What is hell, and what is it for?

[rdhopeca]

Haha, interesting question.

Again, the Christian Church built on an existing religion: Judaism. Not Norse or any other. So you can only refer specifically to the ancient Judaic concepts and claiming connections to others is fallacious (and that goes for all aspects of the faith, not just hell), and Christianity did not change or invent - it explained how Christ transformed the understandings.

Luckily I saw your reply to Fist and understand you're speaking dogmatically, and not practically. Otherwise I would have gone off on a tangent about germanic and semitic languages and the saxons etc. etc.

So you don't think regional pagan practices had an effect on the church doctrine? What about setting the dates of important events?

And what religions had an effect on the development of Judaism? Which effect was passed down into Christianity?

This is true. But you seem to make a further assumption that they must all necessarily be wrong...

As you assume I (and all others) must be. Of course we assume that. The root of our difference is afterall based in one big assumption. You assume there is a god, I assume there is not. *shrug*

The debate over fine points of doctrine is all very well and good, and fun, but it does not...can not, confront that fundamental point. Does it matter exactly how I misunderstand what Christianity says or seems to say? (Well, I'm interested because there are some bits that I agree with assuming I understand them.) But the underlying assumption of it all is effectively meaningless to me.

--A

Hi Avatar!
Didn't want to lose you in the shuffle.
Let me answer the last question first (it's the easiest): Of course it matters tremendously whether or not you misunderstand Christianity. It is only meaningless because you don't understand it. If you understood, you might agree or disagree, and therefore have a valid basis to accept or reject it. If you do not understand it (and this is my thesis and working assumption based on everything posted here by most people), then you cannot reject it and call yourself reasonable in doing so. It may be mystical, it may be strange, it may require you to walk on your hands - but it may be the truth. People here consistently attack Christianity when it is clear that most know only what they have been personally exposed to, and that imperfectly. I doubt most here have bothered to ask whether that is what has always been taught or whether it might be possible that this or that version/denomination of Christianity is invalid by an absolute standard.

It really does come down to who is right. (See my response to Vader on assuming there is no truth regarding the metaphysical world.)

Hopefully my recent posts have clarified what I see to be important regarding "influence of one religion on another". Where they flatly contradict each other one cannot speak of influence. One can only speak of conflict.

Now I do think that most versions of Christianity were influenced by the Roman Church, and I do think that the Roman Church was itself, influenced. But for the first 1,000 years it was only a mood, where caesarism gradually turned into papism and the final insistence that there be a supreme human ruler on earth. Protestant beliefs formed from accepting or rejecting various forms of Roman Catholic doctrine (dogma). (This is where I think there is some truth to what you are saying.)
However, the eastern Church remained entirely outside that loop. The influences there never touched the dogma at all, and remained confined to practices. Even the Old Believer Schism was over practice, not dogma.
On setting of dates, compare the evolution of setting of dates in the Catholic Church - which really did make the calendar the center - and the Orthodox Church, which has always stuck with a Pascha (the resurrection of Christ and most important day of the year) that follows the Jewish passover. It's also interesting to note how Pascha became so trivialized in the west - while being intellectually acknowledged as the most important event of history, the Incarnation (Christmas - which runs a close second) was what came to claim the honor of celebration, and Pascha is barely noticed, especially in the Protestant world.

Thus, western people like yourselves have lots of valid objections to what they have seen in Christianity. It is on the basis of that experience that they reject it. But so what? I am in solidarity with them in rejecting it, as well, and I know of a Christianity that never engaged in the things that created the western Christianity that has all those elements that you rightly object to (from the worldly power and authority of a single corruptible man, indulgences and the Inquisition to 'fundamentalism' where each person interprets Scripture on their own and makes up their own versions of the faith in the process and then knock on your door in an effort to save you).

The Orthodox Church says, "Come and see!"

