Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Excellent analysis. I've thought in basically the same way for a long time now.
If a loving god happened to turn out to be true, which I find no real evidence to support, I'd have nothing to worry about. I'll put my integrity, human ethics and moral values on the scale beside any blind faith adherent to mythology any day.
I agree, excellent analysis. It points out the extemely poor thinking and conclusions of mainstream Christianity.
Of course, the young man does not address the issue of where all the complexity we see everywhere in creation came from. It does not take blind faith to believe in a Creator. It takes more blind faith to believe this all "just happened."
Concerning his comments about contradictions in the Bible. That issue is important. The Church of God does a better job than mainstream but still has some areas where their explanations are lame.
One would have to take these apparent contradictions in the Book one by one to see if there is a logical and loving explanation.
The importance of really knowing what the Bible really says is the key. It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible. Their understanding of what they think it says would make any thinking person come to that conclusion.
"It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible."
Why would a Deity inspire such a book then if "thinking people" could easily find it difficult to take seriously in many areas? What's with that? Does this then show that the Bible is really for the "unthinking people" and of course the fact that "not many wisemen now are called"?
And if the Deity inspires in such as way as to confuse or put off the "thinking people," how can the critical thinkers be blamed for anything like rejecting it all and thus be labeled evil, scoffers and reprobate?
Perhaps another name for "thinking people" IS "Scoffers"?
"It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible. Their understanding of what they think it says would make any thinking person come to that conclusion."
Of course, you must think you're one of those smart enough to figure out what it really does say. Join the millions of others who think the same thing.
It's just another book thrown together by Jews with an agenda and Catholic prelates with another agenda. Both agendas center on control over the masses for the continuance of their privileged positions. Anyone who is going to believe it has "inspired:" authority should go the whole way and either bow to jewish rabbis or the Pope.
When I was just a little kid, I horrified my mother by stating that I thought the Catholic Church had to be right because it was the first. I soon gave up that idea, but there was logic behind my youthful conclusion.
So Jesus says, "28“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
which sounds like a nice relief and rest.
But then we find that Paul is often "hard to be understood" and this causes the wicked to have to wrestle with stuff which seems normal to do it the teacher is hard to understand!
So was Paul a lousy teacher? Was the Deity unable to get a clear message thru Paul to the masses? Was Paul making stuff up that Jesus would not have said? Was Paul making the yoke that was easy and the burden which was light hard and heavy?
You'd think a message that determined the outcome of your eternal self would be more easy to get straight and encouraging than it actually appears to be.
I too agree that this young man makes more sense --- to a point, than blind faith with no evidence. I am not ready to disbelieve in God, even though I finally am able to be honest with myself and put the Bible down.
At last I have found a sort of direction to take, which seems to provide some answers but not all. After reading a bit of history which has been written prior to the compilation of the Bible, I am learning new things.
There is a whole realm of information called gnosticism which has been condemned by the proto-orthodox from before the Bible was (more or less) completed. There are many kinds of gnosticism, but the particular one most interesting to me now is the literature called Sethian Gnosticism. Almost all thoughtful writting was either relegated to heretical gnosticism or condemned or burned since the time the Bible was mandated.
Not to go on too long here, I would just like to mention a couple of helpful things I've found to read.
First is a book, "The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says" by April DeConick. Also a series of articles at the Vridar website presented by Neil Godfrey, but written by Roger Parvus. The articles are called, "The Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius of Antioch" and found at: http://vridar.wordpress.com/category/book-reviews-notes/parvus-letters-supposedly-written-by-ignatius/
These plus the Sethian material contained withiin the Nag Hammadi Library have opened a whole new exciting study.
If I were to believe in anything theistic, it would have to be the Native American concept of a "Great Spirit." An anthropomorphized god just doesn't cut it. That belief just resembles too closely the middle eastern patriarchal system on which it is obviously based a little too much.
Step by step, western society has been moving away from those patriarchal beliefs for centruies. In my opinion, we're moving much to slowly, but embedded concepts don't disappear over night.
9 comments:
I could not describe myself any better than this...
Excellent analysis. I've thought in basically the same way for a long time now.
