Tolerance

[Tyrion]

Originally posted by iamtrip

The Protestant faith however was a direct consequence of Henry VIII's rebellion against Rome's decree against divorce and remarrying.

Set up as a faith tor ebel against traditional values and beliefs, the modern protestant faith is far more open to women and homosexuals..

 

Actually, the Protestant faith was much more of a direct consequence of Martin Luther, although Henry VIII's rebellion did play a very large role in allowing Protestant Christianity to grow.

[Spider AL]

Homosexuality was thought of as great in Rome, even Alexander the Great had a male concubine he took on all of his campaigns

Hmm, these statements are HIGHLY questionable. I've done quite a bit of research into this during my time, triggered by my interest in the strategy of the Spartans, and all I can say is; it's become trendy to declare ancient civilisations to be rife with homosexuality.

 

Re: Rome, homosexuality was looked-down-upon enough for it to be used as an insult against such figures as Julius Caesar. (By his political opponents.) He strenuously denied this and slept with the wives of many of his foes in order to prove them wrong in his inimitable fashion. There were indeed decadent periods in the latter portions of Rome's history that were probably rife with all sorts of interesting sexual activities, but that's neither here nor there.

 

Re: Alexander - There's no specific instances proving that Alexander was homosexual mentioned in the literature of the period. It's a relatively recent interpretation. Hephaestion, the fellow many people claim was Alexander's lover, was a long-time advisor and friend of the great general, and on death was given a huge funeral pyre by Alexander... people say this is proof of a sexual relationship between the two men... I say... what?

 

Perhaps there was, perhaps there wasn't. Perhaps he WAS bisexual. Who the hell cares? I'm fed up of both the sexualisation of history by trendy-lefty historians, and also the rank rewriting of certain portions of history. Take the Spartans: The only people who ever accused the Spartans of institutional pederasty were their political and ideological opponents the Athenians! Unbiased? I think not, especially since the Athenians WERE noted in contemporary historical texts as being sexually debauched.

 

So why do modern historians always spout the line that the Spartans were into the manseckhs, without questioning it? It's bad science. Really bad science.

[Nairb Notneb]

Feanaro, I would agree with you in that the Christian faith is more scrutinized, politicized and criticized than other religious faiths here in the USA. I believe it is because as said above it is the dominant religion here. If you are the number one of anything measuered in any way, then you are the biggest target aren't you?

[Spider AL]

Nairb, valid idea, were it not for the fact that Christianity has a bad press outside the US as well, both here in the UK and in Europe. I think that's more to do with PC than anything else...

[Kurgan]

I think the whole Christianity tolerant or not thing is a bit of a misconception.

 

The majority of people in America are Christian (self-identified). Now I'm not going to get into a huge debate about "what is a true Christian," but c'mon that should tell you something.

 

The people who are "more tolerant" are more than likely Christians. And the people who are "more bigotted" are probably also Christians.

 

So Christians make up the majority of people who have an opinion on the subject. Now I'm not citing any figures for this, only a hunch here.

 

Or should we assume that only the small percentage of Muslims, Jews, and Atheists are the ones saying "be tolerant! (of gay marriage or of women's rights or whatever). Among non-Christians we have saints and sinners alike, nobody should assume that Christianity is any different.

 

The thing to keep in mind is that all Christians are not Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, or the Pope (who's not even an American, he's a Pole), Billy Graham or the infamous Fred Phelps. There's a complete spectrum of opinion and belief. To think of All Christians as the Religious Right is incorrect.

 

It's about public perception. Like the whole "screw France, buy Freedom Fries!" thing, it's about the media view.

 

If all the stories with the word "Christian" in them are about gay marriage, posting the Ten Commandments and abortion clinic bombings, a person may read those and get a scewed vision of what "Christians" are, just as he may get an image of what Muslims are by reading about burkas and suicide bombers, etc. Muslims aren't all Saddam Huessin or Osama Bin Laden. That's the key here, balance.

 

In a majority Christian country like the US, one just assumes that lots of people are Christian but they're not perfect by any means and they don't agree on everything, so seeing Christianity as a monolithic entity where all its members think and act the same leads to another kind of bigotry itself. That's the whole thing about stereotypes, they make it harder to be tolerant when we view all members of a group as fitting to one example.

