Here is William Tyndale's view of Christianity, from his preface to his 1534 translation

[struggle4progress]

of the New Testament:

... all that God requireth of us when we be at one with him and do put our trust in him and love him, is that we love every man his neighbor to pity him and to have compassion on him in all his needs and to be merciful unto him. This to be even so, Christ testifieth (Matthew 7) saying: this is the law and the prophets. That is, to do as thou wouldst be done to (according I mean to the doctrine of the scriptures) and not to do that thou wouldst not have done to thee, is all that the law requireth and the prophets. And Paul (to the Romans 13) affirmeth also the love is the fulfilling of the law, and that he which loveth, doth of his own accord all that the law requireth ...

This is a very ancient view, that considerably predates Tyndale: it requires (say) no particular belief about the age of the earth or the historicity of Noah's flood; it does not promise supernatural fixes for the problems of daily life; it gives philosophical arguments no centrality; it does not demand we cast away all reason or knowledge; nor ask us to "prove" ourselves by handling poisonous snakes ...

[RandomThoughts]

1. If you are in the spirit of love.

They are not poisonous snakes.

That is the whole point.

They are flowers also.



Going to California.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpVLlnQ08OA

[struggle4progress]

3. I used to see rattlers regularly when I worked on a California ranch, and I'll say that

I never confused them with flowers

I had a "live and let live" attitude, except for slaughtering for meat, so I didn't kill rattlers I saw. I also figured the snakes kept down the gopher population, and the gophers were a gigantic nuisance, boring holes in irrigation ditch banks that would cause failures requiring major repairs

Maybe I should have killed rattlers: one of the ranch-hand's kids was bitten once.

[RandomThoughts]

6. I am talking in metaphor.

If you need that explained.

They are not snakes, they are flowers.

So in your example you walk up to a flower, and think it is a rattler snake.

[struggle4progress]

8. I can't remember for sure, but maybe that's one reason I stopped dropping acid

[RandomThoughts]

10. Heh, funny.

I don't take acid either.


Never have.

I am due beer and travel money, and many experiences.

[RandomThoughts]

35. Or for more clarity.

She's Always a Women to Me with lyrics -Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfkJCyqCBc


Cross post relevance to post on if smiles are passive aggressive.
Relevance to separating people, bringing out the best and worst you can be. The apologist for those that cause hardship in that context, where in my view it is not hardship that separates people, but how they choose to see something, and how they do based on what they see.


So are the snakes the flowers in the hair? Or those that think in terms of taking what people give, by claims of them supposed to have stuff?

You can see it either way. So maybe it be best to not judge anyone as snakes and try to help where you can.

So don't call something a name , point out the actions, and why you disagree with them, or agree with them, find the verbs not the nouns.

The consolidations are not defensible. And I have explained why, not by who they are, but by the effects of their actions.


And I am still due beer and travel money, and many experiences.


That is also the wheat thins commercial. The concept of some that think they should take, and people that give are there to serve them. When they don't serve back, but consume more then they give, those are the fat people in metaphor, and why gluttony is actually a sin in metaphor, in my view.

New Wheat Thins TV Commercial (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8frN7OQPPg


As I said, you don't give to them thinking they will save you.

Fred Burkle - A Place Called Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcQF7d2GT0I

Those that care don't steal, they roll the stone.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[jwirr]

4. Those verses are still all in the Bible but many choose to ignore them.

I for one think they are the main subject.

[jberryhill]

5. The Golden Rule doesn't work well with masochists

I really think we need to add a disclaimer to that one - "Offer not valid if you are a masochistic bastard. Please refrain from doing unto others as you would have them do unto you."

[struggle4progress]

11. Yeah, when I have to give gifts, I always give books that I really want to read. Since my tastes

are unusual, it works out great: people wrinkle their noses and say stuff like I just don't know when I'll ever find the time to read Bourbaki's Théories Spectrales, so I say Well, can I borrow it? I'ds like to reads it!, and they say Uh, sure ..., and then I say Just let me know when you want it back!, and they say Will do!, and then I've not only fulfilled my gift-giving obligation, I have new book on my shelf

[jberryhill]

12. Lol... I know somebody like that

I had to start giving them things I wanted, so we could borrow each other's.

Instant sharing!

[dimbear]

15. I have given up giving people things entirely. I give only notices of donations.

Mostly to the SPCA. I never get any complaints. Who would dare to?

[darkstar3]

16. So you deliberately give people gifts that you KNOW they won't want?

:wtf:

[struggle4progress]

17. Hey, I was gonna get you a copy of van der Waerden's Moderne Algebra for your birthday

but I didn't have any more room on my shelf. I know it's a bit late, but, anyway, Happy Birthday!

[darkstar3]

21. Tool.

[struggle4progress]

22. You have a great sense of hubris

[darkstar3]

24. Says the man who wrote #11.

[struggle4progress]

25. Shall I explain #11 to you? Jokes usually lose something in the explaining, I fear.

But very well, here goes:

You have a great sense of humor is a common saying

However, I did not accuse you of having a great sense of humor, though no one knows it until the last syllable of #22: it takes a little turn, you see, and fails to say what was expected, rather aptly, I thought

Oh, dear. After explaining it, I find it less amusing, of course, just as I had feared

Well, I see we do not share the same sense of humor, so I guess I will not quit my day job for a career as a stand-up comic

[darkstar3]

26. All that reading you do, and you can't tell the difference between 11 and 22?

[struggle4progress]

27. The briefer explanation seemed preferable to a longer one, but perhaps I over-condensed.

Yet, somehow, I harbor doubts about the clarifying potential of further expatiation

[RandomThoughts]

7. Time for a good song.

Come as you are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vabnZ9-ex7o

[damntexdem]

9. But the religious right practices this -- do unto others as you would have them do unto you:

they want to put everyone the minds of everyone else in the same straight-jackets that they want for their minds.

