I heard that Easter was originally a pagan holiday?

[Rachmaninoff]

[quote name='Axel Alloy']Oho. Watch out there, Lee. You incurred some wrath there. *Guffaw*[/quote]I didn't see any wrath. I saw a polite response to someone poking fun of religion in general ([SIZE="1"]and yes it came across as very sarcastic to me and I'm not religious[/SIZE]).

Considering how easily that opening could have been taken the wrong way, Sabre's response was anything but wrathful. And there's no getting around the fact that Sabre didn't start it either.

It's quite simple really, either Rosencavalier meant it as an insult, or it was them joking around. But that's not so easy to determine with someone you've only just met, especially online. Responsibility goes both ways, as Nerdsy already pointed out. :/

[Rosencavalier]

Racha, I think you fell upon your own sword there since it's pretty obvious she's kidding and you've responded to it in a needlessly serious context which brings me onto serious person no 2.

Hi Sabre. Hi. I enjoyed the bible lesson I really did but you seem to have neglected that your God condones rape (See Judges 21:10-24 NLT, Numbers 31:7-18 NLT, Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT, Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB, 2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB, Judges 5:30 NAB, Exodus 21:7-11 NLT, Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB) so condemning a rapist would be I don't know...contradictve? He also has a hard-on for murder so if you want me to throw some more enlightening passages your way be sure to give me a call. Also sabre, you may want to think beyond your two dimensional world for a minute before you open the pandora's box of information I have on how the church makes it's money because believe me when I say it goes beyond the collection plate. Thankyou sabre, Im so glad we have an understanding now.

[The Spectacular Professor]

[quote name='Rosencavalier']Hi Sabre. Hi. I enjoyed the bible lesson I really did but you seem to have neglected that [B]your God condones rape (See Judges 21:10-24 NLT[/B], [/QUOTE]

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]Judges 21: 25

[FONT="Palatino Linotype"][I]In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.[/I][/FONT]

Now I'm no scholar, but that doesn't really make it sound like it was God's idea in the first place.

And don't take that condescending tone. It makes people less likely to even pay attention to your arguments.[/FONT]

[James]

[quote]I haven't read many other religious scriptures, but most religion's messages are that of peace, love and understanding. [/quote]

[font=franklin gothic medium]Actually that's not entirely true. Most mainstream religions also contain specific tenants that involve persecution of their perceived enemies. I know the Quran definitely does, but the Bible also contains many areas that specifically refer to acts of aggression in a positive light.

Having said that, I think this is almost irrelevant. You have to distinguish arguments about religion and its articles of faith - or its practices as an organization - from discussions about every day religious people themselves (the vast majority of whom are both compassionate and make real attempts to live up to the highest standards of their respective faiths).

As far as Paganism goes, it is definitely true that Christianity "borrowed" most of that religion's holidays. As has been pointed out in this thread, these borrowed holidays were a tactic that helped to smooth out the transition from one religion to another. After all, if you are trying to implement a new religious order in a society, you can't just change all of the long-standing ceremonies/dates/etc and expect people to come along for the ride.

So in a purely functional sense, that was the aim. In addition, this process is part of the reason why we now view witches as inherently evil in modern society - the term "witch" (or "wiccan") literally had its meaning changed over time. You only have to look at witch hunts as a further example.

The same is true for a variety of terms. For instance, the word "villain" comes from "village" or "villager" - during early Christian times, the rural areas within Europe contained the most ardent Pagans who wouldn't change their beliefs easily. So the word "villain" further helped early Christian leaders to define and target their enemies.

I think that it is important to acknowledge this for several reasons, especially for modern Pagans (and simply for the sake of history). With that said, I don't view intellectual honesty of this sort as necessarily being an attack on the Christian religions. Instead I think it's just an honest assessment of where we began and how we arrived at where we are today.

Unfortunately the nature of religion often puts it beyond legitimate criticism - and unfairly so, I think.

Still, there's a difference between honest assessments and simply baiting Christians or Muslims or whoever else. As Nerdsy pointed out, you can't criticise people for defending a particular religion if you are outright attacking it. This is especially true if you're emotionally baiting people, rather than making factual and pragmatic comments about history.

While I don't think that any religion should be beyond criticism - after all, religion is part of the core of humanity and we [i]should[/i] be able to reflect on ourselves and our history - I also don't think it's fair to snidely joke about incurring wrath or whatever. Frankly, that just makes you look foolish.[/font]

[Rosencavalier]

James, that was a truely exceptional post.

[quote name='Ace']Judges 21: 25

[FONT="Palatino Linotype"][I]In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.[/I][/FONT]

Now I'm no scholar, but that doesn't really make it sound like it was God's idea in the first place.[/QUOTE]

So your argument is that these passages are outdated; unlike the bible.

I don't think people listening to my arguments or not is really going to get me choked up at night, Ace, so don't you go losing any sleep over it. Also you should read sabre's response towards me first before you so rashly try to label me as condescending.

[Raiha]

[INDENT][COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Actually that part of Judges Ace serves to illustrate why kings were a bad idea.

But the Hebrew nation bitched and whined for SO long about their 'need' for a king that the judges and prophets of their culture decided it'd be easier to give in and let the jerks have their bloody king. Wasn't really the best plan as you all know but what the heck, we're over it.[/FONT][/COLOR][/INDENT]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Rosencavalier']James, that was a truely exceptional post.[/quote]
[FONT=Arial]And you go on to ignore the point of the whole thing and continue what you were originally doing. Which is baiting people. And now I'm going to rise to it just a little. :)


[QUOTE][I]So your argument is that these passages are outdated; unlike the bible.[/I][/QUOTE]
No. His statement is that these passages are part of a historical account of the nation of Israel, an account which stretches from Joshua through 2nd Chronicles, and as such reports the actions of Israel and her kings regardless of whether or not they were right in the sight of God.