 

As to outside the US views, at one time the majority of 1st World nations were majority Christian (many still are). Again, with a wide range of beliefs and practices, it's impossible to shoe-horn all members of a group into one neat stereotype, but the media perception is there. On certain issues, perhaps only certain people speak out or their views are heard the loudest. When the "God Hates Fags" (Rev. Fred Phelps) talks, people hear "Baptist Christian Leader attacks Gays." Image in mind: Christians must be intolerant.

 

And just as you've heard before, negative images resonate more than positive ones. You can hear about the pope visiting orphans and AIDs victims hundreds of times in the news and its no big deal, but you can hear about one case of some priest molesting some altar boys and which story do you think is going to get more press? People like to hear about the gory details, and that fuels stereotypes, which can then be used for political manuvering.

[Kurgan]

Originally posted by iamtrip

A lot of the christian church's positions were taken from St. Paul who lived after the bible was written.

He was homophobic and a misogynist, giving rise to the Catholic Church's anti-woman, anti-gay stance.

 

Which Bible are you talking about? The Torah & Tanak (the Hebrew Scriptures) was the 'bible' (bible means "the books") at the time of Paul. What Christians call the "Old Testament" is it. Jesus and the apostles used what is called the Septuagint (from the 3rd century BCE) which is the hebrew bible translated into Greek, and includes some additional books (called the Deutrocanonicals or "Apocrypha") than are found in modern protestant bibles (the protestant OT canon is based on Martin Luther's choice to follow the canon of the 1st century Palestinian Rabbis after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, rather than the Septuagint "canon" of the early Church and of Jews living outside Palestine).

 

 

Paul (Saul of Tarsus) was a contemporary of Jesus (Saul was a tent-maker and member of the Pharisee party), living in the first century. He was a tent-maker and Hellenized (greek) Jew. Since the Christian Scriptures (the New Testament) was written during his lifetime and shortly after, I think you've got your facts wrong. The last book of the New Testament, "The Apocalypse of John" (Revelation) was thought to have been written by someone named John (perhaps the "beloved apostle" of Jesus or perhaps someone else named John, as it was a common name even back then) in about 90 CE.

 

Paul is widely thought to have been a mysoginist ("hater of women") though there is debate among modern Christians, because there is controversy among scholars about the authorship of the "letters" attributed to Paul. That is why in any scholarly book about the New Testament you'll come across the "letters of Paul" and the "disputed Letters of Paul" and the "letters definately not by Paul." Even in my weekly missalette (sp?), at our church when it lists a letter that's disputed it just says the "Letter to the Hebrews" rather than "The First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians."

 

As to the RCC being "anti-gay" and "anti-woman" it's a matter of perspective I suppose. If not allowing women to be priests is "anti-woman" then I guess the church is anti-woman. If saying homosexual behavior (ie: gay sex) is a sin is anti-gay, then the church is anti-gay. If you want to bash the RCC for what it teaches, fine, but just don't single them out, because you'll find far more hard-line beliefs in other christian churches.

 

The Protestant faith however was a direct consequence of Henry VIII's rebellion against Rome's decree against divorce and remarrying.

Set up as a faith tor ebel against traditional values and beliefs, the modern protestant faith is far more open to women and homosexuals.

 

Tell that to the Rev. Fred Phelp or Jack Chick. ; )

There are plenty of "less tolerant" protestants out there, you don't have to look far. The Reformation began with Luther and spiralled out from there. Calvin, Zwigli, etc, had their own mini-reformations. Henry VIII was just one more in a long list. His beef was with the divorce issue, but he himself remained Catholic (in his own mind at least), while it was his daughter Elizabeth who implemented his "reforms" that officially setup the Church of England (from which you get Anglicans and Episcopalians in the US).

 

As far as tolerance of homosexuals, the Episcopalian church had a huge ruckus (which we discussed on these very forums) when it ordained the first openly gay Bishop. Even though the church had no "official stance" on homosexuality, it balked at ordaining this man who has living with his gay lover. Those against the idea threatened to split, and I didn't hear how it turned out, but there you see there is disagreement within the denomination over the status of homosexuals.

 

Theres no denying that both churches however, were merely there to control and indoctrinate the people, through fear and terror (of God).

 

Such establishments are still somewhat effective today.

