/christianity/

I don't see a thread for Christianity in here i'm gonna make one. Anybody here a christian? if so what denomination are you and how has Christ impacted your world and programming in general?

I'm not a Christian, I identify as atheist but I do like Christian aesthetics, moral values and philosophy. More specifically I like Orthodox Christianity because that's what I've been around the most. Are there any books you lains would suggest that I should read? And no, I haven't read the bible, however I have read "The Screwtape Letters" and liked it a lot. I've saved a couple of meme lists I stumbled across on other imageboards but I have no idea if they're actually good or not. I'd rather hear some suggestions by other lainons. Pics related are the said lists.

I'm a Catholic, but it's hard to say how it's impacted my life except that I believe in its ethos and worldview. Jesus certainly hasn't factored into my programming in any conscious way. >>16056 You seem to know already but you should definitely begin by reading the Bible. It can be boring and repetitive in parts, but at least skim them so you understand when those sections are referred to in other texts.

Please don't let this thread turn into an absolute soykaf show with athiests and thiests screeching at each other.

>>16059 But what about Mormon literature?

>>16059 I'm the person who you're replying to. Thanks for your suggestion, I've avoided the bible thus far mainly because of its length. Thus far my resolve wasn't strong enough to read it. I might decide to say fuarrrk it and try to plow through it.

>>16063 It's not like it's one giant continuous story. Some of the books of the Bible can be read in under an hour. Most Christians don't exactly have the whole thing memorized or anything crazy. Just take your time with it, feel free to read the books in any order you like. The book of Ecclesiastes is probably my favourite. It talks about hopelessness and meaninglessness in a really stark and blunt manner, and is probably the most clear-cut example of Christian writings about distancing one's self from earthly pleasures.

>how has Christ impacted your world and programming in general? >programming in general? Programming is a repetitively new thing...

>>16060 Maybe like 5-6 years ago, there are bigger fish these days than theists who just want to go about their lives. People who worship living lunatics or eschew proven facts that are entirely outside the scope of religion are the problem. For Example: "I'm not vaccinating my children because my internet friends said its bad" asswipes.

OP here >>16056 >>16063 These are some great books, seems like they came out of an imageboard but I can see some great read on there, but the bible is basis for all of these books so I recommend you read atleast once. The bible is made out of 66 (I think) books that put together to make one, start with proverbs, it's my favorite >>16060 Nah, mods would not let it happen >>16074 Vaccination has nothing to do with religion, I can't imagine why medicine would be against religion, it is for the benefit of mankind

>>16064 >>16076 I've started reading the bible, I'm reading it chronologically. I found a website which is organized nicely, each bible page has its own html page. I might even create a scraper to download pages for offline reading, which would be a neat programming exercise.

>Anybody here a christian? if so what denomination are you I grew up Catholic most of my life. I spent all of my years in elementary, middle, and high school in Catholic schools. Despite being surrounded by it so much as a child and teen, I kind of fell out of it as I got older. I just stopped believing over time. Not sure what to make it of it christbros. Is the big J testing my faith or did I stop believing because it's all crap? >and how has Christ impacted your world and programming in general? Anyone can take away something from the teachings of the big J even if they aren't Christian. He was a pretty laid back guy, which I admire, and that time he threw all those you know who's out of the temple for selling soykaf in it was pretty based.

>>16056 My recommendation would be to read the daily Scripture readings along with the lectionary of the Church. This is how Christians throughout the ages have heard the Scriptures.. and it's easy to get discouraged trying to read through from cover to cover. You can find those here. https://www.oca.org/readings Additionally, if you like Orthodox philosophy, one good place to find it is in a prayer book. This is where I've found it in a very condensed, practical form. >>16055 >programming in general I think Christianity has informed my views on technology and helped me understand the role it has played in leading the world to its current (somewhat strange) state. e.g., the average internet user has unprecedented access to "hooks" (advertising, videos, random posts) to grab at and exploit that individual's passions/desires. When people are pulled at from all these different directions, it is easy to be pulled apart and to become anxious, depressed, or lost in life. Instead of your energy being focused on subsistence, which was legitimately hard to achieve before industrialization, it is sapped by the technology itself that was supposed to be your liberator. Focus and attentiveness is required to combat this. It's easy to recognize technology's positive effects, but hard to enjoy them while preventing the negative effects that come along with it. Programming is not wrong, but just try not to start building the Tower of Babel...