;-)

[skepticscott]

13. Nice job of cherry picking

by Tyndale and by you.

And in any case, this "ancient view" requires no credulous belief in a supernatural being either, so why does Christianity promote such a thing, if it is really as you and Tyndale claim?

[struggle4progress]

19. I think Tyndale expresses his view of that early in "The Parable of the Wicked Mammon" --

... how can he work any good work .. if there were not some supernatural goodness in him ...

[skepticscott]

28. Do you not even recognize

a lame argument from personal incredulity? Are you not even aware that it's fallacious, or are you just being disingenuous? Are you that big an intellectual phony? Is that the best counter-argument you have to defend something you were so proud to post?

Try again.

[struggle4progress]

29. You seem to regard the explication of a view, as an attempt to provide an overwhelming logical

argument for the view. It seems to me that Tyndale lays out a view deftly and succinctly. You are, of course, free to object that this does not constitute a convincing rational reason for adopting his view, but I think his object is different

Lip-service to "love of neighbor" is common enough, but actually living-it-out is somewhat rarer. The question naturally arises: So how important is this, really? And a very old answer, as from the Tyndale quote in my OP, is: In fact, it is simply everything. But the matter is much more easily said than done: human history suggests many of us find it so very nearly impossible, that it would actually be a gigantic miracle if we all stopped telling ourselves little lies about how kind and generous we are and really began to love our neighbors

[skepticscott]

33. You conveniently avoid mentioning

that this was NOT the point of your OP. Your OP attempted to argue that "love of neighbor" is the entire sum and substance of , in an attempt to deflect criticism of the many foolish aspects of same. But since we clearly didn't need Christ to expound the golden rule and since (by your own admission above) there is no logical reason for thinking that we can't live by it without supernatural help, why do we need Christianity at all?

Back to Apologetics 101

[darkstar3]

14. "and that he which loveth, doth of his own accord all that the law requireth"

This part of the quote says far more than you think it does.

[dimbear]

18. Tyndale was certainly a brave soul. A heroic figure of the day.

He was found guilty of heresy and on 6th October, 1536, he was strangled and burnt at the stake.

There are several notable depictions of the event in woodcuts.

For those not familiar with ancient capital punishment, note it is a mark of special mercy to strangle people before burning them. It was an honor often granted to repentant witches.

[struggle4progress]

20. His "heresy" consisted of translating much of the Bible into English

[dimbear]

23. To be completely punctilious, his heresy was printing his translation.

If he'd kept his translation under his bed, everything would have been fine. He had the idea that common people should be exposed to the Bible in print, in front of their eyes, to interpret themselves.

That didn't go.

[struggle4progress]

30. I am not a scholar on this, so perhaps get some details wrong. From Shaff's encyclopedia,

which may be a century out-of-date:

... Excepting the narrative of Foxe, which is very unsatisfactory, and the opportune discovery of a letter written by Tyndale in prison, showing that he was shamefully neglected, and that he continued his literary labors to the last, no official records of his betrayal, arrest, trial, and martyrdom, have as yet been discovered ...
http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc12/htm/ii.xv.x.htm

It is my understanding that Thomas More obtained a special dispensation to read Tyndale's translation, in order to refute it, and that possession of such translations was generally proscribed, with severe penalties

And the notion that a person's purely private writings were not really of concern to the law may be a more modern notion. I do not know for certain how the discovery of purely private translations would have been received then, but I am not sure the reception would have been better, if the authorities disliked him for any other reason

[dimbear]

31. Another curious corner of history. Looking around the interwebs, I see

that in the articles accusing Tyndale of heresy they more or less threw the kitchen sink at him. As you say, the worst thing they accused him of was a faulty translation.

A Lutheran translation, in other words.

Tough critics.

I am unable to turn up the actual entire set of charges.

Tyndale made one too many enemies along the way.

Maybe more than one too many.

Interesting parallel to some Bible stories: he was invited to dinner and afterwards betrayed by a 'friend.'

[struggle4progress]

32. Tyndale translated a certain Greek word as 'congregation' rather than 'church'

and such "signs of the times" terrified "the powers that be," which had been until then "a law unto themselves" and so disliked the suggestion that authority ultimately lay with "the salt of the earth"

These well-known phrases, btw, are all from Tyndale's translation of the New Testament: "the signs of the times," "the powers that be,""a law unto themselves," "the salt of the earth" ...

[Deep13]

34. Right, we just have to subordinate our normal human thoughts and behavior...

...to a celestrial despot that requires an impossible perfect despite having made us imperfect. That assumes of course that the divine standard can be called perfect, which is nowhere close to the truth.

The problem with Christianity is not the magical occurances like the creation myth. It's its central idea that people are somehow born evil and that only rejection of ones basic humanity can redeem them.