Their tribal nations weren't based on land and geography, they were based on family ties

Yeah. That’s a difficult concept to understand too.

And they didn't all fight us. A lot of them allied with us because they hated the other tribe, the enemy of my enemy is my friend

Exactly.

Wonder why they commit more crimes than any other group nowadays

To bring this back to religion... Those people would still be that way if not for devout Christians converting them.

Ever been to Saint Augustine?

There's a Catholic museum there, you'd like it even not being Catholic

Old artifacts from the first Christians here, paintings etc

When the Spanish first landed, the priest held mass on the beach there to thank God they made it across

Georgia right? I’ve never been. I think my parents have before.

Can't remember his name

But when he was having mass, the natives came out of the woods

And all mimicked what the congregation was doing, making sign of the cross, kneeling etc

So the priest actually used the Lord's Prayer to teach them an alphabet. They didn't have any system of writing before

He just matched Latin alphabet with the sounds of their spoken language

That’s awesome.

I knew they were taught reading/writing by the settlers. From my understanding it was mostly the clergy that did it.

Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales

That was his name

I went to it three years ago, it was pretty awesome

It's in Florida btw, not Georgia

Oh. My bad lol.

Gah I should know that too

This is on my bucket list

It's usually referred to in the west as a Buddhist pagoda

Yeah it looks like it.

But it's well known in China for what it really is

Old catholic place?

It faces east. Buddhist and Taoist temples only face north or south

I know Christianity spread to the east.

Interesting.

Actually it's Nestorian

Not familiar with that term.

There's a painting of the nativity on the walls inside

I've been to two Buddhist temples. They don't have nativity scenes.

Yeah. Wouldn’t make sense to have one.

Nestorians believed that there was a distinction between the human nature and divine nature of Jesus

Nestorius who came up with the idea was the Patriarch of Constantinople in the 5th century

So it was deemed heresy, and his followers moved eastward, as far as China, and built the church in the photo in 640 AD

Oh that’s cool.

The Tang Dynasty was cool with Christianity, but later dynasties persecuted it severely

Still do, don’t they?

Chinese that is.

Not since Mao died

It's a foregone conclusion to them that God exists, just like gravity

Always has been

Meaning they believe God exists?

Dunno if you could necessarily call them Christian, but the existence of God, Jesus, and Heaven are just as accepted as the rotation of the earth

Church however, isn't a big thing. The only legal churches are government agencies basically

Interesting. I thought I had read recent government persecution of Christian churches in China.

Three Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants, and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church for us

The problem is that the government doesn't see any difference in church and nonchurch

It doesn't get a special respect or status

Ah

Officially to join the party you must be atheist. And party membership is required for any higher government position or "elected" office

Interesting that their society accepts God as real, but also accepts that their rulers renounce God.

To non-believers there, or even just people who don't practice Christianity, being Christian is something of a novelty to them. When I met my wife's family and she told them I'm Catholic, they automatically assumed I must be a good guy

Because in their view, every Christian follows Christian principles. Don't lie or steal etc

Oh

Interesting.

Their lack of church worship comes from antiquity. The early Chinese followed the exact same religion as pre-Mosaic Hebrews. This is accepted as simple historical fact to them

And of course Abraham didn't go to church

So the act of Sunday worship and going to church never became important to them, since they lacked a Bible and basically just learned about God by oral tradition

"God is in heaven and can see what you do, so be good, don't make him mad or your life is gonna suck" is pretty much their whole religion for centuries

Really? That’s neat.

They often call it "heaven worship" and for them there's a very blurry distinction between God and Heaven

So would they have gotten their “Hebrew” traditions from like the Tower of Babel split?

In fact their word for God is just "Lord of heaven"

Yeah basically

I suppose the first of them may have realized "this tower was a bad idea, I should probably go worship God now and not be an idiot"

Yeah lol

As far as secular knowledge goes, is there an explanation for that?

I know from human migration patterns, everyone migrated from around Turkey and moved to everywhere in the eastern hemisphere.

One branch to Europe, one to Africa, and one to the Far East.

