Why were early Christians so violently autistic?

It's fun

No it is a phase. It's just a repeating one since they're stuck in the 3rd century BC thinking.

Slippery slope argument

You let any old rando twist doctrine to whatever they want and soon enough you'll have completely fucking nuts abomination sects popping up everywhere

Basically what happened with protestants

They're from the 7th century bro

That's not a phase, that's their perpetual state of being. You know like there are three rowdy kids, one grows up to become a doctor, one to become an engineer, and the third kid will forever stay a retard who fights random people in a bar. That's islam.

>Basically what happened with protestants
Nice meme

>implying

What happened with protestants was the Catholics kept tacking on new unscriptural doctrines and masquerading them as tradition, until Luther said "ENOUGH! WE NEED TO REFORM AS A CHURCH AND GO BACK TO BASICS" and instead of giving him a chance, the Catholics excommunicated him. You know the rest.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

Not with how they act like cavemen.
Good point. Islam is the angry runt of the monotheism family.

Cyrus the Great's biggest mistake was getting the kingdom of juda re-established.

>on a history board but don't even bother learning history

If you want to just keep talking /pol/ tier bullshit at face value without investigating anything, why even bother coming here?

youtube.com/watch?v=mdXJzgtiM4E

I don't mean WHY the reformation happened, but what it led to
It opened doctrine up for the interpretation of anyone and that led to a bunch of movements springing up that were at worst just fucking off the walls crazy

See

Like what happened in Munster with the annabaptists?

Oh, that's just semper reformanda. And ironically all of this would be prevented if the Catholics allowed Luther to reform WITHIN the Church.

Westboro Baptist Church is about as Protestant as the LDS Church. It has no connection whatsoever with the churches of the Reformation (Lutheran and Reformed). Hell, most Baptists, if they had anything like an ecclesiology, would reject them as well.

It's one guy and his disgustingly incestuous family. You can hardly consider that a church, let alone a Protestant one.

You can tell who a Protestant is. Their churches have clearly confessed what they believe in the Book of Concord, Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, Second Helvetic Confession, and the 39 Articles.

...

If this video is all about how there aren't as many movements as some memesters like to claim, that's entirely beside the point

I'm not going to finish it anyway

why are mainlines declining?

how many protestant denominations are there?

Matthew 7:13

Literally tens of thousands.

Liberalism. If they had maintained confessional integrity, they'd still probably be shrinking, although to a lesser extent. But no one wants to adhere to a church that doesn't really believe what its confessions teach. What's the point? You go for Word and Sacrament. If the church offers liturgical dance and shitty interfaith services with equally liberal Muslims instead, of course you're going to stay home and watch football. You'd be crazy not to.

People fought wars more often before firearms cannons and mechanization made them 100x more lethal and destructive.

Huh really made me think.

what denominations are increasing?
are evangelicals declining?

See

Mainline is cancerously liberal

it's a shame, at least they adherred to protestant doctrines

Basically this, as liberalism infected America, the people most affected by it were mainline protestant middle/upper class anglos, the back-bone of protestant America. When liberalism hit, these people became apathetic towards religion and stopped attending church, while the crazy scotch-irish and other various poor/low class whites went full crazy without the guidance of the WASPS, square that with the continual and constant decline of lower class manufacturing jobs, which produces poverty, which drives people to extremes, you produce the retarded, reactionary religious extremism that are Evangelicals, which consequently produces retarded voting bases which produce retarded politicians (pic related) which only supports the liberal talking point that Conservatives are stupid.

Honestly, "nones" (people who identify with no church, regardless of whether they are personally religious or not) are probably the largest growing group. There have been noticeable migrations from evangelicalism to Reformed, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. But as for the mainline Protestant behemoths, mostly their members just die and their kids become "nones."

Evangelicalism is declining in a sense. I think more than not, we're realizing that it's not a terribly useful term. There are too many disparate groups that used to be broadly considered "evangelical" by pollsters and sociologists. It's a lot harder to find out who's an evangelical vs. who's a Presbyterian or a Lutheran or a Catholic, because the latter three are actual churches with polities and membership rolls. There is no "evangelical church." Basically anyone who cares to self-identify as such is considered "evangelical," and even many who might not.

