Christmas a sham?

Page 3 of 4 [ 63 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next

Previous topic | Next topic

slowmutant
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 13 Feb 2008
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,430
Location: Ontario, Canada

16 Dec 2008, 9:09 pm

gbollard wrote:

Does it matter?

It was chosen by the Romans as a good day because it coincided with the sun god festival. I don't see why we can't just make it world "happy day" where everyone at least pretends to be happy for one day.

Has anyone seen Joyeux Noel (the war film).

Isn't it worth celebrating the human spirit that enabled two opposing sides on a battlefield to lay down their arms and forget their differences just for one day.

Lets celebrate humanity, love, peace, joy and spirit.

It doesn't have to be about nations or deities.

Legato
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 17 Jan 2008
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 822

16 Dec 2008, 9:32 pm

Christmas is an excuse to be happy and be with the people you love. As a strong atheist, I see nothing wrong with that, and celebrate the Winter Solstice happily with my mormon family.

Chibi_Neko
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 23 Oct 2007
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,485
Location: Newfoundland, Canada

16 Dec 2008, 10:22 pm

slowmutant wrote:

How is worship and religion taking things too far? Extremist behaviour is what takes things too far, and that is not exclusive to religion.

I'd talk about the brainwashing aspect of religion, but I already went through that on a different thread.

_________________
Humans are intelligent, but that doesn't make them smart.

ToadOfSteel
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,157
Location: New Jersey

16 Dec 2008, 11:37 pm

slowmutant wrote:

The Catholic Church, given its history, must have some really juicy secrets. :wink:

Here's one: St. Peter was really a rabbit.

richardbenson
Xfractor Card #351
$Xfractor Card #351$

Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,553
Location: Leave only a footprint behind

16 Dec 2008, 11:53 pm

obviously you think im lying but im not. catholic archbishops fall down on there faces to bones of peter or paul, (i dont remember again! whatta suprise!) when the pope appoints them achbishops, its quiet an ordeal and i saw a documentry on it about the vatican

_________________
Winds of clarity. a universal understanding come and go, I've seen though the Darkness to understand the bounty of Light

Legato
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 17 Jan 2008
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 822

17 Dec 2008, 12:37 am

Barbaric dogmatism ftw.

Macbeth
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 27 May 2007
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,984
Location: UK Doncaster

17 Dec 2008, 5:53 am

Chibi_Neko wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Pagan elements have been combined to form the Christian Feast of Christ-Mass. Naturally, all things owe their existence to things previous. The pagan origins of Christmas certainly do not invalidate it.

Paganism is not the source of all orginality, either.

Christans thought that pagans where evil, conserviate ones still do, yet they still celebrate pagan holidays.

Many religions have branched off each other.
Paganism to Judiasm to Christanity to Islam

Lets just clarify.. they weren't and aren't celebrating a pagan holiday. They are celebrating a Christian holiday, and a Christian event, at the same date as a pagan holiday. There is a difference. The fact that it got that date through cynical manipulation is neither here nor there.

If Ramadan happened to coincide with Easter, would we all immediately claim that they were celebrating a Christian event, because they share a date? Nope. Even if they moved Ramadan to Easter to deliberately draw people away, it would still not be a Christian event.

_________________
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart,
that you can't take part" [Mario Savo, 1964]

Macbeth
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 27 May 2007
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,984
Location: UK Doncaster

17 Dec 2008, 5:55 am

familiar_stranger wrote:

Quote:

Astronomer Says Christ Was Born in June

The research pinpoints the date of Christ's birth as June 17 rather than Dec. 25, The Times of London reported Tuesday.

there's no scientific evidence that christ was born, only that there was a bright light on june 17th.

Much as it is nice to be dead-reckoning accurate about things.. science can really suck the fun out of a subject. Mass to weight ratio makes Giant Ants impossible, but Giant Ants are still cool, and were awesome bad guys in the movies.

_________________
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart,
that you can't take part" [Mario Savo, 1964]

familiar_stranger
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 5 Nov 2008
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 653
Location: cambridgeshire UK

17 Dec 2008, 7:58 am

slowmutant wrote:

familiar_stranger wrote:

history_of_psychiatry wrote:

The religious myths are meant to be like fables. You can learn from them. However, the danger is when people take scripture literally.

that's what i try to explain, i have no problems or quarrel with someone who acts as a good samaritan who acts as 'christ' taught, but worship and religion is taking things too far. as i've said in another part of the forum there have been many great men (and women) in history that tried to teach humanity how to be more human, most of themwere killed for it, yet they weren't turned into martyrs of a religion. why is jesus so diferent?

