Are Abrahamic religions actually an offshoot of an Akhenaten cult?
>monotheistic
>centered around the sky with no animal or humanistic symbolism
>Egyptians practiced circumcision
>Egyptians avoided pork
>No source
>No connection demonstrated
>>959668
>implying this meme pharaoh predates hebrew and zoroastrianism
>So you're telling me that I get to decide what gods people can worship?
>And that I get to decide where the capital is?
>Okay how about this one: Scrap all the gods, everyone has to worship the sun now. Also the capital is literally out in the middle of the desert where there is no civilization for hundreds of miles.
He was the first memelord, and quite the madman. You can tell from his smug smile that he enjoyed fucking with everything and everyone
>>959678
He does predate the Jewish civilization if I recall. Not the Zoroastrian though.
Akhenaten is what I imagine a /his/ user would be like if he magically became a ruler of some kingdom: that is, would become so obsessed with some stupid project (in Akhenaten's case, promoting Aten worship) that he'd neglect to actually administer the country and cause unrest, shortages, and foreign intervention.
monotheism has existed since the first time humanity could have ideas.
monotheism is a universal concept, and has arose independently in several parts of the world. Even some native Americans believe in a great spirit that everything is composed of and we all return to. Some Hindus believe all their deities are manifestations of the same, single, all encompassing God. Taosim, the Tao is God.
That is because Monotheism is the most rational belief system (atheism is a belief system, by the way). So logic is objective and found in all of humanity.
There are only 2 rational positions to take on the concept of belief in deities: 1) I don't know if God exists, and 2) I'm 99% sure God exists.
All ancient cultures came to these ideas at some point.
>>959736
>That is because Monotheism is the most rational belief system
You are asserting this. What's the evidence for it? Everything in the universe is composed of different conflicting wills, polytheism always seemed to make a lot more sense to me.
>Even some native Americans believe in a great spirit that everything is composed of and we all return to
This sounds like pantheism or panentheism.
>>959668
Abraham and his people were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of the mythical Horus who was called the "Son of God" and "Horus of the Two Crowns". The Horite conception of the priesthood is the antecedent of the Jewish and later the Christian conception of the priesthood.
Horite priests were asked to pray for people because they were recognized as especially holy people. Abraham was asked to pray for Abimelech's household and Job was asked by God to pray for his friends. So the Horite priest's work involved intercessory prayer, fasting and sometimes blood sacrifice. Righteous Job offered sacrifice on behalf of his whole family.
The Virgin Mary's father was a priest who married a daughter of a priest, following the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern.
>>959736
>monotheism has existed since the first time humanity could have ideas.
>monotheism is a universal concept
>That is because Monotheism is the most rational belief system
>atheism is a belief system
>So logic is objective
Go, why are christcucks such imbeciles? And why are they so incredibly bad at hiding their retard level IQs?
>>959736
Why do Christcucks assert that atheism is a belief system?
Christcucks consider "evil" to merely be the absence of good/God, rather than an actual positive quality. So why is it so hard for them to understand that atheism is simply the lack of a belief system?
By the way, the entire post was retarded. Monotheism is not universal.
The Tao is not an actual personal deity, and it is actually more of a dualistic concept. I would not call it monotheism, nor would any self-respecting scholar.
>>959839
Atheism is indistinguishable from antitheism and is thus for all practical purposes a manifestation of Nietzschean slave morality and re-sentiment
>>959684
>You can tell from his smug smile that he enjoyed fucking with everything and everyone
I've heard he liked fucking his sister the most.
People who start retarded threads by asking idiotic questions and dumbass green texts to "support" it need to be shot
>>959839
>Why do Christcucks assert that atheism is a belief system?
If you look at the history of theological debates Christians are used to debating other religions. Atheism is frankly unfamiliar territoriality to them.
Christianity presupposes a certain worldview and it's very hard for them to step outside it. Even when you see them approach the world view of other religions it's difficult. See his example where he interpretes Taoism, Hinduism, and Indian mythology to be "monotheism" when they are respectivily Panentheist, Pantheist, and polytheist.
>>959668
As a muslim i think that religion is from god...
Cause in islam believing in one god trumps all.
>>959853
>Atheism is indistinguishable from antitheism
"I don't beleive in God"
"I beleive all religions are destructive"
Wow so hard!
>a manifestation of Nietzschean slave morality
Not really since atheism is not a morality system
>and re-sentiment
In many cases yes, atheism is ressentiment. Not all cases.
According to Islamic philosophy. There is One God. God has always sent guidance to humanity in various forms, and with my own input and mild evidential proof the types of guidance have looked different but the same in the most important aspects.
One God, Humanitarian and Eco-friendly.
Naturally over time, espeacially in the past with the inferior writing systems, things get warped and lost.
Perhaps the reason Prophet Muhammad is said to be the last messenger is because humanity had evolved its writing systems and general higher civilisation of the world to a high enough extent that it would last humanity until the end of times.
>>959736
>Taosim, the Tao is God.
Oh god you are retarded.
Chinese gods don't care about the world past its conception, the ancestors did and do.
>>959763
Yeah, because Horus, who among others was gay bottom for Seth(but pulled out) and then masturbated into lettuce(Seth's favourite food) too bait him into swallowing his semen is basically 1:1 copy of Abrahamic god in whatever form.
>>959867
I find that monotheist in general have a very hard time understanding the non-prescriptive nature of polytheist god worship. Whether actual or ancient.
It's hard to find a Christian today who doesn't understand that ancient people did not claim that gods they didn't worship didn't exist.
>>959879
>Perhaps the reason Prophet Muhammad is said to be the last messenger is because humanity had evolved its writing systems and general higher civilisation of the world to a high enough extent that it would last humanity until the end of times.
hmmmm good point.
>>959879
>Perhaps the reason Prophet Muhammad is said to be the last messenger
What about Ali?
>>959906
Ali, the cousin of Prophet Muhammad was a caliph at a point.
>>959898
Honestly polytheism is a far more advanced system. Even the famous Christian theologians understood it poorly.
At the heart of polytheism is a concept called the meta-divine realm. It's the ultimate authority in the universe to which even the Gods must submit. It's a force that is all present, binds reality, but can also be tapped into and manipulated. So for example fate is the Meta-divine force in Greek mythology, Life/death cycle in the Aztecs (as represented by the sun), Numbers to the Pythagorean cult, water/primal elements to the Babylonian. It's a beautiful system that can be highly scientific (our chemistry is evolved from the study of the primal elements) or philophical (concepts like the Geist, Heraclitus Flux, the Will to Power, all could be interpretted as meta-divine)
Monotheism denies a meta-divine realm and has one God.
So when Christians try to talk down polytheistic stuff their argument of saying "God is stronger than Zeus" misses the point. The meta-divine realm binds everyone, God's included. I honestly think the case for polytheism is stronger. For God to break out of the meta-divine realm he'd have to be able to do things like make 2+2=5
>>959668
>>959961
Praise Ali.
>>959877
Cute pedantism
>Not really since atheism is not a morality system
Except that all atheist scholars write in direct opposition to Christianity.
Your argument for Christless atheism is literally "communism has never been tried"-tier.
>>960349
You act as if atheism was this really new thing that Dawkins came up with. A lot of people in Europe and Asia are "naturally" atheistic in the sense that god isn't something that people think about.
>>959746
>Everything in the universe is composed of different conflicting wills, polytheism always seemed to make a lot more sense to me.
I'm not him, but could you elaborate on this. There's a remarkable amount of unity found in the universe. I'd love to have a discussion about it.
>>959716
He doesn't predate Abraham and his followers though
>>960399
When you pull something up that is your will conflicting with gravity. When people disagree that is different ideological will. The cycles of nature are likewise the result of some sort of conflicting wills: predater and prey, or the dirt's desire to hold firm in face of running water.
A polythestic world does not exclude order, in fact order is the supreme authority as I said here
>>959984
A polytheistic divinity has natural "divine laws" much like our natural world has natural laws (physics, math, etc). These divine laws cannot be broken by the Gods. Many times the myths of Gods are metaphors for how the laws of nature play out. For instance an earth Goddes may die and reborn like the spring, yet this God is in-conflict with the winter God, as result of their conflict there are cycles.
A monotheistic universe incontrast has a God that is beyond all laws. There is no divine meta-forces. I find the idea of something beyond laws absurd and it leads to all sorts of paradoxes. Could God make 2+2=5, could he have created humans with free will who also cannot sin? At some point you have to decide that there are certain rules, logical limitations for anything,even a God.
So I see the universe can only be ordered in a polytheistic universe, with a divine meta-realm, otherwise the universe is ruled by a God that by definition is not ordered himself.
>>960471
>When you pull something up that is your will conflicting with gravity. When people disagree that is different ideological will.
How does this allude to polytheism? And I was talking about the natural processes.
>The cycles of nature are likewise the result of some sort of conflicting wills: predater and prey, or the dirt's desire to hold firm in face of running water.
Again, the stuff you keep bringing up doesn't really support what you're saying.
Blessed is He in whose hand is dominion, and He is over all things competent - [He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving - [And] who created seven heavens in layers. You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So return [your] vision [to the sky]; do you see any breaks? Then return [your] vision twice again. [Your] vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued. [al-Mulk, 67:1-4]
>>960508
What we see in the universe is not a single will but many wills, often in conflict. If you want examples in nature look at the massive food-chain which is multiple wills. Look at evolution where each set of genes strives to win out over another. Look at moss on a tree which tries to "steal" the sunlight from the tree.
