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Post by panagiotopoulos on Jun 6, 2008 9:57:55 GMT -5
In what ways has Christianity strengthened the idea of the Greek ethnic conscious? For something that has been so important why do so many Greeks today abandon the Orthodox religion?
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Post by chalkedon on Jun 6, 2008 10:19:37 GMT -5
it was the only way to seperate ourselves as greeks during the ottoman empire. There were many muslim greeks as well..but who of us here counts them as greeks ? I dont know if i actually agree with that approach myself. Instead of uniting in hellenism like the good days, we went w/ the orthodox approach. Now you cant seperate the church from govt w/out an uproar...
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Post by greek1234 on Jun 6, 2008 10:29:51 GMT -5
Modern Greeks are a Greko - Byzantine creation. Greek Christians, our Orthodox faith should never be forgotten.
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Post by chalkedon on Jun 6, 2008 10:38:29 GMT -5
Yes....not to be forgotton, but we shouldnt abandon what the ancients knew as well. They put science in front of religion. Orthodox Christianity is a part of how we feel now, but it is a small part if you look at how long we've been around as a nation. Time to change a lil if you ask me....
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PARIS DIO_MYSUS!
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Post by PARIS DIO_MYSUS! on Jun 6, 2008 10:47:34 GMT -5
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Post by Kastorianos on Jun 6, 2008 14:00:36 GMT -5
Orthodoxy is a strong part of our modern identity.
Orthodoxy is what differed us from the western Romans in the middle age and Orthodoxy is what kept us Greek during the Ottoman rule. Orthodoxy is the reason we are independent today.
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Jun 6, 2008 14:17:28 GMT -5
Orthodoxy is a strong part of our modern identity. Orthodoxy is what differed us from the western Romans in the middle age and Orthodoxy is what kept us Greek during the Ottoman rule. Orthodoxy is the reason we are independent today. I agree with Kastor. Todays greece = orthodox Greece. Few times she makes us proud, and we try our best, some times she is ok, but a little backwards and c**kney most of the time she sucks all the way. Take it or leave it, that is todays Greece and it is in inseparatable from Orthodoxy. Ancient Greece today lives only a little in cyprus, crete, lakonia, some islands , southern italy but they are too weak to make a change. Morover, in Kifisia, Glyfada and other "fancy" places, you hear people on the street talking fluent american, even insisting talking english to sales people in stores, sales people with apparent difficulty in english, only to hear the very same persons, who spoke american, later turning into speaking greek very well. That alone is a very bad sign, but i guess the super greeks caring only to beat random FYROMians, dont see that phaenomenon as ... anti-greek at all.
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Post by Arxileas on Jun 6, 2008 15:07:40 GMT -5
Agree 100 % with Kastorianos...
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Post by Kastorianos on Jun 6, 2008 19:12:36 GMT -5
I believe...but thats my very personal opinion...that our orthodoxy...is not just religion...its culture...and as I said above its our identity....personally Im not very religious....and I do not believe in God absolutely....but still I regard myself undoubtly a Greek Orthodox. And thats possible because our religion and our national feeling are inseperable from each other. Our flag gives the answer.
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Post by yahadj on Jun 6, 2008 20:16:31 GMT -5
Very good summary. You don't belief but you still like the tradition of the religion? Or just the name of it... Nowdays that is pretty much the same for the majority of people on the Earth. Identities are mostly about labels or stickers but not about real core or the soul of things. Everyhting is superficial and meant for show off with the real meaning lacking... That is why you don't understand Muslims who value their religion for the sake of real belief in God. There is no way you can understand things while hiding behind your masks... At least we are honest...
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Post by greek1234 on Jun 6, 2008 23:17:15 GMT -5
It doesn't matter if the Bible is real or not what it is important are the messages it preaches.
