EagleCherokee63, CyberRed, SmileyGin, Momoftwo
I'm a Christian; but when Christian people put together stories that carry a death threat against others who don't share the same beliefs or worship the same God, this is very un-Christian-like.
This makes me (a Christian) want to challenge your own individual beliefs--obviously so biased, slanted, and skewed as Guido stated. Maybe you should ask yourself two questions:
1. Do you believe in Christianity because you were raised by parents and the community to believe that way? Remember, what gets reinforced early on in childhood may require self-examination to find if you've been programmed that way, or because you made it out of a conscious and self-educated decision-making process. As kids, our brains are much more easily brainwashed.
2. Or have you chosen Christianity out of an educated decision, with knowledge of other religions and cultures not taught to you by your own church?
Believe me, this article itself is hypocritical and unethical.
Ask yourself this also:
3. If you were raised in a different culture and different religion such as Buddhism or Judaism or Egyptian Heliolatry (Sun Worship), would've you been brainwashed just as easily into saying they are correct about everything just because they tell you so?
(*A closer look at our language tells us that even the term 'right' is biased, because in the English language, it has a positive definition, and the term 'left' has a negative definition. "Throughout history being left-handed was considered as negative - the Latin word sinister meant 'left'. Hence the many negative connotations associated with the word "left-handed": clumsy, awkward, unlucky, insincere, sinister, malicious, and so on." That is why I usually choose the word "correct" instead of "right" when I refer to something as being correct.)
Have you heard of the word enthocentrism, which is a word taught in cultural anthropology?
Ethnocentrism. That link has some good info worth reading, because it brings to light something that should be very obvious but that most people don't know because they are trapped "in the box" so to speak. As Einstein once said, "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
The term ethnocentricity was coined by William Graham Sumner, a social evolutionist and professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. He defined it as the viewpoint that “one’s own group is the center of everything,” against which all other groups are judged. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion.
4. Take a moment and ask yourself: "Does Ethnocentricism apply to me or not?"
Think of this when it comes to religion.
You just might be surprised.
