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    Original Sin

    Originally this thread was called "Christian Indoctrination," but my main issue is with Original Sin. That's what I find myself and others on this forum talking and thinking about. So, I changed the title. This is the old post but I wanted to make this more of a discussion about the effects of Original Sin on culture.

    ---------------

    When I speak to Christians, I often share many of their values. However, I consider the religion to be poison, all the way back to its origins. The concept of "Original Sin" has woven its way into culture, subtly sometimes, and other times, overtly. In this thread I'll collect thoughts about this, as I've had many over the years. Feel free to debate or add your own, but note that I'm looking to collect a variety of thoughts on this topic, so I may interject new posts even if the debate is ongoing. If there's a lot to be said about something that is extraneous to Original sin and the problems with the basic principles of Christianity and cultural indoctrination - we can always move a side debate to another thread. The purpose of this thread is not to debate whether King Dildo the II or III decided to castrate Muslims and which century. I want to talk about the principles behind the ideology and the effects it has on individual and cultural psychology.

    So let's talk about Christian sentiment and how it permeates culture. Please feel free to talk about real incidents too - your own upbringing, comparing and contrasting yourself as an atheist to a Christian friend, your own church experiences, your friends' good or bad experiences with it and how you see its deeper messages and day to day practices affecting you and them as a person. All of that is welcome, as it's part of the topic - you can't really delve into indoctrination without considering how it affects individual people.

    As for history and wider research - note that my critique and sense of things is not coming from an informed history perspective as much as a psychological and experiential one, though I have picked up some history. So I'm very open to critiques and additional information.

    My first post will demonstrate the type of things I notice, and there will be more.
    Last edited by Animal; 03-28-2020, 02:06 AM.

    #2
    "He sees you when you're sleeping
    He knows when you're awake.."


    Creepy assault on autonomy.

    "He knows when you've been bad or good
    So be good for goodness sake."


    Imagine being a poor kid whose parents can't afford any presents, and hearing these jingles playing 24/7. No matter what your parents tell you, all you hear playing in the stores is songs telling you that bad boys and girls don't get presents, and good ones do.

    "I'm bad," you conclude. And that becomes your identity and you become a criminal.

    Congratulations, Christmas! You have paved the way for good boys and girls to see themselves as bad.

    What if we didn't nourish the delusion of "absolute evil" and "absolute good," and instead sang about gray areas, forgiveness, love, and compassion for those who are lagging behind you as well as those who are ahead of you?

    My rewrite:

    He loves you when you're sleeping
    He loves when you're awake
    He loves it when you question things
    So be you, for goodness sake!

    Comment


    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      Also Animal I looked up who wrote the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town and it was written by a Jewish person. https://www.thestar.com/entertainmen...n_by_jews.html This actually makes a big difference because Jews do not believe that people's sins were covered by Christ whether they deserve it or not.

    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      Growing up in churches we'd go to Christmas services and the sermon was always about how Christ had given all of us an unconditional gift if we chose to accept it. Songs like that were never sung in church either. All the Christmas songs sung in church were always about Christ like Silent Night etc. They never would have sung a song about Santa Claus. It was always considered secular music. It wasn't considered wrong to play it, but not something you really played at church for the most part. My friends and I had our own rendition that went "Santa Claus is gunning you down". That's how seriously we took it as children, which was not at all, because we believed in Christ and thought Santa Claus was a bunch of bs
      Last edited by SpiritoftheGael; 12-09-2019, 04:32 PM.

    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      Animal My guess is that we got the parody version of the song from Tim Hawkins, who was and is a very popular Christian comedian. He also came up with this: https://genius.com/Tim-hawkins-santa...e-mafia-lyrics

      So you can see this was the general attitude. Everyone loved Tim Hawkins.

    #3
    if nothing else, Christianity should be commended for what it forcibly replaced: primitive pagan rituals which at times involved mass sacrifices of children as in ancient Greece and Phoenicia. with that said, the actual words and actions of Jesus were remarkably liberals and bore nothing in common with the paranoid hysteria, sexual sterility, compulsive accusations, repression and hatred of human instinct shown by the Catholic Church over the subsequent 1000 years (though to their credit, they also eradicated a number of sects like the Albigensians who were 10x worse and literally thought that all material substance was sinful and of the devil).

    Comment


    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      of definitely. and tbh, I get where you're coming from. much of mainstream Christianity deserves substantial criticism, and it only gets worse the further you go back, so I can't rely on a "good ol' days" argument

    • Animal
      Animal commented
      Editing a comment
      Haha yeah. My problem is that I DO respect the values of some individual PEOPLE who practice Christianity with real attention to the meaning and the soul of the thing.... so I guess I write these threads to vent my own thoughts but also to see if someone can convince me otherwise. I'm never going to convert to Christianity or be serious about any Abrahamic religion, or really any religion made by someone else since I have my own. But I do like to argue and debate to reach understanding, and throw my sense of things right into the debate so I can first of all, formulate it in words; secondly, refine it.

