Birthdays presented in a bad light?

Now Im not trying to make you mad just to get that straight, but I am trying to get you to rant.
Please tell me exactly why what I have said is wrong.

Has OP seen Zeitgeist The Greatest Story Ever Sold?

The problem I a trying to get you to see is that you are throwing objective words around like"wrong" in a completely relative situation. Especially when you're base assumptions are so shaky to begin with.
You are admitting yourself that christians are hypocrites that don't practice what they preach, so at least you understand that, but you are still continuing that preaching, saying that holidays with pagan roots are wrong to celebrate, or at least insinuating it. You are also basing your argument of the lack of moral justification of these celebrations on your religious beliefs, which automatically voids its logical validity, since your base assumption is unprovable and therefore logically unsound.

You are also assuming causality for the reason birthdays are celebrated on pagan tradition, while they are simply celebrations of the continuation of one's life through another year. I think the main confusion of the articles is that they assume that since pagan's were the first to celebrate birthdays (Duh, since the pagans were around much earlier than the christians) that it must be rooted in their pagan belief system, rather than a simple celebration.

Another issue I have is that you are simply making an assumption that pagan beliefs are inherently morally inferior to christian beliefs, saying that from a christian standpoint that paganism is a religious gutter, so to speak, and that any holidays they may have come up with are tainted by association. This is not only extremely arrogant for christians to assume (Big surprise there, Christianity promotes passive arrogance through the belief that God created all of this world for us to rule over) but ridiculous as well. Personally I support many pagan values over christian ones, like how many pagans (think ancient Greeks for example) promoted the values of valor, bravery and strength, while Christians promote the repulsive values of meekness, helplessness, and suffering.

If you need more of a rant, let me know so that I can continue later.

Great, because the entire history of a word can be compressed into the original language definition. Baggage doesn't happen.

Now try replying to the rest of my post.


Where do you get your sample groups? How many is "many", and what do you mean "(chock) full"? New rule: Specifics. All I'm reading is "everybody does it," again and again.

Being closed minded is not the measure of devotion. Jesus Christ preached acceptance and tolerance. "Judge not..."

We live in a wonderful world, full of keyboards, light and sound, and near every other technological doo-dad you can come up with. If you feel like backtracking any further, I suggest using the "delete" key a bit before posting.

Can't really pinpoint when, but I stopped caring about Birthdays and practically any holidays at all.

Although I got a small chuckle out of the fact that I spent my past two birthdays in the hospital after life-threatening accidents requiring intensive surgery.

But yeah- the only Holiday I really give a damn about is Remembrance day- Respect, yo.

The group of individual that I refer to so often are the majority of individuals of the Christian faith that I have met over the period of my life.

I thank you GroverCleaveland and Aud1o Blood for really kicking this subject off the way I wanted, my goal in my posts was to ignite a strong but not uncivilized reaction from the other posters which you have responded well to.

Now to add, pagans were indeed here much before any Christians even praised Christ, but to say we preach weakness and suffering is far from true. After some research I found that the bases of the bible is to serve as an example for its followers. the main leader being God, but the individual who was used to show the way was jesus.
This got me thinking if jesus is so important he must be the angel that was used by god most often.
So in the case of jesus being the best example for Christians to follow I found strength and valor. In front of Jesus captors who took him to his agonizing death he did not try to run showing fearlessness and strength, but with his angelic duties I figured he must be the angel used for the more important things like the 10 pleages since he is gods first born, most specifically the killing of all the first borns.
Therefore if a Christian preaches weakness he preaches the opposite of what jesus was, invalidating his own message.
As for meekness, Meekness means to be overly patient and docile. Each of which take much strength and patience along with self control which are all qualities that many believe to be good qualities in a friend or relative.
Personally I would love to have a friend who was both strong and patient at the same time, a person who lacked a hot temper and was open to reason.
Jesus was a man so he had felt rage and anger before, yet his patients gave him the quality of meekness which when wielded by him was anything but a bad quality.


Please respond as you have interested me with your reply's, and yes I would love to here you rant as you are an interesting person to read from.

But this isn't quite accurate, Jesus showed "fearlessness" which is not even remotely close to valor and strength. It brings to mind a quote from the author Patrick Rothfuss, who said "Only priests and fools are fearless" Jesus as depicted in the bible could be fearless, because he was the fucking son of god, and nothing wrong could happen to him that he didn't allow to happen, which shows how he actively allowed suffering into his life in his crucifixion. He even knew he would be betrayed by Judas, but he let it happen because he was fearless, a trait which is terrible to promote, because fear is very helpful, and very necessary to survival. So since Christians are supposed to follow the example left by jesus, then they will see that he suffered voluntarily, and that means that Christianity does in fact promote worldly suffering. There is a reason Nietzche called them "The death preachers".