They even performed the same sacrifice as the ancient Hebrews until 1911

Wow. So sacrificing sheep and stuff?

Yep

It's called the border sacrifice

It's done at a huge temple in Beijing. Which is not at the border

So what could it be referring to? The border between heaven and earth maybe

上帝

Shang di

Sounds pretty close to El shaddai

God chose the Jews instead, I think not because they were better, but because they were worse. They needed more help

Notice how in the Bible they are always screwing up and descending into polytheism

That is neat.

Well yeah lol

Just when you think they got their act together, they do it again

Goober bunch of Jews lol

But they still were the like the only ones that seemed to really follow the directions anyways.

If you have two sons, and one is good but the other is bad, who do you give more rules to? The bad one. You don't have to tell the good one what to do, he just does it.

God didn't give 500+ rules to the non-Jews. He gave them seven.

No idols. Don't curse God. Establish courts. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't eat from a live animal.

Except, everyone else did all those things he told the Jews not to do.

In Judaism, nonJews are considered righteous if they just follow those seven, and have a place in "the world to come"

Yeah, like wear clothes made from two different fabrics

Like child sacrifice and everything.

Well it's pretty clear, in "don't murder" that you can't sacrifice children

Well those rules were really to distinguish them from the world. The fabrics.

Yeah lol

Of course a lot of other civilizations broke those rules

The rules of don’t murder apply to everyone. Were probably taught by Adam and Eve.

Yeah

The rest of the list is really a set of rules to set them apart from everyone else.

About to drive home. I’ll get back to this in like 30 minutes.

The only one of those rules that was new is the courts. The other six existed since Adam

Before we get to talking past each other. Which seven are you talking about? Like the seven deadly sins? Being Protestant, I default to the 10 commandments.

Commandments as the rules for everyone.

The other rules are basically to set up a society like God wants, that’s separate from the rest of the sinful world and easily recognized.

Seven laws of Noah. Basically the commandments before the commandments

The commandments given to Noah after the flood

This is called the Eight Immortals

Eight people sailed on a boat from heaven to create China

When you see how long those people lived, they might as well have been immortal. Noah's father Lamech actually lived while Adam was still alive

At the border sacrifice the emperor would say this prayer, "Of old in the beginning there was great chaos without form and dark. The five planets had not begun to revolve nor the sun and the moon to shine. In the midst thereof there existed neither forms nor sound. Thou, Oh Spiritual Sovereign, came forth in Your presidency, and first divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made the heavens and the earth. You made man. All things with their reproductive power came into being."

Sounds kinda familiar

Ok, not familiar with the seven laws of Noah. Do you have the verses for them?

Genesis 9

The Chinese thing is pretty cool. I know most civilizations have flood stories.

Beginning of the chapter

Ok thanks I’ll dig that up lol

But that’s like Genesis 1 in their prayer.

There's an OLD poem known to this day with the Miao people, an ethnic minority

Biologically they're the same as Han, Zhuang etc. But they have different social traditions and still live in a primitive way

They're extremely hospitable though

In the poem, it specifically tells the creation story, flood story, and tower

Oh wow

At their funerals they read the deceased's genealogy. All the way back to Adam.

Yeah I’d like to see that if you have it.

In their flood story it's very specific. Noah and 40 days

Yeah that’s interesting.

Miao didnt write it down. You'd have to ask them yourself

They do elaborate on some things not recorded in the Bible, at least not that I remember

They specify at the tower, the world was divided into six languages

It's certainly possible, and then those six evolved and split into many more

Well damn. So it’s an oral only then?

Yep

They were saying it before the Bible was even written

Well that sucks lol. Make them write it down 🤣

Yeah. Which is very interesting.

Oh you could just ask them. They're really friendly

Yeah. But that means going to China 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣

If you showed up in a Miao village they would all beg you to come stay at their house and feed you

in their version, did the Flood happen because of the Watchers' presence on earth

or rather, a reason for the Flood

It gives a reason yes

Didn't do God's will or return God's affection

Fought with each other

so it isn't super specific

i wanted to hear their take on

the nephilim and stuff

lol

it is very interesting that they talk of the Deluge though

It's an oral tradition

Actually I'm not even sure they CAN write

Literacy in China is like 92%

That is pretty cool though. Those similarities.