This is not a single unified will but multiple wills.
So a single God makes no sense. If there was one absolute God there would be no conflict. Instead there is no absolute rule. The only thing that is absolute is the Laws and everything in natural world obeys them.
So a divine realm would mirror that. The absolute thing is the laws and there are many conflicting forces in the form of many Gods. None of the Gods would be all powerful because they have to obey the rules.
Now it's your turn, you havn't answered the question. Is the Christian God limited? Could he make 2+2=5 or create humans that both have free will and cannot sin? If he cannot do both these things it means there are some sorts of binding rulings that limit him.
Even though it's wrong to spout the meme of monotheism being the "great Jewish gift to humanity", I don't think the Jews plagiarized Egyptian or Zoroastrian monotheism.
They probably just came up with it on their own, monotheism isn't that revolutionary or profound. It's just the monopolization of theistic worship and philosophy into one God, one people, one temple. It's not rocket science.
>>960611
There are a number of reasons to think they did. Textual evidence suggests the early Jewish books were polytheistic but later changed, happening around the time they were exposed to Zoroastrian culture.
>>959668
Nah, Zoroastrianism is the granddaddy of the Abrahamics. Muslims even consider them of the book.
>>960588
>If you want examples in nature look at the massive food-chain which is multiple wills. Look at evolution where each set of genes strives to win out over another. Look at moss on a tree which tries to "steal" the sunlight from the tree.
Every animal has its own niche, in a system with absolute harmony. Animals eating each other doesn't equal disharmony. I'm not sure where you're getting that.
>Now it's your turn, you havn't answered the question. Is the Christian God limited? Could he make 2+2=5 or create humans that both have free will and cannot sin? If he cannot do both these things it means there are some sorts of binding rulings that limit him.
I'm not Christian (thought that was obvious from the verses I listed), but I'm Muslim, so I do believe in an all-powerful God. And no, that's not being limited. 2+2=5 isn't a real thing. It's not a limit for you to not be able to do thing that's inconceivable.
>>959853
>Nietzschean slave morality and re-sentiment
I have a feeling you have no idea what you are talking about and just stringed together some buzz words. Nietzsche didn't advocate slave morality you imbecile. and what does slave morality have to do with atheism itself? some atheists do follow what Nietzsche called slave morality but others don't. you can have one and not the other
>>960477
Then where did his name come from?
>>960349
You're trying to conflaite here the theology of Christianity with the morality the religion espouses. There's strictly speaking nothing wrong with an atheist who agrees with Christian morals, but still rejects the existence of God.
Furthermore, the reason most atheist scholars write in direct opposition to god is because, as Dawkins put it, most atheists as we use the term today are from Christian nations.
>>960656
Where did Clifford the big red dog's name come from?
>>960641
But it is conceivable. He just conceived of it by even asking you that question.
>Animals eating each other doesn't equal disharmony.
Yes it fucking does. Animals eating each other is a vicious struggle of conflicting wills, they aren't filling a niche set for them; they're both struggling to survive, with predator trying to kill prey and prey trying to escape predator (often killing predator in the process). There is no harmony to be seen here unless you attempt to redefine harmony into disharmony.
Also, (just to note, I'm not that guy) but polytheism makes more sense than monotheism on more grounds than just that. It gets around the problem of "why would a perfect creator create anything?" (to create would be to imply decision, which would imply a changing entity, which was at some point imperfect, even Islamic theologians recognized this problem and simply asserted the universe always was, which science says likely isn't the case) and it stands to reason that if there is one god, that there would be a population of such beings.
>>960641
>disharmony
This isn't what I am argueing for? I even speficially mentioned harmony as being expressed in the meta-divine realm in every post. Do you even understand what you are reading?
>>960740
>Yes it fucking does. Animals eating each other is a vicious struggle of conflicting wills, they aren't filling a niche set for them; they're both struggling to survive, with predator trying to kill prey and prey trying to escape predator (often killing predator in the process). There is no harmony to be seen here unless you attempt to redefine harmony into disharmony.
Harmony doesn't mean gazelle and deer holding hands, singing kumbaya.
>It gets around the problem of "why would a perfect creator create anything?" (to create would be to imply decision, which would imply a changing entity, which was at some point imperfect
No, those implications aren't logically connected at all. Even I, as an imperfect being make decisions, and that doesn't mean I'm a different entity afterwards.
>even Islamic theologians recognized this problem and simply asserted the universe always was
Even though I'm unfamiliar with this question, I can already tell from the way you described it, which group delved into this.
>and it stands to reason that if there is one god, that there would be a population of such beings.
How...?
>>959668
When they open up the walls of Tut's tomb and reveal the Scrolls of Aten, we will know for sure.
>>960750
So then how does harmony support polytheism?
>>960769
>Harmony doesn't mean gazelle and deer holding hands, singing kumbaya.
If you find harmony in a brutal struggle for life and death, then you're an imbecile.
>No, those implications aren't logically connected at all. Even I, as an imperfect being make decisions, and that doesn't mean I'm a different entity afterwards.
Yes it does. Read more philosophy. You're a constantly changing entity, taking in information and adapting to it as you go along. The idea of a continuous you is actually difficult to sustain at all.
>How...?
If there was one, why not more?
>>960778
>If you find harmony in a brutal struggle for life and death, then you're an imbecile.
I'm talking about the system as a whole, with no animals stepping on each other's niches. The struggles you refer to, don't take away from that.
>You're a constantly changing entity, taking in information and adapting to it as you go along. The idea of a continuous you is actually difficult to sustain at all.
Elaborate on why I should believe this. Why does taking in information make me a different entity?
>If there was one, why not more?
Nigga what? This is one of those times where Occam's Razor is entirely intuitive. This question is so autistic, that it's even shocking me. And that's saying something, considering how much I browse /his/.
>>960798
So how does harmony support a meta-divine force anymore than a single God...
>>960805
>with no animals stepping on each other's niches
But that's not true, just look at any introduced/invasive species ever, not all are due to humans either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Interchange
>>960805
>I'm talking about the system as a whole, with no animals stepping on each other's niches. The struggles you refer to, don't take away from that.
Except they do that all the time. A too-successful organism can destroy an entire ecosystem, and animals constantly compete among their "niches" (which are themselves just an after the fact attribution by yourself).
>Elaborate on why I should believe this. Why does taking in information make me a different entity?
Because you're constantly changing as a result of it, adapting your behaviour in ways you yourself aren't even consciously aware of. Are you honestly going to say you're the same person you were ten years ago? You're likely not even the same at an atomic level.
>This question is so autistic.
So, no answer then. We're just to believe that one perfect god willed himself into existence, and then one day up and decided to create everything for no reason. This doesn't seem even remotely absurd to you?
The answer is obvious of course, there isn't one god, and the gods there are (if there are indeed any) aren't perfect. This can be seen in the fact that their creation isn't perfect.
>>960826
Ah, ok. I wasn't entirely confident on that point, so I'm not surprised. Thank you for correcting me.
This is why exchange of ideas is good.
>>960820
I already answered that.
>>960471
Each God is alligned with a certain aspect of the world. This is why conflicts exist. Yet conflicts do not disrupt harmony because the meta-divine is above the Gods and decides the ultimate outcome, just like physics decide the outcome in the physical world.
With one God there is no explanation for why there would be any sort of conflict, since conflict requires at least two opposing wills. There is also no room for order with a God that can break any sort of rule.
>>960829
>Are you honestly going to say you're the same person you were ten years ago?
You need to specify in what sense. Which aspect is the important part for me to be entirely different? My size? My personality? My amount of knowledge?
>You're likely not even the same at an atomic level.
We're using examples to speak ultimately, about God. So this part isn't really relevant.
>We're just to believe that one perfect god willed himself into existence
No, that's not what any Abrahamic follower argues.
>This can be seen in the fact that their creation isn't perfect.
See the last paragraph >>960508
>>959736
>monotheism is a universal concept
>[implying intensifies]
>>960884
>You need to specify in what sense. Which aspect is the important part for me to be entirely different? My size? My personality? My amount of knowledge?
Not entirely different, just different at all. You're a changing entity. If you see a red ball, you're not longer just you, you're you with knowledge of a red ball, which is a difference and you'll adapt your behaviour according to this information, never to be the same as you were before. Now consider the considerably more major information you take in on a daily basis, the stresses of life. Would you be the same person after the death of your father? The birth of your child? Facing your own imminent death?
>We're using examples to speak ultimately, about God. So this part isn't really relevant.
Except it's entirely relevant. Because it implies that you are something different than you were before, unless your belief is so entirely detached from the material world that no element of it matters.
>No, that's not what any Abrahamic follower argues.
No, they're a bunch of lazy assholes in that they never bother to explain the origin of their creator (while in a staggering act of doublethink, demand everything else have an explainable origin).
That last paragraph doesn't hold any weight if you're not already a Muslim. I see plenty of inconsistencies in our creation. I see a human body that regularly fails because it's most fundamental process occasionally goes apeshit.
>>960919
>You're a changing entity. If you see a red ball, you're not longer just you, you're you with knowledge of a red ball, which is a difference and you'll adapt your behaviour according to this information, never to be the same as you were before. Now consider the considerably more major information you take in on a daily basis, the stresses of life. Would you be the same person after the death of your father? The birth of your child? Facing your own imminent death?
Uhh ok? If that's what you define as different, then sure, I guess it works.
>Except it's entirely relevant. Because it implies that you are something different than you were before, unless your belief is so entirely detached from the material world that no element of it matters.
