Happy Anniversary?

[myth-one.com]

Today, June 20th 2009, is the eighth anniversary of the sacrifice Andrea Yates made for her children. Had she not murdered them, Noah would be 15 years old, John would be 13, Paul 11, Luke 10, and Mary would be 8. Instead, they were murdered by their mother so they would go immediately to live with God eternally in the paradise of heaven, thus avoiding the possibility of eternal torment in hellfire.

Is this a victory for Christianity?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Wikipedia
Psychosis
Psychosis refers to an abnormal condition of the mind described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People with psychosis are described as psychotic.

Great and powerful men of God make statements such as the following:

The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul. Your soul is eternal and will live forever. In other words, the real you -- the part of you that thinks, feels, dreams, aspires; the ego, the personality-- will never die. The Bible teaches that your soul will live forever in one of two places -- heaven or hell. If you are not a Christian and you have never been born again, then the Bible teaches that your soul goes immediately to a place Jesus called hades, where you will await the judgment of God. The moment a Christian dies, he goes immediately into the presence of Christ. There his soul awaits the resurrection, when the soul and body will be rejoined. The scriptural doctrine of hell is an awesome one which must be taken very seriously. God, in His mercy and love, watches over little children who are taken by death, and they go to be with Him in heaven.

Are evangelists who preach the above theology psychotic by definition?

That is, do the above statements of theology represent a "loss of contact with reality?"

Notice that EVERY WORD

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Wikipedia
Psychosis
Psychosis refers to an abnormal condition of the mind described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People with psychosis are described as psychotic.

Great and powerful men of God make statements such as the following:

The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul. Your soul is eternal and will live forever. In other words, the real you -- the part of you that thinks, feels, dreams, aspires; the ego, the personality-- will never die. The Bible teaches that your soul will live forever in one of two places -- heaven or hell. If you are not a Christian and you have never been born again, then the Bible teaches that your soul goes immediately to a place Jesus called hades, where you will await the judgment of God. The moment a Christian dies, he goes immediately into the presence of Christ. There his soul awaits the resurrection, when the soul and body will be rejoined. The scriptural doctrine of hell is an awesome one which must be taken very seriously. God, in His mercy and love, watches over little children who are taken by death, and they go to be with Him in heaven.

Are evangelists who preach the above theology psychotic by definition?

That is, do the above statements of theology represent a "loss of contact with reality?"

Notice that EVERY WORD written above by you in dark red has been entirely imagined into existence and declared to be true. Not one word of it, not one, can be sustained by any actual physical evidence. Things which can only be sustained through the act of imagining them to exist, or imagining it to be true, have no physical reality. So YES, this is certainly one piece, and a very important piece, of the total disconnect from reality that is the very cornerstone of religion.

Is everyone who is religious psychotic? That is something of a technicality. If religion is simply the work of the imagination, has no connection to anything real and valid, and everyone who is religious lives their lives in a fictional reality and makes important decisions based on this fictional reality, then technically YES. So am I saying that religious people are uniformly insane? Well, that is a matter of degree. Because insanity is defined as abnormal behavior, and certainly having a religion is and historically has been pretty far from abnormal. A mainstream condition which is currently and rather rapidly undergoing change, however.

My aunt was diagnosed as mildly psychotic. She carried on a running conversation with Jesus for the last 30 years of her life. It was an entirely one-sided conversation for the rest of us, but he was right there in the room with her according to her. Her doctors prescribed meds, which of course she resolutely refused to take. And the doctors concluded that since she was no threat to harm herself or anyone else, there was no harm in her delusion. Not that anyone could have talked her out of it anyway.

So people who live in their world of delusions are very often not acting irrationally in other ways, and are perfectly capable of interacting with physical reality in other ways without harming themselves or others.

Unless they begin to take their delusions to extremes. And the historical record is FULL of believers doing just that, by joining extremest cults, or creating such cults themselves. Sometimes they self destruct violently and spectacularly. David Koresh and his Branch Davidians sect, a group that separated from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, is an example. The Heaven's Gate cult, all of whom committed suicide so that their " immortal soul" which is "eternal and will live forever" could interface with a passing comet, was another. In other cases, such as Joseph Smith and his Latter Day Saints, such cults manage to become mainstream. Christianity began as a Jewish religious cult.

Delusion is a matter of degree, you see. It's all a "loss of contact with reality" if it's all imaginary and none of it has any connection to anything valid and real.

[myth-one.com]

Wikipedia
Psychosis
Psychosis refers to an abnormal condition of the mind described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People with psychosis are described as psychotic.

