"Christian" behaviour.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

These people profess to be Christians.

Whoever the 'pastor'/'minister' of this misguided flock is, he needs to be charged as well, if he has not been.  This kind of thing is not done unless condoned.  Not only is it illegal is is a work of Satan.

[raynev1 1,887]

WOW , That was a horrific ordeal . What is wrong with people and what are they worshiping there ? Unfortunate things happen everyday , but this is ridiculous . Lock'em up and throw away the key .

[Sabretooth78 808]

This is something I would expect from Westboro.

[MintberryCrunch 83]

This is something I would expect from Westboro.

Eh, the thing about Westboro is they're all talk. 

These people on the other hand are actually scary because they add a physical element to their crazy. 

I think we can also learn from examples like this and Westboro that calling yourself a Christian doesn't mean you actually are one. 

[Sabretooth78 808]

I think we can also learn from examples like this and Westboro that calling yourself a Christian doesn't mean you actually are one. 

I've always felt there's a large disconnect between most christians and being Christian.  I've always viewed being Christian almost as more of an idea.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole mind, soul, and being.  And thy neighbour for the love of Him"
                                  Jesus of Nazareth (as translated by several authors)

This is the whole basis of Christianity.  What else is there?
 

[blade2k5 1,523]

These are those so-called 'Born again' non-christians and are not to be taken seriously at all.  It's easy to differentiate between real christians and fake ones.  Real christians practice what they preach while these so-called 'born again' fanatics are the ones you see on street corners harassing people on the streets attempting to pass out flyers to get others to join their 'flock' so to speak.  Groups like Calvary Ministries for instance are born again fanatics and can get quite nasty at times.  They are so far from being christian because they never practice what the preach.  With them, it's do as we say and not as we do and they're nothing more than a cult.  So labeling all christians in one group is pretty ignorant to say the least.

[tankmank 853]

People use religion far too often as a reason  for their actions and words. And unfortunately this is for hate or intolerance of others sometimes. People say they did/said something because it is was what Jesus/God/Allah ect.. said or would do. This can be being anti abortion, gay or racist. It is happening with ISIS now, their whole back reason for their actions is some passages in the Qu'ran . Religion can be a positive thing, this coming from an Atheist. Look at the stuff that church groups do in America to help the poor where in Europe the state would do instead. But people instead focus on the bad all too often, citing anti gay or abortion stances or even very sexist views where women are in fact second class citizens. 

What originally posted was a terrible thing fueled by religion but does't compare to some of the other acts done by people in the name of their religion. I think so much conflict would be gone if religion was to cease now, people would have less reasons to hate each other. But it won't, we have to instead enhance the positive aspects and remove the negative ones. 

[philforhockey51 4,238]

Acts such as these and those committed by other religions in the name of their religion is why I am against all religions, none are right or can be right.

I think that everyone present at the church during these "ritual" beatings should also be arrested for not doing something to stop it. If I was around something taking place like this I would do my best to stop it but if I felt I could not stop it(this situation could have been stopped) I would not continue to take part in the gatherings with these other people. I'm too disgusted to dig further but if they are not charged with the other crimes they committed including torture, held against will etc. then they should be.

[hym 358]

I think that everyone present at the church during these "ritual" beatings should also be arrested for not doing something to stop it.

In general, American courts, from the state level up to the SCOTUS, reject the legality of "duty to act" laws.  An individual cannot be compelled to act in defense of another individual.  If you are aware of someone being attacked, you are within your right to choose to do nothing about it, and no construct of American government, from the local level all the way up to the federal government, possesses the authority to tell you otherwise.

[philforhockey51 4,238]

I think you're right, moment of anger on my part

[MintberryCrunch 83]

The story is now starting to sound like the teen was beaten because he expressed a desire to leave the group:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/10/16/teen-beaten-to-death-at-reclusive-n-y-church-wanted-out-police-say/

Classic cult behavior. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

I was never one to be sensationalist and emotional so the 'cruelty' etc I shall ignore as subjective data.