I mean that God isn't made of atoms, so it 's irrelevant to talk about mine for analogy.
>No, they're a bunch of lazy assholes in that they never bother to explain the origin of their creator (while in a staggering act of doublethink, demand everything else have an explainable origin).
We don't explain origin, because he's always existed. Everything else comes from Him. And the only other people who I see are "demanded" atheists. I've never even see Evangelicals say "Where did Vishnu come from?"
>That last paragraph doesn't hold any weight if you're not already a Muslim. I see plenty of inconsistencies in our creation. I see a human body that regularly fails because it's most fundamental process occasionally goes apeshit.
So you wanted to be created perfect?
>>960966
>Uhh ok? If that's what you define as different, then sure, I guess it works.
It is different, it's not a huge difference, but is it a difference.
>I mean that God isn't made of atoms, so it 's irrelevant to talk about mine for analogy.
Oh yeah, I got wrapped up change as related to you. Sorry about that. Regardless, perfection is an absolute quality, a perfect being could not change because it would no longer be an absolutely perfect entity.
>We don't explain origin, because he's always existed. Everything else comes from Him. And the only other people who I see are "demanded" atheists. I've never even see Evangelicals say "Where did Vishnu come from?"
I was referring to the universe itself. One of the common arguments supporting the perfect monotheistic god is "well where did the universe did come from?" without ever bothering to explain where God came from.
>So you wanted to be created perfect?
No. I just don't believe a perfect being would create an imperfect universe. There may be a perfect god, but it would be such an alien, utterly detached being that to worship it, or even acknowledge it would be pointless. Perfect beings would not change, will, or act; they would simply be, as they would have no need or desire to do any of these as their existence is fulfilled by their perfection.
>>960988
> I just don't believe a perfect being would create an imperfect universe. There may be a perfect god, but it would be such an alien, utterly detached being that to worship it, or even acknowledge it would be pointless. Perfect beings would not change, will, or act; they would simply be, as they would have no need or desire to do any of these as their existence is fulfilled by their perfection.
This is essentially Neo-Platoism. For them a perfect God is one that has no desires, to want something is to be less than perfect, so he doesn't interfear with the universe, he didn't even intend a creation, just that creation is something Gods naturally do without needing an intent for Neo-Platonists.
From what I understood the Platonists thought the idea that God could "get angry" or "demand something" was absurd.
>>960988
>Regardless, perfection is an absolute quality, a perfect being could not change because it would no longer be an absolutely perfect entity.
And I'm arguing that He doesn't change.
>I was referring to the universe itself. One of the common arguments supporting the perfect monotheistic god is "well where did the universe did come from?" without ever bothering to explain where God came from.
The universe and God are two completely different things, and the same contention cannot apply to both. The universe is finite and measurable, while God is neither.
>No. I just don't believe a perfect being would create an imperfect universe.
Why not?
>There may be a perfect god, but it would be such an alien, utterly detached being that to worship it, or even acknowledge it would be pointless.
Do you want to be able to relate to God, or am I misinterpreting?
>>961023
>The universe is finite and measurable, while God is neither
Not him but saying how many Gods exist is a form of measurment. And whether the universe is infinite or not is a clearly answerable.
>The universe and God are two completely different things
This depends on what you mean by universe. If you mean "all that exists" than God must be within the universe.
>>961087
>Not him but saying how many Gods exist is a form of measurment.
Number =/= measurement
>And whether the universe is infinite or not is a clearly answerable.
What are you saying?
>If you mean "all that exists" than God must be within the universe.
Right, and nobody uses that definition for universe. I think I've seen you on this board before.
>>961023
>And I'm arguing that He doesn't change.
He would have had to to will or act.
>The universe is finite and measurable, while God is neither.
That's a point of contention. The universe may very well be infinite.
>Why not?
Well aside from the fact the notion of a perfect God deciding to do anything is fundamentally absurd, the creation of an imperfect universe would either imply a motive such as curiosity, or sadism or an imperfect such as a lack of consideration or just simple incapability, all of which imply an imperfect being.
>Do you want to be able to relate to God, or am I misinterpreting?
I don't want anything. This isn't about what I want. A perfect God being the creator of reality and a figure that seeks the worship of imperfect beings is fucking absurd. Given the pettiness, pride, and wrath of the god portrayed in Abrahamic texts, there's no reason to assume that your God is perfect.
>>961688
>He would have had to to will or act.
Yeah, He has done that, and is still doing it.
>That's a point of contention. The universe may very well be infinite.
I don't think that has much empirical support.
>the creation of an imperfect universe would either imply a motive such as curiosity, or sadism or an imperfect such as a lack of consideration or just simple incapability, all of which imply an imperfect being.
Or purposefully doing that. The idea of making a perfect human is intrinsically nonsense. At what point are they even perfect?
>>961699
>Yeah, He has done that, and is still doing it.
He would have had to change to will and act. Perfect beings cannot change and remain perfect, because perfection is an absolute state, and thus they cannot will or act.
>Or purposefully doing that.
Which would imply a motive such as curiosity (which would imply a lack of knowledge) or sadism (which would imply malice), neither of which fit into the conception of a perfect being.
>The idea of making a perfect human is intrinsically nonsense.
No more nonsensical than the idea of a perfect God.
>>961712
>>961712
I feel like we're just going in circles.
>He would have had to change to will and act. Perfect beings cannot change and remain perfect, because perfection is an absolute state, and thus they cannot will or act.
Like I've said, acting doesn't require change. Every analogy you construct isn't relevant, because they're things like "you learn new things, you grow in size". None of these apply to God. Instead of saying "Change makes him imperfect.", give me an argument for Him changing.
>or sadism (which would imply malice), neither of which fit into the conception of a perfect being.
You're thinking in terms of the Christian understanding of God. You're thought process is "He doesn't make them perfect, even though he could, so therefore he's sadist." This is irrelevant to the Islamic view, because we don't say He's All-Loving.
>>961740
>Like I've said, acting doesn't require change.
Yes it does, at the very least a change in state of mind. That is none the less a change. Further, why would a perfect being create at all? A perfect being wouldn't have any motive that would be validated by creation, as its existence would be fundamentally validation.
Also, I said nothing about him being all loving. Sadism, even ignoring the all-loving thing would still imply imperfection, as it would imply some manner of desire that needs to be validated, which a perfect being wouldn't require.
>>959678
>implying this meme pharaoh predates hebrew
History must be based on the earliest extant source, not myths and fables concocted generations later and for the Jews, that extant source is the Septuagint from the 2nd century B.C.
Hebrews weren’t even Hebrews at the time of Akhenaten, (14th century B.C.) they were just one of dozens of meaningless tribes of ass-backward goat herding desert nomads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten#Akhenaten_and_Judeo-Christian-Islamic_monotheism
>>960418
>He doesn't predate Abraham and his followers though
You seem to be on the wrong board, Anon.
This is what you're looking for; >>>/x/catalog
>>962563
You're trying to reason with an idiot bro
I feel Christianity has a lot more in common with polytheism, and isn't truly monotheistic like Judaism or Islam.
Just look at the concept of the trinity, 3 types of god, one being an anthropomorphic figure. Let alone all the divinity embodied in the virgin Mary and the saints, and pagan origin of most of their holidays. I feel some forms of Christianity should be considered quasi-polytheistic.
>>962850
Monotheism has logical problems that polytheism does not, especially the problem of evil. With an omnipotent good god, there needed to be some explanation, so they needed to create a secondary evil 'god' Satan (actually through most of the Bible, Satan is either unmentioned or a very minor character. It was not until after Revelation that the Satan character acquired its attributes.)
>>962871
Christianity is really a dualtheism, like Zoroastrianism.
But yeah, polytheism is pretty much vastly superior in every regard to monotheism. It's a shame there isn't any form of polytheism in Europe anymore, only very small groups of people. To me, the Greek, Roman and Norse polytheisms are really the source of European thought
>>959668
It seems possible. A major part of the bible is when the Hebrews lived in Egypt, in Exodus with Moses freeing the slaves is an important story in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It seems to follow that the Hebrews would have picked up various Egyptian customs and/or beliefs while they lived there. Perhaps combining them with their own original beliefs and customs.
The concept of monotheism seems to have arisen separately in different places. It's hard to say where it started first. Though to me it seems that the natural state of humans is to be polytheistic and a monotheistic world-view is strongly resisted by most ordinary people. Even many of the "monotheistic" religions today have strong polytheistic elements in their tradition.
I think monotheism is too esoteric of a concept for most people to really understand, and goes against our natural urge to believe in a polytheistic universe. This is because we try to understand the universe in anthropomorphic terms, imagining things like the seasons to have human-like personalities. This is why it pops up in different places, only to return later in a slightly different form. Personally I think it's the more enlightened view and aligns more with what we've discovered with modern science and technology.
>>962871
Compared to the middle ages Satan's role is has been greatly diminished. He used to be considered the cause of all evil from sickness to famine.
Now that he has lost that role Man has taken Satan's job as proving the reason for the existence of evil. This is extremly bad for the health of the religion, essentially we have been forced to ourself as the bad guy. This does disasters for the morality of the people and ultimatly I think leads to us rejecting religion entirely.
>>962871
I don't think Satan is usually considered to be a god. More of an evil force that exists in this world, but is still subject to the one God's universal laws.
>>962898
I agree, a lot of the stories and morals that every European child knows usually have some kind of origin in Greek/Roman, or Norse mythology. Even if it's cast in a Christian light. Santa Claus is Odin.
