hippie.


No one ever said there is no Christian God without Jesus, that wasn't what I said, and it wasn't what we were debating. I said the Christian God is the same God who dictated the Old Testament, and therefore the same God who unleashed the plagues.

Your money analogy is patently false. You just said Jesus is God. At best, you could claim it's like being bi polar and finding that your evil alter-ego robbed a bank, and then your "good" side works out what to do with the money, but it's still the same person.

Edit: My bad, I re read your post and you're right, the money was the only thing you said was a metaphor. As I've already stated, it's an irrelevant and demonstrably false analogy. It's not an inheritance if you're the same person. It's also false because Jesus always says his father is greater than him, so to claim Jesus is "better" than Yahweh is to ignore the word of Jesus himself. He also said they are "one".
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Ok. Let's check my post:

"The Old testament is like the 5min intro into a movie which sets the stage of the world in which the story takes place. The New Testament is the rest of the movie which has the meaningful aspects in it. It is hence why all the stuff that happens in the Old Testament has but a inheritance relationship to Christianity, but holding Christianity responsible for it is stupid.
It's like, if your father made a fortune and passed it on to you, you now have a fortune, but you do not have the merit of making that fortune with all the consequences of the actions needed to make the fortune.

Of course, I by no means associate the Old Testament with any monetary value. it was just a pure metaphor."
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Good that you acknowledge that the money part was the metaphor. I shall give you the same reply. as I did your colleague in absurdity to respond to the second part. Read it above. It's the part with the causality relation.
 
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Rainman05 said:
Jesus was a Judean. there is no evidence of him being Jewish, as in, the adept of the judean faith. He didn't keep any of the jewish celebrations, he didn't hold the rabbi order in any high regard and there is no evidence of him ever being of the jewish religion.

He was the founder of Christianity.

Let me make it clear about what Jesus was in concern to his divinity and to clear the whole part as to why the Christian God is not the same God as in the Old testament in as simple terms as I possibly can. A simple cause and effect relationship.

In order for there to be a Christian God, you need Christ. No Christ, no Christian God. Since Christ didn't exist till the New testament, anything that is in the Old Testament is something other than the Christian God. Got it? I can't make it any more simple than this. I really can't.
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There is plenty of evidence that Jesus was born Jewish, because everybody was Jewish at the time he was preaching. To have the "son of God" you need the God of the old testament to be the Father. It can't get any simpler than that.
Oh and Christ was not he founder of the Christian church since it happened after his demise. I believe Peter is considered the founder, hence St. Peters cathedral in the Vatican.
 
Rainman05 said:
Jesus was a Judean. there is no evidence of him being Jewish, as in, the adept of the judean faith. He didn't keep any of the jewish celebrations, he didn't hold the rabbi order in any high regard and there is no evidence of him ever being of the jewish religion.

He was the founder of Christianity.

Let me make it clear about what Jesus was in concern to his divinity and to clear the whole part as to why the Christian God is not the same God as in the Old testament in as simple terms as I possibly can. A simple cause and effect relationship.

In order for there to be a Christian God, you need Christ. No Christ, no Christian God. Since Christ didn't exist till the New testament, anything that is in the Old Testament is something other than the Christian God. Got it? I can't make it any more simple than this. I really can't.



Ok. Let's check my post:



Good that you acknowledge that the money part was the metaphor. I shall give you the same reply. as I did your colleague in absurdity to respond to the second part. Read it above. It's the part with the causality relation.
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You're either missing, or deliberately avoiding your initial claim, which was that the Christian God is not the same God who was responsible for the plagues as described in the Old Testament. It's nonsense and you haven't actually disputed it. It's the same God, the God that Jesus claimed to be. "I and my Father are one" John 10:30

You are suggesting that there was no father until there was a son. It makes no sense, even from the Christian perspective. Jesus' claim that he was God was based on the prophecies from the Old Testament. If you don't believe in the God that fortold the coming of his son, then how can you believe that the son is the son of God? The whole thing makes no sense.
 
