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And THIS is why you are clueless about my view of God. My view is closer to the Founders' views than any specific religion.
Pointing out that you straw manned me and reality means I am clueless about your views about your god? Again with your usual straw man and ad hominem, but this time it is also a non sequitur as well. Three fallacies for the price of one. A genuine PhD would not need to rely on so many fallacies.
Try addressing me, the real Harry, and what I write, and in a relevant thread, not your straw man version of me and reality. We know you have to pretend everyone else is an idiot to avoid providing evidence for your assertions, but that is the tactic of a crank who can not defend their bogus claims.
That the founders religion may have been closer to yours does not mean your creationist arguments and you doing the thing you denied doing are valid arguments.
Generally, when you think deeply about existence it is the only conclusion that makes sense. Of course, that excludes those thinkers using glib oneliners like "affirming the consequent." Given the inherent motivation of life, it is hard to imagine dead lifeless "processes" ever acquiring (or "emerging") a motivation of any kind. Atheists do seem comfortable with such a weird existence despite their own myriad motivations. Its attendant purposelessness is even creepier, IMO. But perhaps the most incomprehensible of all is our unique capabilities, thoughts, interests, motives, and agendas that aspire to "something" higher. I guess to an atheist, "It just IS."
You're contradicting yourself. You're accepting and rejecting your god at the same time. You're uncomfortable with things that atheists and religious theist accept, causing you to reject them even though they do qualify as being part of your god. So, once again, you're doing "the act of knowing without knowing" in regards to your god.
There’s a Mar Thoma Church near me in a converted light industrial building, which is pretty neat. Many adherents have biblical names—both first and last—and (bringing things back in the direction of your Hasidic friends) they sometimes even sound Jewish. A coworker who started at my current employer the same day as me has one of those names (think along the lines of “Abraham Nathan”). And imagine my surprise when I saw he wasn’t an elderly Ashkenazi Jew but a young Indian Christian!
That is funny, because the Chasidim I worked with were surprised to learn that my grandfather's and uncle's names were Jacob, the same as the owner of the company. I guess they didn't realize that Christians often use Bible names for their children.
There are also Syrian Christians in Kerala. I dont know how these groups break out into the Christian denominations. My guess is most of them are Catholics.
Well, from what I understand, when the Portuguese Catholics arrived in India in the 15th or 16th century to convert the heathen Hindus, they were shocked to find a band of Christians in Kerala who decorated their crosses with elephants and used some Syriac language, a tongue close to the Aramaic that Jesus spoke, in their liturgy. They did not have the Catholic Bible and didn't know who the Pope was, which horrified the Portuguese, who made it their business to set them straight stat.
The legend is that Thomas, the "doubting apostle" of the gospels, went to India with his Gospel of Thomas, basically a book of the sayings of Jesus, and was martyred there, but he left a church that thrived outside of the Roman structure.
I believe they are now more in line with the rest of Christianity as far as scripture and structure goes because of the Portuguese influence.
There is a large Mar Thoma church in the Toronto area now.
Well, from what I understand, when the Portuguese Catholics arrived in India in the 15th or 16th century to convert the heathen Hindus, they were shocked to find a band of Christians in Kerala who decorated their crosses with elephants and used some Syriac language, a tongue close to the Aramaic that Jesus spoke, in their liturgy. They did not have the Catholic Bible and didn't know who the Pope was, which horrified the Portuguese, who made it their business to set them straight stat.
The legend is that Thomas, the "doubting apostle" of the gospels, went to India with his Gospel of Thomas, basically a book of the sayings of Jesus, and was martyred there, but he left a church that thrived outside of the Roman structure.
I believe they are now more in line with the rest of Christianity as far as scripture and structure goes because of the Portuguese influence.
There is a large Mar Thoma church in the Toronto area now.
There is a church of St.Thomas in the city i grew up in, right in our neighborhood, on the beach. It is dominantly a Christian neighborhood, along with a couple of schools and a college run by the Irish catholic convent. Interesting about Christianity in Kerala. I know there is a church built by the Dutch in Cochin, interesting style. The coastal area was a bustling trading place for a long time, narrated in the Indian classics, so there was a mingling of Indian, Arabs and European traders. The state itself is a fascinating mix of muslim, christian and Hindus some of whom are the most strict and orthodox Brahmins. It is a state of contradiction, of high literacy, communist, artists, and prgressive.
I thought the Portuguese mostly settled in Goa and were a cruel and oppressive regime.
Pointing out that you straw manned me and reality means I am clueless about your views about your god? Again with your usual straw man and ad hominem, but this time it is also a non sequitur as well. Three fallacies for the price of one. A genuine PhD would not need to rely on so many fallacies.
Try addressing me, the real Harry, and what I write, and in a relevant thread, not your straw man version of me and reality. We know you have to pretend everyone else is an idiot to avoid providing evidence for your assertions, but that is the tactic of a crank who can not defend their bogus claims.
That the founders religion may have been closer to yours does not mean your creationist arguments and you doing the thing you denied doing are valid arguments.
That the founders' religious beliefs are closer to mine makes my posts on-topic! There is no straw man. The bold is the one-track mind you have about God that prevents you from even considering my views on THEIR merits. The forum tends to support your religious version of a Creator God and discriminates against my spiritual one. Your selective use of evidence and intellectual laziness account for the rest of your tenacious refusal to be remotely objective.
Nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons. It was a social and fraternal organization, but not religious. There were at least 24 Jewish Freemason officers in the Continental Army according to the paper "Jewish Masons in the American Revolution" published in 1924.
The organization provided people to the Patriot and Loyalist causes; the latter are mostly forgotten as they left after the Revolution; Walter Butler (1752-1781) is perhaps the most notorious of the Loyalist Freemasons.
In President Washington's Farewell Address, he draws heavily from Freemasonry.
... It was a social and fraternal organization, but not religious.
It is.
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Again with your usual straw man and ad hominem, but this time it is also a non sequitur as well. Three fallacies for the price of one. A genuine PhD would not need to rely on so many fallacies.