    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      your criticism is fair. to say otherwise would be a No True Scotsman

    #4
    when you read about some of the worst horror stories of history, it really does make sense who God commanded the Jews to literally exterminate certain evil tribes. I wouldn't want to repeat that now...but it makes sense.

    Comment


    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      They get so sympathy from me. They considered material creation, including man, to be inherently sinful, which is in direct violation of the very first section of Genesis. Creation is beautiful and sacred before God created it, including man and woman who are made in His image.

    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      so, if I'm understanding correctly, your point has nothing to do with the Cathari themselves, but that their eradication marked the beginnings of the snowball that was the crusades rolling down the proverbial hill. I'll repeat as well though: I understand the logic, but I don't want to repeat the bahavior.

    • vermilionplum
      vermilionplum commented
      Editing a comment
      Creation is beautiful... except for the ones I don't like! They can die lul

    #5
    So I was a Calvinist for several years following my "conversion." If you're not familiar with it, it's pretty conservative and very similar to what you described, Animal. This is a decent brief and basic breakdown of Calvinism: https://www.albert.io/blog/understan...p-euro-review/

    Now I'm essentially a Christian Universalist, which is kind of the opposite lol. I don't think hell is eternal, I believe all will ultimately be saved, etc. If you want me to dive into that at all, let me know.

    As to the psychological affects some of this has had one me:

    So under Calvinism, I was very legalistic (insanely rule oriented per scripture, sort of). It was very difficult for me to not be preachy, harsh, critical, etc. I was overly fixated on modesty and VERY others focused in terms of wanting EVERYONE to follow "the rules." I understood the Gospel, and thankfully I actually had really good teaching in terms of the grace and mercy of God, but I definitely squashed huge portions of myself in my endeavour to be the perfect Christian. I was recently talking to my friend about it (she is the wife of our former Calvinist pastor. They are now also Christian Universalists) and she agreed with my sentiment that it's extremely easy to kill parts of yourself that don't need to be killed when you adhere to more strict and conservative theology. For me, this left a kind of emptiness that I attributed to poor faith. I already felt a void before, and God was supposed to be filling it up. But I still felt an emptiness a large portion of the time, so I was sure it was because I simply didn't believe enough. No one ever told me that, either. There are churches that are very works based, meaning the focus is on you enough and being responsible enough with your faith. If you're depressed, it's because you don't have enough faith. My church wasn't like that at all, and yet I still subconsciously believed it.

    I was very much an evangelist, and I was so entrenched in my own beliefs that I couldn't see where what I said to people would break down. It was always at predestination. The idea of predestination is that God predestines people for salvation ("before the foundations of the earth"). Calvinism also says you are saved only through faith, but not of your own merit, because God had to give you the faith first. Basically, you're dead in your sins until God pulls you out. Given that plus predestination - logically, God predestines some for salvation and some for damnation - meaning: God created some of us for the sole purpose of being damned for eternity for His own glory. Which is fucking shitty. And ultimately just leads to fatalism.

    "You must believe in God"
    "Okay, how do I do that?"
    "Well, He has to make you..."
    "So...what's the point?"

    Fuck that shit. Anyway. I think that biblical interpretation creates many different images of God. I think it's legitimate to see Christian Universalism in scripture.

    Anyway, that's MY shit lol.

    I think that Christianity as an ideology has been both good and bad. As with any religion, people use it wrongly. If you fly the banner of Christianity in the US, you can hide a lot of scary shit under it. It's valid to bring up things like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, etc. because they WERE committed in the name of Christianity. But on the other hand, those who have claimed Christianity have also been responsible for things like freeing slaves, advancing science (many of the well known scientists in history were Christians in some sense), fighting for racial equality, etc.

    I think politics have ruined Christianity in the US. "Conservative Christian" is a political party, a social group. Christianity doesn't really play out that way in other countries. There are so many places where you can see sweet and pure, loving, gracious, merciful, humble FAITH (not that it doesn't happen in the US...it does) from people who aren't legally allowed to practice their faith. There's a video of a church in a 3rd world country opening a box of bibles. Everyone freaks out and clamors to get one, and once they all have one the room goes silent. All you can hear are sobs and sniffs, pages being tenderly turned. They value their faith so much, and they believe in God so much it's insanely convicting.

    Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. It's not cohesive, sorry - trying to do this and force the toddler down for a nap.

    Comment


    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      kudos for leaving Calvanism. you hit all the nails on the head of why I've always disliked it.

    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      My grandma explained the conservative Christian thing to me Animal and Hannah. My grandma said before 1973 or thereabouts most Christians were actually democrats and the conservative party was the pro business party. After roe v wade happened and some other things the Christians fled the democrat party and to the republican party which caused a lot of tension in the republican party

    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      I will also add that most people talk about climate change in a very idiotic way with conservatives. I know this because I have reached a place of understanding with most conservatives when I've talked to them. They are very worried that they will end up being taxed to death and lose their jobs etc and end in a situation like France where poor people are being taxed more for gas. These are valid concerns. Very valid. However, all of them have agreed with me that moving to renewable energy would be great so that we could leave the middle east and not pollute the air so much etc. Hannah Animal They are also very pro the private sector developing electric cars and would be more than happy to drive them so long as the cost in not burdensome to them.

