Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

This is also the faith that says "I, the LORD your GOD, am a jealous God," and has Deuteronomy, which is an entire book dedicated to who you should kill, why, and how.

The bible says a lot of things, sometimes even contradictory things. Who but God has the authority to really say whether you are right or they are wrong?

That sounds a lot like judging to me, then again 1 Corinthians says you should cast those you judge to be wicked from your church.

Well if we are just using the old testament for information, you would be more apt to generalise these things toward orthodox Jews, as after Christ arrived and the gospels were written, Jesus edited some of the old biblical rules, quite a few in fact. Please don't ask me to list them as it has been quite a long time since any bible study. But if you include the direct teachings of Christ, and not a mushy amalgamation of what politicized scholars have cobbled together for different denominations and periods of time and political turmoil, he largely changed the face of what the biblical god wanted. I guess the rules did not need to be as strict after the son of god came and died. But in any case, apparently Jesus had the authority to make a warmer fuzzier god, trying to get people to be nicer turn the other cheek, and quit killing each other.

But people are still people I guess?

[Malflick]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

This is also the faith that says "I, the LORD your GOD, am a jealous God," and has Deuteronomy, which is an entire book dedicated to who you should kill, why, and how.

The bible says a lot of things, sometimes even contradictory things. Who but God has the authority to really say whether you are right or they are wrong?

That sounds a lot like judging to me, then again 1 Corinthians says you should cast those you judge to be wicked from your church.

At the risk of massively derailing this thread, I have no certainty of if I am right or wrong about my perceptions and interpretations of God. I'm certain I'm wrong about something, but I'm fairly confident in a few things. Not to mention that the Bible isn't inerrant. Of course it contradicts itself-- it was written down by flawed people, retranscibed, retranslated, and recopied. And different people who recopied it through history added in their own bits as time went on. Looking at the Bible requires thinking and interpretation, not just a hidebound reading of ancient scripture.

Not to mention even if I was taking it wholly by itself that the new Covenant Yahweh made through Jesus overrides much of the old testament law (such as Deuteronomy and Leviticus) pretty readily.

As for if I am judging? Well, yeah, I am. I can't get around that. But I believe there is a difference between judging people who make my LGBT friends want to try to kill themselves, and people who just disagree with you. Standing up to people who are using religion to hurt others in a non-violent way seems Christian to me, after all, Jesus stood up to the Pharisees... But yeah, I'm not perfect and indeed I was judging them. Though still, their actions are reprehensible, because hurting other people is wrong.

But maybe I am in fact a terrible Christian for that, or a bad person. If so, I'm sorry. I don't want to make people uncomfortable, or make myself out to be some paragon or holier-than-thou silliness. I'm not.

I just felt bad about how other people of my faith treated toxicyarnglare.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

On this forum, you can't base christianity on the bible, you have to find out what denomination he is and what that denomination believes about the bible before you can say anything about his "faith".

Or at least, that's the way it has been shown to be so far. You're allowed to speak only of denominations and can't base anything on the bible itself except to the degree that said denomination does.

The problem is with general sweeping statements along the lines of "Christians are evil and kill people." Specific bible quotes in order to prove a point are OK, It is when we use a quote to say something generally nasty, and basically hugely condemning of huge sweeping groups of people, who are not nessecarily represented by these statements that a mod will step in. They would step in if these statements were made about any religion in fact, but there aren't many people who make huge nasty sweeping statements about pagan religions on a pagan website... sometimes, but not often...

[SPhoenix]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

The problem is with general sweeping statements along the lines of "Christians are evil and kill people." Specific bible quotes in order to prove a point are OK, It is when we use a quote to say something generally nasty, and basically hugely condemning of huge sweeping groups of people, who are not nessecarily represented by these statements that a mod will step in. They would step in if these statements were made about any religion in fact, but there aren't many people who make huge nasty sweeping statements about pagan religions on a pagan website... sometimes, but not often...

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but there needs to be consistency. Either we need to acknowledge that the bible is NOT an accepted source to discuss "christianity" or we need to acknowledge that it is. If we are going to state that we can't use the bible to discuss the problems with "christianity" because not all denominations accept it as infallible, then we need to do that and be consistent with it.

I don't necessarily have a problem with doing that, I have an issue with it being inconsistent. We either let christians decide whether or not the bible is their infallible holy book, or whether it's their guidebook, or we see the bible as the holy book of "christians".

It's not fair to let some people slide on it and other people not. It's also not fair to say that it's okay to use the bible in arguments even if the argue-ee doesn't see it as infallible... but not okay to use it when you're lashing out simply in anger over having been seriously hurt. It should be a "one size fits all" thing, not a convenient rule to take out to smack smarting knuckles with but otherwise watch the fun ensue.

