Jesus & Horus. Coincidence?

Quote: FrGamble

By the way Ghandi and Martin Luther King, both fervent believers in God, don’t have to be Catholic for their considerable example and witness to be used to show the power of martyrdom, sacrifice, and love for all people. In my mind they are saints along with Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa is about as deserving of sainthood as Saint George was.

Quote: Pacomartin

In mainstream USA history and in Protestant thought in general, martyrdom or iconography is not front and center. Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" is about as close as American history comes to a martyr.

Abraham Lincoln.

Quote:

I am completely unaware of martyrs in traditional Jewish theology.

I don't think there are any. Latter Jewish ideology values life rather strongly. One symbol popularly worn and displayed by Jews here and there is the "Chai" which is the Hebrew word for "life" (it strikes me now this is very much like the Egyptian "Ankh"). To be sure, Sampson died striking at his captors. Jehovah didn't lead his people into the promised land until he had punished Moses for a tantrum, by having him die before entering it (as though opening up the earth was a calm, measured act, yes?)

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But I am not used to the idea of villifying martyrdom and self sacrifice.

Then you should hang around here some more.

Quote: FrGamble

In my mind they are saints along with Mother Teresa.

Saint is another meaningless word. It
was invented to get people into the
Church. They need saints, they perform
miracles and add to the hocus-pocus
theme the Church presents. If the
fraud Teresa is a saint, they have lowered
the bar for sainthood to just about street
level.

I believe Paco's comments are more tongue
in cheek they they are defending the Church.

Quote: Paco

I am completely unaware of martyrs in traditional Jewish theology.

Quote: Nareed

I don't think there are any. Latter Jewish ideology values life rather strongly.

One the greatest examples of martyrdom in the entire Bible is found in the two books of the Maccabees. Their story is amazing. At one point the mother of all the Maccabee children is brought in before the king along with her sons. One by one they are asked to eat pork in violation of their religion and they one by one refuse and in turn are killed right there in front of everyone and their mother. The king appeals to their mother and says why don't you talk some sense into them, she calls her youngest to her and says, "don't you dare eat that pork and violate the covenant."

I preached about this a few years ago, if you'd like to hear me preach you can check it out here (the Maccabee part begins 1:30 in): FrGamble preaching about the Maccabees

Quote: FrGamble

One by one they are asked to eat pork in violation of their religion and they one by one refuse and in turn are killed right there in front of everyone and their mother.

It's hard to say who's the more moronic: the king, the sons or the mother. Or as one of my Yiddish teachers would have said "Who's the biggest schmendrik? You can only pick one."

The Maccabee fable isn't strictly speaking theology. Not to mention later in life I realized how badly I was taught it. For starters, "the Greeks" never conquered Judea. It was the Seleucids, who were partly of Greco-Macedonian extraction, but were rather easternized in their outlook. Nor was conquest at the time either terrible or unusual most of the time. I should look up external sources. I doubt the Seleucid kings were overly concerned with Judea, as the Romans later on were not, either.

You know, a merciful deity would have appeared right there and said "It's ok. Eat the pork. Your lives are much, much, much, much more valuable than an arbitrary rule I made up for no reason."

Quote: FrGamble

One the greatest examples of martyrdom in the entire Bible is found in the two books of the Maccabees. Their story is amazing.

Amazing? For a religious idea, she lets her kids
be killed? Today she would be arrested for child
endangerment and 2nd degree murder. She could
have prevented their deaths and chose to do nothing.

There's a word for this type of behavior. Insanity.
You would want a mom like that, somebody so
insane that she would let you die rather then
behave responsibly? That you think this is 'amazing'
tells volumes about much you value some abstract
concept over human lives. This is why religion is
so dangerous.

There was certainly no derision intended Padre.

If you guys have divvy'd up into teams, from the perspective of this casual observer, it is a pretty fair match.

FrG" By the way Ghandi and Martin Luther King, both fervent believers in God, " I didn't get that part about Ghandi. From this article: http://www.soundwitness.org/pop_culture/a_critique_of_gandhi.htm " A Christian ministry dedicated to keeping the false out of religion, goes on to say:

"An examination of Gandhi on Christianity will demonstrate, however, that the difference between Gandhi’s beliefs (including his beliefs about Christianity) and Christianity is a fundamental one. It will also demonstrate that Gandhi’s real interest in Christianity was political, he hoped to find support for pacifism in it."

Martyrdom is a Catholic tool to instill
guilt into the masses. Oh look, another
Christian so fervently faithful he went
to his death rather than renounce it.
He believed that much. Could you do
that, common Catholic? Doesn't it
make you feel guilty that your faith
isn't as strong as theirs?

It's rubbish. That good Christians
of the early Church thought the
more you suffered, the better
a Christian you were. That attitude
is still alive today, the Church loves
loves loves its martyrs.

"In May, a Vatican spokesman told the United Nations Human Rights Council that as many as 100,000 Christians are martyred each year..:.
Open Doors International Director of Research and Strategy Ron Boyd McMillan says: Every year, since we started WWL in 1991, the number of Christians killed for their faith was in the 100s or 1000s, never in the 100,000s."

They put the estimate at 6-8 thousand, not 100K.
This number is agreed upon by others in the field.
Martyrs have always been a great sales tool for
the Church, so they wildly inflate the numbers
to make it look like they are far more persecuted
than they really are.

I think what you are missing is exactly how valuable our lives truly are. I don't understand the argument that it is okay or even smart to lie, cheat, break a vow, or do what you feel is wrong if it means you might avoid dying. Avoid suffering and just do whatever it takes to escape it. This strikes me as quite cowardly. Our lives are more valuable than that. It does not strike me as a bad thing to have some convictions that we are willing to suffer for and even die for.

Quote: FrGamble

It does not strike me as a bad thing to have some convictions that we are willing to suffer for and even die for.

If the convictions are religious, they're
specious. You're not dying for anybody
but you. Not for your country, not for
your family, you're dying for some concept
that you can't even prove. That's both
self centered and wasteful. But the Church
loves the good press it gives them, so
they encourage it wholeheartedly. Just
so it's not them that has to die..