Or more specifically, come and see our perversion of "historical fact"...it's better than those other ones you've heard about...kind of like comparing a Lexus to a Toyota. Same basic car, better service.

[aliantha]

(I swore to myself I wouldn't get back into this...)

I'm not going to argue with you, Rus. But I would like to address the comment you keep making that none of us has properly studied religion and has based our reaction to Christianity on interactions with Protestant fundamentalists.

Let me give you a Reader's Digest version of my religious history.

* My father grew up Catholic. He said he became an atheist after he read the Bible.
* My mother's parents came to America from Czechoslovakia with their parents. My grandfather was apparently raised as Czech Evangelist (I gather there are several branches on this tree of Czech Protestantism -- dunno which one he sprung from), but my mother and her siblings were not raised in a church.
* Consequently, my family didn't go to church. (When kids would ask me what religion we were, my mother told me to "tell them we're Protestant." She seemed surprised when I told her, much later in my life, that that wasn't specific enough. )
* I grew up having various friends, concerned about my immortal soul, take me to church with them. So I attended lots of different services: Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic. (I "accepted Jesus into my heart" during a Presbyterian day camp.) In college, I investigated more religions: Lutheran, Methodist, Campus Crusade for Christ. In the meantime, my brother married a Catholic woman and converted, and I occasionally attended Catholic services with them. None of it felt quite right to me.
* In my 20s, I came *this close* to converting to Baha'i'ism. (They lost me when they said they didn't allow cremation.)
* Also in my 20s, I worked with a woman who married a guy who later attended Moody Bible Institute and eventually went to work for Focus on the Family. She's the one who sent me "Mere Christianity", which I read. C.S. Lewis didn't do it for me. She and I traded several letters about my objections; she finally gave up. (We exchanged Christmas cards for many years, but she quit sending to me the year after I mentioned in my holiday letter that my eldest daughter was a lesbian. Imagine that. )
* By this point I had given up on Christianity and had become an agnostic. I had long since begun comparing the varying sects of Christianity to the blind men and the elephant: all are partly right, all are partly wrong, and none of them can possibly have the whole truth because their understanding was so limited. So there's no way to choose the One True Faith. Either God is a kindly being who will save *all* believers, of any stripe, or a whole lot of us are screwed -- but in any case, the best answer is the one Covenant found: to live according to your own moral values. Which I have subsequently tried to do.
* In my 30s, we lived down the street from an Episcopal seminarian who invited us to church with them. My daughters and I eventually were baptized in this church. Then our seminarian friend graduated and moved away, and we quit going to church.
* In my 40s, I realized that throughout my lifetime of searching, I had always been looking for a religion that allowed women to participate as fully as men, and that held as a tenet that everything's connected and there's divinity in everything -- people, animals, plants, rocks, dirt, the cosmos, *everything*. Paganism satisfies on both counts. Hence, I am Pagan.

My point being that when you make sweeping statements about how none of us have studied Christianity thoroughly enough to have a valid opinion, well, you don't know who you're talking to.

[rdhopeca]

My point being that when you make sweeping statements about how none of us have studied Christianity thoroughly enough to have a valid opinion, well, you don't know who you're talking to.

Amen to that. When Rus makes comments such as "you're ignorant of historical fact" about us, that's just plain hogwash. We're no more or less ignorant than he is...we're just potentially ignorant of his belief system's perversion of historical fact.

In all seriousness, that is exactly where Rus's credibility falls apart for me. To claim that either a) only his belief system is immune to the perversion that he claims that falsifies all other beliefs, or failing that, that b) the perversions of the historical record that belong to his belief system are the only correct, or correctly interpreted ones, flies in the face of reality and logic, IMO. He's just being a better pitchman for his beliefs. The idea that only Orthodox Christianity is capable of interpreting history correctly (meaning, their version of the facts is the only correct one), is merely hubris, and is not proof of its veracity; only of the ferver of its subjects.

