AW! Epistles
From Michael James
Abstract
Monday, 17 March 2003
Mike, I have the following comments on: Baptism by Water, Fire Blood, and the Holy Ghost. Sacraments.
A very well put together paper. It does indeed hold much truth and was of great interest to me. I did sense that the author has not actually experienced God personally but relies upon written accounts and testimonies of others. The question must be asked—is there a need—does it fulfill a need—does it result in good or bad? Perhaps a belief in God can be explained away as a fairytale due to a lack of ’hard proof’ however, it must be said that for some strange reason all of humanity strives to believe in some higher force at work in the Universe. I have to concede that all religions have a portion of the truth, personally I think Christianity has the best expression of the truth. Many people distort things and do things in the name of religion (most of time they are the most ill-religious and evil people of the lot—we see events such as 11 September and N Ireland display this) Perhaps as a small experiment you could try going to a church and spending a little time experiencing worship and prayer. (not to be uncomfortable or to find fault, but simply to experience something of what Christians say they experience). See if you find any truth there—or if not even if their is any positive reason for it existing in our modern day? Good luck if you choose to take me up on this suggestion…
Would you say that I should become a Nazi to see what it might be like? Before the war, Hitler put the abject German nation back on its feet, and so was doing good in those days. Later it did nothing but evil, but modern Nazis can say that what happened later was not really Naziism. That is how you Christians always argue. All patriarchal religions have been utterly wicked since they were formed, but you ask me to try your own preferred brand. I suggest you read some more of the AskWhy! pages. Try the sequence beginning here: Inquisition
If you cannot be bothered doing that look at your Christian political leaders Bush and Blair, Satan and his imp, threatening to unleash a worldwide conflict of the believer in the patriarchal confidence tricks. The miracle you need is to cure your own blindness.
Your tone is a little harsh. I would like to know just what your belief is? Do you think there is a God? Do you think that humanity can fulfil a purpose. Why do we have the inteligence that other creatures do not have. Are we alone in the Universe—do we expect anything after death or is death simply the end or re-incarnation? Why do we have a desire to create and interact etc.
Read a little about biology and evolution and many of these silly questions will be answered. Look at my ’truth’ pages if you like. It contrasts Christianity and science, as world outlooks. (The site you refer to above does not exist. You must have read it from a SE cache). Try Truth.
I suggest to you that Christianity is all about 2 verses of scripture said by Jesus himself: Love thy neightbour as you do thyself and love the Lord your God with all you heart… Wars are things of governments. I agree that even so called ’Church’ organisations and individual so called ’Christians’ have done great evils. We have seen the greed and predjudices of men being enacted in the name of God. This is because ultimately we are all human and fall short of the ’glory of God’ or ’righteousness’. Evil is in us all and that is the whole point of Christianity. We will never rid it all while we are on Earth. Even Christians can still do very evil things just as non-Christians—the difference is that they are aware of their evil and should feel sorrow and repent of it. They should grow in holiness—which is to be more set apart for God’s work—doing good and should rely upon God to give them help in this task.
No sane person could disagree with the concept of loving, or at least respecting, other human beings. The trouble is that they do not, even supposed Christians. Yet if Christianity does not help people to respect others, then it is valueless. It becomes the empty sentiment that it is, and even becomes evil in itself because it becomes a veil for evildoers. You all bleat the same phrases and unarguable sentiments, in your pulpit tones, but you do not come together to stop the frightful Christian men that I mentioned last time. A billion people saying to these dimwits that killing other people out of revenge or a sense of outrage, cannot be Christian, could have some effect. These men ARE Christians, and all we get is a few weak objections from a bishop here or there.
Christianity is words and no deeds from beginning to end. Why should it be otherwise. Most modern Christians believe they are saved from hell fire just by professing Christianity. They do not have to do anything. They are smug and holier than thou, and cannot see any sense in good works or deeds other than the token charitable act. Christianity is not only empty, it is Satanic, as I show repeatedly. What good God is happy with a billion or so liars, because Christianity is an utter lie, and Christians lie habitually? Humans might lie, but to lie as an item of faith denies the faith itself. Christians are too smug and besotted to realise the inconsistency of their own beliefs. What makes Christians think their god wants them to lie for him?
Why is evil in us all? You can define whatever you like as evil, and most things have been called evil by Christians at some time or other. When Christians all go to their preferred place and leave the world to we sinners, it will operate a lot better than it does with cracked pots perennially telling us that bleaching you hair is a sin, or drinkling hard cider is, or sleeping with a girl you are not married to is. None are. They are ways of interfering wimps getting some psychological grip on the simple and the gullible.
There are many forces at work in humanity but as the good book says: The greatest of these is love. It is true passionate and pure love which will cure this world of much of its problems. I don’t think we can class our world leaders (who are also politicians aswell as claiming to be Christians!!!) as always having pure motives behind showing off their ’Chritianity’. Indeed the big problem with Christianity is that only the believer themselves knows whether they are a Chritian—it is certainly not claimed by my church that someone can be made a Chritian from being baptised or attending church or signing a bit of paper etc. Only the person themselves know their position with God.
So you say, but if Christianity purports to do certain things or to be displayed by certain characteristics, it is just as easy to say whether any person is a Christian as to decide whether an animal with six legs is an insect ot not. Again, I cite repeatedly at Christians, the words of their own god that a tree is recognized by its fruit, but no Christian understands what I am talking about. I repeat that the fruit of Christianity is wickedness, and that is easily proved by reading a little history. I offer some of it on my webpages.