I believe that religion can be classified as

1. A way of living and acting

2. Belief in various unscientific things like magic or gods

3. Belief in a universal 'good' and 'vaatu' spirit, and a ethical code of moral behaviour

and 4. the most advanced form, a tileset or district style religion whereby each universe in a parallax or each house in a room is differently and absolutely themed.

In such a house, whether one or many roomed, good is keeping to the style and bad being unfashionable, thus a man in a suit in a room of bathers is heretical.

The last type of religion is called 'culture', and when associated/connected with land 'nationality'

Christianity is a landless cultural phenomenon with origins in and a bonework of belief in unscientifical facts and myths but also a good and evil of a moral kind.

I see heretical sects as perfectly natural. No culture or religion ever lived in a vacuum from Adsm to Judgment.

In theory however all religions are absolute convictions, beliefs, dogma unquestionable.

We either tolerate inevitable eternal religious conflict or we enforce rational peace.

 

[Compdude787 916]

Those people are not Christians; they are a cult that claims to be "Christian." The Bible says to beware of false prophets and false teachings, and this clearly qualifies as such. Unfortunately, there are many people and groups like this (Westboro Baptist Church is a famous example. FYI God really does not hate fags as people, but rather He hates their homosexual behavior) and they harm Christianity's reputation. As a conservative/evangelical Christian myself, I'm appalled at this and nobody should be forced to confess to a sin by being beaten to death. It goes against the fact that we have free will and that it's our choice to follow God's commands. Christianity is not about following a set of rules, but really about having faith in Christ. After all, if going to heaven depended on whether we did certain things to make God happy, then there'd be nobody in heaven because nobody's perfect and we all screw up and sin. 

Most Christians are good people. The vast majority of them make the world a better place and improve the lives of others by showing their love, helping people out, and giving people hope by spreading the gospel. It has made the world a better place and without Christianity, a lot would be missing in the world.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think that everyone present at the church during these "ritual" beatings should also be arrested for not doing something to stop it.

In general, American courts, from the state level up to the SCOTUS, reject the legality of "duty to act" laws.  An individual cannot be compelled to act in defense of another individual.  If you are aware of someone being attacked, you are within your right to choose to do nothing about it, and no construct of American government, from the local level all the way up to the federal government, possesses the authority to tell you otherwise.

Too bad.  Good Samaritans are often charged with assault and other offences because of this attitude in the courts.  An other example of the licentious use of freedom.  When "freedom" is treated like a commodity is ceases to be freedom but becomes something else.  Freedom is not free and must be guarded with all care and caution.

[hym 358]

 Too bad.  Good Samaritans are often charged with assault and other offences because of this attitude in the courts.

While we can't dig into the specifics of every assault case in America concerning a Good Samaritan action, I suspect that this isn't actually true.  The reason is that "duty to act" laws and "Good Samaritan" laws cover different portions of the encounter.

The general premise for the creation of Good Samaritan laws is that "it is unconscionable that an individual, acting in good faith and good will towards his fellow man in a moment of personal crisis, should then be eligible for prosecution for mistakes made during that act."  (Or something like that, I don't remember the exact quote.)  In other words, Good Samaritan laws generally concern themselves with what happens after the decision is made to offer aid towards a person in distress.

By contrast, "duty to act" laws, when they regard private individuals, generally concern the moment in time when the individual in distress is first discovered.  Under a duty to act law, the mere fact that you discovered the situation compels you to attempt to help that individual, no matter how unprepared or dangerous it may be for you to do that. Duty to act laws can also have unintended consequences that arise from this requirement.  For example, under a duty to act law, you can be compelled to provide aid to someone against their personal wishes.  You may be compelled to insert yourself into a situation that may be reasonably judged to be deleterious to your own health and/or life.  If you stumble across someone about to commit suicide, you may be compelled to use force against that person to prevent the suicide attempt.  Depending on the individual(s) involved in the situation, it may even be possible for a duty to act law to run afoul of an individual's First Amendment protections.