I'm sorry that this thread is becoming more about the problems with christianity then birthdays though. It is generally unavoidable in threads of a religious nature.

Jesus did indeed show fear at his death those his outward appearance showed fearlessness because in the scripture he asked god to "remove this cup from me" in his prayers before they came and got him.
By no means did he want to die and was in fear of pain and death but he knew if he didn't die no one would be able to gain forgiveness for their sins because he was to be the ultimate sacrifice for mans sins. with this example he showed strength because he could have struck down those apposing him but he resisted and stayed his course.
And don't be sorry, just like any good conversation our topic has evolved and become more interesting and complex.

Please rant more

But that is exactly the point I am trying to make; Christianity depicts sacrifice (in this case the crucifixion of christ) in a good light, as the greatest thing that can be done on this earth to gain entry into heaven. To an atheist, this is the most repulsive and demented part about christianity, in that it says that suffering in this life will lead to salvation in the next, but since there is no next life, all the beliefs are doing is ensuring that people suffer and sacrifice and live unhappily throughout their lives, and then they die and that's that. You are also contradicting yourself, because earlier you said explicitly that Jesus was fearless, and now you are backtracking and saying that he was fearful. And the fact that he could have struck down those opposing him but didn't is exactly what I meant when I said nothing terrible could happen to him unless he allowed it to happen. And things like "he didn't want to die, but made that ultimate sacrifice for others" is exactly what I am talking about with the promotion of sacrifice and suffering, if a christian is to follow the example made by christ. Especially since it is completely ridiculous that Jesus dying somehow cleansed humanity of sin and helped anyone in any shape whatsoever. He just would have just died, and come back to life, and I didn't notice any change in the sins of humanity before or after that moment, so not only was his sacrifice useless, but it was detrimental, because it caused his followers to view sacrifice as a good thing.

The concept of self sacrafice goes beyond mere christianity. it's one of the keys to power over the masses. there can be no military with out self sacrafice.

also, Jesus Was a Terrorist.

I agree with this except for the military thing, since with enough propaganda and spin,(or if your military is advanced enough that you have very few casualties in battle) you can make the military seem like a benefit to those inside of it, like the US "Army Strong" ads, so that it is not seen as self sacrifice.

For me, birthdays were never important. My birthday is around the time school resumes after summer break, so I hardly looked forward to it. I haven't received a birthday present in over five years and I'm not bothered by it at all.

I always had a cake and blew out candles, but that was it. Exceptions were my 16th and 21st birthdays because I could drive and drink, respectively. At least then the birthday meant something besides not dying for another year.

Lesson Learned: Sometimes ignorance can be bliss. :eng101:

One should not let the opinions of others affect their views on a particular subject, and in this case, birthdays. Celebrating birthdays can be for a good cause too; we could show our appreciation for the birthday boy/girl on this very day. Some may argue that the same can be done on any other day, but birthdays also provide a good excuse for family and friends to meet up, especially if everyone is busy with their own schedules.

touche.

the only birthdays that i ever payed attention to were 18 and 21. 18 meant younger girls were off limits, and 21 meant i could buy alcahol.

There is no real reason to celebrate becoming a year coser to your demise. Birthdays are a silly concept designed to give you an extra day off work every year.

A day off work every year... Hey I think im starting to like them now... Lol

I'm a Christian and even I don't believe that Christ was really born on the 25 of December. I personally believe that its in early April. But I'm not catholic... So honestly I don't know what catholics think about when Jesus was born. Also, for me birthdays are just an opportunity to give and get- not to glorify myself or another human being. So the fact that pagans celebrated birthdays doesn't really means anything seeing as it probably had a different name. Also, BTW, Easter is not based on any pagan holiday, just Christmas. And I'm not a devil worshiper just a protestant Christian. (btw you guys should be specific when you talk about Christians- what type do you mean, because it's like five different faiths with the same name.) And yes I do not think that you are dumb if you have another religion and I COMPLETELY agree that many (if not most) Christian religious leaders are hypocrites. It is really hard to find someone who really believes what they say they believe these days, whether it be in Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, all types of Christianity (especially catholicism)... Konan_09 is right- that's basically what birthdays are now.