>>962898
>. It's a shame there isn't any form of polytheism in Europe anymore, only very small groups of people.
You can always try to bring it back. Consistent polytheistic theology could totally have some potential.
>>959668
Freud wrote a book called "Moses and Monotheism" which subscribes to a version of this idea (that monotheism was not a Hebrew idea but an idea taken from Egypt). He also added lots of extremely weird psychoanalysis and the book is not read by historians of religion except as a model of psychoanalytic theories of religion.
But given the discoveries of Near Eastern archaeology since the late 19th century, and the enormous progress made in Biblical studies since the mid 20th century, this thesis is extremely clumsy and unlikely.
This is the main reason: Biblical scholars have come to widely accept the conclusion in the last few decades that the early Israelites were not monotheists. There is a vast amount of evidence which suggests that monotheistic religion developed gradually out of polytheism, and only became crystallized in the post Exilic period (after the Neo-Babylonians sacked Jerusalem in 587 BCE and large swaths of the Israelite population were forced to leave Israel).
The earliest strains of Israelite religion were undoubtedly influenced by the broader religious culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Comparisons with pre-Biblical Ugaritic religious literature (A semitic speaking people from the Levant, north of Jerusalem) reveal huge similarities.
Egypt did have influence on the Israelites, on their mythologies and on their religious views. But this is considerably weaker than Canaanite/Syrian/Babylonian (IE Semitic) influence.
Most importantly, during the period between the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE and the end of the Babylonian Captivity in 538 BCE, which most scholars agree was the period when Hebrew religion most quickly developed towards a pronounced monotheism, Egypt was often an enemy of the Israelites and had minimal influence on their civilization.
The Israelites developed, solidified and theologized monotheism on their own, and they did it in an extremely distinct way that bears very little resemblance to Egypt.
Also I'm pretty well read on this topic, it was practically an obsession of mine for a while.
My post here >>962949
is worth reading if you're curious, and I'd be happy to answer any questions others have on early Israelite religion.
>>959668
The Jews probably stole Zoroastrianism IMO.
>>962956
>Egypt was often an enemy of the Israelites and had minimal influence on their civilization.
Weren't Salomon and David priest-king along the same lines as Pharaoh?
>>959736
>There are only 2 rational positions to take on the concept of belief in deities
There is only 1 rational position to take on the concept of belief in deities, and that is, that they are a man made fabrication based on a combination of ignorance, and our genetics as a social species. Period.
>>962956
Was the god of Jewish belief that we now know as the god of the three Abrahamic faiths always supposed to be all-powerful?
>>962996
>>962978
I'm not super familiar with the Pharoah in Egyptian religion, but I know they were (sometimes?) seen as divine. The Israelite kings were never apotheosized.
Solomon and David derive their ruling authority in the Biblical narratives from divine appointment, but none of the kings are ever elevated to divine status. The Israelites had a priestly class (the Levites), and there are indications that this priestly class competed for power with the monarchy and always exercised a religious authority over the king. In the Old Testament, there are 40 odd kings of Israel described, and all but three or four (Hezekiah, David, Solomon) are described as being extremely evil and subjected to punishment by God, typically for idolatry or worshiping other Gods.
>>962996
I'm not sure your question makes sense as presented, since Judaism and early Israelite religion are quite different, and since each of the Abrahamic faiths has extremely unique interpretations of the monotheistic God.
But if I understand you correctly, no the God of the early Israelites was not all powerful. The Hebrews initially worshiped several gods, but came to view YHWH as THE God, and came to see anything but YHWH worship as the utmost evil. YHWH was originally a sky/storm god, but he gradually comes to be seen as the creator of the world and an all powerful being.
>>963029
Sorry, the question was poorly phrased. Yes, I meant YHWH, and you answered my question. Thanks for your time.
This thread brought out the Zionist shills rather hard.
>>959716
>not the zoroastrian though
At least inform yourself before spouting bullshit:
>With possible roots dating back to the second millennium BCE, Zoroastrianism enters recorded history in the 5th-century BCE,[4]
Akhenaton:
Akhenaten (/ˌækəˈnɑːtən/;[1] also spelled Echnaton,[7] Akhenaton,[8] Ikhnaton,[9] and Khuenaten;[10][11] meaning "Effective for Aten") known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV (sometimes given its Greek form, Amenophis IV, and meaning Amun is Satisfied), was a pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC.
Did it take long to see?
Litterally you didn't even bother to wikipedia it.
>>962850
>trinity
That's not how the trinity works
The trinity is meant to demonstrate the transcendent quality of God. He is not some juju on the mountain, God is beyond our ability to ascribe identity. When Catholics refer to the father, son, and holy spirit, God is the force that describes the interaction between these three concepts. It's describing God as a function of a relationship, not as individual separate actors.
It's like how gravity doesn't actually look like anything and although we know in the abstract what it is (the warping of space time due to the presence of mass), it's easier to describe gravity as a function of a relationship: the apple falls to the ground, the planet continues its orbit around the sun, etc.
>>962871
Nonsense. In the Christian tradition, evil is the absence of God. God allows evil to exist for the same reason we don't interfere with a Lion eating a rivals cubs in order to make his females sexually receptive. We can ask why a perfect God created an imperfect world, or we can carry that line of thinking to its logical conclusion and wonder why a perfect God would create anything at all.
>>962898
>dualtheism
No no no, don't be silly. Satan has no power other than to spread lies. In the middle ages if you went to the Inquisition to report witches practicing devil magic, they'd through YOU in the stockades for spreading malicious lies that any kind of power exists other than God's love.
>polytheism is pretty much vastly superior in every regard to monotheism
If that was true, how come polytheism dies out virtually within a single generation of having monotheism introduced? Polytheistic Romans tried to actively eradicate Monotheism by feeding adherents to lions, and it only made people like the monotheists even more. You see it with Native Americans. Papua New Guineans, and dark-age Scandinavia, pagan societies evaporating virtually overnight after the introduction of Christianity, with only a few die-hards holding out.
>>963810
No, evil is not the absence of god any more than light is the absence of darkness or a cat is the absence of dogness. Real evil, the kind that is demonic, has its own presence and its own pervasive malevolent intention. It is not just the absence of something. It is something.
Christians need to be very wary and not succumb to the relativistic, good intentions of the non-Biblical who seek to abide in the gray area of truth,We must not consider evil to be a lack of good any more than we would say that God is a lack of evil. We should not define something by what it is not but by what it is.
>>963810
>Polytheistic Romans tried to actively eradicate Monotheism by feeding adherents to lions, and it only made people like the monotheists even more
Christian propaganda.
Also, you're misattributing the success of Christianity to the wrong factor.The main difference between Christianity and those pagan faiths it was competing against are its requirement to proselytize and the fact it developed a centralized structure. Monotheism also failed miserably to eradicate polytheism in India and China.
>>963810
>You see it with Native Americans. Papua New Guineans, and dark-age Scandinavia
desu all those places were shitholes compared to the might of the christian world
>>963810
>If that was true, how come polytheism dies out virtually within a single generation of having monotheism introduced?
How come Christianity died out in Najaf in just a few decades, after having been a center of Christianity for centuries?
>>962850
>pagan origin of most of their holidays
I mean yeah Christmas and Easter are definitely pagan in origin, not at all to celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ, or reflect on him dying for the sins of all mankind and celebrating the Resurrection amirite
>tfw you cant burn people who say this shit anymore
the "pagan orgins" were literally condescension to idiot pagans by adding meaningless garnishes around the religious significance and celebrating them around the pagan holidays, how else do you think the early Christians fooled so many heathens into getting on board?
>>960349
>Except that all atheist scholars
[citation needed]
>>960399
I see both sides of this.
People see what they are looking for.
"Although essentially processive [sic] and devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity: one provided by and constituted by teotl... Dialectical polar monism holds that: (1) the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl; and (2) teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites."
>>963905
>Real evil, the kind that is demonic, has its own presence and its own pervasive malevolent intention.
Horse pucky. Show me the cave that goes to hell where I can find these malevolent creatures so I can shoot them with my .30-06
Evil exists because good individuals are ignorant to it or too apathetic to do anything about it. As human progress continues and the flow of information spreads exponentially, we have evolved into increasingly larger and more cooperative and peaceful societies because nothing destroys evil like the free flow of information.
Case in point: it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write, because doing so made them desire freedom. The moment you allow information to spread through their societies, the sooner they begin demanding the eradication of evil.
>relativistic
Einsteinian relativity is one of the most exhaustively tested and validated scientific theories in the history of science. It's predictions have proved accurate to the many, many decimal places. We live in a universe where there is only one center: the person observing it. Christians cling to superstition and rhetoric at the cost of ignoring the latest developments of scientific progress at their own peril.
>>963931
>Christian propaganda.
There are numerous non-christian sources which attest to this phenomena. The act of persecuting innocent Christians were making the pagan high priests look like the real monsters. On multiple occasions, each one more severe than the last, did the Roman status quo attempt to stamp out the Christian religion by simply exterminating them as law-breakers. It's also well documented that Romans fed condemned state prisoners (Christian and pagan alike) to wild animals as a form of entertainment. Multiple sources attest to the depraved cruelty of these games, where donkeys and horses were trained to rape women, while men were made to sit on see-saws as starved, crazed beasts disemboweled them from below. Pagan aristocrats saw this as a sensible way of instilling proper Roman values in the plebs.
Fast-forward a few hundred years: the population is now %100 Christian, blood-sport has been outlawed, and Roman Christians now gather into amphitheaters to watch bloodless chariot races (which were horrendously partisan affairs and often led to mass brawls, but that's progress for you).
