Docadhoc Loc: Elsewhere

Lamont Cranston.

I'm (read we) are old.......lol

Docadhoc Loc: Elsewhere

Some people like PP have no position other than to stir the pot.

Loki Loc: Georgia

According to Merriam Webster......

Definition of cult
1
: formal religious veneration : worship
2
: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents the cult of Apollo
3
: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (see spurious 2); also : its body of adherents the voodoo cult a satanic cult
4
: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator health cults
5
a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book) criticizing how the media promotes the cult of celebrity; especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad
b : the object of such devotion
c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion the singer's cult of fans The film has a cult following.

Technically, ANY religion can be defined as a "cult." The most common understanding of cult is a a belief system that has a small number of adherents. With more than a billion followers, Islam is outside of this definition. Ironic that within the Muslim belief system, the two main schools, Sunni and Shi'a, regard each other as cults.
On the other side; although Satanists declare that they do not believe in God, or any religion, they have managed to obtain status as a religion. I don't think you could find a more quintessential example of a cult than those people.
Islam is a religion. Like Christianity, Islam has splinter groups that could be considered cults.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Paul is okay. He is almost always courteous, which is more than I can say for myself. I disagree with him on almost everything, but we have always had civil discussions.

Homestead

Islam is no more a religion, than the Trojan Horse was a gift.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Believe what you like.

Homestead

No, it's not a matter of believing what I want.

Our forefathers had no problem defining what a legitimate religion was.


A cult has all the trappings of a religion, but, none of the substance.

Islam is a made up religion. That makes it a fraud.

No religion can be based on a deliberate fraud.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Easter is a pagan festival introduced into Christianity. So is Christmas. There is absolutely no Biblical basis for the Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory. Christianity is rife with fraudulent doctrines introduced between 100 till about 400 AD. A first century Christian who viewed a modern day church service would probably think he was observing a pagan ritual and he wouldn't be all that wrong.

Homestead

The backbone of the Jewish and Christian faith is the hundreds of years of prophecy that has seen fulfilment and is still going on, the prophecies are not over.

The purpose of the religion is to find your way to grace. It is about your immortal soul.

The question as to how exactly one should worship God has always been a question. God gave some commandments regarding certain rituals, but, the rest is up to the individual.

Bottom line is that he gave ten commandments and the Golden Rule, no matter what you do, you can't violate those.

Prior to Christ, an eye for an eye was taken literally, after Christ it was understood that that was the most you could do.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Prior to 336 AD there was no Christmas.
Prior to about 150 AD there was no Christian celebration of Easter
Easter has it's roots in the Babylonian festival of Ishtar, nearly two thousand years before the birth of Christ. It has been around in one form or another throughout the Middle East and Europe since long before there was a Christian church.
The celebration of Christmas was introduced as a way to entice adherents of the cult of Mithra to embrace Christianity. Mithraism was real competition for Christianity for a while. Mithra was born on December 25th. Mithra was also killed and resurrected. Sound familiar?

Mr Bombastic

Those particular holidays may not have existed, but the events they represent did happen. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Easter is the celebration of His resurrection. Sounds like you are simply complaining that they share the same day as some other religious holidays. Tough titties. There are only 365 days in the year.

Homestead

What's your point?

Jesus was a Jew.

He was sent down to get his people back on track. They weren't completely off the rails, but, there were some things that they were doing that was not acceptable.

The reason the Jews are God's chosen people is because as a people they accepted the covenant with God. As such they keep to their traditions as humanly as possible.

So a true Christian is a Jew that believes in Jesus, if you want to get technical.

How many Christians live like the Jews?

To clear the way for the Jews that erred, Christ left to go make a path for them, by way of his crucifixion and that opened the door for the rest of us.

So now you want to make a big deal that even though God demanded that he be worshipped, he never said anything about celebrating the birth of his only son, which by the way, modern biblical scholars figure his birth happened closer to summer and three years later than it's thought of now.

So what!
Are you telling me, that on judgement day, God is going to yell at everybody, because they gave extra worship to his son, that he didn't ask for?

And then you want to find old stories that match biblical stories that may or may not have been incorporated into the bible stories.

I doubt that there is a story known today that didn't match some ancient tale somewhere, so what?
And that includes stories about UFOS, though they didn’t call them UFOS.

So what does that mean............planes don't exist today, because they talked about flying machines back then.
Or the flying machines they talked about back then, didn't exist because our air-planes weren't built back then, but,..... they talked about them......but they didn't exist......but they talked about them?

Christ said that the truth shall set you free. That's why most of your archaeological digs surrounding the Holly lands are financed by Christians, ether through their church or directly by the Christians themselves.

Science thought that these endeavours would undermine the bible, the very opposite has happened and happened many times.
**********************************

When the Pilgrims came to this country, they were literalistic about the bible.
But, half the book they brought with them was not written by Christians.
The first half of the bible came from the Jewish Torah.
The Torah comes with an oral tradition. It's the oral tradition that explains the written word.

The pilgrims didn't know this and it's just as well.
It was their dedication to the literal bible that drove them to try and create a heaven on this earth.
Our freedoms and liberty comes directly from their struggle with trying to take the bible literally.

Lewis Black puts a comic spin on things, but, that doesn't mean that he's wrong.

The Bible Jews & Christians - Lewis Black
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seuCWDSi8WQ

Loki Loc: Georgia

You are missing the point. There was no Christmas celebration mandated in the Bible, or in the early Christian religion until the powers that be in the Church decided to put it there to attract Mithra worshippers. There is absolutely nothing Christian about it.
Easter is only mentioned one time in the Bible. Acts 12:4. It is in reference to a pagan festival held just about the same time as Passover.
My mention of Easter and Christmas were in response to Homestead's claim that "No religion can be based on deliberate fraud." The introduction of two Pagan holidays as the most important holidays in the Christian religion is exactly that. They are practices that crept into the Christian dogma more than 150 years after the founding of the religion. They were placed there by men who wanted to make their beliefs more attractive to prospective members who were Pagan.

Christmas is the celebration of the Birth of Christ but it was originally a celebration of the birth of the godlet that represented Christianity's major competition in the Roman Empire, especially the Eastern Roman Empire. The Easter traditions date to ancient Babylon, long before the crucifixion. The only time Easter is mentioned in the Bible, as I said, is in reference to the Pagan festival it was. Sunrise service, Easter eggs, resurrection on the third day, all these are facets of the worship of Ishtar, Astarte, Eostre, whatever name you give the Goddess of Spring.

http://realtruth.org/articles/110307-001-holidays.html

Loki Loc: Georgia

The so what? is your statement that "no religion can be based on deliberate fraud." The introduction of Pagan holidays into the Christian religion in order to attract followers is exactly that. Fraud.

Mr Bombastic

I think YOU are missing the point. Regardless of what day they fall on, Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays. And everything you mentioned was done by the Catholic Church, which I believe is a Pagan religion. They may have set the dates, but I believe that they are, in fact, Christian celebrations of the birth and the resurrection of Christ. That is what I celebrate. Nothing else. There is nothing Pagan about them.