Defending the Truth

I think all religions have costumes, don't they? None of it matters to me, except in that these pagan practices foreshadow some of the "Christian" ones.

The fear of the feminine and the power women have over men is a long tradition that perhaps even pre-dates the bible itself. The bible does position women as something to be feared. It was the Bible that whas been used in the past to give women less rights, it was the reason that women were property of marriage (despite the crap that may appear on this board) traditional marriage is women as property...women as not property is a pecularity of the 20th century and we reinterpreatted the bible to suit our changing views of marriage...

We see it in the garden it was woman that corrupted man by tempting him with the apple which is symbolism for sex and self knowledge/awareness...the idea continues throughout the Bible...almost every instance of a women being mentioned you will see some form of often menancing symbolism surrounding her or she not being of much worth or disobeying some rule or other and men being punished for it and then rewarded when they made their wife obey or they ignored their wife and did what God wanted..other then Mary who was a virgin..she was one of many 'virgins' that had children during the era we call biblical, so called virgin births were common....

the Bible is a book written by men..ancient parochical men but men nontheless..so they wrote a book which included their own fear of women and the feminine..to this day being perceived as 'feminized' in some way or other is an insult to men..hence we get people saying rather disparaging things about gay men for example ...as if calling a gay man gay is actually insulting or something..the logic of doing so escapes me..however they do it so they equate gay men with feminine qualities whereas in actuality there are no feminine qualities between 2 men...but its the fear of the feminine/woman that turns it into an insult or attempt to insult..basically men are a bunch of insecure children

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Only Christianity offers hope for our daily lives on this earth, and for the eternal life to come. Of course not everybody believes that, but those who do have something no other faith can offer.

Unfortunately, that is simply a belief on your part. There are definitely aspects of all religions that are perfectly capable of offering the same as Christianity. The problem with all of them is that their followers aren't actually following the "real" aspects of their faiths. It is as if it's all the frosting and no cake. Most of the esoteric teachings that lead to spiritual transformation or transcendence are not taught to the followers, because many of their leaders are themselves unaware of the "secret" teachings given to those who were deemed ready. What's left today is a shell of what the real teachings were.

Your mind is closed to anything that has not been indoctrinated into it, Gary. It is ridiculous to believe that Christianity offers the only way to spiritual transcendence, and it's very arrogant to believe that people today have half of an inkling as to the true meaning of Christ's teachings. Every religion has an esoteric or mystic aspect that cannot be thrown to the side because one religion says so. To ignore that is to misunderstand a great many lessons. Try to understand what the real, inner tradition is teaching you, and leave the political, divisiveness behind. You'll only be the better for it. The difference is like the way we teach preschool vs. the way we teach college. What a preschooler cannot comprehend, a college student can. Levels, you know?

Get rid of that Mrs. Beasley avatar. I wish to see your pretty smiling face again.