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The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

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Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

ShirtlessBob said:
One Sunday morning, I was running, and I saw "church on the beach." A group had pitched a tent and held their service right there on the Pere Marquette (Muskegon) beach... I thought that was cool.
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The last 3 churches I've attended all had a thousand plus congregation sizes that included...university business auditorium, a grade school lunchroom and an abandoned warehouse. New churches are doing this on purpose to send a message on breaking religion-driven (as opposed to biblical) tradition.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Bob Gray said:
The fact that the focus is on being in a pew on sunday morning each week falls far short of what is intended here and is one of those western/American concepts that isn't really what was meant in the verse you reference. The essence is that there is a lot of value in gathering together, whether it be sunday morning at a building, Saturday morning on golf course, Wednesday night for dinner, or whatever.
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Amen.

One of the most valuable things society lost in moving from agrarian-religious to urban-secular was "fellowship." We are atomized now, and I believe this partly explains the loneliness and depression so many of us feel so acutely. Those of us who have no religious faith still have a great need for the pooling of our thoughts and emotions towards a Greater Good.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Kepler said:
Amen.

One of the most valuable things society lost in moving from agrarian-religious to urban-secular was "fellowship." We are atomized now, and I believe this partly explains the loneliness and depression so many of us feel so acutely. Those of us who have no religious faith still have a great need for the pooling of our thoughts and emotions towards a Greater Good.
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I got an Amen from Kepler! :)

Agreed that we have a built in need for fellowship, whether we have some form of religious beliefs or not. I would attribute this to how God made us (recognizing that non-believers would probably attribute it to something else). This "atomization" as you call it is I believe unhealthy and one of the ways our society is not a good example for others. it is quite deep-rooted though at this point and hard to overcome. Even things like how new homes don't have a front porch now and people just pull into their garage and may never or barely ever see their neighbors.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

USCHO: Where good people go to deatomize.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Bob Gray said:
I got an Amen from Kepler! :)

Agreed that we have a built in need for fellowship, whether we have some form of religious beliefs or not. I would attribute this to how God made us (recognizing that non-believers would probably attribute it to something else). This "atomization" as you call it is I believe unhealthy and one of the ways our society is not a good example for others. it is quite deep-rooted though at this point and hard to overcome. Even things like how new homes don't have a front porch now and people just pull into their garage and may never or barely ever see their neighbors.
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It's not hard to see where it comes from -- just look at apes, they're highly social. Our greatest species survival skill is language, which allows us to work together while still thinking individually. Our babies take too long to mature to be left to a solitary parent, so communal support is wired right into our motherboard.

The atomization of people is highly unhealthy. It's also highly profitable since people working together within a community meet far more of their needs and don't buy as much crap, not to mention that much of advertising is the cynical manipulation of that longed-for community which, if people produced it for themselves, would undermine the false promise of consumerism.

But ultimately cars destroyed community, and I don't want to give up my car. So we have to find ways of keeping the useful things that modernity has given us while curbing the market forces that work to isolate us into solitary, miserable bank accounts to plunder with promises of fake happiness.
 
Bob Gray said:
Yes, a lot of people through history for various reasons couldn't meet in a church building on sunday mornings, whether due to persecution, lack of money to build a building, lack of having enough other believers around to have a big sunday meeting in a building, etc. Unfortunately an all too large slice of American Christianity measures how well a person is doing in their walk by whether they attend a sunday morning meeting weekly or not. Attending a sunday morning meeting doesn't necessarily mean one is doing well or poorly in their walk or even believes in Jesus. But, again, I do think that the verse you reference makes the important point that getting together with other believers in some manner as best works for a person is valuable and important. How we each do that is first and fundamentally between each of us and God.
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In certain (peace loving) second of the world, you're taking your life into your hands going to Mass.

Queen Elizabeth I instituted a tax (fine) if you did not attend church on Sunday. It was used to punish all those recusant Catholics who still clung to the Mother Church. Guess her subjects carried over the spirit of the thing to the New World.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

joecct said:
In certain (peace loving) second of the world, you're taking your life into your hands going to Mass.
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I know Massachusetts isn't all unicorns and rainbows, but I wouldn't say you're taking your life in your hands if you go there. New York, maybe, but not Massachusetts.
 
Priceless said:
I know Massachusetts isn't all unicorns and rainbows, but I wouldn't say you're taking your life in your hands if you go there. New York, maybe, but not Massachusetts.
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I hope there was humor there. Wrong Mass. I'm talking about the one that Cardinal O'Malley celebrates every day.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

joecct said:
I hope there was humor there. Wrong Mass. I'm talking about the one that Cardinal O'Malley celebrates every day.
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No **** Sherlock :p
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

joecct said:
The Cylons followed what would we would think of a Christian God. The humans believed in polytheism.
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The Cylons were very much into the Old Testament version of God on that show, the ****-'em-all-and-watch-'em-burn version of God. Or God 1.0, in a more modern parlance.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

St. Clown said:
The Cylons were very much into the Old Testament version of God on that show, the ****-'em-all-and-watch-'em-burn version of God. Or God 1.0, in a more modern parlance.
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Because it's the internet, here's an article on Cylon religion, from Battlestarwiki.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Kepler said:
Because it's the internet, here's an article on Cylon religion, from Battlestarwiki.
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While interesting, and bringing back memories of watching this many years ago, I find it hard to see anything more than tenuous similarities to Christianity as I understand it, though you can tell the author of the wiki language is trying to draw comparisons at points. The part where the minority of monotheistic humans is persecuted by the authoritarian government was interesting.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Bob Gray said:
While interesting, and bringing back memories of watching this many years ago, I find it hard to see anything more than tenuous similarities to Christianity as I understand it, though you can tell the author of the wiki language is trying to draw comparisons at points. The part where the minority of monotheistic humans is persecuted by the authoritarian government was interesting.
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When I went to CCD and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, they made a point of teaching us a Whiggish "history" of religion where humanity ascended from polytheism to monotheism by shedding the superstition of the former. (When I pointed out that under that thesis the natural final evolutionary steps would be to pantheism and then atheism, I was no longer welcome.) That was the main resemblance that resonated with me. Certainly when I watched the show I got the point that the writers were throwing us a deliberate curveball in identifying the "good" guys with polytheism.
 
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Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

What is CCD? I've heard it mentioned before, but I'm not familiar with it.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Bob Gray said:
What is CCD? I've heard it mentioned before, but I'm not familiar with it.
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For me, raised catholic, it was the yearly classes we took that culminated in first communion, confession, confirmation. I am sure others can add more.
 
Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

theprofromdover said:
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.
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The Catholic Sunday School for those unfortunates who did not go to Catholic school. All we had to do was go to Mass on Sunday.
(which were at 7, 8, 9, 9:30 (downstairs), 10, 10:30 (downstairs) and 12 noon (High or sung)). Nowadays you're lucky to get 3 Masses.

Mom went to the 7AM and Dad and the rest of us kids went to the 8. When we got home, Mom had breakfast waiting. When I was in the choir in 5th grade, I sung at the 12 noon High Mass, and later as an altar boy I had the 6:30 AM Mass during the week and filled in on Sunday (which were reserved for the 8th graders).
 
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