The Religion Thread

Maybe because Islamic radicals want to kill everyone who disagrees with them and actually put their ideas into practice? Christian fundamentalists don't do that or at least do that on a scale that is orders of magnitude smaller. Other than a handful of attacks on abortion clinics (in which some 20 people died over 40 yr timeframe... in a country with 200+ mln ppl), there is hardly any violence that you can acuse US fundamentalists of.

Do you know why are American Evangelical Christians called fundamentalists? Not for their violence - but adult baptism, creationism. literal ressurection of Christ etc. stuff like that.

I sometimes wish Baha'i Faith became the dominant religion in the Abrahamic religious area... would put a swift end to all Abrahamic extremism.

Werewolf wrote:american christian nutheads are catholic pal.

Really?? You serious about this??

FYI the vast majority of nutheads are Evangelicals.

jhelb wrote:

Werewolf wrote:american christian nutheads are catholic pal.

Really?? You serious about this??

FYI the vast majority of nutheads are Evangelicals.

*World Peace

Cowboy's daughter wrote:

jhelb wrote:
Really?? You serious about this??

FYI the vast majority of nutheads are Evangelicals.

*World Peace  

Touché

I watched a part of that documentary posted by Werewolf and read several articles about the Akha people? And honestly - what is the connection between actions of that missionary and the teachings of Christianity? It appears that he was simply approached by the Thai government and asked to get tid of some unwanted tribe. He did not provide any verses from the Bible to justify his actions, he did not quote any Christian theologians etc. When ISIS started taking Ezidi women as slaves, they quoted several verses from the Quran, numerous hadiths and opinions of several Muslim jurists (including the greatest scholars of Islam that ever lived), to justify their actions. Did that missionary provide evidence of similar callibre?

Anyway, how is sterilizing a few thousand people comparable to killing MILLIONS? Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq killed several times more civilians than this and genocide of Hindus by Pak army in 1971 claimed at least 5 times that much lives by the lowest estimate.

I am not claiming that Christian terroristm does not exist. It does exist, just in truly minuscule numbers. Even Jewish religious terrorism is more bloody than Christian one, taking into account demographic discrepancy of collosal scale.

Muslim terrorism quote verses from the Quran all the time and Ultraorthodox Jews also quote verses from the Torah to justify intolerance of Palestinians. But Christian terrorists have a tough nut to crack when it comes to justifying their actions with scriptural evidence. They never have any evidence except "we think so so we do it"

you Jews...?

I know, and you know too, that 1400 years is plenty of time to separate religion from state. The last time Germans killed each other over religion was in 1648 and for the French it was 1590s(?). Muslims might have embraced secularism in 1000 AD or 1500 AD or even in 1800 AD. They did not do it and this is not even incompetence, nor ignorance. This is idiocy and for idiocy one must pay. With blood.

There was no law of physics preventing Saudi Arabs from killing Abdul Wahhab, wiping out Islamists, abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with limited republic by 1700s. Or was there?

Separation of religion of state is a bare minimum required to be called a civilized country - but it's an internal matter and every country should sort this problem on it's own. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, USA, Russia etc. (all European countries basically) all solved this problem at some point between late 17th and mid 19th century, at least to the degree that people are no longer punished for crimes against God (vestiges of state religion remain in every country). Britain did not need France to secularize, France did not need Britain, Germany did not need France and Austria etc.

Most Muslim countries have some anti-apostasy law. It varies from a monetary punishment in the least radical countries, to death in the most radical ones. None other major civilization (West, China, India) has similar laws.

jhelb wrote:

Touché  

How about religion now ? There was a time , when being a prophet was normal job . There were hundreds and thousands of prophets in the holy books . Prophets did different jobs . Like help run affairs of state or advise on agriculture or civil law cases . Because human knowledge was limited . It was possible for one man to be expert in them . But now  it is not possible for one man to be expert in all sciences . So now it is not possible to have a prophet . Or a new religion . So followers of religions must be educated to understand this .

The modern equivalent of prophets today is a council of sciences . As advisory bodies to government or legislators .  In  Iran for example , there is a council of experts . An religious advisory body . But they are experts in religious law . And they need to be experts in all the modern sciences . In Russia there was an academy of sciences . But are they in a legislative or advisory capacity to the government ?

