HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!!!!

[QuakeDuke]

Did I just find myself agreeing with DaHanG? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

QD

[quadz]

one of the things that has always flabbergasted me about the reaction of most (christian) believers [...]
There was a time (as should be known by students of theology)

[DaHanG]

DaHanG's good point is one of the things that has always flabbergasted me about the reaction of most (christian) believers reaction to the secular (in the sense of nonchristian) world removing "christ" from christmas and quote as the reason for their outrage is (and I quote) "christ is the reason for the season"

in all honesty it does not surprise me. i think the majority of christians honestly believe (or know?) december 25th is jesus christ's birthday because they simply haven't investigated this reality deeply (they are just told it's his birthday and christmas is clearly an important tradition - there's nothing to investigate, right?). 'outrage' is not a surprising result. the actual physical birth date of christ should not really matter anyway in my opinion, it's just ironic that we celebrate what may be viewed as the most important event ever on clearly the wrong day.

ps i'm not anti christmas.

 

[X'tyfe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

"Christmas combines the celebration of Jesus' birth with various other traditions and customs"
"December 25 as a birthdate for Jesus is merely traditional, and is not widely considered to be his actual date of birth."

so basicly this tells us that christmas is a bastardized version of what it used to be, and has been even more so with the commercialization of it

[[BTF]Jehar]

I'll be the first to say that I don't hold the actual day up for any significance such as relation to Jesus' birth.
*However*, this day is held as an arbitrary day set aside for the purpose of celebrating the birth. Not a birthday, but more of a celebration of the event itself. It's relation on the calender is totally arbitrary. In this light, I do hold it as a day that is used to celebrate this.

As to the earlier jests in the topic, I'm not offended by any of it, finding none of it to be particularly blasphemous. Rather good taste. Remember though, Jesus has a webhost set up that has h4x available for all to download! Anticheat *this*!

[X'tyfe]

[QuakeDuke]

DaHanG's good point is one of the things that has always flabbergasted me about the reaction of most (christian) believers reaction to the secular (in the sense of nonchristian) world removing "christ" from christmas and quote as the reason for their outrage is (and I quote) "christ is the reason for the season"

in all honesty it does not surprise me. i think the majority of christians honestly believe (or know?) december 25th is jesus christ's birthday because they simply haven't investigated this reality deeply (they are just told it's his birthday and christmas is clearly an important tradition - there's nothing to investigate, right?). 'outrage' is not a surprising result. the actual physical birth date of christ should not really matter anyway in my opinion, it's just ironic that we celebrate what may be viewed as the most important event ever on clearly the wrong day.
ps i'm not anti christmas.
 

You're correct the actual date shouldn't matter. For well over 20 years I've taught it's ok to celebrate the birth of Christ on christmas as long as you understand it's not actually His birthdate but rather a time set aside to do so. I also teach if it's really so important to you then perhaps you should celebrate it every day of your life, not just once a year. The early church did not really celebrate the birth or even the death of Christ but rather his ressurection.

I don't think the "outrage" or knee-jerk reaction to people's degeneration of their "holiday" is so much as because the majority really believe december 25 is Jesus' birthday as they fear that since Christianity is the ONLY minority of people that it is politically correct and allowable for anyone to harass, badmouth or otherwise hassle without one single thing being done in their defense (jjust try getting by with doing/saying/treating anyone else the way people treat Christians and Christianity and you'll see pretty quick what "outrage" really is. It's ironic that many times people who would never seriously put up with racist, sexist, or any of the like actions don't think twice about treating Christians that way)  they see it as just one more of a long list "rights" being taken from them with no recourse - even those who are supposed to protect peoples rights in these matters join with the rest to strip them of the very rights they insist on having for themselves.

This attitude and behavior shouldn't, of course, come as a surprise to Christians (and it really mystifies me that it seems to most of the time). Jesus himself said, " If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you." I like to tell people to try not to take it so personal - the problem isn't people hate you, it's they can't stand Jesus. You're just caught in the middle. - My telling people that for some reason doesn't seem to do much for most people for some reason.

QD



 

[[BTF]Jehar]

Good statements, but I would like to amend that in my experience, people rarely hate Jesus once they have a better understanding of what He really is. A lot of hatred comes towards the organization of the church and a lot of people who are just plain not doing well in representing what Christianity is. Nobody gives Jesus a bad name like people do sometimes...

Sometimes I feel like every time some nutso bombs an abortion clinic with a Bible in hand there are many out there going "tsk, those dammed Christians". I see this as a failure on the church's part to better portray what it's all really about. Indeed, I've been to quite a few churches that don't understand what it's really about themselves.

[DaHanG]

I don't think the "outrage" or knee-jerk reaction to people's degeneration of their "holiday" is so much as because the majority really believe december 25 is Jesus' birthday as they fear that since Christianity is the ONLY minority of people that it is politically correct and allowable for anyone to harass, badmouth or otherwise hassle without one single thing being done in their defense (jjust try getting by with doing/saying/treating anyone else the way people treat Christians and Christianity and you'll see pretty quick what "outrage" really is. It's ironic that many times people who would never seriously put up with racist, sexist, or any of the like actions don't think twice about treating Christians that way)  they see it as just one more of a long list "rights" being taken from them with no recourse - even those who are supposed to protect peoples rights in these matters join with the rest to strip them of the very rights they insist on having for themselves.

i don't see how the falsity of the claim that december 25th is jesus' birthday infringes on rights of christians to believe/celebrate how and what they like (the falsity, in my opinion, of god hating homosexuals hasn't stopped people from following his 'other' work). i also do not think any discrimination toward christians is nearly as significant as discrimination against other groups (in america). a poll came out recently that asked whether people would vote for a perfectly qualified candidate running for president who happened to be atheist. only 37% said they would be potentially willing to vote for this person. being an open atheist also makes you less likely to get certain jobs and do certain things. america is run by christians and homosexuals/blacks/atheists have it much worse in my opinion. some secular progressives are a little to passionate in my opinion when taking offense to the phrase "Merry Christmas!", but i don't see a stripping of rights - not by a long shot.