On Sunday I had to look after some Sunday School kids as we tried to help their drug addicted mother by finding a hostel for her. Today she will have help and support as she goes to Court. She will also have help and support as she continues to see social services. The Ministers welcomed her at their house and fed her and her family. We are constantly called upon by Social Services to held distressed families and people in need. We feed the homeless, we help the elderly and most desperate in society every day regardless of religion or anything else. We do this good in the name of God and in the name of humanity. However you seem to neglect in your argument the good which is done in God’s name by true Christinas. Many in my own contry claim to be ’Christian’ but simply do not have a relationship with God.
You say you are helping these people, but this is the tokenism I am talking about. The leaders of the Christian world will happily kill tens of thousands of Moslems because they have been given the role in the modern world, for Christian ’nuttas’, that communists, witches, heretics, Saracens and Jews have had succesively in the past. They are each given the role of the evil empire and judiciously killed by all of you loving people who fail to object. Hypocrites, your god said of the Pharisees, no doubt knowing, with his foresight, that he was creating 33000 different Churches of Pharisees, from a couple of big ones down to plain maniacs running a death club. You are fond of bandying about the word ’true’ when you simply do not know what it means. If you know what a true Christian is, then why do you not object to the false ones? As for God, read my pages. God is a trick and an illusion that no one intelligent should even consider. It is a hoodwink by charlatans.
Naziism is not relatable to Christianity—and Christianity can not be labelled as any one church or orgainisation—all Christians belong to a worldwide family and are brothers and sisters in the faith. The only person Christinas have to follow is Christ not even their church orgaanisation which could be run on earth by a nutta.
’Gott mit Uns’ was their motto! The trouble is that Christ is so hidden by the Church that no one can be sure whether he even existed, and certainly that he existed in the bland form that he is projected to the credulous as. He is another aspect of the charlatan’s conjuring trick. The non-supernatural history of Christ is on my pages.
I shall take up your suggestion and read more of the askwhy! pages but sincerely that you will take up my suggestion and try experiencing a church setting. It is often the case that a church has wronged someone in the past—the most important thing to remember is it was not God who did the wrong! God is Love.
God is whatever you want him to be. You want him to be love because it sounds nice, but all you do is help an old lady or a distressed mother and think that is love. It is no more than any human should do for another, and if kids were brought up properly, they would all do it without the need for any God. We all think that standards are falling in this country, and I am no different, but even though no more than one in twenty go to church, the vast majority of people remain good and helpful human beings. When Christianity was at its height, people lived in abject misery and the worst exploiters were the clergy.
What you need to do is to throw off your Christian blinkers, and look critically at your own religion. You say I should go to church, but that would be like voting for a fascist to me. I suggest you look to see where the fascists got all their best ideas.
Thanks for your reply, unfortunatley I can see that you have made opposing Christianity your own religion. The time and dedication you obviously give to it is fanatical in itself.
So, dedicated Christians are fanatics? I think you are right. Many are. It seems rather extreme in itself, though, to claim that dedication is necessarily fanatical. If you are right, then I shall have to change my mind about fanaticism, which, like you, I have hitherto disliked. It is a good job for us all that scientists, for example are often dedicated. These are fanatics that we shall be obliged to begin to admire. It seems a good thing to me, though you will doubtless disagree, that many good men spoke out against burning heretics and witches when by so doing they put their lives at risk, and indeed, many were burnt themselves for their courage and honesty. Eventually, the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist madmen, who, in a world run justly would have been the ones burnt at the stake, began to be ignored and the skeptics were heard. Which form of dedication or fanaticism do you prefer of these alternatives?
Anyway, I take it as a compliment that you consider my dedication akin to a religion. It is a shame more Christians do not heed it.
I don’t know whatever happened in your past to make you this way but I can only imagine it has been your experience of non-Christians pretending to be ’good churchgoing Godly people etc. This happens throughout all humanity (even in a humanist world).
Anyone can be hypocritical but because all your friends are does not mean it is any the less objectionable. Christianity suffers from the disadvantage here of claiming that it is not hypocritical, when you are admitting to me that it is. Few of you are so honest. And this is closer to the point than your amateur psychoanalysis. In a sense I am lucky not to have been unduly troubled by evangelical or otherwise obnoxious Christians in my life. What I object to on intellectual and moral grounds is Christianity itself. You cannot see that at all because your whole world view is not to question your belief in case the ogre in your head slams the door on you in the after life, or worse drops you into a fiery pit. You have an academic address, so I would have thought you quite possibly had a brain that you used professionally, but, if that assumption is true, you obviously suspend its use when it comes to examining Christianity itself. No one intelligent and honest could do that. Christianity depends on its adherents being unintelligent or dishonest. Most are unintelligent but those who are not are like you—dishonest.
Congratulations you can now do and say whatever you like and justify it by your own philosophy. You are only accountable to yourself. However, I choose to live according to God’s Laws and His leading and be accountable not only to humanity but to God for my actions or inactions.
You have this quite the wrong way round. I am not only accountable to myself, you are. I am accountable to the power of the evidence that I can provide. You provide none—belief is sufficient. You say you are accountable to God’s laws but you only have the word of those who told you that these are God’s laws. If you were to read a little before you criticise, you would find that there is not the slightest need to believe they are. I am however using evidence that you ignore because all you need, being accountable to no one but your self, and perhaps like-minded friends, is unquestioning belief. It will make you feel smug but that is all it does.
If you really do use your brain professionally, you plainly have a lobe of it cordoned off with a notice saying "Do not disturb with evidence here. God’s truth only admitted". In short, it is the hypocritical zone. Shame. Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
