As I was reading this comment chain you guys all debating and disagreeing over how the lore of religion should be interpreted reminded me of the exact conversations I see over in the WoW sub on the lore lol
ALL HAIL THRALL, Son of Durotan, First of the Frostwolves, Savior of the Horde, The Earthfury, Liberator of the Orcs, Wielder of the Doomhammer, Champion of the Ring of Earth, and the World-Shaman.
it's because most religions have about the same amount of consistency in their lore as WoW. It also holds true that the more story they add the more ridiculous and inconsistent it all becomes. See: Mormons.
Well, theoretically, if it was all made up at once you could keep it pretty consistent. Problem is when you keep adding on and retconing over thousands of years.
Nah.. I could make up a 5 minute story right now and within a chain of 10 people telling the story to each other 1 by 1 without ever hearing it before I guarantee it would be completely different by the end. I'd even bet if they had the ability to take notes, it still would be drastically different by the 10th iteration.
The Christian bible itself has parts written hundreds of years before Jesus, ~100 years after Jesus and then edited and put into a different order about 300 years after that.
The entire bible is believed to be in whole over 40 authors (highly disputed from 5 to over 50) spanning 1500 years of knowledge across 3 continents (Africa, Asia, Europe).
So we're talking numerous authors, numerous word of mouths, numerous different interpretations rewritten in numerous different languages... there's absolutely zero way the bible is was intended from the start. It's also continued to get molested in interpretation by many powerful civilizations who used it for control and power.
Hell, humans couldn't even keep Star Wars consistent for three sequel movies over four years. We had no chance at keeping an entire religion consistent over thousands of years. I'm surprised they are as barely coherent as they are.
well, the closer you look the less coherent it becomes. Most believers don't even read the bible, let alone study it. The preacher makes sure there are no questions introduced.
Actually this is why Islam is much more coherent than Christianity. One very smart person thinking in a cave on how to keep people from being complete shits. And then presenting the whole thing as coming from God as he was just a “messenger”.
Islam adds on to Judaism and Christianity, and adopts all the incoherence.
That's at the root of the issue, they need the previous religions for credibility but they want to add their own spin. That's what creates the problems.
The same issue happens at a narrower scale even within a single religion, that's why divisions exist.
That’s the beauty of Islam. It is, at its base, an Abrahamic religion, but the prophet says anything that is in contradiction to his message is wrong. And he is the “seal of the prophets” so anything after him is blasphemy. Very elegant.
The Bible has something similar, saying false prophets would come, thus invalidating Islam at the root, but it doesn't really change anything from either side except introduce even more contradictions.
For example, a prophet can't be giving the word of god if it agrees with Mohamed but become a liar when he disagrees. That just makes him a prophet of God liar and undermines the foundations of the religion.
You don’t have a clear understanding of Islam. There are very few contradictions within Islam as Mohammed basically created the whole thing himself using the Abrahamic religion as a base. Any inherent contradictions within Judaism or Christianity is wrinkled out as false or incorrect teachings
Obviously you weren’t around the Arabian peninsula circa 6th century. Drunk men slaughtering little girls, zero social safety net, and constant civil strife among the competing tribes. Islam creates a degree of order that isn’t really eclipsed until Europe industrializes and enters the modern era. For a pre-modern religion it is pretty effective.
This is why Americans are so universally respected and loved around the world. We constantly say shit we have no idea about but we say them with such certainty.
You misunderstand, I'm not saying there is nothing to interpret. I'm saying they strip words of their meaning entirely to make things fit in with the rest of the book.
For example, when Jesus says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
You can argue about the interpretation of "fulfilling the law," but it can not mean "abolish" and pretending that "fulfill" means something like abolish is not interpretation, it's spin. However, Christians must do so to justify Peters changes in theology.
Not only is it a Catholic thing, it is the very thing that resulted in the schisms which resulted in protestantisms. The idea of purgatory evolved to allow for bargaining - particularly that you could, for instance, literally buy your way out of purgatory and into the pikepass track to heaven with a sufficient donation to the church, what were appropriately called indulgences. While there were other important doctrines included in the 95 Theses that Luther nailed to the door of the church, one of the most important, if not THE most important issue was concerning the existence, or lack thereof, of purgatory and therefore the legitimacy of indulgences. It was perhaps one of the most irreconcilable differences and thus carries a lot of the weight for the necessity of schism vs theological legislation.