 

Thank you, Karl Marx.

[Kurgan]

Originally posted by Kain

Just a theory, but it may all stem back to when American's fought for their freedom against the Christian(Catholic) Church.

 

Not to mention most non-religious types are always having Christianity rammed down their throats.

 

When was this? I wasn't aware of a war between the Catholic Church and the United States.

 

Or are you referring to people who fled to the New World to escape religious persecution?

 

Because those people were a variety of faiths, but most of them were Christians, and many of them were Catholic Christians as well. And once many of those people got here they were STILL persecuted for their faith or else they started persecutions of their own (the sad thing is, in the past "religious freedom" often meant "only for my church, not your's"). Another sad part of Christianity's past is intolerance of other Christians.

[PR-0927]

Originally posted by ZDawg

I don’t know where you got that information but that is INCORRECT.

 

The original pilgrims of America LEFT England to get away from the English catholic church which at the time had been Changed and FORCED upon all who lived under the authority of the king of England. The pilgrims of America came here to be free so they could believe in the God they wanted to believe in.

 

 

You may be surprised to learn that you are wrong. They did, indeed, leave for freedom of religion. But, just because they wanted this, they didn't necessarily act upon this. Infact, they persecuted many people, including, Jews, and witches (Witch Trials). I actually don't know the whole story, but I know enough to know that these people still were prejudice, and didn't accept freedom of religion. I think Ben Franklin himself had to escape to Pennsylvania (spelling?). One of his virtues is Tolerance. Yes, he did escape, I remember now.

 

The world is full of propaganda (spelling?). Including the U.S., we are...propagated (spelling?) a lot! This is obviously propaganda (spelling?) as well, trying to make our government look good.

 

*Sigh.*

 

I wish I could be proud of the U.S. I can't, because of George Bush, racism, prejudice, segregation, discrimination, and propaganda...(Spelling? You knew it was coming!).

 

[Nairb Notneb]

I have been in church and I have been out of church. I have also served in the church one way or another. I am also an ordained minister and have served as the pastor of a church. It has been my experience that many people claim to be Christians without knowing what that means. They claim to believe what the Bible says without knowing what the Bible says. To test the people that I was teaching, I asked them to turn to certain scripture that did not exist and begin reading a passage that wasn't from the Bible. Nobody noticed. I was appalled but not surprised. This is part of the problem with many so called Christians and many people that affiliate themselves with any group, they claim to have certain beliefs and ideals but really have no idea what they are talking about so they get them selves into trouble all of the time. We all do it from time to time. This happens to highly visible and highly vocal Christians in the media all of the time, just like any other person that is affiliated with any group, and thus the group that that "loud" person claims to be affiliate with gets a bad "rap". Situations like this do not help any group. Just like during the 2000 census here in America, when citizens were asked there religious affiliation and thousands of people put in "Jedi", that made Star Wars fans look very, dare I say it, "geeky". There's always one in the bunch.

[CloseTheBlastDo]

I think the whole Christianity tolerant or not thing is a bit of a misconception.

 

The people who are "more tolerant" are more than likely Christians. And the people who are "more bigotted" are probably also Christians.

 

Well, I think you make a good point Kurgan, in that you have to seperate 'Christianity' from 'Christians'.

 

But I'm not so sure about your conclusion that talking about Christian 'tolerence' is a 'misnomer'. Sure, take a cross-section of anybody who has been baptised into a Christian religion and you'll find a wide spectrum of attutides. But as Nairb Notneb has already pointed out, just because your 'technically' a Christian, doesn't mean you actually do beleive in Christ, or have even read the Bible...

 

So if you are to talk about 'Christian tolerance', (to do the subject justice at least) I don't think you can just look at the overall spectrum of attitudes of anybody who happens to have been baptised a 'christian' - because for many of these people the word 'Christian' would just be a title which meant little to them.

 

I think a more sensible conclusion would be reached by limiting your spectrum of views to those who 'truly' believe so to speak.

...now granted, you will still have a spectrum of views, but I think it goes without saying that the spectrum is not as wide. And on the fringes of this spectrum, the amount of 'true believing' Christians in those areas can get quite thin on the ground...

 

I personally think the bottom line is that certain fairly commonly accepted Christian teachings naturally lead to a certain amount of intolerance - assuming the person involved chooses to believe and actively embrace these teachings...