In many countries , there is no guide for society . What arises out of science or reason . There is only primitive Democracy . These unguided systems . Lead to social problems . Instead of solving them .

The clip creators claim to speak from the Chinese POV. The notion that China wants to dominate the World is incorrect. If she did, Kublai Khan troops would have reached & occupied W. Europe even before the Polo brothers reached him; the Ming fleet of giant junks would've stopped the Portuguese from reaching E. Africa & India, & the Americas, Australia & NZ would've been colonized by her. Rather, she wants to deny any single nation or group of nations such domination & thus secure her own well being. 
After all, China was plundered by the West, Russia & Japan since the Opium Wars & until 1949. Imported low wage Chinese labor supported the same countries' economies, while the Christian influenced Taiping Rebellion killed 20–30M people.

Tsavo Lion wrote:The clip creators claim to speak from the Chinese POV. The notion that China wants to dominate the World is incorrect. If she did, Kublai Khan troops would have reached & occupied W. Europe even before the Polo brothers reached him; the Ming fleet of giant junks would've stopped the Portuguese from reaching E. Africa & India, & the Americas, Australia & NZ would've been colonized by her. Rather, she wants to deny any single nation or group of nations such domination & thus secure her own well being. 
After all, China was plundered by the West, Russia & Japan since the Opium Wars & until 1949. Imported low wage Chinese labor supported the same countries' economies, while the Christian influenced Taiping Rebellion killed 20–30M people.

From the Wiki: "In 1843, after carefully reading a pamphlet he had received years before from a Protestant Christian missionary, Hong declared that he now understood that his vision meant that he was the younger brother of Jesus and that he had been sent to rid China of the "devils", including the corrupt Qing government and Confucian teachings."
This guy has reached levels of heresy that most Protestants can only dream of...I don't think it's fair to call the rebellion "Christian influenced", especially since Christianity (i.e. Orthodox Christianity) is pretty much by definition anti-revolutionary and thus doesn't promote any kind of rebellion.

I agree about China taking a more subtle approach, though, and being probably somewhat more oriented toward a multi-polar world, like Russia, rather than striving for global hegemony. If they do take Taiwan, I hope the brilliant minds of TSMC don't run away; Russia needs their chips (for now)!

From the Wiki: "In 1843, after carefully reading a pamphlet he had received years before from a Protestant Christian missionary,.." 
I don't think it's fair to call the rebellion "Christian influenced", especially since Christianity (i.e. Orthodox Christianity) is pretty much by definition anti-revolutionary and thus doesn't promote any kind of rebellion.

If he hadn't read it, he wouldn't be inspired by it to make trouble. 
Protestantism was not above a rebellion- recall decades of religious wars in Europe. 
In our time there's the Lord's Army in Africa.
In fact, Japan avoided being colonized thanks to the timely expulsion of Christian missionaries & killing of local converts.
In China, the Boxer Rebellion came to late.

Tsavo Lion wrote:If he hadn't read it, he wouldn't be inspired by it to make trouble. 
Protestantism was not above a rebellion- recall decades of religious wars in Europe. 
In our time there's the Lord's Resistance Army in Africa.
In fact, Japan avoided being colonized thanks to the timely expulsion of Christian missionaries & killing of local converts.
In China, the Boxer Rebellion came to late.

This is why I explicitly said that Christianity is Orthodox Christianity...any weirdo can call himself Christian and there were all sorts of "Christian" sects including ones that had "sex liturgies" and ate the aborted babies of female parishioners...Protestantism isn't real Christianity and this rebellion leader went way above even the typical Protestant level of craziness.

I agree that "Protestantism is not above rebellion", though: it basically is rebellion and caused not just religious wars but also all sorts of other murderous and theocratic movements, like the Anabaptists (they're pretty peaceful these days, but that's certainly not how they started out). This "Lord's Resistance Army" also isn't Orthodox and it seems to mostly be a personality cult around their leader, as sects and cults often are.
With respect to Japan: there were Orthodox missionaries there as well as Western missionaries; you can find the writings of some of the Orthodox fathers there who, even in a time when Japan was at war with Russia (the father's country of origin) told the Japanese to pray for Japanese victory even though they themselves would pray for Russian victory (being Russian) and openly saying that this is the way...to stick by your nation.