Thanks to 400,000+ characters

yea that'd be a lot to learn

The bitch of it is, they are heiroglyphics. There is absolutely no way to determine the sounds from reading. It's all memorization

Sometimes, but not always, you can determine meaning

田 is a field for example.

人 is person

yea, ik about the lack of sound

which means diff areas of china can pronounce it drastically different ways, and they may not understand one another

but the writing is uniform

Yup

Japanese use the same characters, same meanings, completely different sounds

Chinese is a tonal language. The pronunciation of a word changes the meaning

And the character

马妈 are both ma. First is horse, second is mom

The second one is made of woman + horse

What horse has to do with motherhood, no idea

吗 is mouth + horse...and it basically means question mark

Most Western inventions don't even have a word. Like helicopter, computer, etc

Helicopter = 直升机 = direct rise machine

Doesn’t Japanese use modern western words instead of making up their own too?

I also read an article that studied languages and found that several geographical locations, after the migration, have derivatives of Noah and his family for names. Like rivers and mountains.

yes, the japanese seemingly do like loan words lol

There’s a video I watched part of where this American(white) kid and Japanese guy talk to people on the street using English words. The street people can’t understand the English words from the American kid. It’s pretty funny.

Yes kinda

Japanese did copy some words from us

You can also see that in the Korean dialects

South uses a loanword for helicopter

North uses a long phrase "flying machine that can take off and land vertically" or something

Occasionally the north has Russian loanwords too

I think it's political reasons for Chinese and NK, they didn't want to copy a word from America so they had to work around it

Like even in Chinese, they don't have a word for car...it's literally the same word they use to refer to a CHARIOT

车

A lot of geographic names in China are silly, like "mountain with trees on top"

Christmas in Japanese is

Kurisumasu

which is obviously just a loan word

Yeah

There's a lot of words like that

After the Meiji restoration the Japanese were fascinated with everything foreign

It wasn't until the 30s when they became really hostile to the outside world

Japan is a weird one. China is as well.

Yep

Like an upside down backwards parallel world

https://youtu.be/ZBELgO3MVY4

Rev up those crosses

Meh it's stil going to go bac k adn forth, rep to dem

the fact hillary is starting to go to rallies (outside her breathing treatmetns) is proof

If Hillary loses 2 times in a row to Trump she is finished

Better off waiting till 2024

This is why I don't take Atheist pages seriously.

Nowhere, in the passage, does it indicate that God was "confused." What is indicated in the passage is that God heard that some crazy shit was going down in Sodom and Gomorrah and, just to make sure things were, indeed, correct, he went down there to see for himself.

Basically, it's kind of like hearing about a pretty nasty car accident on a nearby interstate. So, you're curious to see if the story is actually completely true and you check to see what was going on. That, in no way, indicates "confusion," but rather curiosity and the need for confirmation.

atheist republic is a page for cucks

if they actually understood anything about God, they would know you cannot actually apply human-like characteristics to God -- they are merely a tool to help *us* understand Him

Also, Atheists are clearly leftists because they don't know how to meme.

Honestly, this is one arguing point I have come to hate because it is based entirely on feelings and ignorance than actually thinking about the issue in question and the issues an omnipotent god would face.

It isn't about whether the immediate action, itself, should be stopped, but rather the totality of the possible effects that would be altered by simply changing one event, which fundamentally results in the question becoming one of such complexity that no human could answer it without the answer being based on pure ignorance.

Stopping the action could actually be more detrimental than letting the action occur because the action, in question, could end up resulting in two radically different timelines that could both result in either a net positive or a net negative change. If you were a god and you had the omnipotence that a god has, then the decision would be much clearer because you would know every single result of the action down to the tiniest detail. In such a case, it depends on what results in a net positive overall if you are a benevolent god.

If God existed, he would be so gay

you're gay, manthot

I needed that meme.

For that Sodom one if God is omniscient why did he not already know about it or that they were telling the truth?

