I’m a practicing Catholic but I am a passionate consumer of history in many different forms. I agree there is genuine belief but it’s unlikely to me that a Jarl in Norway woke up one morning and thought “today I shall be baptized!” and suddenly renounced all of their ancestors and prior beliefs. There is a path from A to Z and I believe it always included tangible benefits in their reality. Things they can feel and see. This is why I believe in Christ so deeply - I know it to be true with what I have felt and experienced.
There really isn't a need for missionaries today. The Catholic church recognizes the concept of the virtuous pagan, which is really their attempt to handwave away some really deeply troubling implications. But they chose their poison, and they have drank it, and now catholics must deal with the consequences.
The concept of the virtuous pagan is thus: what if someone never hears the word of God, but is otherwise moral in their conduct? They will be judged as a Christian, whereas someone who rejects the word of God is destined for damnation.
Hypothetical: Gerald is a virtuous pagan. A missionary tells him the word of God. He rejects the word of God but continues to live his moral life. He is now going to hell because of that missionary.
I maintain that missionaries do not save the damned, they damn the moral. Please stop trying to recruit for your cult, just be happy meeting in your congregations, stop spreading the fucking gospels to people who are just sick of hearing that shit already. Goddamn. It's not special or important, it's just spiritual opium for unhappy people, to give them something to look forward to in death while they turn their noses up at people in life and act superior.
What a disgusting and astonishingly ignorant response. You're distorting things and your vulgarity betrays your hateful bias.
First of all, it is essential to Christianity to spread the truth of the Gospels. It is not optional. Christians have been commanded to do so by someone they take to be the Lord of the Universe. If you accept that, then it is necessary. It becomes an act of selfless love, to bring light to the darkness so that people may be saved from the darkness of sin. It isn't just missionaries, but every Christian has this duty. That's nonnegotiable. Your dislike of evangelism cannot change that.
Now, how it is done is a matter of judgement. Usually, it's a matter of demonstration, of living one's life according to the moral and divine law, and through outward signs that make known one's beliefs to other people. When someone lives a good life, this example inspires other people to learn more about the person in question, to better understand where this goodness comes from. Thus, the message of the Gospels can come out in a natural way during normal conversation, and when inspired by example, tends to carry more weight with people. If you genuinely accept the propositions of Christianity as true, then your speech and actions will reflect that. You don't need to strain and look for artificial ways to breach the subject.
Second, you speak of the Church like it has been composed of a succession of idiots who just recently realized the "implications" you propose. Yes, we had to wait two millennia before some guy on the internet or some pamphleteer finally realized there's an elephant in the room (never mind that Christianity started small in a backwater of the Roman Empire). Talk about cringe.
The Church still holds, as it always has, that baptism is necessary for salvation. Now, just because the sacraments are supposed to furnish us with certain graces doesn't mean God Himself is bound by the sacraments. Imagine our pagan forefathers who lived and died a thousand years before the Incarnation. They could not have possibly come to know Christ in the way the Gospels make evident. However, they could still have recognized and lived according to the moral law. Christ is the Incarnate Logos, so if you accept the moral law, you have, to some degree at least, accepted the Logos. Thus, if you come to know Christ through the Gospels, and you recognize in Christ the Incarnation of Reason Itself (that's what John 1 is about[0], though anything but the Greek do it justice), of this moral order, then why would you reject Christ? It makes no sense. The only answer is either a failure of recognition, or that one consciously rejects the Logos, of reason and morality, as evil people do (and all sin is a minor or major rejection of Logos). And if some form of invincible ignorance is indeed responsible, then there is no fault. Here's a bit more on the subject [0].
Cringe is trying to push your beliefs on other people because sky daddy commands you to. I'm not reading anything more on Christianity or catholicism, not after my early youth was squandered by moralizing hypocrites. Religious trauma is a very real phenomenon, and I'd argue that it's on the rise. Christians need to take a serious look inward and try to figure out why it is their religion of peace leaves such a wake of devastated souls and relationships. I actually saw two Christian parents, wholly bought into the fertility cult aspect, encourage their daughter to not seek cancer treatment because it might render her infertile. This is not an isolated attitude.
Also, why should it matter to me if they're doing it because they think they're commanded to by some omnipotent figure? I regularly disregard the rantings of schizophrenics, why should I buy into one delusion and not another? Why should I respect Christian beliefs more than other delusions?
I don't know why anyone is reluctant to believe in your assessment. While not Catholic now, I recall all the saint-worship in catholic school, which, as you probably noticed too, consisted almost solely of those that converted their own tribe of pagan barbarians for the period between Rome's fall and the Spanish Inquisition. Saint Boniface, Saint Patrick, etc. They pretty much declared people anointed demigods to be worshipped forever as reward for convincing barbarians that all their problems can be solved by the cross.
I've been using Conduit for quite a while now and have found it to be very good.
For ages though it has been missing support for spaces, but support has just landed in the development builds and it is great. I've already updated my service and it has worked as expected.
I love that this is a discussion here. How profitable! There are very few questions that are of greater importance than the one you have alluded to.
I'm a Christian and, oddly, don't suffer from the same existential dread as most admit any more, but I used to be consumed by it.
The simplest way I could say it is this: once you are shown what is behind the curtain and you place your trust in the one who's running the show then dread gives way to overwhelming peace. That's what happened for me and I guarantee that anyone who seeks the same true God will find the same peace.