[rusmeister]

Wouldn't this also mean that Islam is transformation and perfection of Christianity, in the literal sense of completing it - after all Jesus is a prophet for Muslims.

Only if you believe Islam to be the truth. I do believe Christianity to be the truth, and Islam to be false, so no, that's not the case.

Only if you believe Christianity to be the truth.

Correct, Rob.
I corrected that in my post to Vader.

[rusmeister]

Let me clarify that I mean "perfection" exactly in the sense of completion, not in the sense of "new and improved".

*I should just walk away*

I understand that, rus. It is the "argument" employed by messianics and "Jews for Jes-s" the world over.

My point is, Judaism is not incomplete. Those who become messianics are not "completed Jews," but are usually those who had very little personal connection with Judaism itself prior to being approached and converted. They have never known the completeness that is Judaism, and calling those who become Chr-stians "completed" is an insult to those of us who are complete with Judaism.

If someone is content with their belief, or lack of belief, they are complete. Period.

It's a question of whose faith you accept Menolly. Jews can't accept Christianity and Christians can't accept that Judaism is still valid. They are mutually exclusive propositions. Christians, at any rate, believe their proposition to be the truth, and I would assume the same of Judaic folk.

[rusmeister]

Reason has its limitations. There comes a point where what we can logically prove through reason ends - the limitations of our own knowledge and minds as human beings. Beyond that point we can neither claim reason nor demand that reason go further, and it comes down to a simple choice: to believe or not.

That's under the assumption that reason has an end. Logically it does not, only if you assume that there are things that reason or science cannot support (i.e. the existence of God). If there are no things that reason cannot disprove (i.e. Hell does not exist) then it makes no sense to say that reason has limits.

This is ignoring Gödel's incompleteness theorems, and certainly not taking into account Father Stanley L. Jaki's argument that systems of physics are incomplete and therefore no ultimate theory or final theory is attainable. However, I believe there are limits to the theorem.

But there ARE things that reason cannot disprove, such as its own validity. The validity of human reason must be accepted on faith.

And if the universe itself has limitations, then it is entirely reasonable that reason also have them. But I think you would acknowledge that the universe does indeed have limitations, at least. Otherwise it would not be possible to speak of it expanding and contracting, for example.

[Loredoctor]

But I think you would acknowledge that the universe does indeed have limitations, at least. Otherwise it would not be possible to speak of it expanding and contracting, for example.

You are referring to cosmic inflation? I wouldn't say that it highlights the limitation of reason. All evidence points to the universe being infinite (which does not contradict God's existence). Space itself is expanding, which allows for no conflict with 'supposed limits' to the universe.

As for contracting, current evidence strongly suggests that the universe won't contract - in fact, it appears that space is flat and that the cosmos will expand forever; there happens to be too little visible and dark matter for gravity to be sufficient to counter dark energy's 'push' that is expanding space.

Interesting response, rusmeister!

Sources: Astronomy Today 5th edition.
Fundamental Astronomy.
The Fabric of the Cosmos.

[Avatar]

Now I do think that most versions of Christianity were influenced by the Roman Church, and I do think that the Roman Church was itself, influenced. But for the first 1,000 years it was only a mood, where caesarism gradually turned into papism and the final insistence that there be a supreme human ruler on earth

But the influences of those first 1000 years, and certainly before the east/west schism, remain in effect now matter which version you follow?

On setting of dates, compare the evolution of setting of dates in the Catholic Church - which really did make the calendar the center - and the Orthodox Church, which has always stuck with a Pascha (the resurrection of Christ and most important day of the year) that follows the Jewish passover.

And christmas?

It is on the basis of that experience that they reject it. But so what? I am in solidarity with them in rejecting it, as well, and I know of a Christianity that never engaged in the things that created the western Christianity that has all those elements that you rightly object to (from the worldly power and authority of a single corruptible man, indulgences and the Inquisition to 'fundamentalism' where each person interprets Scripture on their own and makes up their own versions of the faith in the process and then knock on your door in an effort to save you).

