h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For me also Paul was a problem i had with the church, if not Christianity as such. But recently i realised with some dismay, that i may have wronged him all the time. I came across an argument that Paul might have been a victim of, shall we say, editorial touches, in the scriptures. I don't want to go into the particulars, but the main point of contention seems to be an obvious discrepancy between several teachings attributed to Paul, and also his actual colaboration with women in the church. If anyone's interested i'll see if i can the relevant theological link.

I think that scriptures present a curious mixture of the divine and the all too human, of wisdom, and agendas. Now i know this comes dangerously close to the selective reading of the bible, as practised by so many people with ulterior motives, be they conscious or unconscious. But i think to separate one from the other the good old qui bono principle might be applied. Anything that serves the position, moral or material, of a certain group over others would be suspect by default.
And that might not only go for the truth content of the bible, but also for any other system of thought, particularly of the nature that stroke the ego of certain groups.

Not all Christians feel the need to proselytise others. From my own experience i would say it is the minority, but alas, a very vocal one. But on the whole, Christianity is as any other faith, and when looking at people going to a shinto shrine or a buddhist temple or a mosque, i get exactly the same feeling about them as about people going to church. Those are people on their way to commune with, and worship something greater than themselves.
The churches are as any other temple, they even stand in the same places as the pre-Christian temples. The common notion is that the churches have replaced the old temples, as Christianity replaced the old faith. But i can't help wondering, have they really? Totally? How then can one account for the subtle regional differences in Christian worship? Not to mention other practices that run parallel, such as the predominant role of trees and fire in the annual festivals in certain regions of Northern Europe? What effect did coincidences between mythical happenings and figures in the Germanic and Christian faiths have on the acceptance of the latter? There appears to me to exist a regional spiritual continuity that is largely overlooked.

There are other continuities, for instance societies seem to go temporarily mad, but before i declare a certain religion a sort of mental disease, be it Christianity or as some do today, Islam, one might look at the phenomena per se more closely. To take for instance one example, the witch hunts, far from being a Christian specialty, are a common phenomenon in human societies everywhere, at all times, and seem to result from a real fear, that becomes an illness of the mind of whole communities.
Or the crusades, leaving the religious component aside for a moment, i think one could not help noticing that a push and shove back and forward between Asia/Near East/Northern Africa and Europe has taken place for millenia. Last time the Turks left some sacks of coffee before Vienna, and don't we bless them for it now.

Analiese, I have no "religion", per se.
I have studied the Bible from the day one found it's way into my hot little hands and I drew in it.
As most "theology" is extra-biblical, I have no use for it.
As the Bible itself has been altered for liturgical and political purposes over time...

did you know that the oldest complete Old Testament dates to only the 1100s, and is in Russia? I think it's called the Leningrad Codex.
It is a Masoretic text, the form of the Old Testament that is actually younger than the New Testament.
Christ, the Apostles and Paulie had access to the Septuagint, a Greek text. Apparently there was also an Aramaic version of the Torah that we haven't been able to trace conclusively. Oddly enough, bits of it turn up in Daniel.

... I believe that giving converts or parishioners the "Cliff Notes" version is tantamount to lying to them. This guff about "inerrancy" and "divine inspiration" is the usual backpedalling horsepucky that the clueless spout when caught with their pants down.

Delicia, you are quite right.
"Christianity" has borrowed, stolen and appropriated anything it could from the local cultures it has influenced or rolled over along the way.
In fact, one could say that this very adaptability is part of it's popularity. The fact that one can open franchises is also appealing.

The whole priest/nun thing goes back to Astaroth (which if you look real close, is related to the name Esther!), though her's wore much less clothing and had more interesting lives.

Yes, I have found the apostasy/heresy fixation to be pernicious and evil, completely extra-biblical.
The apostolic succession is really nothing to be proud of, as Luke in Acts is the only one who succeeded in giving the 12 stooges any dignity. The rest of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, portrays them as essentially clueless.
This also makes it easier to transition to dat-datta-dah! Saul/Paul, who is both Super Jew and Missionary Extraordinaire to the Gentiles.
Paul gets his message direct from Jesus himself, a clarification of what Dopey, Sneazy, Doc and Sleepy were still clueless about.
Then he proceeds to ignore the Jerusalem Sect as much as possible, only visiting them twice in fourteen years.

Yes, Delicia, that link would be interesting.

