March 2018 - luv-talk

Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Matthew 28"19 j <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote1>Go > therefore and k <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote2>make > disciples of l <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote3>all > nations, j <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote3>baptizing > them m <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote4>in2 > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote5> n > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote6>the name of the > Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them o > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote7>to observe all that > p <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote8>I have commanded > you. And behold, q <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote9>I > am with you always, to r > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote10>the end of the > age.” > > Romans 10:13-14 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be > saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And > how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are > they to hear without someone preaching? > > Mark 16:15 > <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A15&version=ESV> And > he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the > whole creation. What the fsck is this, a witnessing? {sigh} OK, the Mark 16:15 bit is at least getting there. Context is this is (pardon my irreverence) zombie Jesus speaking after the tomb got reopened. However, please note that he said 'Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation' as an instruction to the eleven remaining disciples. (I guess at this point Judas Iscariot had been voted off the island.) Jesus is NOT quoted as saying this shall be a task for all future co-religionists. He said 'Go...' to the eleven blokes. Note that a couple of verses before, he'd ghost-hullo'ed to Mary Magdalene but didn't tell _her_ to wander the globe being a religion salesman. So, all told, why are you cocluding that Jesus was saying everyone in the future (but oddly not Mary Magdalene) would be so charged? And, getting back to my earlier point, if this is a critical instruction incumbent on all future devotees, why did only Mark think to mention it? Hmm? (But wait, I've just cross-checked.) Actually, I see that one of the other links you hurled out, Matthew 28:19, covers the same zombie Jesus speech to the eleven remaining disciples. (Would it have hurt you to have mentioned this?) Interestingly, the two accounts clash about where this was. Mark just says it was where they were eating. That would logically be in or really near Jerusalem, as people didn't just casually get on an interurban bus, back then. Matthew says it was in Galilee. Take the word of someone who's driven on the still-awful roads from Jerusalem to northern Israel, that's a pretty serious trip. But once again, Matthew gives this oddly specific instruction _very_ directly to the remaining eleven. If he'd meant '...and also I charge this upon all future followers', wouldn't he have logically said so? Now, I also have to back off and review our differrent perspectives. To you, holy wisdom verbatim of your god; to me, a book. Specifically, a book about which it's abundantly clear its text was nowhere near contemporaneous, and shows very clear signs of tampering to support later institutional politics. IMO, there has been backfilling of both myth and later doctrine, and I see in these passages among others the hand of the one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid, Saint Paul the politicker and noted misogynist. You would of course greatly disagree, but that's what makes horse races. Romans 10:13-14: That is NOT Jesus speaking. You are deciding to move the goalposts. I didn't ask you what the one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid, Saint Paul the politicker and noted misogynist, had to say. If memory serves, didn't I ask you where _Jesus_ asked this thing of all future followers? Also, say... Didn't I just get through asking you if you were claiming I was lying? You certainly seemed to be. As I said, I would much rather think well of people, but if you are going to wander around attempting casual character assassination and then ignoring polite queries about whether you are _sure_ you mean that slur, then there really is absolutely no future in our conversing, and we would be better off disengaging pending the heat death of the universe, right now. I'm serious, dude. You have started down a path on which nothing good can ensue.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Rick, you've made many comments, then told me to shut up, so which would > you like? My answers, or my silence? My goodness, I don't believe I asked you to shut up. I believe what I said was that I was confused about you taking personal offense at my comments that -- as you agreed -- were about a variety of Christian entirely unlike you, in a conversation I was having in no way addressed to you. If you wish to clarify your claim that (paraphrasing) there is an active requirement for all Christians to evangelise, I would be interested. If you don't, there is certainly no obligation.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Here you go, Rick....just a few references. I've said before that you need > to take them in context, but you rejected that WTF? No, that is absolutely nothing like anything I said. Right, that's twice in a row you attempted that idiocy, _plus_ calling me a liar and ignoring being called on that. I am done with you. Have a great life. We will not interact again. I have just reached and passed 'fed up'. Bye.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Trent W. Buck 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Russell Coker wrote: >> OK, but WHY are you focusing solely on the anglophone community? > Because they are the ones that are connected to us. That's a depressingly "White Australia Policy" attitude to take. e.g. one in four Australians speak a LOTE at home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#cite_ref-50 e.g. one in four Australians was born overseas, of which the biggest contributing nations are UK, New Zealand, and China. We've more Sri Lankan immigrants than US immigrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_Residents_by_Country_of_Birth… e.g. our biggest trading partners are in East Asia, not North America (nor UK). UPDATE: I'm wrong; the top bilateral partners in decreasing order are CN, US, JP, KR, UK, NZ, SG, TH. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-at-a-glance/Pages/default.aspx Comparing exports and imports separately presents a different picture https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Destinations https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Origins

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > The citation you've provided is pretty clear, I would have thought. OK, if you are asserting that the extremely weak and indirect (and metaphorical) statement included in _one_ Gospel (Matthew) and curiously nowhere in the other three means Christians are abjured to find converts, then that is an answer. Thank you.