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Jun 7, 2008 0:15:39 GMT -5
Very good summary. You don't belief but you still like the tradition of the religion? Or just the name of it... Nowdays that is pretty much the same for the majority of people on the Earth. Identities are mostly about labels or stickers but not about real core or the soul of things. Everyhting is superficial and meant for show off with the real meaning lacking... That is why you don't understand Muslims who value their religion for the sake of real belief in God. There is no way you can understand things while hiding behind your masks... At least we are honest... Religion for Arabs,SLavs,Asians is just a means of national-political dominations. Nothing more/less. Germanics have replaced religion with power/money, while for Jews Religion=Money since day one. Having said that, regarding the typical procedures of the various churches, Orthodoxy is closer to Jewdaism, Islam (dressing of the priests, music, architecture of the churches), than the westie churches (agglican,catholic,etc..) Thats what makes Orthodoxy so fuking underground and cool! P.S. Look at the image of a nice Serb Church:
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Panos
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Post by Panos on Jun 7, 2008 1:21:20 GMT -5
In what ways has Christianity strengthened the idea of the Greek ethnic conscious? For something that has been so important why do so many Greeks today abandon the Orthodox religion? Christianity destroyed all the great works of Ancient Greece, much of the Greek philosophy the world has today was translated from libraries in Baghdad back into Greek, French & English. This was done because christians didn't want to have texts around that contradicted their so-called "holy book". The Library at Alexandria was destroyed due to christian paranoia. In fact book burning, a form of mass ignorance, was a big part of early christianity. So many Greeks abandon the orthodox church for the role it played in destroying the great tradition of logic and reason, and replacing it with ignorance and superstition. These reasons apply to me, but also; the fact that jesus never rose from the dead, the graves of the slain never opened, he never flew into the sky, Mary was not a virgin etc. The metaphysical claims of the bible are lies. Read Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. The first christians (the gnostics) believed that jesus was sexually conceived by joseph & mary and was merely a prophet of god. As told in their Gnostic scriptures (which the early christians destroyed, but they were found again in Egypt just recently ). The orthodox constantine chrisitians killed all of these early christians and imposed only the scriptures that said jesus was of a virgin and divine. Read Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman as he explains the role the constantine christians played in modifying the scriptures to erase the gnostics from history and impose attributes to jesus that suited an agenda. For these reasons, it is obvious the bible as a source cannot be trusted. I can not be a part of a religion that 1) is a lie; & 2) gained power by destroying the Hellenic culture & forcefully quelled any form of opposition. However, I will not deny for a moment that the Church does deserve credit for the role it played during the Ottoman invasion and subsequent freedom from it, ever since independence though the church has been a hindrance. It does serve as a cultural hub for the Diaspora, but a secular body could do that just as well - probably better. The church has only the advantage of being established, thus does not warrant much credit for a role it has inherited from early corruption and power mongering.
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Post by greek1234 on Jun 7, 2008 1:48:18 GMT -5
In what ways has Christianity strengthened the idea of the Greek ethnic conscious? For something that has been so important why do so many Greeks today abandon the Orthodox religion? Christianity destroyed all the great works of Ancient Greece, much of the Greek philosophy the world has today was translated from libraries in Baghdad back into Greek, French & English. This was done because christians didn't want to have texts around that contradicted their so-called "holy book". The Library at Alexandria was destroyed due to christian paranoia. In fact book burning, a form of mass ignorance, was a big part of early christianity. So many Greeks abandon the orthodox church for the role it played in destroying the great tradition of logic and reason, and replacing it with ignorance and superstition. These reasons apply to me, but also; the fact that jesus never rose from the dead, the graves of the slain never opened, he never flew into the sky, Mary was not a virgin etc. The metaphysical claims of the bible are lies. Read Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. The first christians (the gnostics) believed that jesus was sexually conceived by joseph & mary and was merely a prophet of god. As told in their Gnostic scriptures (which the early christians destroyed, but they were found again in Egypt just recently ). The orthodox constantine chrisitians killed all of these early christians and imposed only the scriptures that said jesus was of a virgin and divine. Read Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman as he explains the role the constantine christians played in modifying the scriptures to erase the gnostics from history and impose attributes to jesus that suited an agenda. For these reasons, it is obvious the bible as a source cannot be trusted. I can not be a part of a religion that 1) is a lie; & 2) gained power by destroying the Hellenic culture & forcefully quelled any form of opposition. However, I will not deny for a moment that the Church does deserve credit for the role it played during the Ottoman invasion and subsequent freedom from it, ever since independence though the church has been a hindrance. It does serve as a cultural hub for the Diaspora, but a secular body could do that just as well - probably better. The church has only the advantage of being established, thus does not warrant much credit for a role it has inherited from early corruption and power mongering. Panos, Hellenism was alive during the Byzantine period, it would be wrong to consider Hellenism and Christianity as two different entities. For example the Byzantines where conscious of there Greco - Roman past. The Greek classics as we know them have come down to us in Byzantine manuscripts, setting a side the various scraps found from Egypt. Were it not for certain Byzantine men who labored during the ninth and tenth centuries, we would not have Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles not to mention a large amount of famous and less famous authors. The literature survived because it was recopied, anything that was not was lost. The literature they read; Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Plato and the physicians and scientists they studied; Hippocrates, Archimedes, Hero, Ptolemeos, Strabo where all from ancient Greece. Us the modern Greeks are Byzantines enlightened by our ancient Greek past.
