What happens then when the Very Divine Person, Who is the supposed subject of religion and "theology" (or so called theological "knowledge") comes to town and thoroughly examines at a profound depth-level every proposition every made about the nature of Reality in all times and places. Beginning, by urgent necessity, His examination of Christianity, because He was born in Christian America, and because Christian-ISM is the world dominant religion.And thoroughly explains the relationship between science as an open-ended method of free enquiry, scientism as "religious" dogma, and old style entirely reductionist exoteric religiosity (the kind of naive religiosity that Sells promotes)
http://www.dabase.org/up-1-2.htm
http://firmstand.org/articles/separation_of_church_and_state.html
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/gnosticon/religion-scientism
http://www.dabase.org/illusion-weather.htm

It is also interesting to note that with very rare exception none of the supposedly modern "experts" on religion, that is the theologians with their supposedly superior theologically "knowledge" ever talk about Consciousness or Light, which IS the Energy Of Consciousness.
http://www.consciousnessitself.org
Nor do they talk about the intrinsic fact that the world is a psycho-physical phenomenon.
Nor do they even begin to talk about the significance of the dream state (which we enter every night). Nor the state of formless/imageless deep sleep, which again we enter into every night - which is the state in which we are (gladly) relieved of the inherent stress of having to deal with objects and others.

Hi Joe. That number is one I can recall reading in some history book. And not all that unimaginable in a crusade which lasted 40 years, included the ritual slaughter of captured women and children; and when the spaniards recaptured spain from the moors, or those put to death during the height of the spanish inquisition.

Let's not forget those pesky middle ages when warrior popes rode at the head of private armies and sacked whole non compliant towns and cities.

Anyway I won't dispute a lessor thoroughly proven figure, save say a lot of non believers were put to the sword in the name of a christian God?
Rhrosty.

As a pentecostal Christian I am disgusted by the revelations of the Royal Commission re child sexual abuse. This includes, as far as I am aware, all the mainstream churches and 'mainstream' pentecostal Hillsong leader Brian Houston who either 'forgot' or swept under the carpet his father's confessions. How any Christian leader can 'pontificate' whether they are Roman Catholic or not about the love of Christ and suffer little children come unto me and apparently 'overlook' the warning given by JC that 'it is better for [child molesters] to be thrown in the sea with a large millstone around their neck' is beyond me when they go 'into damage control' against the Highest cause - their own denomination or bureaucratic prostitution of what a church in the New Testament model should be.
It is little wonder that mainstream Australia who mainly sees clergy on TV dressed up in 'nice' golden robes, etc etc with or without tassels on their archaic [but heaven forbid must not be dispensed with] decorated 'stations of office' including church top hats [mitres]. How far from the average Oz bloke can they get! No wonder it is labelled male steer manure! Some of those that shun dressing up to project a 'modern, trendy -get with us' prosperity gospel aka Hillsong, etc are not much better. In all of this don't bleat on about your faith in religion, humanism, communism, socialism, etc but Show me your actions and then I MAY just want to know why you act as you do . . . and you never know I may even want to join [however I am a sinner].

I am glad to hear that theology is alive and kicking, Peter.

I do hope that the Christian religion is alive and kicking as well, for what use is theology if not in the service of religion?
To employ theology merely for culture preservation, is wasteful like a gold ring in a pig's snout.

Indeed, God is not a part of nature, but God is not a human construct either. While it is true that humans colour-in the CONCEPT(s) of God in order according to their own tastes in order to support our feeble and hopeless minds, if you consider God Himself to be a human construct, then perhaps you may be teaching some form of Christianity, but you are not teaching religion and I even suspect that you teach humanism instead. Please remember: Deus ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos!

Hi Cobber,

Well, I did mention "Judaic-Greek-Roman influences," and "early European tribal organisation" [i.e. pre-Christian political organisation]. I apologise for not mentioning Indian Mathematics, Nabataean and Austronesian navigation sciences, and the Phoenician alphabet.

My point was that, out of the spaghetti of pathways, up and down, good and bad, workable and non-workable, of our historical antecedents, through all of that tangle, slowly and painfully, [with - surprise ! - nobody knowing what the future held], pathways have emerged towards (and with a multitude of side-tracks) the various strands of the Enlightenment. Christian ethics play a major part in all of that, but not necessarily consciously, intentionally, with foresight: none of us has those magic skills.

But thanks anyway :)

Rhosty, you may be re-imagining some of the Muslim slaughters: Timurlain's butchery of hundreds of thousands when he captured Baghdad, for example.

After the capture of Granada at the end of 1491, the peace terms included [according to Conde (1855)]:

"To Abdallah El Zaquir, King of Granada, .... to be assigned certain Taas and domains, to enable him to live as befitted his birth; these he was himself to select in the Alpuxarras." [i.e. in the Sierra Nevada].

That " .... the Moslemah inhabitants of Granada were to be permitted to remain in undisturbed possession of their houses and valuable of every kind .... ; they were not to be deprived of their arms, their horses, or any other part of their property ... " [p. 396] and so on.

As the King looked on Granada for the last time and wept, his mother is supposed to have commented: "Well doth it become thee to weep thy loss like a woman, since thou has not been able to defend thyself like a man." [p. 402]

I think it was the Catalan economic historian, Vicens Vives, who described the freeing of the slaves in Spain after the Castilian re-conquest.

Yep, Christian authorities have a lot of blood on their hands, no less than any other brutal forces in history. How far back to do want to go ?

Cheers,

Joe

The entire belief in God, Jesus etc and the man made church, really a control mechanism and money maker is bereft of validity.

The constructs put forward are based on earlier ancient understandings based on the movements of earth through the celestial way. Evidence abounds on the origins of the movement of the earth, based on the knowledge of the 'precession of the Equinoxis' thus giving knowledge of the epochs changing, the revering of the sun and its importance in esoteric knowledge of astronomy and of time it self.

This ancient knowledge provides the sun (God or Jesus), Orions Belt (the three wise men), and so many other astronomical realities, unfortunately picked up and misinterpreted into a religious belief which is somehow earth bound and constructed into a religion clearly false in nature.

As an atheist I find it interesting for people to follow a God and religion that has been created by man, one which is really a misinterpretation of ancient solar understandings. These being based on time, seasons, agriculture and so many other things not related in any way to a 'religion'.

Delusion and blind faith abounds, absurd really given the misery and suffering brought about by religious doctrine and the so-called divine belief in what is right and wrong.