Christianity in a nutshell (satire)

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Here are the rules.

1. You do not ask questions.
2. You do not ask questions.
3. No thoughts.
4. No freedom.
5. You have to trust God.

I just thought I could make a Fight Club reference.

"A lot of dull genealogy and poorly remembered history with a solar hero, death cult and millenialism tacked on."

Look, if you want a good satire, you are best going with this:

"The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

I mean, for rules 1(and 2), it is not completely illegitimate to ask questions.

For rule 3, a person can think and be Christian. Now, one might think that the entire position is absurd, and perhaps Christian thinking is a matter of avoiding weak points at times, but then again, to most outsiders most beliefs seem absurd, and to most insiders most beliefs seem absurd.

For rule 4... I suppose it depends on how you define freedom. Christianity will claim it is freedom. Christianity will claim it is accepting the lordship of Christ. Christianity has rules, and areas where rules are unclear or allow for personal choices.

Rule 5 is correct about the religion.

1. You do not ask questions.
2. You do not ask questions.
3. No thoughts.
4. No freedom.
5. You have to watch television.

How's the alternative working out for you?

In case you didn't notice, I was equating die-hard Christians with the mindless members of Project Mayhem.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[yawn]

I noticed and it was boring and requires serious mental gymnastics to work. That's not to say there aren't legitimate criticisms, just that your characterization isn't working--at all.

Sadly I have neither read the book or watched the movie.

That's not what it's like at all. Where do you get the idea that Christianity promotes mindlessness?

as for no freedom, that depends. Is lust freedom or slavery? is pride freedom or slavery? is greed freedom or slavery? Define freedom.

fifth one's right though.

So christianity takes away emotions?

Nope. But it exploits the feeling of severe helplessness or suffering of others to their cause (like most other organized religions).

That's how many religious leaderships works.
There is no difference between Christians who claim you're not Christian if you question dogmas (which in the end sometimes makes new sects evolve), and Jews who say that you are not Jewish if you eat meat and milk at the same time (again, new denominations formed). Actually, there is also not much difference between those guys and between people who say you hate your nation when you oppose going to a war. People are blind and follow the herd everywhere, let it be religion, politics, other social movements or whatever.

My problem with Christianity itself is it's whole basis, as you can see in another topic here.
But, just because religious leaders don't let you question certain things, doesn't mean you have to say their whole belief is BS. You can interpret it yourself and find it better that way. You don't have to hate the whole idea of religious faith as much as Nietzsche (my favourite philosopher), you can take influence from Kierkegaard, who was somewhat similar to Nietzsche in his individualism, but still remained a Christian. He favoured an individualist approach to spiritual beliefs.

Think of it this way - I find some anarchist claims irrational, but that doesn't make me hate the concept. I'm still an anarchist myself. I can tell people they aren't real anarchists for me because they believe in things that contradict it, but at the same time I can "defend" others who are said not to be "real anarchists", and I think they are, even though we have some different positions on certain matters.

Even though I don't like the whole the concept of Christianity, don't hate it just because "leaders" associate certain things with it. When they tell you not to ask - research yourself.
I hated Judaism as a kid. I liked Jesus. I wondered how come, if Jesus was a religious Jew, and "his" religion was based on Judaism. I couldn't accept Christianity - because it accepted the Old Testament to some extent, and I didn't. Then I began reading about Jesus. I found he was more Jewish than any mainstream Jew, according to the bible... I didn't even agree to have a Bar-Mitzvah (pretty rare in Israel), because I didn't want to take part in a rite that has to do with a religion I despise. Now I read other interpretations, and in addition interpret myself, and am still agnostic, but consider myself part of the Jewish religion, for the first time in years.

If I became Jewish (was nationally, not religiously) because of a person who's identified with a separate religion - I think that says all. From studying Christianity (out of curiousity and interest in Jesus) I became closer to Judaism than I was, as much as it sounds funny, just because I saw that they misinterpret his real messages, and found that the basis for his great moral philosophy is the bible I once despised. I didn't let the fact that I rejected Christian dogmas stop me from studying it, and now I do the same with Judaism.

And, as said before - it goes for all philosophies/ideas. Letting people make you hate their whole system of ideas is one of the biggest mistakes to make. Even if it doesn't convince you - it is important to know that fascism and racism don't have to interact, for example. I don't like people making this mistake, because Mussolini himself - "founder" of fascism, who had no ideology and changed his "opinions" according to the direction of the wind - spoke against racism, and had a Jewish mistress, until he kicked her out because he was afraid of Hitler. Franco's regime, another famous fascist one, was not racist at all. People don't understand how come he helped Jews - but for him Sephardic Jews were Spanish since they identified as such, and kept the language and tradition out of Spain for 500 years. They also blame him for anti-Catalanism - but his claim was just that they should be a part of a greater Spanish identity. He also didn't allow the use of Galician language in the same way as he didn't allow usage of Catalan - but he was Galician himself. His claims were not racist. So I still don't like fascism, to say the least, but I understand it better, and understand what it's not. Better than some neo-fascists, I think.

Aspies seem to have this gift of not accepting norms and herd mentality - you can make use of it if you actually learn to understand the things you don't accept, instead of just hating them automatically.

No, of course not. Christianity helps you CONTROL your emotions. One of Christianity's most important aspects is, after all, love.

Emotions can be good or bad, depending on which ones they are and the extent to which we feel them. Lust, Greed, Pride, Fear, and the other emotions Christianity teaches us to control are not they only ones, and are, in my opinion, rather paralyzing ones.

Phil777: and what gives you that idea?

Because it's been documented by anthropologists of religion? -.- (which i'm taking a class of?). You can read on Clifford Geertz for reference about what i've said. <.<

Good movement of the rhetorical hypothesis to thesis. Though the thesis of, "to most outsiders most beliefs seem absurd, and to most insiders most beliefs seem absurd", is correct, I would suggest that the word "other" be placed as such, "to most outsiders most beliefs seem absurd, and to most insiders most other beliefs seem absurd". Nobody finds what they actually believe to be absurd, but rather "people will most easily accept what they already believe" as Julius Caesar said. You didn't intend to suggest that one's own beliefs are included in the "most" in the second half of your statement, so this is just a matter of clarification.

If it's so well documented, it should be easy for you to come up with at least one example.

I don't believe anthropologists will ever be able to understand religion because they approach it too scientificly. science is too close-minded in it's processes to understand how a religion really works.