>>16055 I'm catholic but apart from some moral choices from Jesus, nothing is really different

Anybody here feel that the type of people that you surround yourself with determines your future and motives? For as long as I can remmember I have always had either no influence or tried to get around people that are "cool" because I always felt like an outsider. I want to surround myself with likemind people that can help me grow but at the same time i'm kind of scared to leave them since I've known them for so long

>>16055 I'm a christian. Non-denominational born again fundamentalist. A lot has changed, now I know where i came from and where i will be going. Before i came to Jesus, i was only using my computer for games and soykaf but now i actually started doing usefull stuff.

>>16055 Here read this, itll open your eyes to organized religion

>>16794 >"It is amazing how unsubstantiated teachings like these circulate—and are believed. One can go to any library, check any history book about ancient Babylon, none of these things will be found. They are not historically accurate, but are based on an arbitrary piecing together of bits and pieces of mythology." >"...Claims that imply “all these things started in Babylon,” are not only divisive and fruitless, they are untrue." The author of that book literally recanted everything he wrote in that book. The quotes are from his website.

>>16063 >I'm the person who you're replying to. Thanks for your suggestion, I've avoided the bible thus far mainly because of its length. Thus far my resolve wasn't strong enough to read it. I might decide to say fuarrrk it and try to plow through it. Start with the new testament, it is relatively short.

>>16797 A bit late I'm >>16077

>>16055 I once met a man who showed me his bible, and he told me that when he was drafted into the vietnam war, he was in combat and people all around him were getting killed, and he said he prayed a confession to god and said he was done with his sin, and if he made it out of that firefight alive, he would live a good christian life and read the bible every day and live by it. He was one of the friendliest and most compassionate people I have ever met.

>>16055 I've been brought up in a catholic household but by my early teens I got interested in occult and kind of fell off it. By my late teens I fell off both and became a full fledged materialist atheist. That being said I kind of cherish Christian traditional values for marriage, family, community, etc...(even if trying to be morally coherent caused lots of frustrations for me) and kind of missed believing that I'll be reunited with my loved ones in the heaven. Or maybe I think I missed those more innocent times.

>>16855 >>16070 And BTW I still LARP as a Christian in front of my parents and grand parents. Not because I believe in it but because I don't want to worsen their already existing mid life and end life crisis by giving them an existential crisis and make them question their long held religious beliefs.

>>16055 >and programming in general I've always liked to believed that DNA and RNA are God's version of machine code. A language could compile down to AT and CG instead of 0 and 1.

I'm not religious myself, but I try to be moral, decent, positive, and compassionate as best I can. I respect any system of belief that is based on those things. Parts of the Bible contain some of the most beautiful poetry I've ever read, especially Songs of Solomon and some of Paul's work. I am congenitally unable to believe in anything supernatural, but luckily Zen has no such requirement. I wouldn't call it a religion, though.

>>16093 I definitely have the same feeling with you. It is usually the correct decision to leave "cool guys". Now I still reminding myself a lot that I should keep my own thinking and ideas rather than always follow others.

Lainons, I have a question about this. Is it must to have some kinds of ceremony like baptism to become a Christian? Can I claim I am Christian by myself because I have read the Bible and I think I am? Do I have to bind with the church? Don't laugh me I am really a beginner on it.

>>17664 I'm not a religious person, but I enjoy the bible a lot. Acts 2:38 says “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." So I assume yes.

>>17664 There are some groups like anabaptism rejecting the necessity of the baptism. Catholic and Orthodox Churches require a man to be a part of the Church to become saved. In the days of old they required participation in '''their''' particular Church. Now they recognize some other religious organizations.

>>17664 No, at least the way I was brought up. If you believe in Jesus as your savior and are repentant of your sins you are saved. I think some sections of Christianity believe baptism is necessary, though.

>>17664 Not a christian or anything, I just happened to see your post. I just want to point out, with which church would you go and baptise if you were to do so? If you take the bible as authority then you'd need to go for the eastern church, right? Either way there's quite a bunch of them now, does the choice of a specific church make a difference?

>>17664 if you want to be a catholic you have to be baptized. i was never a catholic so i might be getting the details wrong, but from my understanding catholics believe the church has some kind of divine lineage, so being part of it requires more of a commitment. protestant positions are more varied because there are hundreds of denominations, but the ones i grew up with would probably say something like "it's a symbolic gesture of your commitment to christ, but you aren't going to hell or anything if you don't". more conservative denominations probably wouldn't recognize you as a christian if you aren't baptized, and might not consider you "saved" or whatever, but they tend to be less touchy about non-christians attending their services than the catholics because they don't believe the church itself is sacred. for them, it's just a group of people coming together to worship. "for where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." either way christians will baptize anyone, at any age, no questions asked, so if you want to become a christian i would definitely recommend it since it's an important spiritual rite of passage.

Abrahamic religion is essentially just slave training. It all boils down to one word: "Obey."