> Monotheism also failed miserably to eradicate polytheism in India and China.
Because these are places which have had centralized cultures for many, many centuries, with cultural conservatism ingrained into the core of their existence, with their own religious traditions which are as every bit as complex as Christianity.
Not that it prevented Marxism from washing over a generous portion that world and seeing most of their religious tradition extinguished under the banner of Monotheism-1.
>>963940
>shitholes
And now they're among the finest places in the world to live.
You'd much rather live in Christian Scandinavia or Christian North America than, say, some Chinese backwater farm village where they still pray to idols and think taking a pill made out of endangered rhino horn will make their penises erect.
>>964075
>the population is now %100 Christian, blood-sport has been outlawed, and Roman Christians now gather into amphitheaters to watch bloodless chariot races
None of these are true
>>964089
>And now they're among the finest places in the world to live.
And in the case of Scandinavia, among the least religious on the planet
>>964096
>None of these are true
Nice argument, bro.
>Gladiator contests, at odds with the new Christian-minded Empire, finally came to an end in 404 CE. Emperor Honorius had closed down the gladiator schools five years before and the final straw for the games came when a monk from Asia Minor, one Telemachus, leapt between two gladiators to stop the bloodshed and the indignant crowd stoned the monk to death. Honorius in consequence formally prohibited gladiatorial contests, although, condemned criminals continued the wild animal hunts for another century or so. Many Romans no doubt lamented the loss of a pastime that was such a part of the fabric of Roman life but the end of all things Roman was near, for, just six years later, the Visigoths led by Alaric would sack the Eternal city itself.
http://www.ancient.eu/gladiator/
>>964097
>And in the case of Scandinavia, among the least religious on the planet
Some would argue that monotheism-1 is the next logical step from believing in many gods to believing in none at all.
Others might argue that monotheism-1 is the next logical outgrowth for Christianity, away from this perception of God as a bearded old white guy sitting on a cloud judging everybody, and towards one of a transcendent being impossible to describe using language, but can only be experienced in the here-and-now.
>>964089
>And now they're among the finest places in the world to live.
that's really not relevant to the persuasive power of monotheism contra polytheism is it now
>>964134
>that's really not relevant to the persuasive power of monotheism contra polytheism is it now
You mean besides the fact that the only remaining polytheistic societies are backwater hold-outs to a Monotheism-dominated planet and a few consumer-cults dominated by edgy teens who still take astrology seriously? That the only thing growing faster than Christianity is Islam, another type of monotheism, and atheism, which is monotheistic thinking carried to its logical conclusion?
Polytheism is a more primitive and inefficient language structure for describing reality. The only effect it has on the world these days is to drive preciously rare animals into extinction just so Chin-Chang can get his penis erect, or so that a bunch of low-caste Indians can ostracize an orphan with vitiligo as being possessed by a demon
>>964172
>atheism, which is monotheistic thinking carried to its logical conclusion
Jesus Christ, it's simply astonishing how much cognitive dissonance Christcucks possess. If Celtic paganism was successful, I'm 100% sure that you people would try to convince me it's 'basically the monotheism of paganism'.
This is also the reason why no one respects Christcucks. You people are so unbelievably biased, ignorant of history and stupid, it's completely beyond the point of parody. It never ceases to amaze me how you people can have access to all this information, and still believe in some of the most intentionally inane bullshit ever.
>>964097
Living in Denmark, I call bullshit. I'm a religion teacher here, and this is one of the most christian places I've been, except it's dogma-less. Everyone gets baptized, everyone gets confirmed at 15, for which they take lessons and get time off from school for. They all believe in some kind of God, and they all believe in Jesus, except not based on any text or learning, it's just "what feels right".
They're not unreligious, they're just ignorantly religious.
>>964205
Also, as my old theology teacher used to say, their relationship to Luther is basically idolatrous, where people read his cathechism over the bible itself.
>>964202
I'm sorry daddy didn't hug you more as a child. Did you have anything of substance to add to the discussion or are you just going to keep complaining and making an ass out of yourself?
> If Celtic paganism was successful,
Celtic pagans believed in human sacrifice. Be reasonable for a minute here because human sacrifice died out on its own across the planet, often without any help from Christians. Even pagan Romans thought that the Celts were degenerates.
Atheism evolved out of Christian societies. It evolves from the line of thinking that goes "if I can't see or detect a god, that god must not exist". A millennium before scientific skepticism was born (in a medieval Catholic university, mind you), people still asked questions like "where did this all come from? Why are we here?" and they turned to the religion which said "there is no old white guy on a mountain throwing lightning bolts at sinners, the one true God is a transcendent being".
Flash forward to the age of enlightenment and scientific progress, and you have thinkers like Karl Marx building on the works of previous Christian utopian thinkers but excoriating these ideas from their overtly religious shell.
>>964241
contemporary atheism is materialistic though, christian thinking is platonic
atheism being like christianity is more in the sense of inheriting christian values
>>964258
>platonic
What does this mean?
>>964258
>contemporary atheism is materialistic though, christian thinking is platonic
I would argue that only politically motivated atheism is materialistic, and that true atheism is an umbrella term that doesn't neatly fall into any single category, and that atheists should be taken at their word when they insist that it is a lack of belief, not a "belief in nothing".
And Christian platonism is exclusively counter-revolutionary, a reactionary backlash to scientific progress evaporating many of their preconceived notions about reality. You don't start seeing these young earth creationists until after Charles Darwin's body of work was published. But there are also strains of transcendent thought in the Christian movement, and Christian thinkers have often played a key role in human development. Lets not forget that the Big Bang Theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest, and was derided as "stealth-creationism" by atheists until the evidence became incontrovertible. So the reality is far from clear-cut
>>964075
They didn't persecute Christians for being Christian. They persecuted them for being criminals who broke Roman laws and defied Roman tradition. They weren't special.
The whole "abloobloobloo, they mistreated Christians" thing is after the fact propaganda meant to make the pagan Romans look like dickheads.
>>964385
>They persecuted them for being criminals who broke Roman laws and defied Roman tradition.
I agree. That was the line that Roman pagans fed to the masses in order to justify their slaughter for the sake of crass, tawdry entertainment for the masses of apathetic urban poor.
All it did was make martyrs out of them. People saw Christians bravely perishing horribly for their beliefs and it exposed huge throngs of plebs to the power and conviction of the Christian faith in an ancient case of bad publicity being a hell of a lot more effective than good publicity or no publicity.
>>959879
damn.. that's a very good point.
When people bring up pagan celebrations as what became the Christian holidays you should pick St-Valentine's Day as an example instead of Christmas and Easter. Because St-Valentine was a literally who and the only reason why that holiday was significant is because of Romans. Whereas Christmas and Easter stand a lot better on their own two feet in terms of Christian -ness.
>>964048
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." - Isaiah 45:7 King James Bible
God can indeed "create" evil; and as such - such an "evil" is not an absence of His goodness - but is a deliberate act on His part.
>>965640
Honestly I think the Old Testament does not support a universe with a natural morality nor does it support a moralizing God.
Rather Yawheh is an amoral deity that the Hebrews have made a pact with.
>>959668
the ten commandments were extracted from the "weighting of the heart" ritual from the book of the dead.
http://happy-firewalker.blogspot.com.br/2011/09/ten-commandments-originated-in-egypt.html
>>965640
>It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. 2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Galatians 5:1-6
in the Christian tradition, Christ's "final sacrifice" frees us from the God of the Old testament, as Jesus did not destroy the old rules but reinterpreted them for a more peaceful, sophisticated era, something we call the Common Era.
>>965755
> as Jesus did not destroy the old rules but reinterpreted them for a more peaceful, sophisticated era
Did he really do this? The church of Christ has a long history of violence, arguably far more than the violence of the Jews. It has also been a far more intrusive church. The Jews really didn't mind if their neighbors had a different way of life but the church of Christ historically wanted to destroy everything.
If you look at the old testament you can find examples of kindness, saying things like the Jews should treat strangers well because they were strangers in the land of Egypt.
>>965932
You're uneducated
>>965901
>Did he really do this?
You have to look at it progressively. It was a step up from slave-owning societies that took people on trumped up criminal charges and made them suffer gruesome deaths for the sake of a cheap entertainment. At one point Emperor Commodus had every legless cripple in the city rounded up and tied in the center of the coliseum in the shape of a giant person, and then he went around clubbing them to death one by one, then looked at the adoring crowd and proclaimed that he had killed a giant. You stop seeing this kind of abject cruelty being employed so freely or so wide-scale. Later Christian societies certainly had their share of horrible treatments for perceived evil-doers, but it was always employed in exceptional cases and industrial-scale slaughter for entertainment was never again tolerated in western society.
>arguably far more than the violence of the Jews.
Obviously no Bronze age Hebrew tribe could conceive of repression on the level of colonial England. As progress takes place, work on a wider scale becomes possible.
Galatians 5:1 uses the example of circumcision. It might have been a great idea in 700 BCE when everybody was dirt poor and you stood a very real chance of perishing from infection, so circumcision was proof that you valued practical knowledge over false prophecies. However by the Roman empire there were public baths and the chance of your penis foreskin getting infected and killing you became far less likely.
>>966242
Your comment did not address the central question. Did Christianity really become more kind than Judaism? You didn't address the Jewish society at all. You completly abounded your central premise to rant about ugly things Roman society did. But you can find these same ugly concepts in Christian societies. Christian societies sanctified slaves and had corrupt courts (which ironically enough fucked with Jews). So not only did you forfeit your original statement but your rant is hypocritical.
