Recent Convert to Christ

muhammad_isa said:
I don't even know you .. I have absolutely no idea.
Are you a Hindu .. a Buddhist? Are those religions mentioned in the Qur'an
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It is not pious to criticise everyone but yourself .. your own creed .. imo.

You wrote that above yes, yet your Religious text does exactly that.

You don’t have to know me as the Religion you follow has vilified my Religion and has condemned us all to hell, the texts that you follow.

Then you have the hide to write that above to someone.

I am a Buddhist, and you know we are criticised by Islam as a whole, now is that Pious.

Or do you not follow all the teachings of the Quran.
 
Thomas said:
Historically, just about everybody regarded ignorance as bliss (for those who know).
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Ignorance indeed.

Thomas said:
But these are historical examples, irrelevant with regard to the author's audience today.
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Any example would help.
You mentioned that all 14 criticisms mentioned in the OP were/are 'based on fallacies'.
Please could you show such a fallacy in the criticism that religion is rooted in fear?
I cannot understand what is so false within the criticism. In Christianity, people who did not believe in Jesus, the resurrection, etc would not be received in to Christian heaven, further, that they would suffer eternally.
 
badger said:
You mentioned that all 14 criticisms mentioned in the OP were/are 'based on fallacies'.
Please could you show such a fallacy in the criticism that religion is rooted in fear?
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To be clear, the 1st point says 'Toxic religion is rooted in fear ... "
A point with which I did not disagree, but simply pointed out that toxic anything is injurious to health and wellbeing.

What the author fails to do is balance this with the fact that religion itself is not toxic – and this is the tenor throughout.

In the author's own words,
"Two devastating events in the lives of church members made former evangelical pastor Jim Palmer step back and question everything he taught about God...
... the first was a revelation that a staff member was beating a spouse.
... The second came when a mother-to-be, bolstered by Palmer's sermons that anything is possible with God if you have enough faith, believed her unborn child with a fatal disorder could survive. The infant died soon after birth, and the mother blamed herself, he said.

"That triggered, 'How can I preach this stuff?'" Palmer said. "Beneath the appearance and the surfaces of people's lives there was a level of suffering and brokenness for which my theology did not touch."

Those cataclysmic moments about two decades ago sent Palmer down an introspective path that led to him leaving ministry, the end of his marriage and the eventual realization that he no longer believed in the supernatural."

OK. I can only say that any leader in a church, synagogue, mosque, sangha, temple, shrine or what have you faces these and other tragic situations, not just once but in an ongoing manner. In that sense they are a test of faith, but a failure of faith does not thereby mean the whole institution, or the premise of God as such, is false.

I can't think what the fallacy's name is, but I'm sure there is one. Simply, because you no longer believe does not mean God does not exist.

I can also testify that there are those who find great strength, support and comfort in their individual faith, their community and their leadership – anecdotal instances do not suffice as an over-arching argument.

When my mother was in her last years in a nursing home, a visiting priest denied another resident the eucharist for reasons I find untenable. I did not lose my faith in anything other than the insight of the individual inn question.
 
@badger – if you want an apologia for the conduct of the curia of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe over the last two millennia, you won't find one here. There the ills and injustices abound, but to declare that the fault or failure of God is to excuse ourselves ... and we're back to the oldest excuse in the book.
 
Interesting, re Tyndale:

Right up to this moment, I thoughht that William Tyndale was burned at the stake for daring to publish a Bible in English.

In 1530, Tyndale wrote "The Practice of Prelates", opposing Henry VIII's plan to seek the annulment of his marriage on the grounds that it contravened Scripture. Fleeing England, Tyndale sought refuge in the Flemish territory of the Catholic Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1535 Tyndale was arrested and jailed for over a year.

In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake.

The insurrections of the Albigensians, the Lollards, the Hussites, the German Peasants' War, the Münster Anabaptist rebellion, etc., led the establishment to view such movements as real threats to the security of the realm. A change in the law resulted in 'heresy' being treated as 'sedition', which bore the death penalty.

The Church could usually protect someone accused of heresy from being charged by the state, if that person satisfied the appointed theologian Inquisitor, in a formal process, that they did not (now) hold heretical views.