How is worship and religion taking things too far? Extremist behaviour is what takes things too far, and that is not exclusive to religion.

would you think it extreme if a bunch of people worshipped me because i taught a new philosophy?

religion is over the top, it's a bunch of myths and fables that people believe to be true. hansel and gretel teaches kids not to go into strangers houses, there was most probably kids who were taken into forrests because they cost too much but that doesn't mean withes built houses out of sugar and sweets. the story is a fable used to teach kids about life on their level of imagination, religion is the same except people of all ages believe in something with no proof.

_________________
most people think i'm a bit strange, even abnormal. normal is the majority, the average, what is most frequent. if you lived around here, you'll see the positive of not being normal

Chibi_Neko
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 23 Oct 2007
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,485
Location: Newfoundland, Canada

20 Dec 2008, 5:26 pm

Macbeth wrote:

The christans may be celebrating the birth of Jesus, but they are doing it by pagan methods and they don't realize it.

The date was picked by the pope on purpose because the winter solstice traditions was so deep seeded that it would be very difficult to eleminate them. Some pagans converted to christanity but still contiuned to celebrate the winter solstice, so the pope said "lets just pretend it has something to do with christanity". It was easy to do because the winter solstice celebrates the birth of the sun god (the days becoming longer) and the christans want to celebrate the birth of their prophet.

Christ-Mass to me would be going to church and a feast. Trees in homes, presents, holly, mistletoe, ect. don't have any christian or Jesus meaning whatsoever. And not many people know because it doesn't occur to themselves to ask where these things began.

_________________
Humans are intelligent, but that doesn't make them smart.

The_Cucumber
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 May 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 514

20 Dec 2008, 6:47 pm

familiar_stranger wrote:

there's no scientific evidence that christ was born, only that there was a bright light on june 17th.

There are plenty of independent historical documentation of the existence of Jesus and even that taught an unorthodox message, as he did in the Bible, the question is just if he was actually the son of God and did he really perform any miracles. To question his existence is to question the existence of virtually every historical figure from that time period and back.

I'm well aware that Christmas is celebrated on the wrong date. No one knows the exact date of his birth, and even with the stars existence he could easily be born a few weeks after or before and it still would be associated with his birth.

_________________
The improbable goal: Fear nothing, hate nothing, and let nothing anger you.

monty
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Sep 2007
Age: 64
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,741

23 Dec 2008, 5:09 pm

ReGiFroFoLa wrote:

I think Christmas more commercial than religious. Nobody even thinks about Jesus in this time; most of people don't give a damn about family - it's all about possession (presents, presents everywhere)

It's not new. The pilgrims hated Christmas - they thought it was an un-Christian abomination of partying and indulgence, it is one of the reasons they left Europe.

Quote:

The Puritan disdain for the holiday endured: As late as 1869, public-school kids in Boston could be expelled for skipping class on Christmas Day.
... Quakers, too, took a pass, reasoning that, in the words of 17th-century Quaker apologist Robert Barclay, "All days are alike holy in the sight of God." The Quakers never translated their dismissal of Christmas into legislation in their stronghold in Colonial Pennsylvania. But local meetings, as the Quakers call their assemblies, urged their members to disdain Christmas and to be "zealous in their testimony against the holding up of such days."

http://www.slate.com/id/2132387/

drowbot0181
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 1 Dec 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 700
Location: Oklahoma

23 Dec 2008, 5:35 pm

There was no Star of Bethlehem. The story only appears in the Gospel of Matthew. Bethlehem and the Nativity isn't even mentioned in the other Gospels. It was most likely a fabrication created so the Jesus would fulfill a prophecy in the Book of Micah.

protest_the_hero
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 14 Nov 2008
Age: 186
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,011

24 Dec 2008, 9:32 am

Dec.25 was when Horus the sun god was born (based in astrological events). He just happens to be the guy Jesus is a direct copy of. Go atheism!

ouinon
Supporting Member

Joined: 10 Jul 2007
Age: 61
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,939
Location: Europe

24 Dec 2008, 9:45 am

protest_the_hero wrote:

Dec.25 was when Horus the sun god was born (based in astrological events). He just happens to be the guy Jesus is a direct copy of. Go atheism!

You don't have to believe in a historical Jesus Christ to believe in the NT god, just need to stop taking things literally.
.

drowbot0181
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 1 Dec 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 700
Location: Oklahoma

24 Dec 2008, 9:49 am

ouinon wrote:

protest_the_hero wrote:

Dec.25 was when Horus the sun god was born (based in astrological events). He just happens to be the guy Jesus is a direct copy of. Go atheism!

You don't have to believe in a historical Jesus Christ to believe in the NT god, just need to stop taking things literally.
.

No, actually, it's meant to be taken literally.

Page 3 of 4 [ 63 posts ] Go to page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next

Jump to:

Christmas a sham? Post Reply New Topic

Christmas a sham?