The Orthodox Church says, "Come and see!"

See, all of that I can agree with. But not the fundamental assuption. That there is a god.

...in fact, it appears that space is flat and that the cosmos will expand forever...

Keep on expanding until everything is so far apart, even the molecules, that there's just vast nothingness?

And wouldn't expansion be moot if there was no "outside" to expand to?

That said, while I personally am not sure of the use of the word infinite in terms of space, an end in time would render it finite, even if only in that direction.

--A

[Menolly]

And christmas?

Wait...

I have always assumed that Easter was more important to Chr-stians than Chr-stmas. For a believer, that is the day it became apparent that "Jes-s was L-rd." For everyone, not just those who followed him in his mortal life.

...right?

[Avatar]

Probably, although I'm not sure how assidiously it's celebrated by most. I'm just alluding to the fact that important dates were set to coincide with existing festivals in a clever marketing ploy.

--A

[Menolly]

hmm...

Orthodox Chr-stmas tends to fall mid-January, though.
Yule/Winter Solstice meshes with Roman Catholic Chr-stmas.
Imbolc is usually February...
Which turn of the wheel is mid-January?
Is there one?

[Avatar]

Not as far as I know. That's why I was asking when Orthodox christmas fell. (And which calendar it's based on?)

--A

[rusmeister]

And christmas?

Wait...

I have always assumed that Easter was more important to Chr-stians than Chr-stmas. For a believer, that is the day it became apparent that "Jes-s was L-rd." For everyone, not just those who followed him in his mortal life.

...right?

Theoretically, it is. But in practice, I think it is not difficult to acknowledge (recognizing the distinction between Catholics and everyone else) that of the two, Christmas is given far more attention and honor in the West, while Easter (again, this term is not used by Orthodox Christians, but for the sake of convention and as long as people don't get started on "Eostre"...) barely gets notice - from Good Friday to Easter morning, and for many Christians, not even that. Catholics do have the forty day Lent period, which used to be as strict as the Orthodox Lent, but after Vatican II most Lenten practices were basically eliminated. (Now food restrictions are generally on meat only.)

I thought that the practice of eliminating vowels was limited to Messianic Jews and in practice acknowledges the name of God.

PS to all - I'm having a serious eye problem, so please forgive me for spotty replies!

[Menolly]

Not as far as I know. That's why I was asking when Orthodox christmas fell. (And which calendar it's based on?)

For as long as I have took note of such things (which has not been that long, I admit), I am nearly positive Orthodox Easter is always the first Sunday after the Pesach sederim. I'm pretty certain Good Friday needs to fall on Pesach as well, but not 100%. But if the first or second night of Pesach is a Sunday, and Good Friday was not on Pesach, I think Orthodox Easter is a week later.

So, my guess is the Hebrew calendar, with modifications. They don't use the Hebrew dates, but the holidays fit into the day of the week it needs to fall.

...am I close, rus?

I thought that the practice of eliminating vowels was limited to Messianic Jews and in practice acknowledges the name of God.

Not limited to messianics, but is used to acknowledge the names of HaShem. My own mishigosh is to use it for names for HaShem that I recognize is used as such, as a way to honor the beliefs of others. That is my own modification though.

From Judaism 101: The Name of G-d:

Writing the Name of G-d

Jews do not casually write any Name of G-d.(Menolly insert: wow, maybe it's not just me after all!) This practice does not come from the commandment not to take the L-rd's Name in vain, as many suppose. In Jewish thought, that commandment refers solely to oath-taking, and is a prohibition against swearing by G-d's Name falsely or frivolously (the word normally translated as "in vain" literally means "for falsehood").

Judaism does not prohibit writing the Name of G-d per se; it prohibits only erasing or defacing a Name of G-d. However, observant Jews avoid writing any Name of G-d casually because of the risk that the written Name might later be defaced, obliterated or destroyed accidentally or by one who does not know better.