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Reading the Bible
by Russell Coker 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-… This article explains why most Americans don't read the Bible. -- Sent from my Huawei Mate 9 with K-9 Mail.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Rick, without elucidating on every point of your colourful "response", what > I take offense to is not that you expressed your opinion on luv-talk. In that regard, for context, please remember that I was responding to Trent Buck saying _he_ found the Bible inpenetrable after a few pages, i.e., was not able to read far into it. Therefore, I was replying back to Trent (Cc to the luv-talk assembled, of course) suggesting _another_ way to approach reading the Bible that could render it appealing, i.e., by interpreting it using a secular framing, seeing it in light of politics and local history and literature, rather than through the interpretive lens of religion. IMO, it really should not have been necessary to salt and pepper my prose with 'Of course, this is par-excellence NOT the only way to read the Bible, for many, many reasons including people starting with radically different assumptions about the universe than mine, e.g., those, not to put a fine point on it, who are devout and for whom this is a holy book. For gosh sake, wasn't that obvious enough without my needing to expostulate about it personally? > It is that if _I_ came on luv-talk expressing my opinion about the Bible, > about Christianity, about a certain kind of "Christian", I would probably > be howled off, because I hold the views of a Christian, so I would be seen > as "bible-bashing", "evangelising?", annoyingly expressing my religion in > public. Once again, you appear to be confusing the verb 'evangelise' with the adjective (and noun) 'evangelical', even though those are extremely different things. I will make no apology whatsoever for saying I find evangelicals very alien to customary, traditional, and otherwise universal characteristics of Christianity. You aren't even an evangelical, so why the Gehenna are you offended? The strange subtype of alleged-Christianity of which I wrote isn't yours at all (you say). Is it that you've decided to become an ex-officio ambassador for the evangelicals for purposes of taking umbrage on their behalf? Have you decided that any time someone says something unflattering about _any_ variety of Christian, you must leap forward and state how shocked and offended you are? (Are you perhaps bored and in great need of a hobby?) > But those who come from the opposite end of the spectrum, who agree in the > negative, can BASH the Bible and Christianity with impunity, without > expecting any negative response. Au contraire, Michael. Go back and read again what I wrote. You will find that I neither 'bashed the Bible' nor 'bashed Christianity'. So, stick your offense-taking in a pipe and smoke it, sir. (Well, there was one small exception, the bit where I was startled by an Israeli asserting that I am 'a Christian' simply because I had mentioned observing Christmas as a secular holiday for the first ten years of my life until my father, Pan American World Airways Captain Arthur Moen, was killed in an airplane crash caused by employer negligence at Christmas 1968. My subsequent swipe at Christianity as a 'Middle-Eastern death cult' was just a bit unkind, but IMO was forgivable because it was also witty. If you cannot look past that one ideological sharp slap, then you're far too hypersensitive, and the hell with you.) > And you, in one fell swoop, did a nice summary of BASHING the Bible in one > email, in response to Russell bashing one kind of "christian" and the > Bible. If you call that bashing the Bible and bashing Christianity, then you need to learn to read better, because it simply wasn't. > Yes, you're right, there is a difference between evangelical and > evangelising. They ARE different. But the discussion about evangelical > "christians" turned to why a certain group don't read the Bible. Which I objected to Russell saying, please note, because it was illogically arrived at and simply untrue. So, I was ON YOUR SIDE on that matter, yet you're complaining? Really? > I wasn't offended by you. Well, you have a really peculiar way of reflecting that. > Again, in this latest post, you have expressed opinion as fact Bullshit. Flagrant bullshit.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Trent W. Buck 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote: > This is why the famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo features -- > yes -- horns on the abundantly bearded guy's head. That reminds me of a story of religious iconography which went something like this: Mary's a virgin, right? So when God knocked her up, he must have used some OTHER hole. Probably her ear. I'll paint that.