The Great YouTube Debate 9

N/B: Ego-eimi’s replies to my last post can be seen in the comments of The Great YouTube Debate 8.

Ego-eimi: First thing first, must you insist in clogging up my inbox with nineteen posts? You could have put all of those in one post, and then directed me to your blog. It saves your time and mine. Secondly, one or two typos are all right. Your number of spelling mistakes…sorry, I don’t do text language, not even on my mobile phone. Call me a stuck up arrogant little girl if you want, but I’m all for proper English. Right, so to save your time, I’ll summarize my points and probably will leave out the less important ones.

Now, I’ve looked over your stuff. I’m sorry you took two hours to type it all up because it was tedious to read. About your answer concerning the marine animals. That was not an answer. Yes, some died while giving birth, but not that many. If that many had died, they would have all gone extinct long ago. So what really happened? The Old Earth theory is the one that can explain it.  

No, I do not believe that a woman should be subject to a man’s authority, nor should she need to follow a man. There is a reason why I admire Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was never subject to any man. She had the power. Her first husband divorced her and lost most of his kingdom. Jesus never said women were inferior. Have you noticed? It was the women who were the most devoted of His disciples. They were better than the twelve because they dared to be present during His passion. I also don’t believe in social hierarchies. Respect is earned. I won’t respect someone more just because he is a man or she is a woman or he is older than me or whatever.

I believe that God judges us by our actions. So it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you abide by His laws and make the world a better place by bringing peace. Jesus came to bring peace. Jesus is Peace. And by bringing peace, we are following His way. Those who claim to be Christians and yet spread dissension amongst others by saying that they are better just because they are baptized are not doing what Christ advocated. I would die for peace, but not for religion.

As for Osama bin Laden, I see where his anger is coming from. While he’s transformed it into religion, it’s actually national pride. Look at the Middle East. You see Americans controlling the Saudi royals, Americans controlling the oil, Americans controlling everything worth controlling. Western companies exploit the poor of the Middle East. They wreak havoc, and they don’t care how many people they hurt as long as they get rich. Look at Blackwater. Look at Palestine. Bin Laden is angry on behalf of the poor and the exploited. He wants to be free of the western yoke. The West has always been associated with Christianity, so in his mind, the right thing to do, if he was to liberate his people, was to declare the lesser Jihad. Do you know how many people look at him as the modern Saladin? They need hope and someone to lead them to it. People without hope do dangerous things.

Now look at you. Are you persecuted and exploited so that you have no food on the table? No, you’re not. Do people put Bibles on toilet seats like the soldiers in Abu Ghraib did with the Qur’an? I don’t think so. If they do, believe me, I would be just as angry. Are your brethren shot for no reason? No. Osama has a reason to be angry. I call him a fanatic and I call him delusional, but since I can see the cause, I feel pity for him.

As for all the laws of the Old Testament, do you follow them? Do you eat pork? Apparently, God said not to eat pork, snails, snakes, anything that crawls etc. Would the French and the Chinese and most people in the world be cursed then? If the Old Testament with all its laws were truly that reliable, then we would be following them all, instead of cherry-picking, as you like to say. The segregation of lepers, let me tell you, is something that most people in the ancient world, pagan or otherwise, did. The Hebrews simply incorporated it into their religion and gave it religious justification because it felt wrong to ostracize someone who was already ill and suffering. However, they believed leprosy was contagious because they mixed it up with syphilis and they feared catching leprosy/syphilis, so they made segregation compulsory by incorporating it into religious law. It made them feel better about doing it. In Psychology, this is called the theory of cognitive dissonance.

Here’s the passage concerning Moses and the Midianites.

I’ll let the text speak for itself.

I used the question of adultery as an example. Do I inherit the sins of my ancestors? No, I don’t. I have my own sins, but they’re different from those of my ancestors. In that same way, I do not inherit the sins of Adam and Eve (and I believe they are symbolic, so it is moot.) Why would the Bible then say that people inherited the original sin? Because the ancients believed that children carried the sins of their parents. That was why illegitimate children were ostracized. All people are born with a clean record, but with the potential to sin. That does not mean that they are born with sin. The potential to get a PhD, for example, does not make me a holder of a PhD.

Racial discrimination is discrimination. Religious discrimination is also discrimination. Would you say that Jews worship the wrong way? There is no right way of worship. Many would say that Protestants worship the wrong way, and others would say that Catholics worship the wrong way. Coptic Christians, Syriac Christians, Armenian Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Cathars, Hussites, Sunni Muslims, Sevener Shi’ite Muslims, Twelver Shi’ite Muslims, Wahabis, Sufis; we all worship in a different way. You cannot say that someone worships the wrong way just because they don’t worship the way you do. To say that they are wrong would be narrowminded. Do you know why there was an Albigensian crusade? Certain Christians believed that other Christians weren’t worshipping Christ correctly and that they weren’t believing in the right doctrines, and they went down and massacred them or forcefully converted them to the ‘right’ way of worship. What about the Spanish Inquisition? They burned Jews and Protestants just because they weren’t Catholics. That’s discrimination. You might think that your little bit of religious discrimination won’t do much, but it builds up. I don’t want another holocaust, and I’m sure you don’t either.

Adam is a symbol for all human beings, meaning that God made the covenant with all human beings. How does that not make sense?

I’ll tell you something; I was seduced by your way of life once. I once read a novel called Sedona Storm and it discriminated against the occult as well as other forms of more lenient Christianity. The authors were devout Christians, and they took the Bible very literally. The book told of how the Holy Spirit spoke directly to one of the characters. It was an exciting read, and to my childish mind, it made so much sense. I needed God’s presence in my life and I thought that perhaps this book had the answers. I went to church every week, but I did not feel God. So I took up this pious lifestyle of prayer and denounced anything that went against the Bible, except evolution because it still made so much sense. Guess what? I didn’t feel God either. The more I looked, the more artificial this sort of lifestyle became. Then along came another story, about an agnostic and depressed man who finally finds God. Yes, I’m talking about Kingdom of Heaven. You should see it sometime; it can teach you a lot of things. The moment I understood the film was the moment I found God. I didn’t find Him in scripture, I didn’t find him in prayer; I found him in this story which advocated peace and goodness, and nothing else. It was from then onwards that I understood that advocating peace and love was the only way to God and to salvation.

Fighting and dying for religion; we’ve been through all that. Look at the Holy Land. It was once the Kingdom of Heaven. The oranges of Jaffa, the fabrics of Damascus and Mosul; it was rich, it was vibrant. It was prosperous and heavenly. Coptic Christians, Syriac Christians, Armenian Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony alongside each other, sharing festivals, doing trade. They even shared the same temples. The church of St. John the Baptist in Damascus once had a Christian end and a Muslim end, and even though the Muslims have long since bought the church and converted it into a mosque, there is still a niche for St. John’s head. Then along came the Crusaders, who believed that the only way to God was their way, much as you believe, Ego-eimi. They fought for God on that soil. They’re still fighting for God over there, so now it’s Hell on earth.

So open your mind to other religions and beliefs. Let them be, and don’t try and say that you’re better than them because of what you believe. Such pride is unbecoming of anyone, let alone a self-proclaimed devout follower of Christ. Jesus was humility personified.