>>966242
“Show me a coin.” Then he asked, “Whose picture and name are on it?” “The Emperor’s,” they answered. Then he told them, “Give the Emperor what belongs to him and give God what belongs to God.” - Luke 20:24-25 KJV
Jesus clearly separates the Sacred from the “Secular”- although Romans were polytheists; the State was to be completely independent from Religion and vice versa. Christianity was designed to be neutral in all worldly affairs: the only instance where it would venture into mainstream life – was to preach the News of Christ - Matthew 28:19-20 It reserved the right to proselytize. In other issues – especially in warfare – Christians refused to take part.
The corrupt form of Christianity, politicised and autocratic, that arrived in Europe in the form of the Roman Catholic Church was anything but neutral. And once the Reformation arrived – sectarianism received fresh fuel for bloodshed and oppression. This in itself provides clear evidence of Christendom's corrupt-mutated false-Christian-nature. When Bibles are used as a bases to engage in warfare, it’s clear that the people who do so haven’t read it.
And the oppression wasn’t limited to other Christian denominations; “Christian” Europe went to war with the Islamic East – in the Crusades. It may have been centuries long past – but it highlights the potency of the Enlightenment which ushered in Secularism – for keeping sectarianism at bay.
>>959668
Judaism might be.
Christianity owes way more to neo-platonism though.
>>966262
>Did Christianity really become more kind than Judaism?
That's not the central question. The central question is monotheism verses polytheism. It's on a scale vastly larger than what you are visualizing. We're talking about how societies shift from century to century, and the sociological pattern that evolves is towards increasingly benevolent structures, albeit very unevenly and often with severe setbacks.
For their time, the hebrew henotheistic societies looked upon their child-sacrificing canaanite polytheistic neighbors with disgust.. After their conquest by the Babylonians, the Hebrew culture was stripped of its henotheistic shell and re-emerged as a monotheism inspired by the Zoroastrianism of their secular savior, the Persian king Cyrus the Great. This took place over the course of the last millenium BCE, from the ashes of the Bronze Age civilizations to the rise of Rome
But to answer your question, Christianity simply had greater evangelical potential. Judaism persevered by being insular, while Christianity persevered through proselytizing and expansion, by moving into towns and setting up orphanages and soup kitchens and inviting desperate people to survive under a polytheistic status quo which didn't even pretend to care about them. They both occupied different niches and were given to different economic stresses, so nobody is saying that the Jews were any more or less kind than the Christians. The Jews and Christians are monotheistic religions which share a common ancestor.
>Christian societies sanctified slaves
In the ancient Christian tradition it was immoral to own another Christian as a slave. Slavery in the west only perseveres as a form of colonialism and racism much later, after the feudal era.
> corrupt courts
Legal reform produced vastly more fair legal structures in dark/middle age societies than anything that was seen in the classical era.
>>966409
>Slavery in the west only perseveres as a form of colonialism and racism much later, after the feudal era.
what? the medieval period was full of slaves taken from within europe
>>966409
>societies evolve from evil polytheistic societies to benevolonent monothestic societies, religions "evolve" to be better over time
This is an idea that is discarded in academia.
Here is professor of Old Testament studies discussing the history of this idea and how it falls apart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZVFoMiOEUY&t=4m38s
I set it to the right time for you. It refutes you central point.
>>959763
you're talking about the biblical abraham right? you obviously have not read the biblical account...
>>966448
I never said it was clean, even process, or that there still wasn't a great deal of hypocrisy which took further centuries to address, but the defining difference between the classical era and the middle ages is fundamentally the division of labor, the difference between the great slave owning societies of classical antiquity and the feudal kingdoms of the later middle ages.
But neither were these feudal kingdoms entirely stable, and class distinctions continued dissolving well into the era of Capitalism, itself another massive shift in the organization of labor, away from the agrarian societies of old.
This thread is interesting and you should all feel good about yourselves.
>>966452
It started me at the beginning, and I won't be able to make commentary on your 40 minute long video unless you care to paraphrase the central points.
Polytheism consistently failed to produce stable, lasting societies. Every single one of the Bronze Age cultures collapsed horribly. Poly/Henotheism might have worked well when Jerusalem was an anonymous mountain town ruled by priest-judges, but in a city like Rome at its peak, with over a million humans coexisting peacefully, a more broad perception of ethics needed to be realized, especially as humans lead increasingly stable, increasingly productive lives, and had more and more free time for self reflection or secular squabbling or, in the case of the Jews, political zeal manifesting itself as armed uprising.
And this phenomenon isn't strictly limited to the west. You see it happen around roughly the same time in both India with Hinduism and Buddhism and China with Confucianism. Some western thinkers would even go so far as to call the educated interpretations of hinduism and buddhism to be categorically atheist, devoid of a central deity whose concepts are used primarily as metaphor. This has nothing to do with Christianity's supposed superiority over any other religion, and has to do with the inadequacy of polytheistic language structures to produce an ethics system capable of producing stable, large scale human societies, and that over time these ethics systems become increasingly fair, and increasingly secular.
>>966497
>the difference between the great slave owning societies of classical antiquity and the feudal kingdoms of the later middle ages
but the slaves were about the same as serfs
>>966452
>This is an idea that is discarded in academia.
Maybe among the more conservative members, but most members of academia still believe that socialism is the future of labor organization, even if it won't be in a form that Karl Marx or Joseph Stalin could have conceptualized.
>>966544
maybe by our standards, but by contemporary standards a serf or a villein had far more rights than a slave.
Most often a serf was a tenet farmer, tending his private farm for profit, and donating labor to his manor lord in the spring and autumn, when the manor lord needed the extra labor. Though he needed his lords permission to leave villa, in practice he rarely had reason too (unless the lord happened to be exceptionally cruel).
This was a radically different set up from the Latifundia of classical antiquity, which more resembled the cotton plantations of the antebellum American south.
>>966543
>It started me at the beginning
This odds.
Anyway the point starts at 4m38s and lasts for about 3 minutes.
>Every single one of the Bronze Age cultures collapsed
All cultures either die transfuse themself into other cultures.
>Some western thinkers would even go so far as to call the educated interpretations of hinduism and buddhism to be categorically atheist, devoid of a central deity whose concepts are used primarily as metaphor
This is because the supreme force of non-mothotheistic religion is the meta-divine realm. The idea of a deities life story as a metaphor has always been the norm. The deities are players in a stage and the writer of the play are certain divine forces, for instance Karma. In this way we can view non-monotheism as a type of nature-philosophy with certain absolute laws. Monotheism is a rejection of this. Watch the video for a bit of info on that.
>>966548
This type of secular view of a materialistic heaven on earth promised by science or economics. Of a teleological "growth" towards a "goal" is just taking the Christian concepts and putting them in non-spiritual pants. Just like how the second coming of Christ is always "very soon" so is the economic salvation. And both are filled with countless examples of the prophecy failing only for us to say we misinterpreted it.
Meta-narratives about history and progress went out with post-modernism. This is because society is not one big meta-narrative but many different niche groups each with their own narrative and their own ambitions.
Things like circumcision and food taboos are prevalent among the various cultures of the near east and are probably acquired beliefs originating in prehistory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_drink_prohibitions#Fish
>>959736
>atheism is a belief system, by the way
And starvation is a traditional african cuisine
>>966609
>Anyway the point starts at 4m38
And basically confirms my own. She says that monotheism did not evolve out of the syncretic polytheistic tradition but arose specifically as a reaction to it. That was my point entirely: You see the henotheistic nature of the ancient Hebrew religious tradition die out after the israelites in exile were exposed to the monotheism of Zoroastrianism, and you see their religion gradually adapt into modern Judaism.
You also see the bloated, dysfunctional status quo of the pagan Roman tradition abandoned by the plebs in droves for the Christian religion, which essentially built a state within a state, and that was the thing left standing after the Gothic Germans and Byzantine Greeks burned Italy to the ground in the 6th century.
>All cultures either die transfuse themself into other cultures.
But not all cultures perish horribly. Some die with a whimper, some leave strong offspring while others never amount to jack.
>Of a teleological "growth" towards a "goal" is just taking the Christian concepts and putting them in non-spiritual pants.
Only in the outdated orthodox Marxist tradition. Modern traditions of democratic socialism define it as an inevitable consequence of legal emancipation producing fairer societies mixed with technological improvements that boost the efficiency of our cultures and permit individuals to make decisions based off the interpretation of massive amounts of sensory input and aggregated data. The type of research that economists can do in our era, with super computers collecting and compiling truly colossal reams of data would make David Ricardo, Karl Marx, even someone as late as Milton Friedman green with envy.
The only ones adopting a secular religion are the paleo-conservative free market puritans who, like the conservative natural law theorists of ancient Rome, deduced that the current systems is the best of all possible arrangements for human society and any attempt to modify it constitutes heresy.
>>959668
no its the other way around
>>959874
>Cause in islam believing in one god trumps all.
Don't you need to accept Muhammad and follow certain aspects of the Sunnah? Or is monotheism enough?
>>968976
>But not all cultures perish horribly. Some die with a whimper, some leave strong offspring while others never amount to jack.
And the polytheistic culture of the Romans and Greeks is the father of the modern world. Even after it collapsed on itself it still managed to empower things.
The culture that is dying with a wimper is the Christian one. Honestly it's pathetic to watch. The Pope is demanding Islamic enemies enter through the boarder, the Protetestant core feels threatened by basic facts like evolution, only the Orthodox really has any diginity left.