In closing, there are very serious reasons that "duty to act" obligations to do not exist for individuals. First, they offer the distressed individual very little versus what that person would receive from a Good Samaritan genuinely motivated to help the situation.  Second, to be effective, they must offer standards that are clear and easy to follow during a moment of crisis and irrational thought, while still avoiding unintended and negative consequences.  Finally, they must do all of this through a legal framework hostile to their existence; American courts have been rejecting the concept for over a century, and English courts centuries before that.

  Edited October 17, 2015 by hym  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Of course with minor children there is also the 'duty of care' that falls on any adult when a child is being abused.  Whether this is covered by a legal code, it is most certain covered by the Christian ethic, which is claimed in this regard.

[Meg 368]

. . .  He hates . . .

That is one place where modern Christianity loses me. "A time to hate".

Hatred is toxic and no good can come from it.   The Law of Tenfold Return, as some people call it, applies to emotions as well as money.   Sending hatred out into the universe results in more hatred.  What is the purpose of encouraging that?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

One must be very careful with concepts like hatred.  Hatred is a sin in many religious frames, but Christianity preaches hatred of evil (the Devil and all his works).  However, most of this is in the Old Testament and, perhaps in the Acts of the Apostles.  The doctrine of Christ says nothing about hate, but speaks only of the love of God and neighbours.  IMHO the New Testament completely supersedes the Old Testament and the Acts of the Apostles are simply commentary.  As for the Book of the Apocalypse, I would shear it out of the Bible as the ravings of a madman.

Now what is the definition of evil?  To some it is any argument against doctrine, and this can be deadly as we have seen.  But this doctrine is quite often non-Christian.  If God created everything, why did He create evil?  (Never mind, this question breaks the machine.)

FYI: I am a kind of rational Christian (kind of) but I don't buy answers that cannot be questioned.

  Edited October 17, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  

[AkemiAzula 280]

If there was a neoclassical house and someone thought they would bring in a Victorian grandfather clock or an Edwardian dresser, the religion of Neoclassicalism would call for hatred against this evil.

Evil is whatever isn't Good and Good is whatever is good.

But one does not require the emotion of hatred in order to delete a weed. Fixing bugs in a code does not call for swastikas or for smashed windows.

But in deleting bugs in code we are more thorough than any pogrom or fox cull.

Religions are beliefs and beliefs can be either rationally proven logical rules (I must eat, if someone steals my cow i shall kill him) or loyalties to dogma of culture (red is the color of our devil, wear not red)

I have often said war and peace are rain and sun, human emotion is tornadoes and fire.

Sims do as they are programmed. The problem with having a single religion of faithful sheep or of ethical atheists in our universe is freedom of thought.

So long as temptation to 'sin' or necessity to (war etc) exists we shall. Only when the code is bug free do the automata behave without fault.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Paranoia in the Pulpit appears to be the Proximate Cause.

"He did have good points," Handville said. "Through him I was able to memorize half the Bible. He taught me a lot. What he failed to teach me was how to use what I read — how to treat people."

What good is memorizing a translation of the scripture if you don't understand it?  You have to be able to discriminate among all that allegory.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

This is a complex matter but it touches on a few things.

1. Some churches (usually with small membership in low-density areas) are cults (some were founded as cults, some merely devolved into cults) that superficially resemble a major religion

2. Many self-proclaimed "Christians" do NOT truly understand the teachings of Lord Jesus Christ (which is also translated as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit or "ruler," "Joshua," "anointed"). Some memorized Bible passages and some listen to sermons but none of these people took the time to read an accurate translation of the bible and critically analyze and understand it. Their "Christianity" is reduced to regurgitating the "word of man" (what others have told them) so they become biased, prejudiced, and intolerant.