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The letters “INRI” are initials for the Latin title that Pontius Pilate had written over the head of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The acronym INRI (Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum) represents the Latin inscription which in English reads as "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews".
 
iguanaman said:
There is plenty of evidence that Jesus was born Jewish, because everybody was Jewish at the time he was preaching. To have the "son of God" you need the God of the old testament to be the Father. It can't get any simpler than that.
Oh and Christ was not he founder of the Christian church since it happened after his demise. I believe Peter is considered the founder, hence St. Peters cathedral in the Vatican.
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Ah, actually that isn't true. There were a whole lot of other religions that existed and thrived in that region. From various religions like zoroasterism and the egyptian polytheist religion and other pagan ones to the roman pagan religions.

but as to the claim of him being jewish.

So while yes, he did identify himself as the Son of God, as in the Son of God from the Jewish Testament, one of the first things he did from when we first read of Him was to be baptized by John the Baptist, hence, establishing baptism and Christianity. Sure, he was circumcized but then again, circumcizion is not an integration ritual into being Jewish... if so, many american males would be jewish and a lot of african ones today.

So maybe you can make a case that because his parents were Jews, that makes him a Jew... and that may be true to some degree, but the moment he had a choice in the matter, he left Judaism and established Christianity.
 
grip said:
The letters “INRI” are initials for the Latin title that Pontius Pilate had written over the head of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The acronym INRI (Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum) represents the Latin inscription which in English reads as "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews".
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Yes. And they were made there to mock the jews. As in "ha ha, you killed your king".
 
If there is a father and son there must be a mother. Christianity can't handle the logic so they just avoid the issue.
 
HumanBeing said:
You're either missing, or deliberately avoiding your initial claim, which was that the Christian God is not the same God who was responsible for the plagues as described in the Old Testament. It's nonsense and you haven't actually disputed it. It's the same God, the God that Jesus claimed to be. "I and my Father are one" John 10:30

You are suggesting that there was no father until there was a son. It makes no sense, even from the Christian perspective. Jesus' claim that he was God was based on the prophecies from the Old Testament. If you don't believe in the God that fortold the coming of his son, then how can you believe that the son is the son of God? The whole thing makes no sense.
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I made a long and extremely thorough post on the prophecies. the jest of it is:
there are a lot of conflicting prophecies about jesus and you can put them in 3 categories.

1. The detailed ones that told us about where he was going to be born and how he would be identified (of the line of David and born in Bethleem, etc).
2. The peace-loving ones where they told us how he would heal the world and bring peace..
3. The ones that aren't peace-loving that told us that he would strike down the enemies of Israel and establish Israel as the greatest nation, enslaving others etc.

So #2 and #3 don't really mix and it does seem to be written by bipolar jews who wanted either a hippy or a mass murderer. Maybe depending on how they were feeling about the Egyptians, Baylonians or what other nation they hated at each particular time in their history.

Needless to say, Jesus didn't bother much with #3, partially fulfilled #2 and was right on #1. The closest he got to #3 was when he said mean words at the rabbi order "den of vipers" because they were as such.

So yeah.

Again. Simple cause-and-effect relationship.

You can't have a Christian God until you have Christ. If you don't have Christ in ancient Egypt, Sodoma and gomorra, the flood... so yeah. etc. You do have a Jewish God.
 
Rainman05 said:
Ah, actually that isn't true. There were a whole lot of other religions that existed and thrived in that region. From various religions like zoroasterism and the egyptian polytheist religion and other pagan ones to the roman pagan religions.

but as to the claim of him being jewish.

So while yes, he did identify himself as the Son of God, as in the Son of God from the Jewish Testament, one of the first things he did from when we first read of Him was to be baptized by John the Baptist, hence, establishing baptism and Christianity. Sure, he was circumcized but then again, circumcizion is not an integration ritual into being Jewish... if so, many american males would be jewish and a lot of african ones today.