Easy to dismiss, I know, but I guarantee it's true. Odd, eh?
Part of dealing with your existential dread is accepting the fact that you're right to be afraid, but not for the reasons you first think. This will be a bridge too far for some, but a discerning reading of this could be the catalyst some need: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/edwards_jonathan/Sermon...
Thank you for sharing this. I’m a Christian as well and have found the same peace about death. At the same time, I get stressed out easily about work and probably have an existential dread about negative reputation or “wasting my potential” - clearly my work-related identity is an idol (in Christian parlance).
I was watching “Hustle” (Adam Sandler basketball movie) yesterday and strangely enough a line he said resonated with me: “they can’t kill you if you’re already dead.” (The context in the movie was that the youngster protagonist missed his official chance of playing in the NBA by failing the combine, and thus was “dead.” He had nothing to lose when he got a random last-ditch chance to demonstrate his skills in another venue.). As a Christian we believe that our old selves have died and that we are born again in the Spirit, even while we are here on earth. This gives those who believe this the confidence to face any fear or challenge in this lifetime, as we have already died anyway, there is nothing to lose since our new lives are secure in Christ (even after a physical death process).
I'm Christian, and feel likewise - no existential dread. We recently had various deaths and mortal health scares in our family and among friends. I hadn't really confronted death before that but I realised that because I had complete faith in the fate of the departed (or the person who was unwell etc), it was the people around them that I worried about more, but even that was tempered by the fact that I knew they'd be taken care of too.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Imagine playing a game of Minecraft where the game was constantly being updated to help you get the most out of it, and where you experienced something much deeper as a result of engaging in that process.
The problem with Christianity is that all this stuff about God, Christ's sacrifice, and letting yourself have faith is all very nice, but the ethical side of the religion is, to me, quite deplorable.
Could you please expand on this? Full disclosure, I am a Christian myself and am genuinely interested in which ethical parts of Christianity you find deplorable.
To me, the ethics essentially come down to mirroring Christ in my own life in everything I do; the moral compass is Christ himself in the Christian life. I fail often but that's the goal / struggle. With that, I'd like to know what those outside of the faith find deplorable about the way Christ lived His life?
And I do understand that deplorable ethical decisions have been made by those or the body calling themselves Christians (and sadly, myself too at times). I would say this is a sin / shortcoming of the person or group and not of what Christ has asked that person or group to live like.
James 1:27: "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
Please explain. I'm not on either side but you've left a very strong claim without backing it up. At the very least someone who responds will likely have an entirely different version of what you said than you do
I do not think a God that allows his children the option to damn themselves for all eternity is morally good. That is pretty much my main ethical issue in terms of the basic theology. I think the morally correct action for God would be to override the wishes of humans. I do not think that "free will" is a good excuse to allow people to be damned forever. A parent who allows his child to touch the stove is a bad parent.
I don't think it's necessary to believe in eternal damnation in order to be a Christian. Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Bentley Hart are two preeminent theologians who would agree. That's just from the little I know on this subject.
I mean it’s surely possible to find theologians that don’t but it’s the official doctrine of all real existing sects, and regardless, even if you forget about eternal damnation then is still implies that you aren’t saved unless you put faith in Christ.
My other issue with Christianity is that Jesus comes off as genuinely unhinged sometimes. For example, when he tells the Jews that the only way to be saved is to eat his flesh, and when they say “surely that’s just a metaphor, how do we eat your flesh?” he says “no, I’m being totally serious”. There are a bunch of times in John where the stuff he is saying sounds crazy even to his disciples. Let me ask you, if someone today came and said those things, would you believe them? The only difference between him and a modern person on drugs is the records of his supposed miracles
You don't need to eat the whole cake at once. It's astonishingly tough to give advice on this sort of thing. A couple of starting points which might work for some people:
1. Dwelling on the utter absurdity of the universe appearing from nowhere without the intervention of a power well beyond our means to understand is a good start.
2. Try to move from the dominant paradigm of scientific analysis (nothing wrong with it, in its place!) which breaks things down into smaller things, to a narrative or holistic view of the world. They're both equally valid, and both can be considered fundamental. There are things happening in the world and to you. Those things are all imbued with meaning. Nothing is meaningless. What is the story of your life, what is your mission? If the events of your life were trying to tell you something, what would that be?
Alternatively, the fact that we don't yet know how the universe came to be doesn't imply that there has to be some great power that created it.
Things are happening all the time, of course, but there is no need to see meaning anywhere. Humans have a strong need to seek meaning, and will even go so far as to make it up where it does not exist.
If everything that exists has a cause, and a higher power that created the universe exists, something else must have caused it to exist. What caused God?
This is one of the ontological arguments for the existence of God. Any intelligible first cause must have a prior cause. Therefore the first cause is unintelligible. The thing which caused the universe is beyond our understanding.
I've got Minetest on my machines. Another good one along these lines is Veloren. It's a Rust voxel game along the lines of minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.
The guy is literally describing how to shut down discussion on topics by escalating behaviours around it.
The great problem with this approach is that there are very many groups happy to see discussion of divers topics quashed and they're already familiar with how to get it done on platforms like Twitter.
I don't think Canonical have taken a ux-first approach to their development since the early days of their distro accelerating the evolution of the Linux desktop experience.
They're much more business-goal minded now. In this instance, making their users dog food their new shiny enterprise play.