The problem is there still things like the OPC that are niether lib nor evangelical

i'm not watching proddieganda, it might not be 33,000 but it's still tens of thousands

>Except for islam, in islam it's hardly a phase.
It is a phase, though it's not the first and it probably won't be the last.

You are hopelessly retarded

OPC? sorry not american

what's the difference between mainline and reformed?

80% of this video is completely false. I do appreciate though that 20% of truth used to mislead uneducated christians. For example how they fail to mention which church fathers didn't believe in the sinlessness of Mary or that the rock in matthew 16:18 is Peter (because they don't exist), skillfully introduced after correctly listing diverging opinions on pointless matters that are literally "discussions of the sex of angels". Also pretty funny that protestants think they don't disagree on key doctrines and dogmas, considering they don't even agree on things like baptism and eucharist which are essential for salvation. Btw the catholic doctrine about genesis is that it's both literal and metaphorical, because we objectively incapable of knowing how much of which is which. Regarding the apocalypse of course there is some freedom of interpretation, because God's prophecy is not by its nature understandable until its accomplished (which seems to pass over the head of protestants who claim to know who the antichrist is every year).
Also incredibly funny how it's ok to have a shitload of denominations because "w-w-well t-they are less than 70000".
Honestly, I could go on forever, but I am inclined to just shake my boots and let dumb people be deceived. If you make an 8 hours documentary that attacks the church of Christ, good luck trying to convince Christ about your "ignorance" to justify your heresies when you die.

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Basically mainline Presbyterians who left the mainline church to escape the creeping liberalism. In the OPC's case, it was largely because of the aggressively modernist and liberal agenda being pushed through Princeton Seminary and other major Presbyterian institutions.

The OPC is undeniably Presbyterian, and thus not evangalical, but it's not liberal either, and thus not considered mainline in American social history (it's also quite small).

See Basically the "mainline" in America refers to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and maybe a few others. The biggest, oldest Protestant churches in America. They used to uphold the theology, piety, and practice of their traditions, but ended up selling more and more of their traditions' heritage in facor of modernism, multiculturalism, liberalism, and, really, money. They're the WASP denominations and, as the WASPs felt less social pressure to keep the faith, so too did their churches. What they didn't count on was that they couldn't keep up with secular culture, so all they had left to maintain them were old people and college professors who kept pushing shit like interfaith services and labyrinths and Garrison Keillor. Which is why they're mostly just old dying white people.

It doesn't even matter if it's truly protestant or Christians if it's still nominally those, it's banking on the preexisting christian base and feeding people their own flavor of nonsense on the pretext of protestantism without anyone to tell them to cut that shit out or they'll all get burned at the stake

It's taken from an 8 hour documentary you fucking autist
>baptism and eucharist which are essential for salvation.
You know we were talking about Protestants right?
>Btw the catholic doctrine about genesis is that it's both literal and metaphorical, because we objectively incapable of knowing how much of which is which.
I thought the Magisterium could infalliblely interpret scripture?
>because God's prophecy is not by its nature understandable until its accomplished
Then why does said prophecy exist?
>incredibly funny how it's ok to have a shitload of denominations because "w-w-well t-they are less than 70000"
21 is a shitload? Compared to 16 RC?
>Honestly, I could go on forever, but I am inclined to just shake my boots and let dumb people be deceived
The only dumb person i see here is you, a retard
>If you make an 8 hours documentary that attacks the church of Christ, good luck trying to convince Christ about your "ignorance" to justify your heresies when you die.
Enjoy the lake papist

Why are you making a distinction between Protestant and Christian?