So I would simply suggest not lumping in crazy cults and heretics and their anti-Christian movements with Christianity.

Within Christian Catholicism & Orthodoxy itself, there r different branches & sects:
 Eastern Catholic  List of Catholic orders and congregations
 Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches

Just like in the Koran, the Bible gives different things to different people.
There were also Nestorian (Assyrian) Christians & Jews in China, but most of them were gone before the 1st Opium War. 
Btw, Chingis Khan, upon learning the Christian theology of "1 God in Heaven", declared that there should be 1 empire on Earth- i.e. his Mongolian Empire that later united China under his grandson Kublai.

Only the Eastern Orthodox Church is Orthodox because only it has the Orthodox theology that explains our worldview.

Eastern Catholics are pretty close to our theology but still deviate in a number of important ways, such as an undue (and Nestorian) focus on the "sacred heart" (which actually comes from Frankish pagan heart worship) and the acceptance of the Pope as "infallible supreme ruler of the universe", which is an entirely un-Christian idea (but no surprise that such an idea comes out of the West); they are also responsible for a number of massacres against Orthodox Christians in the East and are mostly a geopolitical tool of the Papacy. So, while they are clearly not Orthodox Christians, they show that the Roman Catholic Church isn't really a united Church, unlike their claims and unlike our Church, because they have all sorts of groups within it that believe wildly different things. In the Orthodox Church, whether you are in the East or in the West or anywhere else (and this, of course, includes Western Rite Eastern Orthodox) you must believe in our theology or you are not Orthodox by definition.
The Oriental "Orthodox" also deviate greatly from our theology...it's not just about Chalcedon, as they have an entirely different Metaphysics from us, which becomes clear when they debate actual Orthodox people (see e.g. youtube.com/watch?v=4n-myvYQO8M). So you see, it is important to know what is the actual belief of a person when putting them in some category...if they are not Orthodox in their belief, like the Apostles and Church Fathers were, then they are not really / fully Christian (and most Roman Catholics today don't even know about the Church Fathers, other than, perhaps, St. Augustine); additionally, even a properly Orthodox person is not automatically a Saint and thus still constantly falls into Sin (and even Saints can sin, of course), so it's not valid, either, to look at any actions of any Orthodox people and call that something that is supported by Christianity. If you want to know what actions are actually supported by Christianity you need to read the Bible in the context of (i.e. with the commentary of) the Church Fathers, because the Bible is a very large collection of very old Books in languages (regarding the original text) that almost no one can understand any more today, so the proper interpretation is not always trivial.

If by your comment about the Bible giving different things to different people you mean the Old Testament notion of the "Chosen People" (Israelites) then this is simply the early portion of God's working in the world. He chose the Israelites to establish His temple and carry His Commandments out into the world. When they started to become self-obsessed, however, and didn't accept the prophesied Messiah, who is His Son, He rejected them and entered into a new covenant with humanity (the New Testament), such that now His Church (the Orthodox Church) is the New Israel; this is why Christianity, unlike Judaism or Islam, is actually universalistic and doesn't view some people as inherently better than others. But while the Old Testament may seem much more "harsh" on the surface, if you pay attention, you can still find the teachings of the New Testament present in it, e.g. the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20) or "Love your neighbour as yourself" and the idea of not regarding people's worth differently based on social status (Leviticus 19:15-18) etc.

With respect to the Chingis Khan thing...I don't see how that has to do with Christianity; Islam and Judaism also believe in One God and establishing "one empire under the sun" (e.g. a world government) is actually what the Bible prophesies the Antichrist will do.

