Real-world sensitivities and game names

HoneyBadger · #1 July 20th, 2008, 12:29 AM

I never understood, other than the actual historical reasons for it, namely Constantine getting fed up, why they didn't continue writing the Bible. Maybe not edited it, but continued adding to it, as each generation came and went and left their mark. The Bible as it is, although admittedly one of the literary cornerstones of Western Civilization, is in it's current form a handicap to Christianity. So much is ambiguous or taken out of context, or just plain unfriendly to modern eyes. In a way (along with the "Render unto Caesar...") it's a real credit to the Abrahamic religions that they've kept their books as close to the original text as they have.

Tifone · #2 July 20th, 2008, 04:29 AM

? HoneyBadger, the Bible is believed by the Christians to having been *directly* inspired by God - the Word of God itself. The Holy Spirit or anyway some kind of Divine Inspiration descending on the Evangelists and the Old Testament writers and guiding their hands into writing the Bible the way that God wants. While opening a lot of problems (like the fact that God is supposed to be perfect and so not self-contradictory but still goes through a massive change of personality from the Old Testament to the New, and Him being some kind of a all-hating all-forbidding slavery-supporting genocidal giving death penalty to everybody, in the Old Testament), this also implies that you cannot wake up one day and say "Hey, I want to leave a track of my society in the Bible too". Writing what? The only way to do a similar thing are the Papal bull and Encyclicals, both prerogative of the Pope. And none of them have ever been very "modern society's values" inspired yet

JimMorrison · #3 July 20th, 2008, 05:41 PM

It amuses me terribly that there seems to be some sort of a Christian moratorium on prophets. I mean, there used to be a whole lot of prophets running around, some false, and some true - how did we tell the difference then?

You would think it would be a big wake up call for people to think how "easy" it is to tell a false prophet now. I mean, gee, if the people 2000 years ago were a bit more educated, would they have believed even half of that stuff? "God" is supposed to be all powerful, yes, but is supposedly fighting this war with the Devil, who spreads lies and deceit. It seems not only silly, but incredibly foolish, IF you believe in these myths, to pick up a book that plainly says "The Word of God", and not wonder if maybe it's a trick!!

Really, we just need to lower our criteria for prophets. Just lower the bar until we can agree to bestow the title on John Lennon, and we can refine it from there.

HoneyBadger · #4 July 20th, 2008, 06:10 PM

I don't think it's because of Christian Prophets that much of the concern lies, but rather because of Muslim sensitivities, as concerns the Prophet Muhammed, and the restriction against displaying images thereof.

I won't bother pointing out that this restriction is only against Muslims creating or displaying images of the Prophet, according to Islam, because it still seems to become a sensitive issue, even when it's non-Muslims doing it.

JimMorrison · #5 July 20th, 2008, 07:41 PM

Well it just seems to me that there hasn't really been a religion that has had a recognized prophet in over 1000 years. And no, I don't count Joseph Smith.

I'm actually a bit partial to the portrayal of the concept in The Life of Brian - where it was illustrated that at one time there were an awful lot of people vying for the title, most of whom were ignored if they were lucky, or otherwise stoned to death. Only a few managed to get anyone to listen to them, and I hardly can bring myself to imagine that by virtue of their ability to convince some ragged and uneducated peasants that they are somehow indisputably trustworthy. I mean, most of them arose before there even was "Christianity", so the people who adopted them were unhindered by a faith and value system that was built to protect them from impure influences. Oh but wait, you say that after they adopted that faith system we call "Christianity", there were virtually no more actual prophets, ever? Isn't that unexpected..... I wonder what it means?

HoneyBadger · #6 July 20th, 2008, 08:14 PM

I dunno, living in Utah has given me a certain amount of respect, atleast for modern day Mormons. I've never personally had any problems with them, and overall, they seem like nice people. Living in Utah has actually been a very good experience for me, much better than living in some other areas-that's not to say the Mormon church is totally or necessarily responsible for that, but the Mormons haven't done anything too dramatic, to make matters worse for me. They've also got all the other trappings of a fairly major religion, everything from some very pretty temples, to customs that definitely do affect their lives on a day-to-day basis, and I think in generally good ways, from what I've seen. So while it's not a religion I would personally subscribe to (but neither is Christianity), I am willing to grant them legitimacy, in my own head (if that counts for anything, anywhere).