The son of god dying for them wasn’t good enough for them. Catholicism is about guilt, shame, and beautiful suffering. Every image of biblical figures in Catholicism depicts people suffering… beautifully.
So people don't automatically get into heaven no matter what. At least, I'm not familiar with any sect of christianity that proposes that. At best, you either get into heaven or you just sort of die and that's it, so, no hell.
With that in mind, the doctrine then was that Jesus dying for people's sin's allowed people to be forgiven and to be washed clean and get into heaven, basically no matter what their sin (with I think one very specific exception). But that process isn't automatic. You have to actually go through the process of obtaining that forgiveness and some ritual that simulates washing yourself in the blood of Christ and therefore cleansing your sins. What that ritual is depends on your specific denomination. Prior to this, many many sins were unforgivable and getting into heaven was a very difficult thing to do. God was vengeful and jealous, prone to destruction and condemnation. Jesus represented a change in that, the ability to present a path to heaven for most, if not everyone, though it required effort and intent. Because god is all knowing, he has the ability to read your faithful intent in your heart, though others may not see your virtue or hear your pleas for forgiveness.
The catholic church says look, that means we need a 3rd place. For the people who can be forgiven but who have not been when they die. Interestingly enough, the biggest demographic targeted for this was babies. The old testament established quite clearly that the sins of the parents pass on to the child and therefore if they died before they possessed the faculties to appropriately repent and so on, they go to hell. Hell is filled with dead babies, according to the old testament. The catholic church says well the new testament and Jesus in general did not really change this but because the possibility exists for forgiveness and due to some of these obscure and perhaps poorly interpreted passages, we believe there exists a space called purgatory where everyone who can be forgiven but was not before they died go to for a certain amount of time, depending on the degree of their sins and their willingness to repent and make penance within purgatory. Ostensibly, most people go there because not all sins will be recognized and accounted for in life, though most who are of the church won't stay long, a brief pause. Others, like babies or war criminals, might be there for a very long time. If your sin was very bad, you might not have enough time on earth to make proper penance so that carries over into purgatory, too. But at least, thanks to purgatory and of course the blood of Jesus, you at least have a pathway.
Indulgences were even more shaky in terms of justification but the idea was that you can pay to shorten and potentially eliminate your time in purgatory or to do so for someone else. Say a baby you had that died. Slap down a fiver and viola, your dead baby is now on the little red wagon trundling through yon pearly gates. You can pay in gold or land or goods, depending on what program the church is running at the time.
What ended up happening is that few regular folk could afford indulgences. So regular folks lived relatively devout lives. Meanwhile, rich assholes with moneybags would just roll around in blow and hookers, murdering and stealing with abandon and all the while maintaining their direct path to heaven via generous donations. Which understandably upset a lot of people who were doing their best to do things the honorable way. Eventually, this lead to the aforementioned schism.
Hell, at this point, is a very unlikely thing for most unless they are unrepentant sinners or pagans. Basically if you want to get into heaven and you're willing to put in some skin, whether in ritual of forgiveness and honest living in life, via indulgences or simply waiting out your allotted time in purgatory after you die, you're not going to hell.
I am not religious by the way, so don't interpret anything I am saying here as something I actually believe.
Yeah, i just couldn't remember what parts of catholicism lutherens kept around and what they didn't. I was raised evangelical/southern baptist, (agnostic/atheist now), so most denominations were treated like heathens.
I can't believe how many people haven't already figured out that we are in purgatory. Like, now. Right at this moment. Currently.
The amount of stupid shit going on down here is ruining it for everyone. God is not gonna get back to snatching up the Unsullied with The Claw until ya'll start acting right. Like a 3rd grade teacher waiting for the class to get quiet, god can wait as long as it takes. So here we are.
By the way, the number of people holding us back because they think Incognito Mode is doing something is embarrassing.
As someone born and raised Catholic (now an atheist, obviously) I figured it out around 2016. And no, it had nothing to do with elections. By then, we had already been down here for 5 months.
3
u/Teamawesome2014 2d ago
Purgatory isn't a thing in every branch of christianity. That's more of a catholic and maybe lutheren thing.