>Presbyterian Church (USA)
The OPC was formed by clergy leaving that due to modernism and liberalism

Reading comprehension pls
I said "it doesn't matter if it's truly protestant or (even if it's truly) christian"
As in, it might be only christian in name, not just protestant

All Protestants are Christians

Wew

Militant Islamism as we know it today is a recent development. We're talking 20th century. The people who brought it about are the people in the Middle East with whom we're allied the closest. Good old Saudis.

Nowadays you have folks murdering due to cartoons of Muhammad, whereas some of the first texts returned from the crusades - written by imams - featured illustrations of scenes from the Qu'ran, including, you guessed it, depictions of Muhammad.

Nowadays you have a ban on drinking among hardline Muslims (though this doesn't always hold: when I was in Turkey, everyone drank, even quite committed Muslims). Whereas 14th and 15th century Islamic poets talk in detail about their drunken revelry, and we've found drinking carafes with passages from the Qu'ran inscribed on them.

In short, it's a phase. Learn history if you're posting on Veeky Forums. Pic related is a good place to start on this sort of stuff.
Or, read the Qu'ran, even if only to attack it from a position of knowledge. Didn't enjoy it as much as the bible personally, but in my opinion it's no more violent or divisive.

?

spooky

because they were Jews

>All Protestants are Christians
Enjoy hell, heathen.

>Roman
>Catholic
>Church

anyone who rejects papal authority?
mormons? jw?

That was kind of my point though.

At least with the OPC it's that simple. It gets way more complicated when you consider the PCA, which isn't 100% confessional but has some very confessional pockets, and is the result of a split from the Southern Presbyterian mainline which was a result of the natural split that occurred in American culture due to the Civil War. The church I grew up in was originally ARPC but which ended up getting folded into the PCA and we ended up merging with an OPC and gaining a formerly OPC minister, and became part of one of the most confessional presbyteries in the PCA. Shit gets really weird in American history sometimes, so it kind of gets hard to blame Catholics and Orthodox for believing in the "tens of thousands of denoms" myth.

>implying you're either a Protestant or a Roman Cathlolic
wew

>mormons? jw?
Reject all five solae

stakes, everybody ends up in the same place after death anyway
Wrongo.

Greco-Romans had Elysium, and the Norse had Valhalla.

Entry requirement? Be as epic as you can to achieve Apotheosis.

Neither of those are actually christian.

what about seventh day adventists?

They do too, they just hide it better

so they're still christian?
they regard themselves as protestant

Yes. It's all American /pol/ redneckz hating the turrurists because muh 9/11 and knowing nothing. Keep telling yourself that. Completely ignore the constant Muslim conquests and subjugations of non-Muslims that have near continuously occurred since its inception.

Do you have a way to weasel around that? Can you do it without saying "b-but Christians did it too!"

Yeah. We know. But they've stopped and atheism is on the rise in Europe.

Islam is definitely the religion of peace, but that moniker only applies once there are no more infidels.

see most conquest were done in the name of conquest/booty/wealth religion being the minor motivation.

Do you think the average muslim raided surrounding lands for allah? or for the gain of booty/rape/land/slaves? How many muslims would have fought those ancient wars if Caliph did not promissed them riches?

Ancients were far more pragmatic and less radical than you think. Romantic ideas about religion and nationalism are very recent inventions

>Completely ignore the constant Muslim conquests and subjugations of non-Muslims that have near continuously occurred since its inception.
Completely ignore the fact that every single religion has been engaged in religious conflicts throughout history. You even get militant Buddhists.

>But they've stopped and atheism is on the rise in Europe.
An athiest carries out a school shooting. Is that school shooting the fault of athiesm as a whole, or that one nut who happened to be an athiest?
Islamist terrorists don't exist in a vacuum. Sure, they're Muslims, but they're always, without fail, deeply troubled and deranged. Their actions are the result of the latter much more than the former. Consider that in many cases, Islam isn't the motivation, but rather an excuse.

Are modern Muslims, on the whole, responsible for proportionally more violent attacks than followers of other religions? Yes.
Is Islam, the religion itself, inherently more violent than others? No.

I'm sure you've read the Qu'ran and definitely know what you're talking about though.