And yes, Analiese, I am afraid you are right. The writing of the Gospels became necessary when it was figured out that old What's-His-Face wasn't coming back on the next bus. The verbal traditions and the sayings lists were no longer enough. It was time to 'Add to the Scriptures'.

On the whole, I would have preferred an actual manual instead of a collection of memories of varying chronology and levels of completeness.

I think if Jesus himself had written a book, then the rest of them would be unnecessary.

"one can open franchises"
Hmm that does make a difference, I like how you phrased that!

I too would be really interested in Delicia's link. When I first discovered the inconsistancies in Paul's accounts of his revelation it really surprised me. It probably shouldn't have though since there's inconsistancies in the Koran and that's supposedly by one author too, but if there's another explanation that would be good to investigate.

Now that manual idea is interesting, Mr. Revenge, although I'm not sure it would work. I mean one of the things Jesus was pretty unequivocal about was proslytizing. Didn't he say to preach the Gospel to all the world but if it's rejected shake the dust off your sandals and go elsewhere? Now I'm not really sure what the dusty sandals stuff signifies but the directive seems pretty clear. So clear you wonder how authentic Christians keep ignoring it?

I often wonder that myself.
One of the reasons, I suppose, is the pernicious doctrine that He wont't return until the Gospel has been heard by everyone on the planet.

The focus on the so-called Book of Revelations is a bit like the tail wagging the dog.
The stupid thing is so late as to be positively modern.
It's reception into the canon makes the whole Bible-making enterprise suspect.

Yes,link please Delicia.

Pauls Letters to the Romans were different ,he is not concerned with immediate practical problems, "they were Pauls independant theological last will and testiment to his faith. These ideas have most shaped Protestant belief." Wm. Barclay
*looks for copy,small green book*
Ah yes, here it is.

3 Christian principles

1)Rigteousness - puting others first
2)Peace between man and man- Man and God
3)Joy asit is interelated to others.

3 Behaviors in principle

1)Teaching by example in living not by preaching.
2)Do not flaunt "Christian Freedom" - It is about your personal relationships with God and man.
3)Sin is defying your own conscience. No man is keeper of another mans conscience.

Not bad when kept that simple

Seek, and ye shall find. It was this one
http://www.religioustolerance.org/nfe_bibl.htm
I also found this very interesting
http://www.scs.unr.edu/~fdaniels/rel/women.htm
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Tonsil revenge, it was the same with me, there was a Bible lying around and one day i read it, and since then i’ve dearly wanted to know as closely as possible what the original texts say, or better even, what the original people themselves said.
There’s Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, when Jeshua is interrogated by Pilate, and tells that there is a man always running after him, writing, and saying that he writing up Jeshua’s teachings, i think he referred to Mathew. Once Jeshua read üparts of the manuscript, realising with horror that it wasn’t at all what he had said, so Jeshua wanted to tear it up, but the man snatched the pages and ran away. So thanks for the number of keywords provided on Bible research, such a blessing , i know the amount of work behind that.
However <<"Christianity" has borrowed, stolen and appropriated anything it could from the local cultures it has influenced or rolled over along the way. >>
This sounds almost like Christianity spread purely through ulterior motive or even active malevolence, but i very much doubt it works that way, as a matter of pure mechanics of the spread of a religion. Beside undoubted prudence on the part of the proselytising element I think a reason for the perseverance and final adaptation of the old beliefs was, that they were deeply rooted in the local population, including the locally recruited clergy.
I also think in the case of any other religion than Christianity showing this adabtability, it would be called religious tolerance these days.
Thus i think that at first Christianity co-existed with the older religions in many places, then becoming predominant, and that process probably was forced in many instances, but in many others must have worked by sincere conviction, i deduce that from the appeal the figure and legend of Jesus no doubt has, and also from the spontaneous springing up of so many subreligions or sects, which i think illustrates the inherent driving power of this creed.

What can of course provoke anyone into making loaded statements about Christianity are those Bible thumpers whose blatant ulterior motives are so clearly obvious to anyone but themselves.
Therefore wanting that everyone conforms to one's own interests, disguised as absolute truth, is ultimately logical, hence proselytising. I think that is meant by the word of the devil quoting scripture.
So that would answer the question of why don’t all who call themselves Christians simply do as Jesus says? Why oh why????
I say, deeply ingrained self interest and resulting lack of compassion for others, that's why.

