Quote from: JS on January 31, 2014, 11:38:44 PM
That supposes that there's a right "notion" of God, which is?
I would be arrogant to claim to be able to answer that - there is a reason why the traditional churches prefer apophatic theology (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology) especially with regard to the nature of God. We only resort to positive descriptions when absolutely needed.
Yet, I have some ideas about what God is not - and He is not the spiteful, angry, small-minded entity atheists often describe to me. If that is who they reject (often based on taking portions of Scripture out of context), they indeed reject a false god.
Quote from: michelle on February 01, 2014, 01:13:45 AM
In reading the Bible, we see that Christ taught to individuals and to groups of individuals, but he never set up any formal institutions that were to govern and teach Christianity. Individual churches were formed by his followers after Christ's crucifixion.
Not true. When Jesus says to Peter "thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church", the word used for "church" in the Greek text is "ecclesia", which was also the term used for the electorate in Greek city states - a highly organized entity, and not least a legal/jurisdictional term.
Also, in the Septuagint (the translation of the Old Testament to Greek, which predates Christianity), the word "ecclesia" is used to translate the Hebrew word "qahal", which again was the term used to refer to those who had religious and national "citizenship" in the people of Israel. Again, a highly organized entity etc.
Since "ecclesia" bears this meaning in Greek, and is used to translate a nearly equivalent word from Hebrew by the Jews who translated the Septuagint, it is reasonable to believe that Jesus used the Hebrew (while he spoke Aramaic, Jews at the time often used Hebrew religious terms) "qahal" when he spoke those words to Peter. So if the gospels are right (and if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be Christian - there are also no better sources anyways), Jesus did indeed intend to form an organized Church.
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Regarding the rest of what you wrote, I don't have time to address all of it - but a lot of the things you say are common misconceptions that few historians (of any persuasion) would agree with. Do you know that Constantine actually
supported the Arians? Yet, when the Church declared it a heresy, he decided to support the decision, since he had no business interfering with it. Yes, he wanted the Church to set up a council to end the fight between Arianism and Trinitarian belief, but the people he supported actually lost the argument, something he accepted. So a lot of the myths about how Constantine affected the Church are simply wrong.
In general, I think it's natural to want to paint the "big" organized religions as bad, simply because they're, well... big. But while there certainly have been transgressions done by Catholics, from laymen to popes, the history is generally more sympathetic (and less exciting) than the popular beliefs.
(Edit:)
Quote from: michelle on February 01, 2014, 01:13:45 AM
Jesus stressed kindness and love above judgement and condemnation. So I think as transgenders we at least have to be kind to ourselves and love ourselves, accepting who we are. Then just do the best we can to live our lives.
I just had to add that to this, I absolutely and utterly agree