You have points. And before you posted I was about to post an addendum that this doesn't mean that every Islamic civilization was culturally backwards. Quite the opposite as you pointed out.

But my statement had absolutely nothing to do with the stereotypical "Muslim talking points" you're reacting to. To claim that "militant Islam" wasn't a thing pre-WWI is absolutely laughable. Your argument that the average Muslim wouldn't be fighting for Allah is on par with claiming that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery because the average confederate didn't own slaves. Yes, in nearly every pre-modern society the common soldier rarely if ever fought for the true cause in any war. And while, yes, the ultimate benefit of ANY conquest is financial gain, the "cassus beli" for these conquests was Islam plain and simple. It is a warrior religion whether you like it or not. That statement does not mean that it cannot bear artists, scientists, or philosophers. It simply means that it is by and large incompatible with our modern world.

I will not trust any religion whose central figure is a warlord. Until Mohammad and his actions are denounced and Islam undergoes reform in that regard (as has been done in south Asia) I will not consider it compatible with the modern world.

Let me shift my argument a little bit
modern militant islam is a new invention

If today you want few islamic youths to attack say paris, you could do it by promising heaven/paradise/glorfy to islam/allah/durka whatever, that is modern miltant islam

but 500 years ago at the gates of constantinople, If you said to the soldiers
>you will not rape, you will not loot, you will not gain anything but you will fight for islam/allah/heaven/durka durka
the soldiers would have choke you to death.

There lies the difference. Islam just as any other major religion is a pro war religion, religions become warlike when they become powerful, regarldess of how they were originally.

for example muh zoroaster persians ignore the organized and systematic violence of sassanids towards christians, pagans and zoroastrian heretics. I always suggest them to read Inscription of Magi Kartir.

Although I must say that I'm not a muslim apologist and one can and should attack a religions past without having to bother with "but muh christians did that, check mate"

>Completely ignore the fact that every single religion has been engaged in religious conflicts throughout history. You even get militant Buddhists.
Oh silly me. I completely forgot about the massive Buddhist caliphate that forcefully converted Hindus and demolished their temples in 14th century
India.

>should atheists be blamed???
Again with the laughable assumption that I'm at all using the last half of the 20th century as my argument. If I was I wouldn't have an argument and I'd probably have the same opinion as you. Hint hint.

>I'm sure you've read the Qu'ran and definitely know what you're talking about though.
I have. Nice sarcastic assumption though. There were some half decent taking points in Mein Kampf too. What's your point?

>There lies the difference. Islam just as any other major religion is a pro war religion, religions become warlike when they become powerful, regarldess of how they were originally.

While both Christians and Muslims were indeed warlike, the central difference is that Islam was FOUNDED as a warrior religion by a literal warlord. Christianity did not become what it was at the time of the crusades until it had wrapped itself around the decaying corpse of the Roman Empire.

Christians do and did horrible, disgusting things, I am not saying one religion is necessaeily better than the other, but there is a fundamental difference in the nature of Christianity and Islam. To ignore it is dishonest.

>Oh silly me. I completely forgot about the massive Buddhist caliphate that forcefully converted Hindus and demolished their temples in 14th century
India.
Another example of religious persecution in the name of Islam doesn't refute my point about most other religions (and all the Abrahamic ones) being engaged in exactly the same thing.

>Again with the laughable assumption that I'm at all using the last half of the 20th century as my argument.
No, I used an example from the last half of the 20th century, since athiesm hadn't really been a majority belief until then, and you mentioned athiesm.
My point is that in all these cases, religion is the excuse rather than the motivation. You could say somebody is motivated by the promise of paradise and X virgins, but in that case the underlying motivation is sexual frustration.
Which would make religious terrorists motivated by the exact same thing as people of no religion who go on indiscriminate killing sprees: loneliness, sexual frustration, etc.

>I have. Nice sarcastic assumption though. There were some half decent taking points in Mein Kampf too. What's your point?
My point is that the text, in itself, advocates violence no more than do The Bible, The Torah, The Upanishads, whatever. Mein Kampf's a bit of a different story.