As for the other monotheistic cultures: Judaism no other religion has had the power to create a nation but I would argue this is because of ethnic identities, the Zoastrianism still fell with dignity going on to influence intellectual movements in Europe and the Moorish countries. Islam had it's glory days and is reduced to thriving in shit-hole countries.
In general I think monotheism promotes weak culture. The great boon of the world was Hellenism in which Greek culture, math, science, and philosophy was spread through-out the world and the Greeks managed to absorb all the good ideas from everyone they found. Polytheism was a key facotor in this. The philosophy was that other cultures just worship the Greek Gods under different names, or that the other culture's Gods actually existed. This allowed the Empire to study everything and for all the good aspects of their culture to be exported.
>>969274
>And the polytheistic culture of the Romans and Greeks is the father of the modern world.
Only in the sense that the conditions fostered by the Pax Romana gave rise to the Judeo-Christian west, and western culture is distinctly defined by its relationship with this eastern religious tradition, and the Roman polytheistic tradition is better thought of as an older, more inefficient competitor to our more modern way means of compiling society.
We should remember that older societies are more unstable ones, and both of the great the classical polytheistic traditions (the Bronze Age Mycenaens, the Iron Age Romans) collapsed from a combination of climate change, external human pressure, and internal division.
>The culture that is dying is...
Don't be fatalistic. Christian culture isn't "dying", it's "molting", shedding the old and superfluous while preserving and expanding upon the underlying point. The reasons for deflating economies and population decline are entirely secular
> The Pope is
demanding dialog and peaceful exchange and abrahamic ecumenism. Frankly he's the only one setting a decent example, especially when you consider how badly screwed (in a secular sense) these people actually are
>he Protetestant core
Money is the root of all conflict. Scratch just below the surface and you've got an insurance industry which would rather make women pay for their own abortions and force homosexuals to take separate insurance plans. The protestant marriage to right wing politics has turned their entire religious tradition into a running joke and a national embarrassment.
>only the Orthodox
Let me guess: you're totally gay for Putin, aren't you?
>Judaism
One of the most successful and productive ethnic lines in human history. We Christians should feel privileged by their presence, even if we actively despise Zionism
>Zoastrianism
Hasn't been relevant since the Sassanid Persians
>Islam had it's glory days
and then the mongols burned everything to the ground
>>969274
>In general I think monotheism promotes weak culture.
Nigga which culture brought the world to heel during the colonial era?
>he great boon of the world was Hellenism in which Greek culture, math, science, and philosophy was spread through-out the world and the Greeks managed to absorb all the good ideas from everyone they found. Polytheism was a key facotor in this.
And what's the industrial revolution? Chop liver? What about the culture, math, science, and philosophy that the Hellenic Greeks plagiarized from Pharaonic Egypt? What about the Islamic golden age?
You can talk about the strengths of polytheistic societies but you literally don't have a single real world example that didn't go extinct in the classical era.
>The philosophy was that other cultures just worship the Greek Gods under different names, or that the other culture's Gods actually existed. This allowed the Empire to study everything and for all the good aspects of their culture to be exported.
Polytheistic syncretism was taking place a very long time before the Hellenes showed up. In the days before mass media, religion WAS your entertainment, and that was big business, so all of these religious traditions coagulating into each other is really just a long list of bankruptcies and buy-outs.
And lets not forget that when the polytheistic vikings invaded monotheistic England, they sacked the monasteries and took all the monks as slaves. Fast forward 1 generation, and all of the monasteries have been restocked by the central church, back at their jobs laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the Catholic university system, and all of the vikings have now been Christianized because while the men were at war, the enslaved monks were left at home with the wife and children to manage the house, and guess what he was teaching them while the hubby was off splitting craniums for personal glory?
>>969193
monotheism is enough for a person to go to heaven and to be forgiven if you never heard of god messenger but if you did then yeah you would need to accept him.
In islam you only need an atom weight of faith to go to heaven but that does not mean you will not get punished,
>>963810
>If that was true, how come polytheism dies out virtually within a single generation of having monotheism introduced?
Ironically that can be partially explained by a mechanism which would in polytheistic terms described as a "god" or as the above anon said "will". It is in fact the "will" which has been most extensively discussed in my experience. Variously it has been referred to as "Gnon", or "moloch", in nature it's sometimes called "survival of the fittest" though I don't think that's a fully accurate phrase.
Here's a nice piece detailing it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
>>959668
No.
>>969610
James 2:19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!
Might want to rethink your position, friendo.
>>969671
According to Pope Francis, the phenomenon that you are describing actually bears more in common with the ancient worship of Mammon, who was this ancient patron of commerce for pure commerce's sake, that sort of dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest mentality which we see today with social darwinists and hardcore free market capitalists. Mammon personified the acquisition of wealth beyond the bounds of morality and was tolerant of infant sacrifice in its Carthaginian tradition.
The irony is that while the pagan status quo squandered its great wealth reserves on foreign military adventures and internal political speculation, Christians were spreading from town to town, building up communities around churches, leading to an eventual reversal of fortune where the most fantastically wealthy and most popular game in town were the Christians, who were beating the pagans at their own game. The pagans realized too late that it was wrong of them to try forcing people to care about a system that didn't even pretend to care about them.
>>969549
>Don't be fatalistic. Christian culture isn't "dying", it's "molting", shedding the old and superfluous while preserving and expanding upon the underlying point.
The % of people that identify as Christian in Western in cultures is dropping, if you factor out the immigrants that have not yet been fully exposed to the secular shock it's even more signficant. Now this is just a personal experience but the Christians that remain are increasingly lax and as you said tie Christianity with some sort of politics. I think this is the only way to keep the religion alive, it doesn't have a leg to stand on. All attempts to keep Christianity alive have been from taking the blood of some foreign ideas and transfusing it into the religion's veins. In doing so the religion stays alive but lose it's identity.
The underlying point of Christianity is totally incompatable with the modern world and arguably became so around the time Paul corrupted the religion. It was a doomsday cult where the arrival of the end of the world was supposed to crush the corrupted society,the founders expected the end in their life time. Now here we are 2,000 years later and same "any day now" message isn't appealing anymore. The religion defined itself by rejection, rejection of Judaism, rejection of it's priests, rejection of the Roman rule, rejection of their sovereignty over the earth, it is a religion with no values, only anti-values.
>>969784
> Frankly [the Pope is] the only one setting a decent example
The Pope knows white Europians are no longer interested in his religion. The immigrants are which is why he wants them. "Charity" is the political excuse he tells suckers. The Arab world is not taking in these "refugee's" themself, in fact most arn't even refugee. The immigrants want to control the West by asserting cultural dominance. The desperate Pope is willing to give them a chance if it means having a shot at his religion staying relevant in the Europe.
>strengths of polytheistic societies but you literally don't have a single real world example that didn't go extinct in the classical era.
When we switched from Polytheism to Monotheism the world went to shit. It was only after religion stopped being so relevant that the pace picked up again. In the modern Western world religion is in total decay. Monotheism began with the idea of rejecting many Gods and today the atheists brag "we go one God further". The Christians who insisted on an unnatural God, above nature, allowed for the naturalistic secuarlists to destroy their God (while in a polytheistic system the divine meta-realm co-existed with naturalism). It was the Christians who insisted that God had to be a historical truth and thus allowed him to be falsified when advanced biblical study started showing inconstancy in their history. The claim to one God existing that it incompatable with a global reality of many Gods.
Now the world has and does run perfectly fine in a secular setting. But if you want to reignite the spiritual spark you need to look to the past. Even the Christians owe a dept to the Pagans. The modern image of the angel comes from some Greek statue, the Saints were substitutes for Gods. The holy days borrowed from Pagan ones, mystery of the Euchrist and dying/rise God from mystery cults, metaphysics and nature of God from Aristotle and Plato, kickstart of Paul's form of Christianity from Hellenism.
>>969784
>The % of people that identify as Christian in Western in cultures is dropping,
No, church attendance is down. Spirituality isn't going away, it's decentralizing because we no longer live in a society where you get all your information from a single building. People are turning to websites like these one and private reading groups and non-denominational congregations.
But it is still the same core values and traditions, just re-envisioned for a modern era, with modern nuance.
>I think this is the only way to keep the religion alive,
It's a short term gain for a long term loss. The short term gain is an insanely active base. The long term loss is that they're driving away converts and political moderates by tying their faith to identity politics.
> taking the blood of some foreign ideas and transfusing it into the religion's veins. In doing so the religion stays alive but lose it's identity.
That's the story of every religion in existence.
>The underlying point of Christianity is totally incompatable with the modern world and arguably became so around the time Paul corrupted the religion.
You mean literally the second generation of Christians out of a 2,000 year run?
>doomsday cult
Even pagans believed in eschatology. We have letters from pagan Romans of virtually every era complaining about basically the same things: how the world is going to hell, how kids these days are lazy and lack moral fiber, and how the end of the world was probably going to happen in their own lifetimes. These are just things that people have always complained about and always will.
>>971222
>You mean literally the second generation of Christians out of a 2,000 year run
Exactly. I think Paul's version of Christianity was doomed from the start. I think our society came to it's current state in spite of, rather than Christianity. There have been some spirtual worth in early Christianity, Thoma's Gospel really shows this. But the Christianity we got was one of sickness.
