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Defending Christ in todays Society.

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    #32
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    monosharp wrote: »
    But its not because they are Christian. Its 'any group meeting without state approval'.

    The Nazis persecuted Jews for being Jewish, Homosexuals for being homosexual, blacks for being black.

    There are 13 million Christians in China who belong to one of the 'official' Christian/Catholic Churches. They don't persecute these Christians.

    Protestants in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianghui
    Catholics in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism_in_China

    They persecute people who meet together in their houses in groups. What they are especially afraid of is people like PDN going there and talking to these underground churches because of the western influence. Not because of the religion but because of the politics involved.

    So technically speaking, you could say that the Chinese government doesn't persecute Christians, they persecute people gathering in secret in private homes who happen to be Christian/Buddhist/Falon Gong practitioners.

    Unless of course people don't consider the 13 million people who are members of the state sponsored churches to be 'not-christian'.

    If you want to know why they are so afraid of this please read about Falon Gong, a religion that is truely despised by the Chinese government.

    Yeah ok I see your point, it is the underground part of underground church rather than the church part that gets the Chinese government so up in arms.

    Anywhoo, getting a bit off topic


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    #33
    prinz
    Registered Users Posts: 14,598 ✭✭✭✭prinz


    doctoremma wrote: »
    I find this an amazing jump. Are you honestly suggesting that only religious people don't swear and that only atheist have mouths like sailors?

    Bizarre.

    Now that was an amazing jump!

    Stephen didn't suggest anything of the sort but was hazarding a guess as to why this random man would enquire as to his religious beliefs. Temperance of speech tends not to be a strong point of mine :o


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    #34
    cypharius
    Closed Accounts Posts: 504 ✭✭✭cypharius


    Sorry to pull the conversation back to the start again, but I have another angle which may make sense to the OPer. As an atheist(Don't worry, I'm not here to argue) I do find it a bit offensive to have people worship the "god" who according to the bible, is going to have me punished for all eternity for not believing in him. The man at the bar may be angry at the injustice of the world, and see that Christians worship what they see as the cause of everything. Therefore in his eyes, Christians approve of the injustice in the world.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbMcthUZGW8

    May be a better explanation.


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    #35
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    cypharius wrote: »
    Sorry to pull the conversation back to the start again, but I have another angle which may make sense to the OPer. As an atheist(Don't worry, I'm not here to argue) I do find it a bit offensive to have people worship the "god" who according to the bible, is going to have me punished for all eternity for not believing in him...

    Misconception #1

    The man at the bar may be angry at the injustice of the world, and see that Christians worship what they see as the cause of everything.

    Misconception #2
    Therefore in his eyes, Christians approve of the injustice in the world.

    What your saying is that this person had a go at a Christian because of this persons misconceptions?



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    #36
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    cypharius wrote: »
    Sorry to pull the conversation back to the start again, but I have another angle which may make sense to the OPer. As an atheist(Don't worry, I'm not here to argue) I do find it a bit offensive to have people worship the "god" who according to the bible, is going to have me punished for all eternity for not believing in him. The man at the bar may be angry at the injustice of the world, and see that Christians worship what they see as the cause of everything. Therefore in his eyes, Christians approve of the injustice in the world.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbMcthUZGW8

    May be a better explanation.

    So you find it offensive that someone worships a non-existent Being who will send you to a non-existent place?

    Don't you think there are more important things to get offended about?


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    #37
    cypharius
    Closed Accounts Posts: 504 ✭✭✭cypharius


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Misconception #1




    Misconception #2



    What your saying is that this person had a go at a Christian because of this persons misconceptions?


    Perhaps if you would explain how these are misconceptions...

    Also, I'm not defending the guy, I'm just offering an explanation which could explain why he was so aggressive.


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    #38
    cypharius
    Closed Accounts Posts: 504 ✭✭✭cypharius


    PDN wrote: »
    So you find it offensive that someone worships a non-existent Being who will send you to a non-existent place?

    Don't you think there are more important things to get offended about?

    It's not "god" that offends me it's that Christians believe I deserve to burn in hell, as they worship the "god" who sets up that system.

    It doesn't matter if I believe it's going to happen or not, imagine there was a book where all Christians were being rounded up and shot by some guy and I wore a T-Shirt of this guys face on it. It might offend you(I don't know if it would). But again, I'm not seriously offended by Christianity, I am a bit, but not enough to do anything about it, and I just offered this as an explination for the guys behavior.


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    #39
    Stephentlig
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,114 ✭✭✭Stephentlig


    It's not "god" that offends me it's that Christians believe I deserve to burn in hell, as they worship the "god" who sets up that system.

    first of all, the Christian belief is that Christ wills no-one to go to Hell, for he died on the cross and saved us from our sins to that we may have eternal rest with him in paradise.

    secondly, the Christian belief is that God does not put you in hell, you put yourself there by your unwillingess to repent and believe in him who died for you sins. you willfully accept evil and thus thats the end result.

    thirdly ( is thirdly even a word? ) the Christian belief is that you dont deserve to burn in hell, you deserve to reign with Christ in heaven, and every Christian on this forum wants that for you regardless of your belief.
    No Christian is your judge.