I'm Catholic. Hasn't impacted my work much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_anarchism

>>17671 It's not true. You still have you own way to explain the religion, however it might be not recognized by others.

>>17670 >i was never a catholic so i might be getting the details wrong, but from my understanding catholics believe the church has some kind of divine lineage, so being part of it requires more of a commitment. Basically, yeah. The Church's official position is that its authority is derived from Saint Peter, who was personally given authority on religious matters on Earth by Jesus Himself (Matthew 16:18). Of course non-Catholics might regard that as mere rationalization for the Church's centralization of authority. And frankly, speaking as a baptized-but-non-practicing-Catholic, I'd probably agree. The funny thing is that Catholicism, for all its ritual and pageantry and dogma, is actually rather pragmatic in a lot of ways. The Church didn't survive for almost two millennia by being inflexible and unable to adapt to changing times and local culture/politics. Treating everything in the bible except for the gospels as metaphor and guideline instead of literal truth will help on that front. One of my favourite discussions on the Old Testament was with a Jesuit teacher who regarded it as basically a load of crap. I friggin' love the Jesuits, man. Whip-smart, practical, and totally badass in their own way.

>>17718 Not the same guy. But wouldn't the ultimate authority lie instead on the eastern orthodox church? Or whatever the name of the actually original branch (The one that didn't add a 'filioque' in their prayers)?

For almost my whole life I was a catholic christian, I went to church every week at least once, sometimes even several times since I was an "Altar server" (idk if that is the correct therm, pic related). My whole family Is highly involved in the local church community. But to be honest I never actually believed in most of the silt and hated going to church, I remember faking headaches so regularly, in order to skip church, that my doctor tough It might be a brain tumor... In front of my family and on paper I'm still a Catholic cause If I bring up that I might want to leave the church my parents get devastated (crying about how they failed in raising a good person...) and its just not worth the trouble. So yea I don't like Christianity

>>17681 I was respond something sarcastic like "Christian anarchism? What's next, christian socialism?" but there must be something like that already existing.

>>17726 Looked it up, it's actually real and it has been for a long time (acording to wikipedia).

>>17723 I would argue that the ultimate authority lies with the Roman Catholic church because it arguably predates Eastern Orthodoxy and Jesus vested St. Peter with the authority of creating his Church. I say arguably predates, because the first churches today are part of the Eastern Rites. Also, they did not necessarily follow Rome's authority in the following centuries but they were still part of the same Church. However, the great schism in the third century saw the Eastern rites leaving the Catholic church, thus Rome predates all Christian faiths in my opinion. I hope for a better union between the faiths someday.

>>17813 >Jesus vested St. Peter with the authority of creating his Church i mean... yeah according to the catholics.

>>17814 According to Saint Mathew the Apostle actually (Mathew 16:18)

I am increasingly convinced that the chan chaos magicians have accidentally unleashed the Millenial (or, perhaps in the case of the cult-left, Amillenial, if you want to get REAL FUAARKIN _E C C L E S I A S T I C A L_ M'LAIN'Y) heresies again. Problem is God is dead, and we killed him. So instead of people at least vaguely trying to be holy or persist the devine, it's devolved into a bunch of waveforms flaying their psyches over semiotic sins, lest the new god, Captain Planet (played by a xxxk/o/x cxmmxnxxt wxmxxnx, of cxuxxe) fail to incorporate their cummies into the Goop Genome to Come. Did you know there was a communist vampire movement lthat sought to achieve the unity of all mankind and the emergence of a harmonious human collective through forced mutual blood transfusions? At that time, many scientists believed that it was blood, not genes - the carrier of heredity. Mutual blood transfusions were seen in deep systemic sense, just as each human system receives a missing or healthy system component during transfusion. Moreover, the body should also rejuvenate. Needless to say, in the first place the institute tried to rejuvenate the old party members. 'Twas the progenitor of the vampires, Red Hamlet...or Bogdanov...or didn't you know?, quoth "In the name of our Tomorrow burn Raphael, destroy museums, trample the art flowers." All present strife, an symptom of ill-physick within the shredded soul of the varied body politick; Resulting from total collapse of aesthetic // And the tendency of those who have more than those who have not // Or those who don't see their brethren what they're leaving to rot // To be dicks. Please fix. Sincerely, Motherfucking St. Augustine of Hippopotamus for All I Know or You Care or It Matters

I grew up in a catholic country, went to catholic school heavy with liberation theology, watched Lain and realized YHWH is a false demiurgic god, turned to neoplatonism after reading the Nag Hammadi texts. I think most christians, particularly evangelists, are deluded and have no understanding of the mysteries of christianity, and I don't recognise the catholic church as being able to convey the power of god since Jesus pretty much laid a path towards self-gnosis through his teachings, something that is conveniently omitted in church doctrine despite it being plastered all over the new testament. Oh, also I think the council of nicea was a mistake.