The commandment not to erase or deface the name of G-d comes from Deut. 12:3. In that passage, the people are commanded that when they take over the promised land, they should destroy all things related to the idolatrous religions of that region, and should utterly destroy the names of the local deities. Immediately afterwards, we are commanded not to do the same to our G-d. From this, the rabbis inferred that we are commanded not to destroy any holy thing, and not to erase or deface a Name of G-d.

It is worth noting that this prohibition against erasing or defacing Names of G-d applies only to Names that are written in some kind of permanent form, and recent rabbinical decisions have held that writing on a computer is not a permanent form, thus it is not a violation to type G-d's Name into a computer and then backspace over it or cut and paste it, or copy and delete files with G-d's Name in them. However, once you print the document out, it becomes a permanent form. That is why observant Jews avoid writing a Name of G-d on web sites like this one or in newsgroup messages: because there is a risk that someone else will print it out and deface it.

Normally, we avoid writing the Name by substituting letters or syllables, for example, writing "G-d" instead of "God." In addition, the number 15, which would ordinarily be written in Hebrew as Yod-Hei (10-5), is normally written as Teit-Vav (9-6), because Yod-Hei is a Name. See Hebrew Alphabet for more information about using letters as numerals.

*sorry*

[rusmeister]

(I swore to myself I wouldn't get back into this...)

I'm not going to argue with you, Rus. But I would like to address the comment you keep making that none of us has properly studied religion and has based our reaction to Christianity on interactions with Protestant fundamentalists.

Let me give you a Reader's Digest version of my religious history.

* My father grew up Catholic. He said he became an atheist after he read the Bible.
* My mother's parents came to America from Czechoslovakia with their parents. My grandfather was apparently raised as Czech Evangelist (I gather there are several branches on this tree of Czech Protestantism -- dunno which one he sprung from), but my mother and her siblings were not raised in a church.
* Consequently, my family didn't go to church. (When kids would ask me what religion we were, my mother told me to "tell them we're Protestant." She seemed surprised when I told her, much later in my life, that that wasn't specific enough. )
* I grew up having various friends, concerned about my immortal soul, take me to church with them. So I attended lots of different services: Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic. (I "accepted Jesus into my heart" during a Presbyterian day camp.) In college, I investigated more religions: Lutheran, Methodist, Campus Crusade for Christ. In the meantime, my brother married a Catholic woman and converted, and I occasionally attended Catholic services with them. None of it felt quite right to me.
* In my 20s, I came *this close* to converting to Baha'i'ism. (They lost me when they said they didn't allow cremation.)
* Also in my 20s, I worked with a woman who married a guy who later attended Moody Bible Institute and eventually went to work for Focus on the Family. She's the one who sent me "Mere Christianity", which I read. C.S. Lewis didn't do it for me. She and I traded several letters about my objections; she finally gave up. (We exchanged Christmas cards for many years, but she quit sending to me the year after I mentioned in my holiday letter that my eldest daughter was a lesbian. Imagine that. )
* By this point I had given up on Christianity and had become an agnostic. I had long since begun comparing the varying sects of Christianity to the blind men and the elephant: all are partly right, all are partly wrong, and none of them can possibly have the whole truth because their understanding was so limited. So there's no way to choose the One True Faith. Either God is a kindly being who will save *all* believers, of any stripe, or a whole lot of us are screwed -- but in any case, the best answer is the one Covenant found: to live according to your own moral values. Which I have subsequently tried to do.
* In my 30s, we lived down the street from an Episcopal seminarian who invited us to church with them. My daughters and I eventually were baptized in this church. Then our seminarian friend graduated and moved away, and we quit going to church.
* In my 40s, I realized that throughout my lifetime of searching, I had always been looking for a religion that allowed women to participate as fully as men, and that held as a tenet that everything's connected and there's divinity in everything -- people, animals, plants, rocks, dirt, the cosmos, *everything*. Paganism satisfies on both counts. Hence, I am Pagan.