Great and powerful men of God make statements such as the following:

The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul. Your soul is eternal and will live forever. In other words, the real you -- the part of you that thinks, feels, dreams, aspires; the ego, the personality-- will never die. The Bible teaches that your soul will live forever in one of two places -- heaven or hell. If you are not a Christian and you have never been born again, then the Bible teaches that your soul goes immediately to a place Jesus called hades, where you will await the judgment of God. The moment a Christian dies, he goes immediately into the presence of Christ. There his soul awaits the resurrection, when the soul and body will be rejoined. The scriptural doctrine of hell is an awesome one which must be taken very seriously. God, in His mercy and love, watches over little children who are taken by death, and they go to be with Him in heaven.

Are evangelists who preach the above theology psychotic by definition?

That is, do the above statements of theology represent a "loss of contact with reality?"

Notice that EVERY WORD written above by you in dark red has been entirely imagined into existence and declared to be true. Not one word of it, not one, can be sustained by any actual physical evidence. Things which can only be sustained through the act of imagining them to exist, or imagining it to be true, have no physical reality.

But there is some physical reality against which most religions can be checked against.

Each religion typically has some written source which defines there beliefs -- the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and Torah, etc.

The theology in darkred above is Christian, and should thus be found in the Christian Bibles if it is true.

So regardless of whether or not the Bible is a total fairy tale, imaginary events, or true events -- what Christian preachers preach should be contained in the Bible, which they consider to be the inspired words of their God.
==========================================================================

Using that as our testing criteria, let's examine the above theology in darkred sentence by sentence and see how it compares with God's inspired words.

Sentence #1: The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul.

The Bible really teaches as follows:

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)

So the soul is not immortal, and we can't even accept the first sentence as being true if we accept the Bible as the Christian Holy Book as inspired by God!

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Wikipedia
Psychosis
Psychosis refers to an abnormal condition of the mind described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People with psychosis are described as psychotic.

Great and powerful men of God make statements such as the following:

The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul. Your soul is eternal and will live forever. In other words, the real you -- the part of you that thinks, feels, dreams, aspires; the ego, the personality-- will never die. The Bible teaches that your soul will live forever in one of two places -- heaven or hell. If you are not a Christian and you have never been born again, then the Bible teaches that your soul goes immediately to a place Jesus called hades, where you will await the judgment of God. The moment a Christian dies, he goes immediately into the presence of Christ. There his soul awaits the resurrection, when the soul and body will be rejoined. The scriptural doctrine of hell is an awesome one which must be taken very seriously. God, in His mercy and love, watches over little children who are taken by death, and they go to be with Him in heaven.

Are evangelists who preach the above theology psychotic by definition?

That is, do the above statements of theology represent a "loss of contact with reality?"

Notice that EVERY WORD written above by you in dark red has been entirely imagined into existence and declared to be true. Not one word of it, not one, can be sustained by any actual physical evidence. Things which can only be sustained through the act of imagining them to exist, or imagining it to be true, have no physical reality.

But there is some physical reality against which most religions can be checked against.

Each religion typically has some written source which defines there beliefs -- the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and Torah, etc.

The theology in darkred above is Christian, and should thus be found in the Christian Bibles if it is true.

So regardless of whether or not the Bible is a total fairy tale, imaginary events, or true events -- what Christian preachers preach should be contained in the Bible, which they consider to be the inspired words of their God.
==========================================================================

Using that as our testing criteria, let's examine the above theology in darkred sentence by sentence and see how it compares with God's inspired words.

Sentence #1: The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul.

The Bible really teaches as follows:

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)

So the soul is not immortal, and we can't even accept the first sentence as being true if we accept the Bible as the Christian Holy Book as inspired by God!

But there is some physical reality against which most religions can be checked against.

Each religion typically has some written source which defines there beliefs -- the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and Torah, etc.

Every religious belief has it's book, or books, of revealed truth which provides decrees and proscriptions, stories and wisdoms reputedly derived from the wishes and purposes of the God or gods that particular system of belief is centered around. The existence of these religious documents certainly has physical reality. That these documents are derived from supernatural Beings and represent anything other than the beliefs and ruminations of the humans who wrote them does NOT correspond to any physical reality that can be checked against. It has to be accepted entirely on faith. Which is exactly what religion is all about. Religion is an attempt to explain the existence of and operation of the universe around us, and to offer some hope of being able to effect some modicum of control of our individual circumstances by prescribing right actions and wrong actions, and proper rituals which it is hoped will serve to convince the deity or deities in question to respond favorably. The end result of this system of attempts derive some measure of control over a capricious universe, it should be noted, is inevitably very uneven. Sometimes it seems to work. And at other times, for no apparent reason, disaster strikes.