>Even pagans believed in eschatology
Christianity is unique in that it craves the ultimate end. For the Norse Pagans the world does end, but only to be reborn again in the events of Ragnarok. The Greeks already believed there had been multiple worlds before. The healthy state of a religion is a religion of the eternal recurrence, that embraces the infinite life/death cycle. Christianity represents a dissatisfaction with life a sickness. That is why it wants there to be no more death (and thus no more life). We get calls fro God to return and make all the animals vegetarians again like in Genesis. This represents a profound dissatisfaction with the inherit properties of the universe, a God that is opposed to and repulsed to the world.
>[spirtuality] decentralizing because we no longer live in a society where you get all your information from a single building
I agree. Now this has certain interesting changes. To start with there is no longer a firm cannon. People can read what they want and interpret it as they please. It means its' an individual thing where each person creates their own spirituality. There is nothing to stop you from opening forbidden theology or combining philosophies or politics in with the religion.
>>971302
>Paul
Paul's contribution to the western ethical tradition is more profound than what you're giving him credit for. Paul's paradigm shift realization was that a life of hedonism and base stimulation is a spiritually hollow and unfulfilled experience. In the modern day we consider it common sense to say that its shallow and immature to have this attitude of "get money, do drugs, fuck bitches", but it wouldn't have been common sense to a Roman pleb, an illiterate whose only education came from a series of state temples, and whose only entertainment was tawdry circus and horrifically violent blood sport, and probably spent most of his life just barely scraping by while languishing in some of history's worst squalor and urban blight.
>Christianity is unique in that it craves the ultimate end.
Bull pucky. The Pagans were as every bit as interested in the end of the world as we are. We know from their literary tradition that they viewed the world as having gone through "ages", a golden age when men were men and slaves knew their place, a silver, bronze, and their current, shitty iron age. End of the world cults have always been popular, its a coping mechanism for living in a reality that often refuses to conform to their ideals and principles.
>forbidden theology
There is no such thing. Ideas in this era are judged by their merits. That's why nobody gives a shit about Satan worshipers because exposure has shown us that they're all just a bunch of edgy teen metalheads crying for attention from their inattentive yuppie parents.
>>971371
> Paul's paradigm shift realization was that a life of hedonism and base stimulation is a spiritually hollow and unfulfilled experience
This is downright revisionist. All Pagans were evil hedonists until Paul came. Paul's aestheticism was a result of his exposure to Hellensim, particularly Stoic philosophy.
And his primary conflict isn't with Pagans but with other Christians and Jews. He argues with James about circumscion. Honestly I can't see how Christians view Paul as a great man, his letters read like whiny internet posts, he is constantly lying about his origins, and the people that personally knew Jesus accused him of being a fraud.
>That's why nobody gives a shit about Satan worshiper
>>All my opponent's worship Satan
In a society with no authentic spirtual leader (say an organized church) there are no official texts. Whether the Gospel of Thomas, Taoism, or Paul's letters are valid becomes a choice that each individual makes. As you said people are not going to church anymore. There is no preacher to tell them that their beliefs are heretical or wrong.
>>971448
>This is downright revisionist.
Nobody said that Paul wasn't building on the work of people who came before him, nobody is saying that the polytheistic tradition is completely without merit. But what Paul did was take a line of thinking which had previously been only accessible to a small cloister of educated Greeks and present it in a way that made it palatable to a large number of gentiles. This was a breakthrough because the pagans essentially had no tradition of distributing these progressive new ideas to the masses.
> He argues with James about circumscion.
Paul's point about circumcision that he expanded upon in Galatians was that circumcision was an example of a rule existing for the sake of a rule, that people were following because an ancient scroll told them that they had to. Paul's point was to say that all acts of Godliness are acts of love, when humans are actually acting in a way that is beneficial to the people around them, and that blind adherence to crusty old rules does not a Godly person make
> valid becomes a choice that each individual makes.
We live in a society beyond good and evil. It is only the size of your paying audience that matters.
>>971492
>This was a breakthrough because the pagans essentially had no tradition of distributing these progressive new ideas to the masses.
You do realize Stoicism was incredibly popular with the lower class? Your point couldn't be farther from the truth. Hell Paul wasn't even the first to merge Judaism with Greek philosophy, that had already been done way before and Paul was educated by Hellenistic Jews.
Again you have more revionism.
>the Jews were mean rule-nazis and Paul liberated people from them
Gee. Do you get all your fucking information from Christian propeganda?
Paul's disgagreement wasn't just over circumscion it had to do with key doctrine. James and the Ebioniates did not believe in a resurrection (really says something about how much Paul changed Jesus's teachings, since Paul never knew Christ but James spent his all his life, including childhood with him).
What Paul wanted to destroy Christianity and replace it with his own religion. The resurrection of the dead, the hatred of the old testament, turning Jesus into a sacrificial Lamb.
And Paul replaced the old "crust rules" with his own. In fact the religion he put forth was MORE STRICT. In contrast the Pharisee's were the most liberal Jewish group at the time.
>>971555
>Stoicism
>lower class
That's just not true. A plebeian could not have given less of a shit about some old white guy (the ancient Roman equivalent) depriving himself of every luxury except the luxury of restraint. He was probably too poor to afford something so luxurious. Stoicism was popular among the educated Greek speaking world... aristocrats and landed gentry, in other words. For the other 95% of Roman society,life was a game of which mystery cult you belonged too.
And you're missing another point entirely. It's like trying to say that the ipod wasn't revolutionary because there were other mp3 players on the market before it. That's true but it's completely ignoring economies of scale, how Apple simplified the product and turned it into something a teenager or a grandmother could figure out and derive use out of, and who actually put together the distribution network to make this vision a reality. Nobody cares who did it first, they care about who does it better. Every new good idea builds on the work of previous generations and is then expanded upon by later thinkers. Polytheism, and early Christianity, are no different.
>the Jews were mean rule-nazis and Paul liberated people from them
Paul didn't liberate Christians from the yoke of crude, outdated Mosaic law, which was relevant when Hebrew culture was a collection of mountain nomads centuries prior. That would be Jesus Christ, who made points like you don't need 10 commandments if you follow the two that really matter: Love God, and love your neighbors.
And Paul's strategy was part theological and part pragmatic. The Romans were really not happy with Jews in this time period, and within years of his ministry the entire region would erupt into a massive civil war. By differentiating Christianity from Judaism, he sheltered them from the pogroms of the Roman diaspora.
>>971555
>And Paul MORE STRICT.
People have this strange misconception that Rome fell because it grew lazy and decadent, and it never occurs to them that Roman society actually grew more pious over time, and that it was ironically the only aspect of their culture to survive the fall.
>the Pharisee liberal Jewish group
And in STARK contrast to Paul, the Pharisees were bitterly despised by the Jews as being sell outs to the Romans and the entire region was a seething hotbed of unrest which would eventually lead to revolution, bloodshed, and repression on a scale Jews had never witnessed, vastly eclipsing the suffering they endured under the Babylonians.
>>971555
>What Paul wanted to destroy Christianity and replace it with his own religion
What Paul did for Christianity was also one of the great breakthroughs in business history: he created the concept of a franchise.
I don't think you're appreciating Paul's industriousness, how far and wide he traveled, making sure that each far flung location had its own church, with its own teachers teaching as standardized canon as what was practically possible. He made it so that each church group was its own self-contained cell which could multiply at will with a doctrine which emphasized evangelism (or salesmanship, in a modern sense) and outreach. It was his efforts that truly distinguished Christianity from the myriad mystery cults dominating Roman culture at the time, and set off the structural reforms so effective that Roman polytheists fed Christians to wild beasts in an increasingly brutal series of repression.
And Christians being made into martyrs was quite possibly the best publicity that the early Christian cult leaders could have possibly asked for, because all it did was make the masses of plebs pity the Christians and resent the status quo for what was a transparent display of naked fear and jealousy.
>>960656
Abraham may have been a real person, but your argument about the name doesn't demonstrate that. I think the other people responding to you are a little quick to be on the attack about your religion, makes it impossible to have a dialogue.
I do hope we can just discuss the possible history of the religion in a secular way though, should be fun. Maybe christians can just treat it like fan fiction for the purposes of the thread.
>>960471
Nonsense is nonsense even when you apply God to it. The question "could God make 2+2=5 ?" is a nonsensical question for either answer has no meaning.
>>964385
To be Christian requires that you not sacrifice to idols. Being a Christian was illegal because in order to be a Christian you had to break Roman law and custom.
It does not matter that they weren't special, they were still persecuted for their faith.
>>959736
All these godfags doing their own thing
>>973204
The point is that the reason this stuff is "nonsense even for God" is because God is bound by certain rules of the universe.
The Pythogerian spirtuality understood Math to some sort of divine rule or even a type of magic that even the Gods obey.
Now since the universe and Gods is held in place by certain rules this means there can be an infinite number of Gods since God will be bound by the same rule. It also means that God is not all powerful since these divine meta rules bind him.
>>959763
>The Virgin Mary's father was a priest who married a daughter of a priest, following the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern.
Joachim and Anna? Really? And wouldn't the Horites be extinct by then?
>>975595
I love you, anon.
>>959668
well, the pork thing is true, but they believed circumcision was destruction of one's physical, spiritual being. also, older cults existed such as that of shumash, not much comes before that one, not because of lack of there being older cults, just lack of evidence.
>>977292
>possibly involving scorpions.
What
>>959879
The Koran was not written during his lifetime. It was transmitted orally and it was only compiled after his death during the time of Umar (or was it Usman?).
Muhammad's genius was positioning himself as a descendant of older prophets, so he can claim their wisdom and assert himself as the last in a long line of holy men (124,000 prophets came before him, or so they say).