>Another example of religious persecution in the name of Islam doesn't refute my point about most other religions (and all the Abrahamic ones) being engaged in exactly the same thing.
Name me another empire whose existence came about from religious fervor.

>My point is that the text, in itself, advocates violence no more than do The Bible, The Torah, The Upanishads,
This is debatable, but my point is even if that is the case, it doesn't really matter when the man who allegedly wrote it and founded the faith was a violent warlord. Mohammad's taint has never washed away as, like you said, Islam doesn't live in a vacuum. Any religion that esteems conquerors is, in my view, incompatible with our modern world. I said elsewhere in the thread that I would have no problem with Islam if Mohammad was thoroughly condemned in reform as has been done by some practitioners as in that event all you would have left is the Quran.

>Name me another empire whose existence came about from religious fervor.
Arguably any empire with an official religion?
That empire, like any other, came about because people wanted more land, more money, more power, and instilled religious fervour in the proles to that aim.
Even seemingly irreligious empires are the same. The British Empire, while not really motivated by Christianity (wealth and power, of course), developed a quasi-religious justification in the form of "the white man's burden".

On the second paragraph, we pretty much agree.

>On the second paragraph, we pretty much agree.
Probably because I'm absolutely fascinated by the golden-age of Islamic civilization and don't actually hate the religion.

I'm just seeing the zeitgeist shifting to excusing Islam for everything it possibly can in reaction to any criticism whether that criticism be valid or base "hurr turrurrists" and am hence more readily critical of any defense of Islam than before. Pre-2012 I'd have been in your shoes. Nothing enrages me more than lies to suit an agenda. Especially when "why does it matter? It's for a good cause and they're harmless!"

>It's taken from an 8 hour documentary you fucking autist
I know I even mention that when I say
"If you make an 8 hours documentary that attacks the church of Christ..."
so what is your point? Can't you read?
>You know we were talking about Protestants right?
Yes I know. Do you think the doctrine of baptism is the same among protestants? You are either completely ignorant or deluded. Same goes for the eucharist. Pic related
>I thought the Magisterium could infalliblely interpret scripture?
Yes, and it infallibly states that it is both metaphorical and literal. what is your point? We are not muslims. The Holy Spirit inspires us not to teach heresy, he is not supposed to dictate us things directly. The account of Genesis was influenced by the accounts of Genesis to which Jews in Babylon were accustomed to, but were modified under inspiration of God so that they would mirror the truth. It is the usual overturning of pagan lies that we find all over the Bible. The setting and material side of the story is not as important as the spiritural revealed truth that is in it. You should actually study things before opening your ignorant mouth. You don't understand the Bible, like all heretics.
>Then why does said prophecy exist?
So that we do the right thing and the will of God when it occurs. Are you retarded?
>21 is a shitload? Compared to 16 RC?
There is only one Catholic Church. The Churches that are part of it, even if they have administrative autonomy in certain things, are subject to the complete authority and are in complete doctrinal communion with the Church. Schismatics and wannabe-protestants are not part of the Church.
>The only dumb person i see here is you, a retard
Nice non-argument, hateful satan
>Enjoy the lake papist
Again, nice non-arguments you got there m8

the guy on the left is too good to be honest
i wouldn't trust him at all

now the guy on the right, he looks like a friendly moron and i have no reason to dislike him

So pagans were reasonable people while Christians were fanatic ideologues. Thought as much.

>the central difference is that Islam was FOUNDED as a warrior religion by a literal warlord

Islam was founded as an apocalyptic reform movement preparing for the end of the world through ritual cleansing of social and religious evils by an Abrahamic judge figure. The 'literal warlord' image is just one of many later extolled by a subsection of adherents (and their modern detractors) to propel their vision of Islam as the one true Islam.

It's also interesting that for all that has been said of Muhammad and Islam being uniquely tied to war and warlordism, the major ghazi kings of the 14th century onward mostly quote and reference figures other than Muhammad in their self-aggrandizing faith-militant biographies.