Ancient people worked on a different theory of how the universe works than we do today. Since they did not yet possess enough technology to acquire the information needed to explain the natural phenomenon going on around them, lightning, thunder, earthquakes and the like, they made up answers. They presupposed solutions for which they otherwise had no means to answer. Ancient people used a system based on making it up and then declaring it to be true. They presupposed solutions for which they otherwise had no means to answer.

Presupposition can simply be another word for make believe. Believers presuppose that humans, and the universe we exist in must have been created by an infinitely powerful Being whom they not only presuppose exists, but whom they presuppose exists without the need for such a creation Himself. And they made it all up, which is, as I have just pointed out, what presupposition is all about. There is another way of looking at the universe however. It's called the empirical method, and it involves investigating the physical evidence for what the physical evidence has to tell us. The empirical method entails close observation, much experimentation and direct experience, resulting in detailed conclusions that allow for the same results to be reached repeatedly. It requires that the results, when discovered, be accepted at face value even to the extent of completely abandoning centuries of make believe. This sort of research has also led us rather inextricably to the conclusion that EVERYTHING THAT OCCURS DOES SO FOR NATURAL REASONS which can be understood and even utilized for our advantage. The general term for this deeper understanding of the basis for how the physical universe operates is called quantum mechanics. Does the empirical method have credibility?

Well, Does that computer that you are sitting at actually work? What about your smart phone? How about the various modern marvels of modern technology that you take for granted every day? They are not the result of making anything up and declaring it to be true. The are the result of a step by step process of empirical investigation and experimentation. Modern technology is a physical reality that can be checked against, you see. By comparison, make it up and declare it to be true has no genuine history of success at all, other than one which is entirely random.

The theology in darkred above is Christian, and should thus be found in the Christian Bibles if it is true.

So regardless of whether or not the Bible is a total fairy tale, imaginary events, or true events -- what Christian preachers preach should be contained in the Bible, which they consider to be the inspired words of their God.

This is of course exactly the opposite of what 1213 has been saying. It is his belief that the Bible functions as a whole rather than taking each part at face value. So if the Bible commands that we should not suffer a witch to live, that must be balanced against commands not to commit murder. In this way the Bible can be an ongoing process of "interpretation." It's all a matter of the opinion of the individual interpreter. And this is very clearly that way the overwhelming majority of Christians approach their beliefs. Which is exactly why we have thousands of different types of Christianity.

Christian preachers preach the form of Christianity that they have declared to be the "true" form of Christianity. And there seems to be an inexhaustible amount of devoted gullibility out there to sustain them very handsomely. Which they do by declaring their "true" vision of Christianity is derived from the Word of God itself, which YOU dare not dispute in any way for fear of your mortal soul. The force can be effectively employed on the weak minded you see. Which is why believers are referred to as "sheep," and congregations of them are called "flocks." But the force doesn't work on everyone.

Using that as our testing criteria, let's examine the above theology in darkred sentence by sentence and see how it compares with God's inspired words.

Sentence #1: The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul.

The Bible really teaches as follows:

Quote:
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)

So the soul is not immortal, and we can't even accept the first sentence as being true if we accept the Bible as the Christian Holy Book as inspired by God!

The Book of Ezekiel is from the OT. And most Christians affirm that when Jesus sacrificed himself he released Christians from a strict application of the strictures of the OT. We are all born into sin because of original sin, Christians proclaim, but those who on faith believe in Jesus will have immortal souls. So, prior to the coming of Jesus people were just screwed. They were born into sin and their souls died. "Real" Christians are now saved however, and will live in eternal glory, praise the Lord.

And as I previously pointed out this has absolutely nothing to do with any observable physical reality. This is make it up and declare it to be true in action.

Which is the original subject of this thread. Andrea Yates, who is clearly a person susceptible to the influence of the force, took the beliefs that she was indoctrinated into, to what to her seemed a logical conclusion. If she sent her children to heaven while they were still innocent of corruption by evil, she could spare them of possibility of falling victim of evil, and not going to heaven. By breaking the commandment against murder she consigned herself to hell. Which must have seemed a very noble and Christ-like act of personal sacrifice in her mind.

Because Andrea Yates was psychotic. Not simply because she lived in a world of fantasy. But because she acted on her fantasy. Which is the only real difference between her and the mainstream majority who ONLY live in a world of religious fantasy, but do not commonly act out all of the possible implications presented by their religious fantasies.

History is filled with just such examples of psychotic conclusions acted on, not just by individuals, but entire societies. Today Islam is getting all of the attention for acting on their psychotic conclusions. Christianity has it's own bloody history of psychosis, however.