The first passage in Judges there recounts a retributional act by the other Israeli tribes after defeating the tribe of Benjamin in essentially a civil war. The whole incident starts back in Judges 19 with a Levite and his concubine.

[INDENT]Quick aside: I've never quite understood the concept of a concubine. Far as I can tell, it's a woman by which the male head of a household bears children, but she's not his wife, and yet she's part of his household and her children are considered legitimate heirs.

....[I]what?[/I][/INDENT]

Anyway, long story short, this Levite's concubine "played the harlot against him" and then ran to her dad for safety, since I think the law at the time was pretty harsh against adulterers. Levite (now called her husband; wtf) goes down to her dad's house to "speak tenderly to her" so she'll come back. Forgiving chap.

Her dad starts playing the man for a dupe, attempting to delay the Levite's departure until God knows when, and after five days of this the Levite gets fed up and leaves in the evening. He, his girl (success!) and his two servants get as far as Gibeah, in Benjamin, before they have to stop, but everyone there was a jerk and they couldn't find lodging.

They're sitting in the town square in the middle of the night when an old man sees them and takes them in. Then, while they were eating, "the men of the city, [U]certain worthless fellows[/U], surrounded the house, pounding on the door . . . saying 'bring out the man who came into your house that we may have relations with him'." [I](Judges 19:23, NAS[/I]

Right-O. So it's not just rape these worthless fellows are after. It's homosexual rape. You know, I seem to remember a similar incident back in Genesis involving residents of a town called Sodom. Sodom was destroyed with fire, and the one person who witnessed it was turned into a pillar of salt.

So the old man gets panicky and offers his wife along with his visitor's girl. Gnarly dudes take the girl and rape and abuse her almost to death. She does die after managing to crawl back to her master's (the guy who was her husband a while back; wtf?) door. He wakes up in the morning, comes out, sees her dead, takes her body back to his house, cuts her into twelve pieces (ew) and sends a piece to each Israeli tribe.

EW.

All the tribal leaders show up at his door in a collective state of WTF, DUDE? So he explains what happened and asks for counsel, and they decide Gibeah (the town in question) should be punished for such heinous acts. So they take up arms.

400,000 of them.

For pre-King era Israel, that's a freaking lot.

Anyway. War with Benjamin, Benjamin eventually loses, and then the funky stuff starts.

See, apparently at the counsel to decide what to do with Benjamin, an oath had been sworn to completely cut off Benjamin from the nation, including refusing to marry any Benjamites and refusing to allow their daughters to marry Benjamites. Now they all start feeling bad about this, because they're going to lose a tribe entirely. So what to do?

Someone gets the bright idea to give the Benjamin men some women. So they find this clan who hadn't sent anyone to fight against Benjamin, send 12,000 guys to kill all the men and all the non-virgin women and bring back all the virgins for Benjamin.

Flawless plan.[/sarcasm] 'Cept there aren't enough women to go round. So THEN they tell all the Benjamites to go lie in wait for the women of Shiloh who walk down a particular road before a feast of the Lord, and take advantage of them there.

tl;dr version: Levite's girl gets raped to death, Levite calls for counsel, rapists are killed and Benjamin almost destroyed, and the clan is told to survive . . . through more rape.

[QUOTE][B]Judges 21:25[/B]
[FONT="Arial"][I]In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.[/I][/FONT][/QUOTE]

Moral of the story, [COLOR="DarkRed"]Rosencavalier[/COLOR]: know your material. I don't like it when fellow [I]Christians[/I] quote single verses from scripture because it is so easy to take it completely out of context and remain ignorant of the surrounding information. And these are people who're supposed to read it regularly.

[quote name='Rosencavalier'] Also you should read sabre's response towards me first before you so rashly try to label me as condescending.[/quote]
We did. You were.

Back down the tone, bucko.[/FONT]

[The Spectacular Professor]

[quote name='Rosencavalier']So your argument is that these passages are outdated; unlike the bible.[/QUOTE]

My point, actually, was that you somehow managed to take an entire passage of scripture detaling sins committed by the Isrealites completely out of context by simply removing a single verse from the end. Sins of a follower are not sins of the leader. That's like saying Al-Quaeda represents the entire Islam faith.

I have neither the time nor effort to painstakingly pound out an in-depth post on this topic when the only technology available to me is a Playstation 3 browser, but I will say that I did, in fact, read Sabre's post. It was almost entirely non-confrontational, if a bit preachy. I found that pretty refreshing, compared to the one of yours that it was in response to. So I'll say it once again: Back off the snark. It's completely uncalled for.

[Botar]

[quote name='Rosencavalier']Racha, I think you fell upon your own sword there since it's pretty obvious she's kidding and you've responded to it in a needlessly serious context which brings me onto serious person no 2.

Hi Sabre. Hi. I enjoyed the bible lesson I really did but you seem to have neglected that your God condones rape (See Judges 21:10-24 NLT, Numbers 31:7-18 NLT, Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT, Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB, 2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB, Judges 5:30 NAB, Exodus 21:7-11 NLT, Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB) so condemning a rapist would be I don't know...contradictve? He also has a hard-on for murder so if you want me to throw some more enlightening passages your way be sure to give me a call. Also sabre, you may want to think beyond your two dimensional world for a minute before you open the pandora's box of information I have on how the church makes it's money because believe me when I say it goes beyond the collection plate. Thankyou sabre, Im so glad we have an understanding now.[/QUOTE]

I'm glad i'm agnostic, but seriously, lay off the condescended tone, it doesn't make friends here, maybe 4-chan, but not here.