People in general aren't reasonable. Pagans were simply unreasonable in their own ways distinct from early Christian unreasonableness.

why are religion debaters so retarded

a religion is based around their prophet(s), if your prophet was peaceful, you've got aningerently peaceful religion (it's immoral to not be peaceful according to the actions of the prophet) and if your prophet was not peaceful you've got an inherently violent religion

live by the philosophy of your prophet, that's what religion is

/thread

>its a mongs think pagans were just happy agnostic hippies in the woods episode
Pagans were far from "chill", unless you want to ignore the bulk of ancient history and warfare having a decidedly religious aspect to the point you can't really separate the politics from the superposition since they were so intertwined.

The Abrahamic religions come from the desert, and turn everything they touch into desert.

When this ideology began sweeping through Europe, they began cutting down trees to piss off pagans because trees were sacred to them. They also burned books, I suppose it turns your mind into a desert as well.

A lot of turks don't drink because of religion.

A religion is based around the community of worshipers. Prophets, holy books, and the like are merely the totems onto which the community projects their identity and culture.

This is why the nature of Christ was important for so many early Christians, because it was about more than what Jesus or the Apostles taught. It was about which community gets to be the one true Christian community without having to change their customs and rituals.

>Militant Islamism as we know it today is a recent development
explain revolts in the 18th century by the Wahabbi? or the rise of the Mahdi in Sudan?

I might argue that the decline in more "mystical" ideas in Islam, alongside the decline in popularity of mystics/saints in favor of jurors/legal authorities in power is due to protestant influence in the region, particularly Calvinism.

Colonial authorities gave more power to Judges and the like, meanwhile Muslims began to take to Protestant ideas and adopt them as part of their own practice, not changing the faith really, but taking it as an excuse to "go back to their roots"

stakes, everybody ends up in the same place after death anyway
LOL absolutely not
the highest "heaven" for Romans and such for example was Elysium but even that was pretty lame if Odysseus can be believed, the dead don;t particularly enjoy the place, and this is the very best, lower realms are significantly more shit and often the dead are reduced to shades lacking in all strength or personality (the Jewish Sheol is similar to this) and truly dishonourable people end up in endless torment in Tartarus.

pagan morality was very VERY different so you could be an "evil" person by modern standards and still end up in elysium.

the average person ended up in the Asphodel Meadows which is basically a giant meadow

in the Odyssey its described as a pretty lousy place
"The dead approach him in swarms, unable to speak unless animated by the blood of the animals he slays. Without blood they are witless, without activity, without pleasure and without future"

Not him, but the Wahabbis and the Mahdi weren't Islamists, just militant fanatics. Unlike militant Islamists who aim to create or control a nation-state in their image, the 18th century Wahabbis and the Madhi state were more like religions irredentists or apocalyptic movements with no interest in Western political theory.

>Not him, but the Wahabbis and the Mahdi weren't Islamists, just militant fanatics
are you serious
just because they didn't concern themselves with the West doesn't make them not islamists. They most certainly were.

holy shit dude. The only reason we have the Roman and Greek writings (and even then far, far from all of them) is because the institutions you detest copied them down in monasteries for centuries. You know, while the vaunted pagans in the north we literally burning and raping everything they could (I do love the Vikings - but they were undeniably destructive).

And to a lesser extent Islamic nations were important in the transference of Greek learning.

Soo... wtf are you talking about? The vast majority of the shit Christians burned was heretical christian writing (which I think I can safely assume you don't care about).

An Islamist is not the same as being fundamentalist. There are plenty of Wahhabi Muslims for instance who have no interest in Islamist politics whatsoever.

Islamism is a political ideology, which for the early Wahhabi movement was entirely anathema since their major issue was the incorporation of non-Islamic practices into Islamic society.

Militant islam was the OG islam. Muhammad was literally a brigand. He sacked cities and murded people (compare to Christ who wouldn't even let his apostles defend him as he was taken to be tried).