Your free to dispute this if you like, but I don't think you can dispute it by saying 'but consider everybody who happens to have the title Christian'. For me at least, that isn't really getting to the crux of the matter.

 

..and let me make it clear that what I've just said above can also be directed at many other world religions. So I'm don't single out Christianity by any means... (although it is the topic of this particular thread - so..)

 

You can hear about the pope visiting orphans and AIDs victims hundreds of times in the news and its no big deal, but you can hear about one case of some priest molesting some altar boys and which story do you think is going to get more press?

 

Since the pope could very well have been directly responsible for the AIDS victims he was visiting (depending on which part of the world he was visiting) because of his insistence that using contreception is sinful (in fact many Catholic leaders have no problem flat-out lying to their 'flock' in various parts of the world, telling them that the HIV virus can easiely pass through the rubber of a condom!), I would view both these stories in a negative light if I saw them in a paper.

 

...many people take the time to visit AIDS victims. But most of these people don't encourage the future infection of 1000's upon 1000's who would never get infected if they took proper precautions.

...I'll take it for granted I'll get the usual moronic comments like 'The best contreceptive is abstinence'. This comment could only come from someone who hasn't actually been involved in trying to curb the AIDS epedemic in places like Africa. A totally dogmatic, non-practical stance which ignores the differences in culture, as well as the far more obvious basic drive of human nature...

 

...as far as visiting orphans - meh, fair enough I guess. I just wonder if he'd still find the time for such charitable deeds if he actually had a 'real' job to worry about....

..heh, as maybe you can tell, I'm not the biggest fan of the pope If you want to find examples of truly 'good' Christians, I can think of quite a few, but the Pope certainly ain't one of them... In most cases I'd call him 'misguided' at best...

[Nairb Notneb]

The main problem with the seemingly intolerance of Christianity is that it is a religion. If you take a realistic look at all religions that require a devout faith to be a part of its teachings then they are all intolerant in its purist form. I would dare to say that all religions are truly intolerant in a state that they each take similar views about themselves. Every religion views itself as having the correct, or at least the best philosophy of life and spiritual awareness. If this were not true then why would you be following the teachings of that religion? If you were a Baptist, for example (a Baptist being a protestant Christian), and you were of the opinion that the Baptist faith was absurd, yet you remained a member of a Baptist church, donated your time and money to your local Baptist church, worshiped there, sang there and served there. What would that make you? A hypocrite and a liar, not to mention an idiot.

 

Most religions truly teach their followers to love everybody and to accept them as they are, but if it is possible to encourage them to become a follower of said faith to. If you think that your religious affiliation is not the correct one then why are you practicing it? You aren't I'm sure. All religions have some form of intolerants in them in that way. They are intolerant in that they believe themselves to be the best or at least better or else the people wouldn't be practicing it.

[CloseTheBlastDo]

The main problem with the seemingly intolerance of Christianity is that it is a religion. If you take a realistic look at all religions that require a devout faith to be a part of its teachings then they are all intolerant in its purist form.

 

I absolutely agree. Fundementalism - in any religion - can lead to unnessesary intolerence.

 

The only reason you would not view it as 'unnessesary' is if you 'bought' it...

 

Most religions truly teach their followers to love everybody and to accept them as they are

 

Well, this is also probably true, depending on how harsh you want to be I guess. Some religions do. Some religions don't. And I would estimate that actually most religions (to a greater or lesser extent) contain various basic teachings that COULD encourage NOT accepting others for what they are...

 

And Christianity, overall, cerrtainly falls into this catagory.

 

Yes, I've heard the 'Love the sinner, hate the sin' line many. many times. And it get's less convincing every time I hear it...

 

The trouble is that the kind of people who use this line can't seem to get it into their heads that some actions they consider 'sinning' are nothing more than a person behaving exactly how they were designed to behave, and nothing more...

 

So to say you love someone, and yet hate something that is a fundemental part of who they are is a bit of a paradoxical nonsense in many cases....

[iamtrip]

The trouble with religion is that people are in charge of them.

Why can't you just be a Christian, Jew, Muslim etc without having to worship in some building? Why do you have to follow new rules made up by a bunch of people leading the faith?

The trouble with religion is that its organised.