So maybe you can make a case that because his parents were Jews, that makes him a Jew... and that may be true to some degree, but the moment he had a choice in the matter, he left Judaism and established Christianity.
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The Jewish myths of the messiah make no reference to a son of god. All of that was added later by early Roman Christians to make their beliefs more palatable to Romans they were trying to convert. It has absolutely no roots in Judaism. The messiah is just a man in Jewish theology. Not a descendant of god.

Everything Jesus preached were elements of contemporary Judaism. The majority of his preaching was about strict adherence to Jewish law. Not only was he a Jew with no interest in establishing another religion, he was a fundamentalist Jew. And that Jesus and a bunch of other people were baptized in a river clearly demonstrates that baptism was already a normal thing at that time, and thus a part of Judaism.

I'm not quoting your earlier post about "He didn't keep any of the jewish celebrations" directly, but you do know that the last supper was a Passover celebration, right? Also, weird that you capitalize a pronoun but not a proper name.

These are some of the reasons that, in the modern world of knowledge and information, religion does not hold up. It requires too much cognitive dissonance to believe thousand year old stories and ignore all of the learning that took place since. In this case, holding these views on Christianity requires a functional ignorance of Judaism. That was possible when there was minimal peaceful contact between the two groups, but now Jewish ideas are easily accessible. One of the core claims of Christianity is fulfillment of Jewish law, but it gets that law wrong constantly. That kind of cognitive dissonance gets harder and harder in the face of modern learning.
 
I think Christianity is disappearing because of polarization.

We have come to a point in Western civilization where your party is against anything the other party is for and vice versa. Polarization really took root here in the United States in the '60s and, since conservatives were pro-Christianity, liberals had no choice but be anti-Christianity. Anyone who has looked at a voter registration list while working on a campaign can tell you nearly *MOST* Catholic priests and nuns are registered Democrats. With young people no longer hearing the call, most priests and nuns are older and registered during the 60's and 70's when extreme polarization was just taking root.

It just goes to show how Christian this country was that it has taken so long to really become an issue. As recently as the Clinton Administration, Democrats were still touting their faith to appeal to voters.
 
Paschendale said:
The Jewish myths of the messiah make no reference to a son of god. All of that was added later by early Roman Christians to make their beliefs more palatable to Romans they were trying to convert. It has absolutely no roots in Judaism. The messiah is just a man in Jewish theology. Not a descendant of god.

Everything Jesus preached were elements of contemporary Judaism. The majority of his preaching was about strict adherence to Jewish law. Not only was he a Jew with no interest in establishing another religion, he was a fundamentalist Jew. And that Jesus and a bunch of other people were baptized in a river clearly demonstrates that baptism was already a normal thing at that time, and thus a part of Judaism.

I'm not quoting your earlier post about "He didn't keep any of the jewish celebrations" directly, but you do know that the last supper was a Passover celebration, right? Also, weird that you capitalize a pronoun but not a proper name. I type fast. Please don't consider the fact that I don't capitalize everything all the time as anything but the desire to quickly address the multiple issues I'm handling in the most expedient manner possible without infringing on the context and the information transmitted.

These are some of the reasons that, in the modern world of knowledge and information, religion does not hold up. It requires too much cognitive dissonance to believe thousand year old stories and ignore all of the learning that took place since. In this case, holding these views on Christianity requires a functional ignorance of Judaism. That was possible when there was minimal peaceful contact between the two groups, but now Jewish ideas are easily accessible. One of the core claims of Christianity is fulfillment of Jewish law, but it gets that law wrong constantly. That kind of cognitive dissonance gets harder and harder in the face of modern learning.
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Ok. Since I never really held the Bible to be a scientific document, I don't care to argue it from the perspective of what is or isn't scientifically plausible.

And no, Christianity is not the fulfillment of the jewish prophecy or law or rules or whatever(since the jews don't think that also). Christianity is an independent entity. If tomorrow judaism would disappear, Christianity would still be fine and dandy all on its own.