My point being that when you make sweeping statements about how none of us have studied Christianity thoroughly enough to have a valid opinion, well, you don't know who you're talking to.

There are similar elements to my own story. Your childhood and 20-s were not so different from my own, although my path was a little more monolithic (Baptist), I was more fervently committed to it as a teen and young adult, and I went to agnosticism quicker.
On your 30's, it reminds me of Lewis's comment that most people are not reasoned out of Christianity - they just drift away.
On what you've looked for in your 40's, I can say that on the one (women participation and involvement), welcome to Orthodoxy! but on the other, there is an acknowledgement of divine origin/creation of all things, and that our attitude should be one of respect, as stewards, in regard to the created world - and that in every person we can find the image of God, if only we will learn to look. But if you mean a pantheistic "everything is God", then we would part ways, though.

And I do think there remains a misunderstanding (regarding valid view points). I see that you have extensive personal experience with Christianity, and that doesn't surprise me at all. However, personal experience in our own lives is of little value in understanding where this "Christianity thing" came from, how it divided, why, and why it appears in the form you see it today. So I imagine you've had a lot of reactions to your experience that i would agree with - and validate your reaction. But if you don't know the story, or as is the case with most, have a limited and biased understanding - as Rob put it,

come and see our perversion of "historical fact"

- and I have seen it - in all of the public school textbooks that I have come across, (and my own history 5th through 8th grades and my college philosophy courses) as well as seeing the misunderstandings based on their personal experience. On history it is not so much perversion of facts as the interpretation of facts and their omission, preventing a truly balanced and fair view. But I digress.

The very fact that your knowledge and experience is limited to western Christianity makes my point - which is NOT that "you know nothing about Christianity" but that what you do know is distorted and the very versions you know have broken with that historical Christianity. But that leads to Rob's complaint, which I'll try to get to.

One charge you've made elsewhere I'd like to respond to here (I didn't want to pop in on a thread where I know I'm not welcome), that I do not respect your beliefs. This is, in a sense, true. However, it does not express my position properly. I simply say that not all beliefs can be true - that mutually contradictory propositions exclude each other from being considered to be both true. For example, Judaism says that Jesus is not the Son of God, and Christians say that He is. As propositions of truth, they cannot both be true. One must be right and the other wrong. Or again, the kindest and most loving person I may know is a flat earther. Now I can fully respect the sincerity of people with sincere beliefs. However, if my own beliefs hold as a proposition of truth that their belief cannot also be true, then it is no disrespect of the person to disrespect that belief, and it is in this sense specifically, and only this sense, that I "disrespect" your beliefs. I think it is easy to confuse respect for people with respect for ideas. The person is worthy of the utmost respect, but the belief is not necessarily worthy of respect in the way that people are. If I find a mathematical error in a complex formula, I can respect that the mathematician put in a great deal of trouble, and admire his effort, but the real question is, "Is it true, or is it in error?", and on that level it would be wrong of me to 'respect' the erring formula or theories spawned from it.

So I think respect for beliefs, applying it to my own as well, can be fairly examined on that basis. Is it considered a proposition of truth? (Translated into pre-20th century English, "Do you believe it to be true?") If so, and if there is a contradictory, mutually exclusive proposition, then have the intellectual courage to state that what you believe is true. Or else you do not really believe it, ie, the word "believe" itself has come to mean little.

I just wouldn't want you to misunderstand me on "respect". Hopefully, I've clarified a little something.

[rusmeister]

Not as far as I know. That's why I was asking when Orthodox christmas fell. (And which calendar it's based on?)