In Tyndale's case, he was held in prison for a year and a half: his Roman Catholic inquisitor, Jacobus Latomus, gave him the opportunity to write a book stating his views; Latomus wrote a book in response to convince him of his errors; Tyndale wrote two in reply; Latomus wrote two further books in response to Tyndale. Latomus' three books were subsequently published as one volume: in these it can be seen that the discussion on heresy revolves around the contents of three other books Tyndale had written on topics like justification by faith, free will, the denial of the soul, and so on. Latomus makes no mention of Bible translation; indeed, it seems that in prison, Tyndale was allowed to continue making translations from the Hebrew. 

When Tyndale could not be convinced to abjure, he was handed over to the Brabantine (the Duchy of Brabant being part of the Holy Roman Empire and spanned parts of today's Belgium/Germany/Netherlands) secular arm and tried on charges of Lutheran heresy in 1536. The charges did not mention Bible translation, which was not illegal in the Netherlands.. 

He was found guilty by his own admission and condemned to be executed. Tyndale was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned". His final words were reported later as "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes."

+++

The translators of the RSV in the 1940s noted that Tyndale's translation, including the 1537 Matthew Bible, inspired the translations that followed: The Great Bible of 1539; the Geneva Bible of 1560; the Bishops' Bible of 1568; the Douay-Rheims (Catholic) Bible of 1582–1609; and the King James Version of 1611, of which the RSV translators noted: "It [the KJV] kept felicitous phrases and apt expressions, from whatever source, which had stood the test of public usage. It owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale".

One estimate suggests that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's words and the first half of the Old Testament 76%.
 
Thomas said:
To be clear, the 1st point says 'Toxic religion is rooted in fear ... "
A point with which I did not disagree, but simply pointed out that toxic anything is injurious to health and wellbeing.
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OK, so no fallacy found within that.
Thomas said:
I can't think what the fallacy's name is, but I'm sure there is one. Simply, because you no longer believe does not mean God does not exist.
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You were telling us that all the criticism mentioned in the article were or had fallacies. I couldn't open the article for some reason and so I picked the first criticism which I could see shown on the OP, but I now wonder what was so wrong with all the others.
Thomas said:
I can also testify that there are those who find great strength, support and comfort in their individual faith, their community and their leadership – anecdotal instances do not suffice as an over-arching argument.
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How others believe things is not questioned, it's some of the claims made a out Christianity that I've got in mind. I do happen to believe much of the G-Mark account, less the last verses and certain other parts
Thomas said:
When my mother was in her last years in a nursing home, a visiting priest denied another resident the eucharist for reasons I find untenable. I did not lose my faith in anything other than the insight of the individual inn question.
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I've heard of that kind of thing before. Priests or any who do that kind of thing just display their total lack of value, imo.
 
Thomas said:
@badger – if you want an apologia for the conduct of the curia of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe over the last two millennia, you won't find one here. There the ills and injustices abound, but to declare that the fault or failure of God is to excuse ourselves ... and we're back to the oldest excuse in the book.
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I don't need anything from any churches, Thomas.
But the RC Church was one of the earliest churches from which most of Christianity would become. The RC bible differs not that much from other Christian bibles.
 
badger said:
But the RC Church was one of the earliest churches from which most of Christianity would become. The RC bible differs not that much from other Christian bibles.
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A note on terms, for clarity –

The first use of the term 'Catholic (meaning 'universal') Church' was by Ignatius of Antioch c. 110 AD.

Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Church has taken the adjective Orthodox as its distinctive epithet; its official name continues to be the Orthodox Catholic Church. The Western (Latin) Orthodox Church took the adjective Catholic.

The Roman Church referred to the Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and continued on into the Middle Ages.

The Roman Catholic Church as a name came into use after the Reformation in the late 16th century.
 
Thomas said:
In the general intent of the list, yes, as it's making a blanket statement about religion, without qualification.
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That's a very weak challenge, isn't it?
Surely a fallacy is a falseness that can be shown?
The OP did try to explain each of its criticisms, I guess...(I couldn't open the whole list up.)
 
Thomas said:
A note on terms, for clarity –

The first use of the term 'Catholic (meaning 'universal') Church' was by Ignatius of Antioch c. 110 AD.

Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Church has taken the adjective Orthodox as its distinctive epithet; its official name continues to be the Orthodox Catholic Church. The Western (Latin) Orthodox Church took the adjective Catholic.

The Roman Church referred to the Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and continued on into the Middle Ages.

The Roman Catholic Church as a name came into use after the Reformation in the late 16th century.
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Again....... The RC bible differs not much from other bibles. So why rubbish that bible... the base for Western Christianity.
 
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