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck(a)gmail.com) > The response I was actually expecting is that USA is a Christian > millet, so non-Christian USians need to read their holy book to > understand their legislation. Heh. My experience was not that, in part because I was raised (part of my boyhood) in California, not in the Bible Belt or Oklahoma. In part because my parents were non-militantly non-religious. We did observe Christmas and Easter, but I as a boy would have been utterly astonished by the notion of these being Christian. Christmas was a tree and presents, and a dinner with family. Easter was decorating and finding eggs in the outside lot of one of my aunts and uncle's house, and then a dinner with family. And, the larger point is, in California, nobody pushed religion at you. That would have been deemed terribly impolite and Not Done. I was distantly aware that religion existed, but it had no centrality in public life, because that was (and still is) deemed inappropriate. In 1980, I mentioned during my time as a kibbutz volunteer that my family had observed Christmas in this fashion until 1968 when Dad was killed by the negligence of Boeing Company and his employer Pan American World Airways. One of my fellow kibbutzniks, an Israeli, made a comment about 'you Christians', and I boggled and said 'Excuse me? _Whom_ are you calling a Christian? I don't hate Christians, and some of my best friends are such, but I never said I _was_ one, and haven't been one for a day in my life, thankyouverymuch.' I was obliged to explain that, among other things, we Scandinavians had been celebrating that seasonal occasion since long before Christianity showed up, under the name, Jul, that it is still known by in the Germanic-language Nordic countries such as my father's native Norway. So, Christmas doesn't necessarily imply Christian, dammit. Get it right, my Israeli friend. And never accuse me of membership in a Middle-Eastern death cult again. Because of a historical oddity, I am technically an arguable Christian on account of baptism, even though absolutely not in any real sense: When my parents found they could not conceive children, and arranged adoption of first me and then my sister in infancy from private parties, they found to their great annoyance that a fossil statute of the state of California still required adoptive parents to give their children some bare minimum amount of religious instruction and education. (Christianity was not required.) Mom and Dad therefore sought locally for the least-bothersome option. They found a new social-activism-oriented congregation, that didn't yet even have its own building. (It met at, I believe, a high school's building on weekends.) The main attraction was the minister, a great and good man named Reverand Stephen Peabody. Rev. Peabody met the highest ideals of Christianity by my standards, in that he didn't care what if anything you believed. He just wanted to help make the world a better place, and he and his congregants would be found helping and feeding the poor, doing civil rights actions, and other deeds of good character. My family thus became in theory congregants from 1958 to 1962, and I attended Sunday School there at which I remember colouring books and instructive toys but no religion whatsoever. Many years later, when the elderly Rev. Peabody and his wife retired, they sold everything they owned and moved to rural Bolivia to spend the rest of their lives trying to teach and feed poor rural children and their families. And that was their story. > Personally, I tried to read an English translation, but didn't get > past about page ten. That seems to be about par for holy books for > me. The key to reading the Tanakh (the Old Testament) is to prepare to skip great gobs that are just peculiar wastes of time, such as all the begats, and read it in the framing of ancient politics, as if you were reading about the Wars of the Roses. And of course there is obvious and less-obvious mythology lying and pretending to be history, but you can read all that tall-tale gibberish and just think 'This is mythology, less accessible than Edith Hamilton, but also less grim and terse than the Eddas and less alien than Hesiod.' There is some fine writing, such as the tales of King Saul and King David. The history is suspect and sometimes outright fraudulent, e.g., the invasion of Canaan and the 40 years in Sinai and escape from Egypt, none of which happened and are pure literary fantasy. Even the _Iliad_ is better founded in fact. But you don't read it as history. You read it as politics and commentary on the human condition. It helps to adopt the (imperfect) framing used for the Tanakh by Jewish tradition, which divides it (the 'Old Testament') into three parts. (1) Torah (law), the first five books. Of course it's not just the 613 commandments to the Jews from God, but that's the concept applied. (2) Navi'im (prophets). These are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., social critics of several stages of the (claimed) history, and a meaty source of insight into character and society. (3) Ketuvim (holy writings). This is the grab-bag of Everything Else, stuff like the Book of Esther, a bloody-minded fairy tale set in Persia. For the New Testmament, the main attraction is the four Gospels, which comprise the three 'synoptic' ones, the ones that are in