In an attempt to salvage the derailing of the thread, I certainly agree that numerous states and organizations (and especially the West) have attempted to use some perverted, false notion of Christianity for geopolitical purposes and this certainly happened in China, as well. But in Orthodoxy we have this idea of "synphonia", a balance / harmony, which applies also to the relationship between the Church and the State; so proper Orthodox Bishops will not allow the Church to be misused as a tool for geopolitical ambitions; if you are interested, you can check out the official Russian Orthodox Church's position on such issues at mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/

I think China could greatly benefit from a Christianization and the fact that, despite the persecution, so many people are participating in (even properly Orthodox) liturgies there shows that these people hunger for the Truth. At the same time, neither Russia nor any other Orthodox country will forcibly impose Christianity on them and this is not how Christianity works anyway; if there is a revolutionary element to Christianity then it is the revolution in one's heart, but not a rebellion or state coup.

With respect to the Chingis Khan thing...I don't see how that has to do with Christianity; Islam and Judaism also believe in One God..

regardless of which teaching he learned 1st, they r all monotheistic, & while fighting Muslims he used it to justify his ideology- similar to the 19th century Manifest Destiny in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmEScIUcvz0


Since the Kievan Rus baptism in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church always served the state. in the USSR & now Russia, it was/is under the KGB/FSB control. 

..China could greatly benefit from a Christianization and the fact that, despite the persecution, so many people are participating in (even properly Orthodox) liturgies there shows that these people hunger for the Truth. 

to the Orientals, there's more than 1 truth- Christianity is just 1 more teaching that some of them find helpful, while they & don't discard/integrate elements of it with Confucianist, Buddhist, Taoist & animist beliefs & practices. The same person will practice Confucianism in his daily life, Buddhism at a funeral, & Taoism when learning/practicing self healing/visual/martial arts & visiting a TCM doctor. 
Btw, the Falun Gong  combined elements Buddhism & Taoism; it's the latest example of their mutual influences on each other, as the Chan (Zen) Buddhism itself is a product of Indian Buddhism combined with Taoism, which under its influence established its own formal church structure with big temples & monasteries. 
The Chinese rulers were always afraid of religious sects getting out of control; they know how the West used Christianity to subjugate, exploit & colonize non-Europeans, & that's why they don't let Christian churches/NGOs to be infiltrated by outside intel services.

regardless of which teaching he learned 1st, they r all monotheistic, & while fighting Muslims he used it to justify his ideology- similar to the 19th century Manifest Destiny in the USA.

My point is that just because someone claims to be Christian or claims to be inspired by what he thinks Christianity is doesn't mean that actual Christianity is now responsible for his actions...also, "monotheistic" is a term that can mean different things; from our view most Roman Catholics are actually polytheists and Muslims are pantheists with a rather unclear status of "monotheism" (but this only becomes apparent when deep diving into the theology).
The USA was never Orthodox.

Since the Kievan Rus baptism in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church always served the state. in the USSR & now Russia, it was/is under the KGB/FSB control.

There is big difference between coexistence in harmony and subservience. The ROC has supported the state when it was doing things it approved of and seeing how the Tsarist state was mostly leading the country in a very Orthodox manner, there was no reason to form any kind of "opposition"; this changed with the October Revolution, however, and the ROC certainly didn't bow down and support the communists, which is why they killed and tortured more than 50,000 priests, raped nuns and destroyed almost all monasteries and most Church buildings. It is no coincidence that so many people fled Russia after the revolution that they were able to found an entire new local Church (ROCOR - the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) that then initiated a schism with the ROC once the few remaining ROC bishops in communist Russia started conceding to the communists' demands with the public declaration of then-Metropolitan Sergius in 1927, who, in his faithlessness, though to be fair under great hardship, capitulated to the atheists and started the process of allowing the ROC to be undermined by KGB agents and unbelievers. This is why it took more than 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union for ROCOR to reunite with ROC...ROCOR was very insistent that any remnant of so-called Sergianism is purged. The fact that even today only a little more than 5% of the Russian population can simultaneously fit into ROC parish churches, despite the fact that Russia has been building on average 3 churches per day in the last 15 years and was a very Christian country before the revolution with a population of about 90 million of which most could fit into a church on Sunday and important holidays, shows the massive destruction that was wreaked, so the notion that the ROC was only ever a tool of the government is absurd, but unfortunately quite popular in the West, which, IMO, is simply a projection of what they know of "their own Church", which certainly does serve Western elites no matter the ideology and has for a long time (you can find images of Protestant ministers doing the Hitler salute in Nazi Germany and it's abundantly clear that today both most Protestant organizations as well as the RC Pope clearly push Western Liberalism).