He was not a fundamentalist Jew by any stretch of the imagination. That's why the rabbi's hated him and wanted him dead... so they engineered it.

Baptism is a Christian thing only. The fact that other people baptised after Jesus did was because He did it and they wanted to be Christians. Not because it was the normal thing. Bathing wasn't even a normal thing at that time in history.
 
Rainman05 said:
Yes. And they were made there to mock the jews. As in "ha ha, you killed your

king".
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Why would the Romans call him Jewish if he wasn't?

He lived with the Jews, preached to the Jews, was called Rabbi and constantly referred to the scriptures.

Luke 4:16

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.


He himself said...

John 4:22

22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.


He was rejected by Judaism as a false Messiah but I don't think he was considered anything but Jewish during his lifetime.
 
Another aspect of poll-options 2-4 is the increase in mentalism, educational awareness, health, and longevity of people out here in the west.

Early on, we get a time table sense of our expected longevity and the impression that a tragic abrupt end is also comparatively rare.

So we plan, as westerners do, and those plans include a long life, starting with a fun adolescence, choice of lucrative careers and college, state-of-the-art healthcare, raising kids, grandkids, and prospering well into our 90s.

When we're in our 20s, we don't think, therefore, much about dying, about a premature demise, and are mostly focused on thriving here in the material world.

As civilization progress removes a lot of the dangers that were ever present in the not too distant past, we think less about dying and more about really enjoying life.

Since the foundation of Christianity is about living forever in Heaven through Christ, complete with painful-world toleration coping mechanisms, such thinking has become back-burner fare that only awareness of one's or a loved-one's imminent death creates the motivation to move it to the front burner.

The western mentalism, however, compromises our spirituality, in a non-religious sense, as mentalism's foundational function is thinking, and spirituality's foundational function is feeling, especially intuitive feeling.

More spititual people still contemplate the meaning of life and the reality of our material mortality, and although they are more inclined to practice a faith, maybe even one of Christianity, today it's less likely to be one of fundamentalist legalism.
 
grip said:
Why would the Romans call him Jewish if he wasn't?

He lived with the Jews, preached to the Jews, was called Rabbi and constantly referred to the scriptures.
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Again, as a mockery. "ha ha, you jews killed your king, ha ha". Pontus Pilate never wished for Jesus to die, but since he had to have him executed to avert a crisis, he decided to mock the jews who sentenced him to die. As Jesus never called himself a King, and promised a kingdom of abundance in the afterlife, not this life... as the jews wanted, well... you see the delicious irony and sarcasm found in just a few small words.

Rabbi means teachers. he was a teacher.
 
Rainman05 said:
Again, as a mockery. "ha ha, you jews killed your king, ha ha". Pontus Pilate never wished for Jesus to die, but since he had to have him executed to avert a crisis, he decided to mock the jews who sentenced him to die. As Jesus never called himself a King, and promised a kingdom of abundance in the afterlife, not this life... as the jews wanted, well... you see the delicious irony and sarcasm found in just a few small words.

Rabbi means teachers. he was a teacher.
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You missed my point. If he wasn't Jewish and the Sanhedrin didn't recognize him as such why would calling him "King of the Jews" bother them? It's because he was one of their own and they rejected his teachings and interpretation of the scriptures.

Rabbi literally translates to "My Master", but it's recognized as meaning religious teacher and person authorized to make decisions on issues of Jewish law.
 
captainawesome said:
If there is a father and son there must be a mother. Christianity can't handle the logic so they just avoid the issue.
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That would be Mary and some scholars say she was head of the Catholic Church in the very beginning until the church was hijacked by Peter and women became "unclean". We will never know for sure I guess.
It does seem strange that God choose a woman to bear his only son when he could of just "poofed" him into existence. Does not that make a woman the sex chosen by God as the most "holy"?
 
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