Sometimes I feel like every time some nutso bombs an abortion clinic with a Bible in hand there are many out there going "tsk, those dammed Christians". I see this as a failure on the church's part to better portray what it's all really about. Indeed, I've been to quite a few churches that don't understand what it's really about themselves.

though almost all christians would not agree with murdering a doctor who has aborted babies, i think it does take strong faith to actually do this. if there are vague implications in theology that a very young embryo is as equally human (at the very least has a soul) as a 20 year old man/woman in the bible, then yes some will certainly view abortion as murder. by murdering an abortion doctor they are only preventing further deaths of innocent babies. when you know you're going to heaven because of the lives you have saved, the concept isn't that crazy at all.

from a scientific perspective, these doctor murderers are no doubt among the nuttiest people in the world: a three day old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells (which may seem like a lot), but a fly's brain containst 100,000 cells. certainly suffering isn't an issue for these *young* embryos. some claim it's the "potential" human that must be saved, yet in today's age every cell in the human body is a potential human being. when we scratch our face we have just committed a holocaust of potential humans.

[johnny]

NOT HIS BIRTHDAY?

Crap, what am I going to do with this cake now?

[X'tyfe]

omg cake? you would be stupid not to eat it 

[QuakeDuke]

Good statements, but I would like to amend that in my experience, people rarely hate Jesus once they have a better understanding of what He really is. A lot of hatred comes towards the organization of the church and a lot of people who are just plain not doing well in representing what Christianity is. Nobody gives Jesus a bad name like people do sometimes...

Sometimes I feel like every time some nutso bombs an abortion clinic with a Bible in hand there are many out there going "tsk, those dammed Christians". I see this as a failure on the church's part to better portray what it's all really about. Indeed, I've been to quite a few churches that don't understand what it's really about themselves.

Yes! Very much so....

QD

[QuakeDuke]

NOT HIS BIRTHDAY?

Crap, what am I going to do with this cake now?

Chocolate? With lotsa fudge icing?  I'll take two slices please....

QD

[[BTF]Jehar]

In reply to DaHang (btw Christmas Cake sounds like an awesome idea... forget the turkey):
That logic is sound (that killing an abortion doctor would prevent deaths potentially), but the very act of making that judgement is outside of what people are called to do. By making that decision, we place ourselves above other people, and therefore above God ("What you have done to the least of these you have also done to me").

As far as abortion itself goes... I'm not as active against it as others, simply because murder is nothing new. People die as much now as they ever did. It's just publicized more now. Aside from the death of an infant, I don't agree with the huge thought shift that tells people that they don't have any responsibilities to live up to. It's not the killing that bothers me, it's the *devaluation* of human life.

Atheist or not, I would presume that an overall degredation in how valuable life is to people is a generally bad thing. That's when we get organizations for the systematic lowering of the earth's population by not feeding the "weaker races" and giving more support to higher classes. That's when we get legallized post-birth euthanasia of children in the Netherlands.
So, yeah. I don't like abortion, but because I value individual choices. Contrary to what the labels say, abortion ultimately leads to the *removal* of choices for that person. I don't believe in taking away the right to choose, but there are choices that will degrade your future abilities to think as an individual.

My only point here is that things of this nature serve to remove the freedoms of the individual in favor of those "better positioned" to make decisions for you.
I hope this doesn't sound all overbearing, it's just that things do progress, and factors such as these do logically reach those ends.

Oh yeah. Happy New Year

[DaHanG]

i specifically mentioned three day old embryos because the situation is far simpler than an embryo 6 months old. we know, scientifically, that suffering is not an issue for this *incredibly* young embryo. if we had concern over this collection of 150 cells, we should then be very concerned over swatting a fly (since a fly's brain - not including the whole body - has almost 700 times more cells). i was saying it takes faith to believe you can have a soul in a pitri dish, or right when fertilization occurs a soul is formed. what happens when the embryo splits to form identical twins? is this the result of one soul splitting into two souls? embryos can even fuse to produce a single human. how can two souls combine into one? this arithmetic of souls does not make sense.

as for the concept of devaluation of life, i see where you're coming from. but consider a mother who wants to have an abortion right away (when the embryo is ridiculously young) just to ensure there is no suffering at all for her baby. what if she is addicted to heroine, poor, and in no way could raise the child? what if she pretty much knew this child would probably turn out to be just like her or worse because of the terrible environment the child will grow up in? if no close family member or friend wants to take responsibility for her child and she's not willing to put it up for adoption, abortion is the likely the best choice for her. abortion is not a good thing, but it is necessary to look at the entire situation for the best possible solution. it never hurts to consider the decision of a mother either.

once again, i specifically avoided the issue of a much older embryo because the situation is too sticky for my liking. however, when someone decrees by fiat claiming abortion is wrong because every fertilized ovum has a soul we must ask for evidence. if they claim they 'know' because of the vague implications of a book, this argument should not hold any authority. if it does, then the embryo will go to heaven (because it has done nothing wrong) and the mother/doctor will go to hell since they helped this murder occur. isn't god's eternal judgement enough?