For as long as I have took note of such things (which has not been that long, I admit), I am nearly positive Orthodox Easter is always the first Sunday after the Pesach sederim. I'm pretty certain Good Friday needs to fall on Pesach as well, but not 100%. But if the first or second night of Pesach is a Sunday, and Good Friday was not on Pesach, I think Orthodox Easter is a week later.

So, my guess is the Hebrew calendar, with modifications. They don't use the Hebrew dates, but the holidays fit into the day of the week it needs to fall.

...am I close, rus?

Yes, that's pretty much it, in my best understanding. But I'll concede that their calendar calculations are almost beyond me - some people commit serious time to their study! There is some controversy between "old calendarists" and "new calendarists", but as it is not dogma - and dogma, by the way is nearly always limited to "christological" questions - related to the essence of Christ's person. Stuff like this falls into the local practices, so it shouldn't be confused with dogma.

Certainly, because the elimination of letters is a defiance of convention, I prefer not to read texts that do so if I don't have to (it's irritating, to be honest - at the very least, I'd like an option to be able to see the text with the letters inserted). I'd prefer to use Orthodox terminology everywhere, such as "Pascha" instead of "Easter". But my audience will lose me if I start talking too much outside of their own experience. I suppose you might see something similar in capitalizing pronouns in reference to Christ/God (He, Him). This is where faith intersects written expression, and we affirm what we believe by how we write.

The calendar point kind of upholds my assertion that a lot of typical objections of non-Christians to Christianity are based on Roman/western practices. It also shows up the closeness (not identicality, but relative closeness) of Orthodox Christianity to Judaism - and the historical connection lost in the West.

[rusmeister]

Now I do think that most versions of Christianity were influenced by the Roman Church, and I do think that the Roman Church was itself, influenced. But for the first 1,000 years it was only a mood, where caesarism gradually turned into papism and the final insistence that there be a supreme human ruler on earth

But the influences of those first 1000 years, and certainly before the east/west schism, remain in effect now matter which version you follow?

Not really, no. The major Church centers were quite separate, and were unified by agreed upon dogma. The "Roman mood" did exist - as a mood, and tendency in thought, and gradually fueled the equating of spiritual leadership with secular authority. This didn't happen in the other Churches (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople). Rome retained a Pope, even when Rome collapsed, while Constantinople had an emperor distinct from the Patriarch throughout its existence. This remained the case when Moscow became "the third Rome" until Peter the Great eliminated the patriarch and established his own means of control - the Holy Synod - which, as a more controlled entity, led to the spiralling downward of the Russian Church until the revolution - and by that time there were a lot of just claims against clergy and Church practices there. But I seriously digress.

Point is, that the collegiate nature of the Church in it's first 1,000 years was destroyed by the ascendant papacy in the west, but retained in the east. One man can't take the whole Church out with him if he goes wrong.

On setting of dates, compare the evolution of setting of dates in the Catholic Church - which really did make the calendar the center - and the Orthodox Church, which has always stuck with a Pascha (the resurrection of Christ and most important day of the year) that follows the Jewish passover.

And christmas?

I think this was at least partially addressed above. Most of the Orthodox Church is not on the Gregorian calendar at all. Some are, but it is a purely modern shift - no connection to paganism whatsoever. And again, as a local practices issue, it is not universal dogma. The Church I am in - and it is a matter of geography, not choice (although in America, strangely enough, you can choose which "flavor" of Orthodoxy you prefer _ Greek, Russian, Antiochian, or just plain American) - the Russian orthodox Church, is on old calendar, so Christmas here is on Jan 7th. (Holidays start and end later here as a result of a Christmas that now follows the New Year, and that situation is thanks to the Bolsheviks, who stamped out Christmas celebrations (and moved the trappings of Christmas to the new year - thus the tree is a "New Year tree") and put Russia on the Gregorian calendar. But the Church, what was left of it, anyway, remained on the old calendar.