Back to China: yes, some elements of e.g. Hinduism are perennialist, but typically this is relatively superficial and simply meant to suck people into the religion (it is being propagated very intensely and with some success in the USA, especially), but it definitely has it's very own theology and metaphysics that merely uses perennialist notions as a tool. "True perennialism" is more of a modern invention and makes no sense whatsoever...it's just relativism, which is always self-contradictory; mixing and matching elements from different religions together only makes sense if you don't actually believe in any of them, because they all contradict one another; it is the modern, consumerist way to look at religion as just another product to incorporate into one's secular, godless lifestyle that has very different basic assumptions philosophically than any of those religions and therefore simply serves as yet another temporary distraction from the latent suspicion that life is meaningless. People have to be constantly and intensely indoctrinated not to notice this, which is what modern education systems and media do (the "secular prophets" like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye "the Science Guy" even explicitly tell you that you shouldn't think about philosophy, because their own philosophical grounding is absolutely laughable and if people did start thinking about this stuff they might start to notice that).
Some people, though, will notice and then they will tell others and search together for an alternative, which is where both ideologies and religions can enter to "fill the void"...only one can actually be true, however, and Orthodox Christianity makes a very compelling case for itself, which is why it's growing much better than the other "denominations", and not just in the East. I think some concerns on the side of China with respect to outside influence from NGOs and religious organizations is legitimate but when it comes to Orthodox Christianity, which very decentralized to begin with, the disagreement is much more fundamental and to be found on the level of world view.

The USA was never Orthodox.

true, but its Westward expansion "from sea to shining sea" was justified in the name of progress & anti-paganism/animism/catholicism, as those lifeways/religions were practiced by the Natives & Mexicans that stood in the way. 

..from our view most Roman Catholics are actually polytheists..

Slavic-paganism-make-its-way-to-the-practice-of-Orthodox-Christianity-in-Russia: Eastern Orthodoxy: Mirror Image of Pagan Romanism

Pagan symbols adopted by Christianity  http://oaks.nvg.org/ap3.html

..the notion that the ROC was only ever a tool of the government is absurd,..

Peter the Great changed the ROC rights, installed a new Patriarch, & sent the Old Believers to hiding in Siberia & later abroad. Patriarchs Alexis & now Kirill was/is working hand in glove with KGB/FSB & Putin.

..Orthodox Christianity makes a very compelling case for itself, which is why it's growing much better than the other "denominations", and not just in the East.

most Chinese Christians r Protestants, Baptists or Catholics, not Orthodox- I doubt there will be a huge following of Orthodoxy there. Like in India, there'll be more Buddhists & Muslims there than all the Christians combined. Official statistics don’t exist, but the Pew Research Center, which surveys religious belief worldwide, estimates some 245 million Buddhists in China, around 18% of the total national population. Another 21% of Chinese adhere to folk religions that often incorporate Buddhist beliefs, according to Pew. Buddhism Is Growing in China, But Remains in Legal Limbo ...

[url=https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/buddhism.htm#:~:text=Buddhism is China's oldest foreign,involved reaching Enlightenment through meditation.]Chinese Buddhism Facts and History[/url]

Indeed, the Chinese venerate the Dragon (big flying snake) since according to their believes it controls rains essential to rice cultivation, while for the Christianity it represents evil that gave an apple to Eve & fought the righteous saintly heroes. 
Don't expect most of them to convert/accept the E. Orthodoxy which is likely inspired the Egyptian theology:  https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2017/04/11/How-Egypt-was-Christian-before-the-birth-of-Christ#:~:text=11%20April%202017-,The%20documented%20history%20of%20Egypt%20dates%20back%20to%20the%20age,years%20of%20its%20written%20history.&text=In%20fact%2C%20Egypt%20has%20succeeded,many%20of%20its%20ancient%20beliefs.

Even in Russian built Harbin, the Saint Sophia Cathedral is now a museum.