3. If faith, understanding, and penance are like voluntary vaccines and antibiotics (they strengthen your "immune system" against the "disease" of sin without eradicating it from the world), then regurgitating biased paraphrasing is like placebos and alcohol (they make you feel good and wipe out 99% of outside "microbes" of thought without making you healthier).

4. Faithful understanding, disbelieving skepticism, and hypocritical religious appearances are mutually exclusive but are independent of the power of the persons with these beliefs. There are persons from all levels of wealth and authority in all 3 categories (as well as the weak middle grounds of agnosticism, militant "flat-earth" atheists, faithful believers obsessed with tradition and appearances, and believers without the desire of deep understanding).

5. The Bible says that God condemns sin but forgives sinners. Jesus paid the ultimate Sacrifice to erase the sins of ALL humans. The Old Testament describes animal sacrifice to cover sins. Lambs are believed to be without sin but their sacrifice in the old times were only partially effective because of the inability of informed consent. Jesus was without sin, constantly turning down temptation but was also a living, thinking human being. His Sacrifice was consensual and rather brutal. He suffered more than any ritually sacrificed animal would have because he was punished like a murderous traitor under Roman law. If you think lethal injection is bad, you would faint from a description of Crucifixion! Anyway, God truly despises sin but God hates the temptation (the work of Satan), not the poor human beings who fell for the temptation. We are ALL sinners and the Bible says we can ALL go to heaven. Even if we do all the right things, think all the right things, and have true faith, temptation will always remain because we have free will. It is impossible for a normal, functioning mortal human to be without sin from birth to death. The Bible clearly states that Jesus preached that the MOST IMPORTANT thing is love! When asked (by what most nowadays would call traditionalist religious lawyers) what the most important of the 10 Commandments was, Jesus responded that loving God was the most important Commandment and (thinking ahead of the inevitable next question) that loving each other was the 2nd most important Commandment.

6. Side note, supporting Israel and Kim Davis are NOT the Christian things to do, they support religious oppression. The (Palestinian) Christians are persecuted by the Israelis in power and the Islamic terrorists. Our books tell us to love each other and for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to accept that we all worship the same (Abrahamic God). Also, Roman Catholics are obligated to go to mass on Holy Days and the only churches that count towards fulfilling our obligations are Catholic, Orthodox, and Maronite. I could fulfill my obligations by going to a Palestinian church for Easter Mass but a Mega Church doesn't count. Kim Davis is a hypocritical "Christian" with beliefs contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ and actions that Jesus would personally condemn himself.

In conclusion (too long; didn't read):

1. Many "churches" are really cults

2. Many religious conservatives do not follow their own religion

3. Regurgitation bad; understanding good

4. Anyone can potentially be good or bad

5. God hates sin, loves sinners, and wants us all to love each other

 

I'm Marco Meza and I approve this message

 

 

My own opinion (which is not an opinion officially held by any religion) is that our civilization is undergoing a critical turning point in the "human experiment" on free will. Depending on our actions, God will either end the experiment (Second Coming, Rapture, Apocalypse, etc) or continue it (peace and progress). The good thing about my opinion is that it cannot be disproven because the results will be discovered in the future and both options resemble plausible natural outcomes (WWIII or peaceful (possibly even gradual, unnoticeable, and mostly technological) revolution)

  Edited October 18, 2015 by OcramSeattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Free will is the gift of the (probably mythical) creator.  It is there so that we can find out for ourselves whether there even is a creator.  Organized religions are full of answers that cannot be questioned on pain of retaliation.  Free will questions everything, and often has more questions that may not be answered in anyone's lifetime.  Which makes more sense?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Free will is the gift of the (probably mythical) creator.  It is there so that we can find out for ourselves whether there even is a creator.  Organized religions are full of answers that cannot be questioned on pain of retaliation.  Free will questions everything, and often has more questions that may not be answered in anyone's lifetime.  Which makes more sense?