But.... equating self interest with cosmic truth is by no means restricted to Christians.

Religious tolerance .org I am familiar with.
I had not seen the skeptics one Good links,thanks.

All that stuff is very facinating, Delicia. It also reminds me that maybe we're all too quick to assume that ancient Christianity was really like later versions.

Yet even as late as the 14th century, all that a good Christian needed to do ostensibly was know the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Creed. This we know because it's what Jehanne d'Arc testified to at her trial trying to show she had been raised a good Christian and not a heretic.

Her accusers made much of the Fairy Tree in Domremy as evidence Jehanne was influenced by witchcraft, yet that tree was the scene of an ancient ceremony that the entire village participated in including the priests because the Church had effectively taken over that ceremony, a sort of rite of spring.

So while the complex theology that seems to play an increasingly important role in the Church as it assumes more and more political power appears to dominate things, the fact is that for the average Christian the faith was rather simple and liberally mixed with aboriginal rites or ceremonies and the rank and file priesthood apparently didn't have a problem with this unless it crossed the political lines somewheres which would have brought down the wrath of the bishops.

In fact the power of the bishops seems to have related to a fundamental split in the Church from Late Antiquity on between the urban and rural authorities. This was long before the issue came to a head in England or Scotland between the Anglicans and the Presbyterians.

Unfortunately then, much of the theological arguments derive from political disputes that still plague us.

Exactly politics affects religion leaders and religious leaders affect politics.

The Pope announces he is still NOT OK with Gays.
The President of the US announces a Federal definition of marriage must be made law ,the same week. No accident in timing there!

Politics and Religion cannot stay entirely seperate but we sure ought to try harder IMO to keep a definite line.

I will use Gays as an example since the topic has been used here already.
Gays should be able to have civil marriages like all other persons in the US.

Gays can have a religious ceremony also like any couple in the US.
It is seperate from the "state marriage" The state marriage is what allows for state rights. The religion marriage has to do with living under the eyes of your God. Two different topics. Your God (or faith)may believe it's ok for Gays to strive for a sacred couples union.

If state and religion were more seperate this would not be a political issue. The state could serve the need of the people whom live in it peacefully with the full citizen right to a civil union thereby creating a legal civil family unit.

One thing I'm wondering though. What business does the state have in marriage anyways?

Like one time this couple met in LA. One was Tewa I think and ostensibly a Catholic. The other was Jewish. So the state will marry them but that's not the point. They want a ceremony. It ain't a real marriage without a ceremony. So then the priest won't marry them because one is Jewish and the Rabbi won't marry them because one is Catholic so they get married by the Ba'hai priest because the Ba'hai don't care what you are.

So then they sometimes come back home visiting and people say, "Why didn't you just shack up? You know? The injun way." And that's a good question because neither one of them is Ba'hai but one is injun. But to get the ceremony done that's what they had to do.

But then why do they need a ceremony? So the state will protect their children's inheritance? That's a laugh!! By what right does the state even get involved in these matters?

Bluntly speaking, taxation and incest.

Historically, the approval of marriages was originally performed by the parents of the two accused. The benefits of an arranged marriage involved land, cattle and rights to the use of similar.
Later, the state approval or oversight over marriage made it easier to locate taxable entities.
The church and some other authorities got involved in some communities where the fear of "outsider" blood was so great that they joinings were often between first cousins! This had to be ameliorated with some sort of genealogy.
The church also had an interest in making sure it didn't loose any children to the other sides. Thus, it became an excummunicatiable offense to marry outside the "faith".
In later years, municipalities and states instituted "blood tests", ostensibly to prevent the spread of syphillis (sp?) to the spouse and the child.
Recently, as in Uvula's and my case, it turned out that there was an Rh factor problem and she had to take medication during her pregnancy to ensure that the fetus was not rejected by her body.

Of course, none of this applies to Gays.
Thus, the law has no application to them.

Gays exist, get used to it. And let them bond however they please.
There are enough bigger problems with the mindless oafs who profess to be "straight", half of whom I am firmly convinced are latents and too cowardly to admit it.

The Supreme Court just tossed out a sodomy law or two and that includes the rarely enforced one in Texas.
I know some boneheads who are upset with that.

Having hovered in and around the medical field all my adult life , I see the need for the civil unions and guardianship in those matters of life, death and consent for all types of treatments in between.