 

As soon as people worship who they want, where they want, when they want and how they want, religion will cease from being a hippocritical waste of time for a predominantly blinded and ignorant following.

[Spider AL]

Nairb:

The main problem with the seemingly intolerance of Christianity is that it is a religion.

I think the point of this thread was to say that in the west Christianity is lambasted more than other equally organised religions.

[Tyrion]

Originally posted by iamtrip

The trouble with religion is that people are in charge of them.

Why can't you just be a Christian, Jew, Muslim etc without having to worship in some building? Why do you have to follow new rules made up by a bunch of people leading the faith?

The trouble with religion is that its organised.

 

As soon as people worship who they want, where they want, when they want and how they want, religion will cease from being a hippocritical waste of time for a predominantly blinded and ignorant following.

 

As taken from Dogma:

 

Originally by Rufus

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change

 

an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life

 

should malleable and progressive; working from

 

idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to

 

certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't

 

generate. Life becomes stagnant. That was one

 

thing the Man hated - still life. He wanted

 

everyone to be as enthralled with living as He

 

was. Maybe it had something to do with knowing

 

when He was going to die. but Christ had this

 

vitality that I've never encountered in another

 

person since. You know what I'm saving?

[iamtrip]

Cetain people want beliefes, not ideas.

[Nairb Notneb]

The main reason that Christianity gets blasted is because of its high standards and the lack of its people to walk by those standards. It makes for an easy target. Self proclaimed Christians that act in that manner need to take a good hard look at themselves.

[SkinWalker]

I would say that primary reason that Christianity gets criticized is that it is one of the largest, most prolific religions in the world along with Islam. This invites those that think critically and without religiocentric bias to evaluate the evolution of Christianity as a religion.

 

When that is done, clear lineage with pagen and polytheistic religions can be noted, particularly in the religious texts of modern chrisitanity and the epigraphic artifacts of pre-christian peoples. Stories like the Enum Elish, the Atrahasis, the Deluge, Gilgamesh, etc. all have clear correlations in biblical mythology.

 

That so many people in the world take such mythology literally, when such an evolution of literature and myth is obvious, begs for criticism.

[NileQueen]

It would be interesting to study how the bible was written (by whom), and what historical biblical documents were suppressed.

[SkinWalker]

As it happens, I'm currently looking at this very topic from an anthropological perspective. Specifically, the evolution of mythology and oral tradition from the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia through the first century CE.

 

Would anyone like me to start a thread on this, summarizing what I've discovered to date? It's fascinating stuff. Particularly with regard to flood and deluge stories -the Tigris and Euphrates, as well as the Nile, experienced frequent floods and the Black Sea itself may have given rise to flood myths that created early written stories such as the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh.

 

But there are also strong parallels to other Near Eastern sources in Biblical texts, such as the code of Hammarabi and the names of specific gods, kings, etc.

[Nairb Notneb]

I think its a good idea Skin.

[NileQueen]

Sounds like a fine idea. Don't know how involved I can be in discussing it but I will read it when I get time.

[Shok_Tinoktin]

The reason that Christians get critisized the worst is that people are afraid that if they say something about a person of a social group that is in the minority, that they will be accused of some form of prejudice. Personally, I cant stand this. I am not affiliated with any religion, so I just try to avoid challenging anybody's spiritual beliefs, because they will often get offended, and tend not to listen anyway. The only exception is when I am with somebody I trust can talk about it in a civilized, open-minded way, and even then its only when they bring it up (I think it has totalled three people).

[lukeiamyourdad]

That's true. Most of the time, when you corner them in the discussion, they just say:"Bah! This is what I believe! I'm right, you're wrong! Go God Go! You're gonna die in Hell!"

[Jdome83]

Leviticus: 20:13

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

OLD testament

NEW testament is what is traditionally followed in the modern day church except for the ten commandments. Which have stayed the same throughout.

In the end God is their judge not us. We can simply tell others what we believe. Here's a real example of that principle. I have a friend who is satanic and pagan. I am Catholic. I don't agree with how they live but they are still my friend, and most of my friends are democrats.

"You're gonna die in Hell!"

I truly don't talk like that to people. I try to be kind to everyone. Even when discussing John Kerry. I don't agree with his views, but I still must respect him, and his opinion.