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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:11 PM
Original message
Priest says "Hell" is an invention of the church to control people with fear
 
Run time: 03:17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtIREJVPfQY
 
Posted on YouTube: April 16, 2011
By YouTube Member: AlphaMindControl
Views on YouTube: 54838
 
Posted on DU: December 05, 2011
By DU Member: begin_within
Views on DU: 3832
 
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Lionessa Donating Member (842 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:14 PM
Response to Original message
1. DUH! Actually, super DUH!
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:16 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. But for a former Bishop (Episcopal) to speak out like that is kind of unusual.
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Lionessa Donating Member (842 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:19 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. True they are not known for their
intelligence or honesty in the matter, pick your choice. Either they are entirely daft and really don't get it, or they get it, but like the manipulation it allots them upon others, generally.

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xchrom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:22 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. i don't think that's so unusual in the episcopal tradition.
we have had these kinds of thinkers before -- he's not the first person in the anglican/episcopal communion to say things like this.

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roguevalley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 04:04 PM
Response to Reply #2
16. good for him. original sin and hell have no place from a god of
peace and love and his best teachers, Jesus and Buddha and the rest.
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bullimiami Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #1
7. Yeah. I was thinking this came from the no shit department as well.
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xchrom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:20 PM
Response to Original message
4. ...
:applause:
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tularetom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:23 PM
Response to Original message
6. Ya think?
Some of us figured that out when we were kids.

Kind of like the religious version of the "permanent record" they used to threaten you with in school.
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lumpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 01:04 PM
Response to Reply #6
13. I was one of those kids. Although I was raised and confirmed
in the Episcopal Church,I went along with the ceremony. I found spiritual freedom when I decided to take Christ's advice and believe as a child, that is to continue in the path of wonderment with out having the answer. The sweet mystery of life is not knowing the answer.
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supernova Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:26 PM
Response to Original message
8. I love John Shelby Spong
:D

He's such a treasure.

"Maybe salvation ought to be expressed in terms of becoming more fully human..."

I love that.
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xchrom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:32 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. he is so smart -- love him. nt
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Jackpine Radical Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:29 PM
Response to Original message
9. I know at least one Catholic priest who would say the same thing.
As for the Episcopal types, there's always Bishop Spong, you know.

Here, from Wikipedia:

Spong's writings rely on Biblical and non-Biblical sources and are influenced by modern critical analysis of these sources (see especially Spong, 1991). He is representative of a stream of thought with roots in the medieval universalism of Peter Abelard and the existentialism of Paul Tillich, whom he has called his favorite theologian.<5>
A prominent theme in Spong's writing is that the popular and literal interpretations of Christian scripture are not sustainable and do not speak honestly to the situation of modern Christian communities. He believes in a more nuanced approach to scripture, informed by scholarship and compassion, which can be consistent with both Christian tradition and contemporary understandings of the universe. He believes that theism has lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature. He states that he is a Christian because he believes that Jesus Christ fully expressed the presence of a God of compassion and selfless love and that this is the meaning of the early Christian proclamation, "Jesus is Lord" (Spong, 1994 and Spong, 1991). Elaborating on this last idea he affirms that Jesus was adopted by God as his predilect son, thus embracing (at least at linguistic level) a form of the ancient adoptionist heresy (Born of a Woman 1992), and yet in an orthodox way he says that this would be the way God was fully incarnated in Jesus Christ..<1> He rejects the historical truth claims of some Christian doctrines, such as the Virgin Birth (Spong, 1992) and the bodily resurrection of Jesus (Spong, 1994). In 2000, Spong was a critic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church's declaration Dominus Iesus, because it reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church.<6>


12 Points:
Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
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AmericaIsGreat Donating Member (611 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:51 PM
Response to Original message
11. That's very nice and all but
Edited on Mon Dec-05-11 12:52 PM by AmericaIsGreat
Unless he rejects the Bible as the inspired word of god then he is simply adopting his own version of the faith and, while I have no issue with it and would encourage more people to do it, he might as well no longer call himself a Christian.

I think the priest is simply coming closer to realizing that there's no way the creator of the universe can be as miserable, vile, and cruel as the one in the bible. But if you're going to believe that, then to continue to claim he is still the Christian god, just not like the one in the bible, seems foolish. The most logical conclusion is that he doesn't exist and never did, not that he definitely does but the Bible just misquoted him.
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ET Awful Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 01:52 PM
Response to Reply #11
15. Not necessarily. In most cases, the word "hell" was translated from the Hebrew word
Edited on Mon Dec-05-11 01:53 PM by ET Awful
Sheol which simply means "the grave". The concept of a fiery hell came later and after translations meant to empower the church over the people. If you truly wish to consider the Bible as the inspired word of God, then you must consider it so in it's original form, a modified English translation which alters the original text can not be said to be the inspired word of God if it has been altered from the text that was written by the authors.
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deutsey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-06-11 10:31 AM
Response to Reply #11
21. He wrote an interesting book a few years ago called Saving the Bible From Fundamentalists
I'd recommend if you're interested in finding out more about what he thinks of the Bible.

From what I remember, he was inspired to write the book after a debate he had with Jerry Falwell. He also wrote Why Christianity Must Change or Die (but I haven't read that one).

Regarding his status as a Christian: I know Christians (even more mainline ones) who think Spong is a heretic, although he believes (from what I remember of his book) that he's being true to the spirit of the example of Jesus presented in the Gospels, and not to the literalism of biblical orthodoxy.

Here's more about him here: http://johnshelbyspong.com/about-bishop-spong/

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patrice Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 12:53 PM
Response to Original message
12. Thank you Bishop Spong.
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msongs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 01:46 PM
Response to Original message
14. how peculiar that the "gods" seem to have the exact same personalities as....humans lol nt
Edited on Mon Dec-05-11 01:46 PM by msongs
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Sky Masterson Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 04:20 PM
Response to Original message
17. Thank you!
:applause:
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lindysalsagal Donating Member (444 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-11 11:04 PM
Response to Original message
18. In less evolved times, the direct threat method served its purpose. Nowadays,
when we know the earth circles the sun and it's round and spring will come back without an annual human sacrifice, the entire voo doo of religion makes me scratch my head.

So, take me out and burn me at the stake.. That'll do it.
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bowens43 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-06-11 05:38 AM
Response to Original message
19. so is heaven....
religion was created by man to manipulate and control the ignorant and the frightened. It's so sad that in this day and age people are willing to kill and die for for gods whose existence is supported by about the same amount of evidence as Santa Claus.
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mmonk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-06-11 08:43 AM
Response to Original message
20. I saw this posted from a Facebook friend. It was interesting.
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