For the rapist one thats just stupid. God doesnt make anyone do anything just observes. Free choice and all that.

But that sodom one really makes it sound like god was an advanced life form or Demiurge rather than an omnipotent omniscient being

it probably is written in a way to invoke the seriousness of the situation in Sodom, rather than to accurately describe God's reaction to it

It breaks omniscience on 3 levels. 1 God had to be told, 2 God didnt simply know and 3 God needed to go there.

On top of that why would you lie about your Gods reactions to something? Its one thing to lie but to me it seems like quite another to misattribute actions to your God whose core tenets is to be truthful in their holy scripture.

This brings up 2 problems. God is not omniscient and the book is factual or that the writers took liberty and wrote in a way that would inspire awe. This means that God either isnt truely god like or the nature of God is uncertain because the book is untruthful.

why would you *know* God's immediate reaction

God's nature is incomprehensible

a book, no matter how insightful, isn't going to be able to accurately portray that

the Bible is a book written by humans for humans

God is omniscient, but, as it is a concept founded in something as abstract as knowing all things at all times, you're not going to get a truly accurate representation of that

Then the book forsakes the commandments put forth by their God about bearing fasle witness and cannot be trusted.

This would mean that the nature of God, to include its very existence, is uncertain even when referencing the very book written to exalt it.

I'm not saying they knew the immediate action but if God was all powerful none of those actions would have happened. Furthermore if NONE of those actions happened its a book of lies and brings the whole religion into question.

That the source calls God all powerful is untrustworthy, untruthful, immediately brings accounts of other things into doubt. Things like there being a heaven or hell could be grossly untrue and things like Jesus' miracles could be exaggerated or never happened.

1. Omniscience does not imply just because God knows everything He acts on it beforehand. Do not try to act like you can understand God's motives or logic.
2. There is a fundamental difference between "bearing false witness" and drawing parallels to humanlike emotions, actions, and things that can be understood more easily by humans to the incomprehensible nature of God. As I have said prior, you cannot put what is infinite into a finite container. You cannot fully encapsulate or acknowledge what is infinite, because our understanding of all things is limited. You can not describe the true nature of God, but you can help to understand some, limited version of Him through applying relatable things, such as human emotions (i.e. God is angry), or physical features (God's Hand) -- because that helps us, as humans, understand Him better, even though we can never truly begin to understand His TRUE nature. That is not "bearing false witness".

Under the pretense of God's omnipotence, He cannot exist within the confines of Creation -- within the limitations of the Universe. To be the creator of all things, He has to exist outside of space and time.

You are looking at this far too rigidly and must look at it from a non-black and white point of view. It is not something simple that is "either, or" -- it is something more complex than that.

now i am going to sleep soon

1. It does mean that he would know when it did happen, that if people knew about it he would to, and that he would not need to travel to see if it was true and to what degree.

2. Even if you twist the meaning like that it still means that the book isnt true. It was written by people with far less wisdom than the average person today, trying to describe something that even we could not know, and doing so in a way that only conveys what they want us to know rather than what actually happened.

That the book is what labels him as all powerful and the book is untrue which bring that into doubt.

I get the concept of God and it wouldnt match up to whats written. God cant be known but they clearly know whomever it is they are actually referencing.

"God" spoke to them directly and did so in exactly the manner that a non omniscient entity would. Furthermore outside of the bible "God" no longer speaks to anyone though its obvious he had to in the past. Why did he stop?

God was speaking. If they did not record it as spoken that sounds like lieing to me.

While it is possible that God did everything in a way that calls doubt its much more likely that it simply was a ploy for gaining power. Especially because of how strict the belief system is.

Taken as written it is 100% logical to doubt it. Anyone who hasnt been groomed heavily to "have faith" or believe "you can't know god" will come to that conclusion or something similar.

What I and other agnostics and atheists see is that people are lying. That it is a book of people being people in a bid for power.

If the book was truthful it wouldnt be open for interpretation. Doing so has believers lying and in some causes committing murder over difference of opinions among themselves.

Not saying you have to agree with my viewpoint but at the very least you would say that it could be possible and or that it isnt an unreasonable viewpoint to hold.