Being indoctrinated into religious fantasy and then subsequently indoctrinating one's own children into religious fantasy DOES NOT automatically make for "good people," or "better citizens." What is going on in Islam today could not be a better example. It's nothing less then a type of the propagation of insanity which has historically led to death, destruction and much cruelty. In a world of weapons of mass destruction, the sooner we can put these ancient forms of divisive superstition and insanity behind us, the safer we will all become.

[JLB32168]

This thread is crass ad extremis. Using the tragedy of a woman with clear psychiatric issues and who drowned her children in a bout of hallucination to mock Christians and their faith is just . . . well, crass.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

This thread is crass ad extremis. Using the tragedy of a woman with clear psychiatric issues and who drowned her children in a bout of hallucination to mock Christians and their faith is just . . . well, crass.

So the Andrea Yates case is simply an anomaly which is being used to discredit Christianity and doesn't deserve further examination? Andrea Yates lived in a world of fantasy and acted out her religious indoctrination and the resulting religious fantasy by concluding that it was better for the children to die then to be exposed to the evils of the world. What of the mass insanity derived directly from Christian beliefs which resulted in hanging, burning at the stake and cruelly torturing to death tens of thousands of women and girls accused of witchcraft, because their religious documents and religious indoctrination pronounced it necessary? How "ad extremis" was THAT? Is it "crass" to notice that these things have a root cause? Which is that living in a world of fantasy and acting on that fantasy results in psychotic activities. Or does that line of thought simply make you uncomfortable?

[1213]

[Replying to post 63 by 1213]

I don't see how those verses help at all. They instruct Christians to be just. How are Christians ignoring these laws with their literal witch hunts?

By what I see, the judgments were not just. And they were not judges set by God (the rules were for judges that God had set, not for anyone who is able to cherry pick one line out of great book).

[1213]

...This is a very specific command which is very difficult to take out of context, or to reinterpret in any way OTHER than what these few words very specifically say. So how do we deal with this command today?...

It is true that it is specific. Same is with to whom it was said. It would be reasonable to also see that.

Do you believe in history books? If so, does it mean, when you read Hitler commanded to kill Jews, you obey it, because you believe what history books tell?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

...This is a very specific command which is very difficult to take out of context, or to reinterpret in any way OTHER than what these few words very specifically say. So how do we deal with this command today?...

It is true that it is specific. Same is with to whom it was said. It would be reasonable to also see that.

Do you believe in history books? If so, does it mean, when you read Hitler commanded to kill Jews, you obey it, because you believe what history books tell?

I don't even understand the nature of the question. I wouldn't kill ANYONE on the orders of others. That is a step I would only consider taking if I personally decided that it was necessary. I certainly would not kill on the orders of of an individual I consider to have been a total and very dangerous psychopath. But then, I am not German either. And NO, I don't "believe in" history books. First, history books are not sacred texts which require unconditional acceptance. And second, I freely acknowledge that history book are almost certainly wrong to some degree.

Exodus Chapter 20 begins:
[1] And God spake all these words, saying:

and for the next four chapters Exodus reels off an assortment of direct commands from God, including the Ten Commandments.

If you believe that the Bible is a sacred text and the Word of God then the Bible requires unconditional acceptance. Because, according to Exodus, God personally gave these commands to Moses. Ignore them at your peril.

Or you can simply accept them as, well, more of a guideline then actual rules.

[myth-one.com]

This thread is crass ad extremis. Using the tragedy of a woman with clear psychiatric issues and who drowned her children in a bout of hallucination to mock Christians and their faith is just . . . well, crass.

Who's mocking anybody's faith?

Christian "theology" was used in this case by the murderer to justify the murder of her innocent children. That's a fact!

Christians then rushed to their pulpits to proclaim that the children were indeed with God in Heaven. It's a fact that they made such proclamations!

The proclamations themselves are false! That's a fact!

Christians making proclamations that the murdered children are now in Heaven are claiming that the "woman with clear psychiatric issues" as you described her was successful! That is false!

Wrongly proclaiming that she was successful provides positive feedback. That's a fact!

If any "Christian theology" can be used to justify the murder of innocent children, then I claim that particular "Christian theology" is incorrect.

God, who created everything, would not create a system whereby the murder of innocent children could create any good outcome. That's a fact!

These children are not now in Heaven as most Christians proclaim loudly. They are buried in the Forest Park East Cemetery at 21620 Gulf Freeway in Webster, Texas. Here's a link to a photo of their gravesite:

http://www.death2ur.com/yates_children_gravesite.htm

Where do you believe the murdered children are?