    #6
    It's kind of a chicken or egg scenario- killing kids is not inherently fucked up as seen with nature, thus proving the point of this post- that living in a largely Christian society probs puts the notion into our unconscious that killing kids is *that* messed up.
    Abrahamic religions are simply an ideology of human supremacy/centrism instead of the "radical individualism" in most other religions/cultures.
    In the beginning of the Bible, God literally gave humans dominion over all other things in the garden. Heck, the whole Bible is really just man did this, man did that, man, man, man......
    "If you are God, and the delusion becomes reality,
    About what kind of the noids you get?
    Is it the sensual world? The despotic society?
    The destructive sanctions?
    Or..."

    -Chaos;Head title screen

    Comment


    • BalalaikaBoy
      BalalaikaBoy commented
      Editing a comment
      "Abrahamic religions are simply an ideology of human supremacy/centrism"
      good

      "It's kind of a chicken or egg scenario- killing kids is not inherently fucked up as seen with nature, thus proving the point of this post- that living in a largely Christian society probs puts the notion into our unconscious that killing kids is *that* messed up."
      if you have ever experienced the death of a child you felt somehow responsible for protecting, you will know that there is nothing societally constructed about that.

      like...normally I'm a fairly patient person. I believe that things work better in the long run if most punishment for such transgressions is left to due process of law where objective procedures and ensure high levels of accuracy and avoid crowd hysteria, but sacrificing children...no. that is the one scenario I can think of where I could comfortably say "if you oppose me, you oppose God, now submit to His principles or die....".

      the other 99% of the time though, I'm glad that I'm Christian and a part of a faith which emphasizes mercy, remembering that all men are made in God's image and giving people the chance to change.

    • SpiritoftheGael
      SpiritoftheGael commented
      Editing a comment
      Killing people in general is apart of nature and is therefore not at all messed up by that logic. Are you suggesting that we should get rid of murder laws in general? vermilionplum

    • vermilionplum
      vermilionplum commented
      Editing a comment
      Yeah we should. It's really inconsistent that killing pigs is okay but killing humans aren't.
      Not to mention the very concept of government is pretty much just the biggest mafia mob in a certain area. With military being hitmen.

    #7
    Btw Animal I just want to show you the Christian music that I grew up with on Christian radio that was very popular. It is much more like your rewrite of that stupid Christmas song. When you grow up listening to music like this, it is very different. These songs are practically buried into me I heard them so many times



    "How He Loves"
    (originally by John Mark McMillan)

    And He is jealous for me.
    Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree,
    Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.

    When all of a sudden,
    I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory.
    And I realize just how beautiful You are,
    And how great Your affections are for me.

    And, oh, how He loves us, oh.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    How He loves us, oh.

    And He is jealous for me.
    Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree,
    Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.

    When all of a sudden,
    I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory.
    And I realize just how beautiful You are,
    And how great Your affections are for me.

    And, oh, how He loves us, oh.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    How He loves us, oh.

    Yeah, He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves.

    And we are His portion and He is our prize,
    Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes.
    If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.

    And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss.
    And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
    I don't have time to maintain these regrets,
    When I think about the way...

    That He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves.

    Yeah, He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves.

    Yeah, He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves us.
    Oh, how He loves.



    "Alive Again"

    I woke up in darkness surrounded by silence
    Oh where, where have I gone?
    I woke to reality losing its grip on me
    Oh where, where have I gone?

    'Cause I can see the light before I see the sunrise

    You called and You shouted
    Broke through my deafness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again

    You shattered my darkness
    Washed away my blindness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again

    Late have I loved You
    You waited for me
    I searched for You
    What took me so long?

    I was looking outside
    As if love would ever want to hide
    I'm finding I was wrong

    'Cause I could feel the wind before it hits my skin

    You called and You shouted
    Broke through my deafness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again

    You shattered my darkness
    Washed away my blindness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again, I'm alive again

    'Cause I want You, yes, I want You, I need You
    And I'll do whatever I have to just to get through
    'Cause I love You, yeah, I love You

    You called and You shouted
    Broke through my deafness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again

    You shattered my darkness
    Washed away my blindness
    Now I'm breathing in and breathing out
    I'm alive again

    Last edited by SpiritoftheGael; 12-09-2019, 06:37 PM.
    The day is done, and the darkness

    Falls from the wings of Night,

    As a feather is wafted downward

    From an eagle in his flight.


    I see the lights of the village

    Gleam through the rain and the mist,

    And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

    That my soul cannot resist:


    A feeling of sadness and longing,

    That is not akin to pain,

    And resembles sorrow only

    As the mist resembles the rain.

    Comment

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