It is on the basis of that experience that they reject it. But so what? I am in solidarity with them in rejecting it, as well, and I know of a Christianity that never engaged in the things that created the western Christianity that has all those elements that you rightly object to (from the worldly power and authority of a single corruptible man, indulgences and the Inquisition to 'fundamentalism' where each person interprets Scripture on their own and makes up their own versions of the faith in the process and then knock on your door in an effort to save you).

The Orthodox Church says, "Come and see!"

See, all of that I can agree with. But not the fundamental assuption. That there is a god.

I understand that you're not there yet. But you can see how what I'm saying is reasonable (agree or not), if you allow for the possibility.

[aliantha]

Hey Rus, you're of course welcome anywhere on the Watch. I just said I'm not going to argue with you anymore.

On the bit about the divine being in all things: Yeah, I don't much like the "stewardship" concept. As I have said to you before, it seems to encourage destruction and tyranny -- over other peoples as well as over the environment and so on. It seems to me that the world would be a better place if we would all treat, not just our neighbors, but everything around us, as we ourselves would like to be treated. If you say that translates into a pantheistic "everything is God," well, then yeah, that's where I am.

Sorry about your eye. Hope you feel better soon.

[rusmeister]

Hey Rus, you're of course welcome anywhere on the Watch. I just said I'm not going to argue with you anymore.

On the bit about the divine being in all things: Yeah, I don't much like the "stewardship" concept. As I have said to you before, it seems to encourage destruction and tyranny -- over other peoples as well as over the environment and so on. It seems to me that the world would be a better place if we would all treat, not just our neighbors, but everything around us, as we ourselves would like to be treated. If you say that translates into a pantheistic "everything is God," well, then yeah, that's where I am.

Sorry about your eye. Hope you feel better soon.

Thanks again!
At the moment both eyes are working. It's on and off.
I think that all of the good things or aspects about your desires ARE ones you would find in my faith as well (I would say "Christianity" but for the complex reasons why we might agree that that's not so). (Of course, I also believe that there are aspects, that, taken to their logical conclusion, are either self-contradictory or, in an attempt to obey a small virtue, violate a bigger one.)
Just as a thought, and it doesn't have to be argument (IOW, you can let this post end the thread if you wish), on neighbors. If people ACTUALLY fulfilled the Christian ideal of loving their neighbor as themselves, you would have that total respect; that heaven on earth. But, as an old friend of mine says,

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

- Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910
But our natural tendency to prefer self, and to place our interests over our neighbors, makes this a very difficult thing. The Christian saints knew this better than anybody - they also did it better than anybody - and so (for example) the legends of St Nicholas, however garbled, have come down over a millenium and a half - although most today would admit that they do not know what the original forms of those stories were.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Myra

Our natural tendency is to think of ourselves as good and to look out for number one. The ability to see that perhaps, we are not as good as we think we are (that we are actually a mass of lusts, rages and petty vices and desires) and to consciously turn from that and prefer others to self, is monumentally difficult, and all around us encourages us to do the opposite - to admire our own goodness while indulging all of our dark desires - and even to see the dark as "light enough". This is why the saints were always talking about how bad they were - they simply had learned to see better, just as we cannot see the streaks and dirt on a glass in the dark, but taken into real light, we can see how poorly it was washed.

With respect for all things around us, it would be wrong to prefer those things to the well-being of our neighbors, though. (I mean an ideal that refuses to cut down a tree to build shelter, or to kill a deer or chicken when your children are hungry- and I do mean when alternative sources of food and shelter are unfeasible.) So we would again, part ways if you held differently.

[Avatar]

I understand that you're not there yet. But you can see how what I'm saying is reasonable (agree or not), if you allow for the possibility.

Ever. (Possibly.)

But yes, if I allowed for the possibility, I think I would prefer your version to the versions I've personally experienced or have knowledge of.

But that possibility, while I accept that it could be possible, I find unlikely in the extreme, and certainly see no convincing evidence for.

--A