I'm sorry, that's just my personal opinion. I don't think it's right to have various rules about various situations... all around the same thing... either we should ALWAYS acknowledge that various denominations are different and so is their view of the bible, or we should be able to base ALL "christianity" discussions on the bible without considering denominations. Right now it seems very pick-and-choose and thus very unpredictable and rather arbitrary.

Again, just my personal view, but consistency will go a long ways towards making everyone feel more comfortable, christian and pagan alike. If the rule is clear and consistent, then it's easier to have these conversations.



EDIT: Basically, the argument here is, "but look at these verses... your faith isn't about love". But Malflick doesn't believe that the bible is inerrant, and thus such an accusation (that directly disputes what he just said) is inconsistent with the rule. The rule states that we are to discuss denominations on their individual merits. Malflick's belief is that "christianity" is about love and versus that seem to contradict that fall into the "most likely humanly altered" category.

It makes it inconsistent to allow verses to be used as an accusation against a person who doesn't believe the thing to be inerrant... when the standard is "don't sweep with a broad brush."

Malflick doesn't make a pretense of believing the bible inerrant, so slapping him with contrary verses when he was reaching out to someone with kindness seems a rather underhanded thing to do. Again, just personal opinion. But I think that the rule being inconsistent isn't helpful to discussions like this. *I think* and *my opinion* being the operative words here, of course.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

I'm sorry, that's just my personal opinion. I don't think it's right to have various rules about various situations... all around the same thing... either we should ALWAYS acknowledge that various denominations are different and so is their view of the bible, or we should be able to base ALL "christianity" discussions on the bible without considering denominations. Right now it seems very pick-and-choose and thus very unpredictable and rather arbitrary.

Again, just my personal view, but consistency will go a long ways towards making everyone feel more comfortable, christian and pagan alike. If the rule is clear and consistent, then it's easier to have these conversations.

The only times the mods get involved is when what people are saying boils down to accusing hundreds of thousands of people of being bigots and hurting them, when in fact it is a small, generally loud minority which is persecutory and hurtful. Ultimately if it boils down to hate speech , not only does it make the poster look just as bad as those they are accusing, which is generally bad form, but is not tolerated on PF. By anyone, for any reason, and yes the mods use their own discretion to make the determination of when the line is being met, or crossed, but that is basically their job here. I don't think addressing the bible specifically has been an issue... at all, and if it has, maybe a personal conversation with the specific mod or decision maker is in order. It is always possible to be misunderstood, and many of the mods will make the effort to understand.
I will now try not to further derail the thread, sorry

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

Note: The original post in this thread related to a specific person, doing a specific thing. It appears that people need to be reminded of that.

Referencing a specific person (or persons) doing specific things, rather than making sweeping generalizations about people we know little or nothing about, is the correct way to go about this - IMHO.

This is the point in being specific about who one has a problem with, and what that problem is, and that is what we prefer to do here.

There is a whole lotta hate being spread about whole groups of people pretty much anywhere you go on the Internet. I like it that Pagan Forum refuses to contribute to that.

[Denarius]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

Malflick doesn't make a pretense of believing the bible inerrant, so slapping him with contrary verses when he was reaching out to someone with kindness seems a rather underhanded thing to do. Again, just personal opinion. But I think that the rule being inconsistent isn't helpful to discussions like this. *I think* and *my opinion* being the operative words here, of course.

He was making an argument based on a premise, I saw a flaw in that premise and pointed it out. I meant no harm by it.

As for the rest, the bible is only an accepted source to discuss the bible. At that only the specific bible you are talking about. The fact of the matter is that Christianity is by no means consistent, to have a consistent rule governing the whole of it would be impractical on so many levels it's kind of absurd.

I go by my personal rule of using no weapons my opponent hasn't. If they quote scripture, then it is only fair to quote scripture back at them.

As for forum rules: "Please be courteous to your fellow members." and "Respect others as you would like to be respected." Simple enough.

[StormBringer]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

And suddenly, Internet cookies for SPhoenix.

[RainbowDemonic]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

In response to the OP, I chuckled at it. I remember when I was a kid, my parents had a lot of flack from other Christian parents around them for putting me into Karate for a while. That was back when they weren't douchebags about their faith and they just sort of rolled their eyes and kept me in it despite the crap they were getting. In the end I got pulled out not for faith-based reasons, but because I was a wild child and randomly decided to kick some other kid at school because apparently I decided kicking and punching was totally more fun than dress-up and Barbies, LOL.

As for off-topic stuff, I thought Malfick's apology for rude people within his faith was really sweet. Debates aside that's a pretty nice thing to say. Gave me warmfuzzyhappies.

[iflewoverthecuckoosnest]

Re: Beware! Yoga is the door to Satanic possession!

Haha, I've heard this from my parents many a time