close agreement about the life and teachings of Jesus, and then the outlier, the Gospel of John, from an author who spent way too much time warping his mind on Greek mystery cults and tried to overlay that on a biography of Jesus. Following that, you have many books largely concerned with the annoying and somewhat retrograde street-politician figure Saul of Tarsus (yclept 'Saint Paul'), the guy who inherited leadership of early Christianity when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and Christianity's incumbent (Judiasm-oriented) leadership along with it. Saul transformed Christianty away from Judiasm, intuiting that he needed to broaden its appeal, which paved the way for Emperor Constantine later to use it as a unifying principle for his east-leaning Roman Empire. Saul is also where much of Christianity's misogyny came from (or started and was perpetuated). An Israeli friend called him 'a one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid', which is about the size of it. ISTR that if the book has 'Epistle' (letter) in its title, it's in almost every case Saul writing to somewhere to speak in either a selling-his-religion role or writing to other church functionaries to tell them what to do. (I'm perhaps a bit vague on Saul/Paul's epistles because he struck me as repulsive in his ways of thinking.) And, as with the Tanakh (Old Testament) there is the grab-bag of stuff, some of which will cause you much WTFery, such as the Book of the Revelation of Saint John [of Patmos], which is like a terrible B-movie horror film directed by someone on magic mushrooms. (One theory is that it's mostly political allegory, avoiding using contemporary real names of powerful people so the author would not be killed.) > Shakespeare I had no problem with because it's mostly cross-dressing > and fart jokes. The comedies, anyway. The tragedies and histories > never interested me much. They are worthwhile. And all of Shakespeare matters because a huge amount of the vocabulary and expressions of modern English come directly from his words. Seriously.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 15 Mar '18

15 Mar '18

Quoting Mike Hewitt (mikeh(a)electroteach.com) > Just to show that I, at least, am reading this discussion: > > I have some understanding of both(?) points of view and while I > > don't live in USA I can see some of the issues raised if only > through the eyes > > of the style of some of the TV programs that we receive here in > Melbourne, Aus. My own parallax on this matter was having been raised, first as a heathen in California, then during formative years studying in the British government school in Hong Kong, a very Church of England place, and having Lutheran relative and Catholic (and Jewish) friends. And my main teacher in Hong Kong was a very, very Presbyterian Scot. So, I ended up having a good grounding in mainline, normal branches of Christianity -- C of E, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, etc. -- when in 1968 with an immense sensation of cultural dislocation I landed back in the USA and studied this preposterous and now-alien place as if I were a 10-year-old anthropologist. And, my point is, you can recognise the main themes of Christianity in all of those, plus (non-Southern) Baptists, non-Holy-Roller Methodists, Quakers, and many more. IMO, where the budding young heathen anthropoligist will be driven to 'WTF? Why is this called Christianity?' is when the young lad encounters Southern Baptists and such lot. Or Mormons, though that should go without saying. (Scientogists are equally crazy if not more so, but only passively let people assume they're Christians because of symbolism such as the cross-like symbol they use, but they actually have no Christian roots at all.) > Christianity seems to have been forked like early version of Linux Well, yes, for well over 1000 years. You've heard of the Great Schism? That was in 1054, and made the Protestant Revolt and the responding Reformation look small by comparison. Christianity forking is _old_. But the point is that the family is mostly still close, from my outsider perspective. Faith versus works, central authority versus decentralised, who's in charge, these are all to my eye small points. Your Mileage May Differ.{tm} > and now some > Similar too for the use of English language : one point could be that > when you read, or hear, sentences in 'english' you could take them > literally or guess at the meaning and then you get shot for 'picking' > wrongly. http://linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/a-man-of-letters.html Dear Editor: Could you set me straight on apostrophe's? I can't keep its and it's straight. All those possessive's and contractions are confusing. Thank's. Charle's Owen's San Carlo's Dear Charles: Sure, no problem: It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then, too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's, either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. See, it's handy to have a publication that knows its it's from its its, isn't it?

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