Happy Birthday, Jesus. Thanks for the gift of American Freedom!

just rebut the points, if you can. They are not religious in nature, but historical & logical. Reread the OP if you can't remember.

Well, that settles that!

If you saw it on npr, it must be the gospel truth!

 

Well, they did talk about the gospels.
They even talked about all the gospels that were not included. And only found about 60 yrs ago.
But, I wouldn't say npr is necessarily gospel truth. But they do a pretty good job of delivering all sides to a story.

 

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Finally. Posts from you people can understand.

 

Again the conspiracy theorists have nailed us Christians again with their poor historical arguments that are not backed up by any New Testament scholars. Maybe next time you can explain to ignatius of Antioch, polycarp and Clemente of Rome in the late first to early second century that a 4th century emperor invented the religion that they were taught by the apostles in the first century.
I keep telling the youth of today to lay off the drugs because of the after effects on their brains but maybe I can convince them of this by bringing them here lol

 

You should not speak of people's feelings when you clearly know absolutely nothing about them whatsoever. What you posted bears absolutely no semblance to reality.

If my taxes are going to fund Muslim religious displays then I won't be happy about that either. The difference is, as far as I know, it does not. There's no point attacking something that doesn't happen.

"Celebrating in public" is not the same as "spending taxpayers money in order to celebrate it". One is fine, the other is not.

Pathetic strawman. Is that all you got?

 

Christ is merely a Latin transliteration of the Hebrew word mesias. Considering that the first Christian writer to write in Latin lived in the third century, the claim that he was never called Jesus Christ is misleading at best.

Consider Peter's answer to Jesus's question of "who do you think I am?" His answer: "You are Christ, the living God."

Jesus was called the son of God in the gospels. The similarities of the spelling of son/sun may be compelling at first, but translate them into Latin and son becomes fillum and sun becomes sol.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=christ

 

Constantine probably didn't invent Christianity, but he certainly used it. The early history of Christianity is interesting and unfortunately beyond my knowledge. But the process of the transformation of a small cult in a out of the way minor Roman-occupied territory into the worldwide phenomenon it is today is no doubt fascinating.

 

No doubt. It certainly is to me, though i find many things in history fascinating. It is my premise that christianity was the spark that started the concept of individual freedom, & is at the root of our history of scientific enquiry. You did not see those things advancing in other regions, where christianity was not in place. Africa had many tribal religions, & never could get out of the pattern of rival kingdoms & war. China & the far east had a lot of technological advances, but seemed to stagnate in tradition & the status quo. They invented gunpowder, but lacked the metalworking skill to make firearms.. their bamboo 'guns' were no match for the european steel. Of course the new world was a hodgepodge of tribes & small native nations, & also lacked the technological skill to make weapons of war. But it was primarily the ideals of individualism that was sparked by the teachings of jesus, that moved the human race away from bigger & bigger state centered powers, to the experiment of america. Instead of working to INCREASE the power of the central govt, & view people as serfs or infantrymen, the american founders tried to LIMIT govt, & make it the defender of the individual's rights. While that was the emphasis, america prospered, & attracted freedom loving people from all over the earth. The state never amounted to much, & the powers of the world thought of the fledgling nation as charmingly provincial.. like some hillbilly cousin.

Note that when christianity was growing throughout europe, so did the expansion & power of the state. In fact, the church was complicit in oppressing the people, & propping up the state, with admonitions to recognize the king as divinely appointed. But as literacy increased, & those reading the sacred texts began to see the disparity between what they read & what was practiced, the call came for reform.. it was not easy, nor without blood. The state NEVER relinquishes power willingly.. it always must be taken.

Anyway, i find the progression of events, & especially the ideology behind those events to be particularly interesting.. we did not get to where we are in a vacuum.. we are part of a history of events that have led us to this point. So we can learn from history, & try to not make the same mistakes, or we can ignore it & resign ourselves to doomed repetition.

 

Are you trying to claim NPR does conspiracy type reporting?
And your worried about drugs effects on the youth?

 

Dont you think you have claimed "conspiracy theory" about often enough for one day?

 

And Jesus instructed the disciples to not tell anyone.
20Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 

Yes, Jesus obviously wanted the fact that he was a messiah to be a secret at the itme.

 

Obviously he didnt want people talkin' crazy talk about him.
They did it anyway.
Look what it got him.

I wonder if they felt guilty later?

 

"Happy Birthday, Jesus. Thanks for the gift of American Freedom! "

in a way your right, our ancestors were fleeing a Christian theocracy, had that not of existed, there may have been no America

 

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Why do you waste everyone's time and bandwidth posting this all the time? If you dont want to comment, here's an idea... dont post.

 

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Here's a comment:

Pathetic.

 

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If you dont want to see it, there is the ig function.

 

They're not wrong, just ignoring aspects that make it so they're not all that true when they came about during the American revolution. For example in your OP:

"So i have often pondered the events in history & the evolution of thinking that got us to this point. I see the beginnings of america in the roots of the reformation. There was a backlash to the establishment religious institution, & the idea that the authority of religious instruction should be in the written texts, not the edicts of the hierarchy. Many religious groups & philosophies went to the new world to be free to practice their version, or dream of a religious utopia. Many of them were no more tolerant to alternate views than the oppressive system they left. But the idea was born. The new world became a place where tolerance to other religious views was the norm.. it was institutionalized, & eventually stated clearly in the 1st amendment of the american constitution."

You're right, skepticism did come out of the reformation, and that influenced the enlightenment thinkers. However religious tolerance did not exist. We see this with the treatment of the antibaptists and the test act. In the colonies only 2/13 had some form of religious tolerance, and even then only Rhode Island had universal religious tolerance, while Maryland just had it for Catholics. The real reason why we had that in the first amendment, besides the enlightenment influence (which did come from the reformation, or at least skepticism) was because of the failed invasion of Canada during the revolution. Before the revolution Britain gave Canadian Catholics the religious freedom. Because the colonies didn't have it, they were worried about being persecuted by the Protestant invaders. So it's not wrong, just ignoring a lot of other things as well.
Then you said this:

Daneslaw. Feudalism, The Holy Roman Empire, the fact that the English king had Shire Reeves. Laws were important before the Magna Carta.

You misinterpeted the quote. All it's saying is you will be a good Christian, without having to follow the law, or if you don't know the law, you will automatically will still follow it.

Two things. One, Martin Luther was socially conservative. He didn't believe in freedom for the peasants, in fact he condemend the peasants when they tried to overthrow their lords over taxation. The second is the Peace of Augsburg. It wasn't religious freedom. It was just the ruler of a region setting what the religion is. Freedom did not exist in this time. You were still subject to the King's law. It wasn't about freedom, just making sure the kingdom ran effectively. Freedom came about during the Enlightenment period, and even then it was limited. The most liberal country by 1800 was the US, which still had slaves, thereby calling into question how can everyone be free and have freedoms when you have slaves?

 

thanks for taking time to write what some of us thought was too time consuming and probably pointless to go into.