If a loving god happened to turn out to be true, which I find no real evidence to support, I'd have nothing to worry about. I'll put my integrity, human ethics and moral values on the scale beside any blind faith adherent to mythology any day.
This was fantastic
Thanks for posting!
I agree, excellent analysis. It points out the extemely poor thinking and conclusions of mainstream Christianity.
Of course, the young man does not address the issue of where all the complexity we see everywhere in creation came from. It does not take blind faith to believe in a Creator. It takes more blind faith to believe this all "just happened."
Concerning his comments about contradictions in the Bible. That issue is important. The Church of God does a better job than mainstream but still has some areas where their explanations are lame.
One would have to take these apparent contradictions in the Book one by one to see if there is a logical and loving explanation.
The importance of really knowing what the Bible really says is the key. It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible. Their understanding of what they think it says would make any thinking person come to that conclusion.
Our paradigms. So important.
"It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible."
Why would a Deity inspire such a book then if "thinking people" could easily find it difficult to take seriously in many areas? What's with that? Does this then show that the Bible is really for the "unthinking people" and of course the fact that "not many wisemen now are called"?
And if the Deity inspires in such as way as to confuse or put off the "thinking people," how can the critical thinkers be blamed for anything like rejecting it all and thus be labeled evil, scoffers and reprobate?
Perhaps another name for "thinking people" IS "Scoffers"?
"It is completely understandable why many thinking people do not put any stock in the Bible. Their understanding of what they think it says would make any thinking person come to that conclusion."
Of course, you must think you're one of those smart enough to figure out what it really does say. Join the millions of others who think the same thing.
It's just another book thrown together by Jews with an agenda and Catholic prelates with another agenda. Both agendas center on control over the masses for the continuance of their privileged positions. Anyone who is going to believe it has "inspired:" authority should go the whole way and either bow to jewish rabbis or the Pope.
When I was just a little kid, I horrified my mother by stating that I thought the Catholic Church had to be right because it was the first. I soon gave up that idea, but there was logic behind my youthful conclusion.
So Jesus says, "28“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
which sounds like a nice relief and rest.
But then we find that Paul is often "hard to be understood" and this causes the wicked to have to wrestle with stuff which seems normal to do it the teacher is hard to understand!
So was Paul a lousy teacher? Was the Deity unable to get a clear message thru Paul to the masses? Was Paul making stuff up that Jesus would not have said? Was Paul making the yoke that was easy and the burden which was light hard and heavy?
You'd think a message that determined the outcome of your eternal self would be more easy to get straight and encouraging than it actually appears to be.
I'm just sayin....
I too agree that this young man makes more sense --- to a point, than blind faith with no evidence. I am not ready to disbelieve in God, even though I finally am able to be honest with myself and put the Bible down.
At last I have found a sort of direction to take, which seems to provide some answers but not all. After reading a bit of history which has been written prior to the compilation of the Bible, I am learning new things.
There is a whole realm of information called gnosticism which has been condemned by the proto-orthodox from before the Bible was (more or less) completed. There are many kinds of gnosticism, but the particular one most interesting to me now is the literature called Sethian Gnosticism. Almost all thoughtful writting was either relegated to heretical gnosticism or condemned or burned since the time the Bible was mandated.
Not to go on too long here, I would just like to mention a couple of helpful things I've found to read.
First is a book, "The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says" by April DeConick. Also a series of articles at the Vridar website presented by Neil Godfrey, but written by Roger Parvus. The articles are called, "The Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius of Antioch" and found at:
http://vridar.wordpress.com/category/book-reviews-notes/parvus-letters-supposedly-written-by-ignatius/
These plus the Sethian material contained withiin the Nag Hammadi Library have opened a whole new exciting study.
If I were to believe in anything theistic, it would have to be the Native American concept of a "Great Spirit." An anthropomorphized god just doesn't cut it. That belief just resembles too closely the middle eastern patriarchal system on which it is obviously based a little too much.
Step by step, western society has been moving away from those patriarchal beliefs for centruies. In my opinion, we're moving much to slowly, but embedded concepts don't disappear over night.
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