An astonishing truth of our world is that most
followers of religion have no true understanding of what it is they
claim to believe in. If the average Christian were drawn into a debate
about the numerous ancient heresies that were stamped out one by one by
the Church, he would almost certainly discover that he himself was a
heretic. The reason for this is that the heresies provided logical, and
devastating, critiques of the central tenets of Christian theology and
were never refuted in any credible manner. A couple of examples will
suffice. The Arian heresy declared that God the Son could not be the
same as God the Father because, by definition, a father precedes a son.
Leaving out science fiction time paradoxes, there is only one situation
in which the father does not come before the son: in the Christian
concept of the Trinity.
Arius was never disproved: he was simply outvoted at the Council of Nicaea, which was held for the purpose of establishing Christian “orthodoxy”. However, if God the Son died on the cross and yet is, by some mysterious mechanism, also simultaneously God the Father and God the Holy Spirit then it means that the Godhead itself died at one point in the history of the universe, which will come as surprising news to most people, though perhaps not to Nietzsche.
The heretic Nestorius asserted that the Virgin Mary could not be declared the “Mother of God” because a mortal cannot give birth to God. Again, he wasn’t refuted but merely outvoted at a Church Council. Of course, Mary had to be a virgin because otherwise God would have been the product of a sexual act between two sinful mortals. Also, Mary herself had to be free of Original Sin because God couldn’t possibly have sinful blood flowing through him while he was in Mary’s womb. Therefore, Mary had to be different from all other humans beings: she was an “immaculate” conception i.e. God made her free of sin when she was conceived.
Nestorius has belatedly found a certain degree of favour in Protestantism, which relegates the significance of Mary, just as Nestorius did.
In this article, we will highlight a few ways in which Christians, Jews and Muslims fail to understand their own religions, and how the same is true of Hindus. Hinduism is a rich and complex but fundamentally flawed religion. Those who have not had much contact with it will find an introduction and critique of it here.
http://members.webs.com/s/sitebuilder/pages/310082013/Arius was never disproved: he was simply outvoted at the Council of Nicaea, which was held for the purpose of establishing Christian “orthodoxy”. However, if God the Son died on the cross and yet is, by some mysterious mechanism, also simultaneously God the Father and God the Holy Spirit then it means that the Godhead itself died at one point in the history of the universe, which will come as surprising news to most people, though perhaps not to Nietzsche.
The heretic Nestorius asserted that the Virgin Mary could not be declared the “Mother of God” because a mortal cannot give birth to God. Again, he wasn’t refuted but merely outvoted at a Church Council. Of course, Mary had to be a virgin because otherwise God would have been the product of a sexual act between two sinful mortals. Also, Mary herself had to be free of Original Sin because God couldn’t possibly have sinful blood flowing through him while he was in Mary’s womb. Therefore, Mary had to be different from all other humans beings: she was an “immaculate” conception i.e. God made her free of sin when she was conceived.
Nestorius has belatedly found a certain degree of favour in Protestantism, which relegates the significance of Mary, just as Nestorius did.
In this article, we will highlight a few ways in which Christians, Jews and Muslims fail to understand their own religions, and how the same is true of Hindus. Hinduism is a rich and complex but fundamentally flawed religion. Those who have not had much contact with it will find an introduction and critique of it here.
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