Organized religions are full of answers but they can all be questioned without retaliation. However, you cannot just go out and publicly question any type of leader (whether religious, political, economic, or other) without consequences. Some questions can be considered defamation if shouted in public. Even the 1st Amendment allows punishment for defamation. The wrong churches (by this I mean single congregations, not an entire organized sect) can punish free thought (as seen in the article linked in this thread's opening post) but by doing so, their local religious leaders alienate themselves (the leaders and the entire congregation) from their God.

 

EDIT: Why do you think Catholicism and fundamentalist Protestantism have lost more inter-generational members than Christianity (as a whole) in the USA? Children of conservative religious parents who disagree with their parents leave their community. They might remain Christian but they don't spread the prejudiced teachings of their parents to their new neighbors. Catholicism is seeing a resurgence as our new Pope has cast off the chains of un-Christian dogma.

  Edited October 18, 2015 by OcramSeattle  

[AkemiAzula 280]

I guess then that Abraham's God would despise me as a Satan because I believe that hate is both natural and healthy. If you live in a gothic house and suddenly a pinball machine or telephone appeared I would say it would be rightful to delete this abberance.

I have always been a Bettian and felt that the solution to all conflict is purity and absoluteness in cellular structures like 'nations' or 'universes'.

The idea of loving everybody because they have feelings/are God's or nature's creation I find disgusting. Love I feel should only exist for things of beauty, and most humans are hideous.

I guess you could say I am an aesthetic nazi in that if you have a pimple I will torture you to death, beat and rape your wife and wat your children, but if you are pretty I will turn a blind eye to your sins.

I am thus a believer in the goodness of hatred and the cleanliness of hatred. Being rational my 'good' is prettiness and my 'evil' ugliness, so for instance I would condemn all pop singers to Hell no matter how morally right their lives were. And pardon any sin made by Beethoven etc.

Thus maybe I am seen as an 'antichrist' or 'devil' by the Abrahamics.

 

I do not see why a heresy should be punished for being unorthodox given the existence of multiple faiths. 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Wow, Mark_Kochan, that is quite the belief you have there!

Anyway, my definition of good is contribution to human knowledge (beneficial and useful info) and my definition of bad is any action that increases the sum of human suffering. However, the opposites are not necessarily evil and good (respectively) because ignorance can be bliss and genocide removes many sufferers.

  Edited October 20, 2015 by OcramSeattle  
fixed typos caused by phone

[AkemiAzula 280]

I will say this regarding knowledge.

Without knowing the truth we are blind. Should blind men lead?

How do we know what is right or wrong, pretty or ugly, without the truth?

 

Thus above all else I believe sincerity, honesty and knowledge the most important things in any religion. 

I believe the worst sin is to lie and the worst affliction ignorance. If we do not know the truth how can we be expected to act rightly?

This is why my religion is one of culture of prettiness, for my own reactions and thoughts about a thing, how it feels in the force to me, are undeniable. I think therefore I am.

Whereas all religions with beliefs in gods or other worlds are but theorising, speculating. The very existence of multiple religions demonstrates this.

As to good being what benefits mankind, mankind is a very complicated man with many personalities and qualities and 'mankind' and animal kind are like computers and abacuses.

The relative nature of everything we see and know for certain, the predictable patternistic nature of our world of probability...

Religious wars and extremism are stupid and ignorant. However 'mankind' is but part of this world, and while I am all for advancement and knowledge... 

 

Heaven has one house for me with many rooms. I do not see becoming one with some force or light as particularly appealing and in my heaven there will be beer meat and swordfighting.

But these are just the opinions of a human after all... 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Word of life? Seriously? 

That straight up terrifies me. I get that this is probably an extreme case, but still. I live in Uppsala. Word of life was founded here,and the city's full of them. I just hope none of this happens in my city.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

sorry, never mind, moving that post to different thread

  Edited October 21, 2015 by OcramSeattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

This topic has certainly wandered far afield.  I fail to see what that last has to do with so-called Christian cults.