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    #40
    cypharius
    Closed Accounts Posts: 504 ✭✭✭cypharius


    Stephentlig wrote: »
    first of all, the Christian belief is that Christ wills no-one to go to Hell, for he died on the cross and saved us from our sins to that we may have eternal rest with him in paradise.
    I understand this, but if god is omnipitant than he can do what he likes, and therefore dying on the cross wasn't nesisary and neither is satan/hells existence. But that's just causing a debate, and that's not what I came here for.
    Stephentlig wrote: »
    secondly, the Christian belief is that God does not put you in hell, you put yourself there by your unwillingess to repent and believe in him who died for you sins. you willfully accept evil and thus thats the end result.
    Ah, here's where the problems start to arise, me not believing in god doesn't harm anyone, so how is it evil?*
    Stephentlig wrote: »
    thirdly ( is thirdly even a word? ) the Christian belief is that you dont deserve to burn in hell, you deserve to reign with Christ in heaven, and every Christian on this forum wants that for you regardless of your belief.
    No Christian is your judge.
    I understand that Christians don't think I should go to hell, if I ask them for their opinion they will always answer "That's for god to decide" or something along those lines. But they worship the god who sets up a system whereby I could rescue orphans from burning houses on a daily basis and only eat grass and drink water when not saving orphans, yet could still be tortured for all eternity simply because I didn't believe in god.

    But this is turning into an argument, I was just offering this as an explanation for the guy at the bars behavior, not invading the Christian forums with my evil atheist taint.



    *I'm using the humanist idea of evil, IE:If it harms somebody, yada yada yada.


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    #41
    Stephentlig
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,114 ✭✭✭Stephentlig


    cypharius wrote: »
    I understand this, but if god is omnipitant than he can do what he likes, and therefore dying on the cross wasn't nesisary and neither is satan/hells existence. But that's just causing a debate, and that's not what I came here for.


    Ah, here's where the problems start to arise, me not believing in god doesn't harm anyone, so how is it evil?*


    I understand that Christians don't think I should go to hell, if I ask them for their opinion they will always answer "That's for god to decide" or something along those lines. But they worship the god who sets up a system whereby I could rescue orphans from burning houses on a daily basis and only eat grass and drink water when not saving orphans, yet could still be tortured for all eternity simply because I didn't believe in god.

    But this is turning into an argument, I was just offering this as an explanation for the guy at the bars behavior, not invading the Christian forums with my evil atheist taint.



    *I'm using the humanist idea of evil, IE:If it harms somebody, yada yada yada.

    as you said you didnt come for an argument, but my advice to you is to buy a cathechism to understand why it was neccesary that Christ deliver us from our sins. God could of done it another way, but thats the way he chose to do it, so who are we to argue with that? anyhow by a cathechism.

    speak to a catholic apologist with your opinions upon church teachings and allow him to explain it to you.

    www.scripturecatholic.com give John salza an e-mail or two and allow him to clear things up for you. again I'm not pushing it on you to do so, its just an invitation.

    therefore the argument ( as you will be relieved to know ) ends here.

    Pax Christi
    Stephen <3


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    #42
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    I don't think he is asking for the theology. As PDN points out, he doesn't believe it.

    The thing is that Christianity says something along the lines of we are all evil and at some point each Christian goes "Yeah, I agree with that, that makes sense". Otherwise they wouldn't be Christians if they didn't agree with it or think it real.

    While I personally don't find that offensive, I can sort of understand why someone would.

    None of this though is any reason to start shouting at some in a pub.


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    #43
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    cypharius wrote: »
    Perhaps if you would explain how these are misconceptions...

    Sure..

    Misconception 1. God isn't going to punish people for all eternity because "they don't believe in him". He will punish people for their evil-doing and, for those who effectively chose the option of spending eternity outside the love of God, he will respect that choice. That existing outside the love of God isn't pleasant is incidental to the central issue. A persons own choice.

    It'd be like saying that choosing to spend eternity away from all source of heat results in the unpleasantness of feeling cold all the time, is unjust of God - when it's actually the result of a persons own choice.

    Misconception 2. God doesn't cause everything to be. He creates beings with potential to choose and those being exercise that choice. Injustice results from their choosing. His responsibility is once-step removed. And he shouldn't be blamed for injustice.

    Also, I'm not defending the guy, I'm just offering an explanation which could explain why he was so aggressive.

    Understood


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    #44
    rantyface
    Registered Users Posts: 496 ✭✭rantyface


    OP it just sounds like the guy was drunk. You were in a bar. Most of the things people are angry about at the moment (Ryan report etc), are things that devout Catholics are also angry about. It's not necessarily an attack on real Christianity.


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    #45
    ItisintheSTARS
    Closed Accounts Posts: 76 ✭✭ItisintheSTARS


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Sure..

    Misconception 1. God isn't going to punish people for all eternity because "they don't believe in him". He will punish people for their evil-doing and, for those who effectively chose the option of spending eternity outside the love of God, he will respect that choice. That existing outside the love of God isn't pleasant is incidental to the central issue. A persons own choice.

    It'd be like saying that choosing to spend eternity away from all source of heat results in the unpleasantness of feeling cold all the time, is unjust of God - when it's actually the result of a persons own choice.

    Misconception 2. God doesn't cause everything to be. He creates beings with potential to choose and those being exercise that choice. Injustice results from their choosing. His responsibility is once-step removed. And he shouldn't be blamed for injustice.

    Well explained in a straight forward manner.

    I like to Talk about religion in the widest sense,as part of
    history ,personal experience and,philosophy.As part of life and society.
    Unfortunately the majority of Catholics [of which I would like to be one
    as in the highest sense] are SHEEP led by a hierachical clergy who are often themselves just SHEEP,stubborn ones at that,who lead the SHEEPLE not forward but backwards.
    As a result of their determined Ignorance ,they are losing the Biggest and best Souls to ATHEISM,and other sins.
    So much of he Church are responsible for LEGALISM, IGNORANCE
    and the growing of atheism.
    I fortunately in spite of the church believe in Christ ,read what He said,
    finding the pettiness and cruelty of the ORTHODOX Catholic to be nothing to do with Christ.


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