RevBogovac

I don't know if you have followed the news a bit in the 1990's... but I am from (former) Yugoslavia. I consider myself to be (part of the social structure, that identifies itself as) Orthodox Christian. Unfortunately my family has lived in (the former Yugoslav republic of) Croatia for the previous 600 years (prior to the 1990's). Croatia is considered to be (part of the social structure, that identifies itself as) Catholic. The war that raged in the 1990's many consider to be "religious". "We" (Orthodox Christians) have been persecuted in Croatia into "extinction" (literally, the village my ancestors founded now has 2 - very old - inhabitants). But up to today I still do not consider the persecution to be religion based. It was power based. A bunch of power-hungry individuals who grasped their moment in history and used religion as an convenient opportunity...

I found the video's from Amy of the ULC Seminary that you can find on youtube quite interesting and a nice "primer" for introduction...

Hey, another doomsday prophecy! Not like "we" (mankind) haven't heard that before... Further more some of the "North American VERY TANNED previous land owners" had no problems whatsoever butchering one another (Mayan child sacrifices; and, Iroquois vs. Mohawk genocidal wars come to mind). They "just" didn't have the means (lacking a pack animal large enough to carry a human; and, the ability to make steel) to do so as effectively as "Europeans" do... Bubble burst, move on... please try to stay positive in the mean time.

Hmkay... As I already said:

Right. And: But you forgot: And than he can repent our free choices... right.

You exactly emphasise my point. Do you think we don't have culture and social pressure in the Netherlands? Believe me, we have. But we (at least a lot more of us) take the trouble of thinking a couple of steps further; remember what is important and focus on our friends and family... instead of "just" following the leader... That blackface discussion further shows the point; nobody takes that serious over here... (except for a few exceptions on both ends of the extreme). For the fast majority we like the "Aristotelian golden mean" over here... as a Dutch saying says: "act normally, and that's already strange enough". I don't know if you saw the video of our Prime Minister bumping over his cup of coffee...?

Nope, for a (hu-)man that makes perfectly sense. For a so called omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God however... Major contradictions...

You think its that small a percent? Christmas is a massive economic driver here. No company can really avoid thinking about how it effects their bottom line. And the yearly media blitz extolling the virtues of "Finding The Perfect Gift" highlights the replacement of Christ with Consumerism as the centerpiece of the holiday in the collective consciousness... My emphasis was on "thinking", the rest are just consumers following the crowd... hence: lazy...

It totally isn't that. I mean, it does contain some philosophy and some metaphors, but they don't even comprise the majority of the book. Its full of everything from folk history and legal records to geneologies and dream diary entries... Its a very complicated collection of disparate texts... True, those too...

Not to bother you all with the (Very long) list of contradictions the bible is full of (and that is "normal" as people wrote the bible, and people are fallible.) You can find one of those lists at: Bible Inconsistencies - Bible Contradictions? as compiled by Donald Morgan. As people who find themselves defending these contradictions bending over backwards, will also say that: Adam lived 930 years (GE 5:5); and, Terah was 205 years old when he died, making Abram 135 at the time (GE 11:32); As far as the God "not repenting [...] himself, [...] creation, [...] anything He had done" but he "repented of what man had done, the wickedness of man", well: God decides who will be dumb, deaf, blind, etc (EX 4:11 ). One of my - personal - favourite (recurring) contradictions in the bible is the dichotomy: 2SA 24:1 The Lord inspired David to take the census. 1CH 21:1 Satan inspired the census. Ah well. c'mon people; the bible is a nice philosophical book full of metaphors one can choose to learn from (or not). But taking the bible literally in this day and age, IMHO, does Christianity a huge disfavour.

Contradiction. <- period

It has more to do with Americans trying to more efficiently exploit profit opportunities. Economies of scale, and all that. Piggy-backing the Santa myth on the Christmas holiday created more opportunities for "kid-friendly" merchandising while simultaneously cementing in the popular consciousness the notion that Christmas is primarily about gift-giving (and, therefore, gift-buying).[...] True... for the 0,1% thinking and acting like that. For the 99,9 other %... well... maybe...

Sorry, but you do not get to "philosophise" this away... God does not get to "repent", remember: NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17. Major contradictions going on by now...

That's "just" Americans being lazy... Santa Claus is actually a derivation from Saint Nicholas; a clergyman who was made into a saint because of various good deeds involving children (especially giving them sweets to children so they got some reserves to survive winter). "We" (Dutch) commemorate him around his death anniversary (6. december), and continued to do so as "we" colonised the Americas. Unfortunately Coca Cola decided at the beginning of the 20th century that two holidays in one month was too much and adapted Santa Claus into this "modern" holidaymaker. The popularisation of American culture did the rest... The "celebration" of spring/rebirth of nature with fertility symbols has nothing to do with Easter. It was a coincidence that the pagan celebration of the spring equinox and Judean Pascha coincided more or less so the early Christians adopted the pagan rituals as to convert pagans easier. At the time it was a good idea, nut now it ridicules the most important Christian holiday. I personally like to commemorate the death sentence the philosopher Jesus fro Nazareth got because he did not want to denounce his teachings of equality before the gathered masses (who were there to celebrate the Jewish Pascha) thereby "immortalising" this philosophy and laying the foundation for our current culture. PS@Jonathan; and I thought Jack Frost only entered our culture somewhere in the 19th century personifying (unifying?) the "old God" Old Man Winter (Western Europe) / Grandpa Frost (Eastern Europe)...

I - as an "outsider" to USA laws* - think you can probably find something in the direction of copyright-law: was it the designer's (I believe that was Eiffel, from the French tower) or commissioner's (was it NY city, state or Federal?) intention to depict these gods, or were they only used for inspiration as to depict some abstract notion (like - for instance - freedom). As it is at least a mixture of two known gods I would say the case is strong for the latter. * but I must agree with Jonathan (again...) that this seems like a fun discussion.