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Panos
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Post by Panos on Jun 7, 2008 3:02:56 GMT -5
Our past was about enlightenment.
What is enlightening about saying: I know who created the universe, I know he sent his son and I know how he wants us to live. Especially when you cannot know this, and the sources you rely on have been proven to be invalid and untrustworthy.
That is the opposite to enlightening and it is an affront to our great logical, philosophical and scientific past.
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Post by yahadj on Jun 7, 2008 3:04:22 GMT -5
There were times when religion just meant to serve the real believers in the Truth of God Almighty. Those times are over. Now we have the individual experience. Everybody chooses to use it for whatever they feel it is OK. God Almighty will determine who was right or who was wrong. The day of Judgement is near...
PEACE
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Jun 7, 2008 5:22:51 GMT -5
Panos, we almost proved that God exist. Did you miss that thread?
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Post by Kastorianos on Jun 7, 2008 15:16:17 GMT -5
Pano we are rather the descendats of those who burned the books than of Pericles or Socrates. And fixing Christianity on its historic verities is anyway the wrong way, because you also dont do it with the ancient Greeks and still you seem to love them.
Yahac you are talking crap. Allah does not exist wake up finally.
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Jun 7, 2008 15:35:36 GMT -5
Yeah, kastor i agree with you, (for the 2nd time in this thread) and i must add, that the ancients were responsible to their descendants TO NOT LOSE FROM ROMANS! Those guys, by failing to defeat an inferior culture, proved that (retrospectively) we deserve to be who we are. Those ancient guys maybe desrved to have their books burned by a newer and more "trendy" ideology : Christianity, a religion that suited Roman "Globalization| of the time. Think about it. Christianity back then was like the american films today. Needless to say that the common denominator in both Roman-Era Christianity and modern-era holliwood is ..... JEWS.
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Panos
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Post by Panos on Jun 7, 2008 20:41:04 GMT -5
No one deserves to have their books burned.
We are descendants of both the book burning anti-knowledge zealots of the middle ages & the Ancient Greeks.
The Ancient Greeks loved knowledge above all else, they were not perfect but given how mysterious the natural world was to early humans they can be forgiven for some transgressions. The christian Greeks were anti-knowledge, pro-ignorance, pro-zeal, pro-solipsism. I criticise the middle age christian Greeks, simply because of the wickedness and stupidity they were a part of. The Ancient Greeks never killed or ostracised anyone because of their sexuality & they never burned books (a sign of true ignorance).
Some of the Ancient Greeks did, like the christians, forcefully spread their faith. But I am not advocating that at all. In fact, I am not advocating basing our modern society entirely on Ancient Greece. We need to take the best elements from Ancient Greece, and use that in our social model. Encourage enquiry (make no subject too taboo that it can't be debated academically), provide honest open and broad education, separate the church from the state entirely. Such measures must be taken to move Greece from a modern-middle-age tribute state into a modern state.
Saying "people are complex therefore god exists, and not just god - the one in the bible" is intellectual dishonesty at its worst. This is the reasoning skills that many Greek schools are imparting on its pupils, who become adults with equally inept reasoning ability. No one really cares about the military success of the christians, it has nothing to do with which view is right and which is wrong; & which view is honest and which view is dishonest.
Greece, in order to call itself a democracy, should teach children in school a balanced religious curriculum. Teaching children that jesus is real and will save you is child abuse. We should copy the Swedish model, teach Atheism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Hinduism, Philosophy.. in a comparative religious sense that encourages kids to actually think, as opposed to telling them what to think. Our Byzantine tribute society has to change, and it will. The EU is siding with rationalists, secularist and humanists in Greece.
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