>>17839 Interesting view, i dont specifically know what you are refereing to but in general it seems right. >Oh, also I think the council of nicea was a mistake. It was not a mistake, it was a deliberate sabotage and hiding of information, if you know what they hid you know why.

17727 >christian anarchism i think a more apropriate name would be christian theocracy. its where a people is ruled by a god (in this case the Father God). thats actually how israel was before its first king, Saul. They started having kings because surrounding kingdoms had em and they seemed dope, but God and the prophets weren't too happy about it. they just followed those long lists of rules in the Old Testament cause God said so. TL;DR: christian anarchism -> God == king

>>17839 from that it sounds like i somewhat agree, but i wouldn't say that elohim is false. the view that its not just some old white dude in the sky but more of an omnipresence isnt that uncommon (e.g., the Holy Spirit). Sure, there are a lot of catholics but there's also a lot of nondenominational churches that teach similar viewpoints >>17839 >council of nicea was a mistake >>17840 >it was a deliberate sabotage and hiding of information they didn't discuss the canon at the council of nicea

>>17664 >Is it must to have some kinds of ceremony like baptism to become a Christian? No. That is works-based salvation. The most famous verse of the whole Bible, John 3:16, refutes the idea that one must be baptized to be saved: >For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Now, you should get baptized, in the same way that you should do what God tells everyone to do. But that is a different thing to baptism. >Do I have to bind with the church? It is necessary in the same way as baptism: you should do it, but salvation does not depend upon it.

>>18337 *But that is a different thing to baptism being required for salvation.

>>16055 I was christian before read the bible and realize is full of contradictions.

The world is full of lies to try to destroy you. usa is biblical lands. Yosemite -> Yo, semite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z0v4REkAkI >>18339 people say this but never give any examples.

>>17664 Multiple places in the Bible speak of being "saved by faith in Jesus Christ", so if you have faith in Jesus then you are a Christian. Even in the old testament many non-Jews were saved simply by faith in God. >>17666 >>17718 >>17813 Isn't the purpose of the Church to spread the faith (through knowledge of the Word of God), until the day he has prepared in which he will collect his followers? In that regard aren't all churches that spread the faith part of his purpose? >>18339 I have heard of many "contradictions" that turn out to be misunderstandings on the the part of the reader. The only true contradictions I know of are trivial. If there where anything significant wouldn't the religion be dead by now? Remember that many sane human minds have read the book cover-to-cover and still believe it all. What did you notice that they didn't? All in all, it seams to me that the biggest problems with Christianity are the various attempts to build upon what is written in the the bible and the conflicts between small differences.

>>16059 >you should definitely begin by reading the Bible just watch Evangelion, the Bible is a spin off of it

>>18337 Mark 16:15-16 -- He Who Believes and Is Baptized Will Be Saved

>>18414 Yes. I too believe that. But it does not mention the case where you believe and are not baptized.

>>18420 does 1+1=2? Does salvation come before baptism or as a result of it? We can no more be saved before baptism than we can before believing. The Bible does not always spell out what we have to do to be lost. It tells us what we have to do to be saved and expects us to realize that, if we don't do it, we will be lost. Jesus says we must do two things to be saved. To be lost, you only need to omit one of them. If you don't have faith, you probably would not be baptized, and if you did it would not do any good! To be lost is easy -- just don't believe. To be saved is harder -- you must BOTH believe and be baptized. the person who has a true faith will believe that baptism is necessary. Jesus said to believe the gospel (15-16). What does the gospel say? "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved."What if I don't believe that? Then I don't believe the gospel! What does the passage say about people who don't believe the gospel? Note the difference between what men say and what the Bible says Men say: “He who believes is saved and may then be baptized.” The gospel says: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.” BOTH faith and baptism are essential in order to receive salvation. We need to heed the warning about following human doctrines that differ from the gospel(Galatians 1:8; Matthew 15:9 Acts 2:38 -- Repent and Be Baptized for Remission of Sins. Where does this passage place remission in relation to baptism? Are sins forgiven (remitted) before baptism or as a result of it? Note that the purpose of baptism is clearly stated: it is for remission of sins.

>>18363 Evangelion is a overrated piece of crap

Søren Kierkegaard is really worth reading, he's a Christian existentialist, talks about the irrationality of religion and how it requires a "leap of faith" to accept God and His message info your heart. Best place to start with him is "Fear And Trembling", it's a lot to wrap your head around but it's a great insight into faith that's more than just "do what the church says".