JuliaTheFirst · 22-25, F
This is unbelievably stupid, even for you Carazaa.
The eclipse had nothing to do with the end times.
The eclipse had nothing to do with the end times.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@JuliaTheFirst Eclipses and comets were seen as portentous from ancient times, with Revelations possibly illustrating that in what seems a shamanistic "trip". The Bayeux "Tapestry" (really an embroidery) shows people staring at a comet and pondering what it would bring, prior to the Norman-French invasion of England and the death of King Harold.
In the 18C, there dawned the Age of Enlightenment, starting to study Nature and so see it as worth understanding and admiring, made by a god or no god by personal belief, but not feared or given superstitious attributes in ignorance.
It is strange that there are people now even in supposedly "developed" countries that lead in that understanding and in education, who want to return to pre-Enlightenment ignorance and superstition.
The Age of Unenlightenment?
In the 18C, there dawned the Age of Enlightenment, starting to study Nature and so see it as worth understanding and admiring, made by a god or no god by personal belief, but not feared or given superstitious attributes in ignorance.
It is strange that there are people now even in supposedly "developed" countries that lead in that understanding and in education, who want to return to pre-Enlightenment ignorance and superstition.
The Age of Unenlightenment?
ArishMell · 70-79, M
[@CarazaaI suppose wanting to see a co-incidence depends on how you believe in God, as well as whether you believe in Him anyway, but these towns' locations would have had nothing to do with either God or what are only ordinary (though rare) astronomical effects.
Evidently all those "Salems" were named after the Hebrew original cited in that rather aggressive psalm about a Zionist belief in a rather tetchy deity, but that's not what set their locations.
Anyway, a solar eclipse creates a latitudinally very long shadow across a wide stretch of the Earth, so including a septet of Salems in its progress is not that remarkable, especially if they are all along old settler routes West. Making a magical triple link between a place named in an ancient Middle Eastern psalm, a few 19C colonial settlements in North America and a 21C solar eclipse, seems rather more like ley-line plotting than worshipping God. Some people do like to produce straight lines joining two ancient sacred sites on a map until they meet others, and thereby pronounce them "ley-lines" - but it's still only by chance.
If I were a practising Christian I'd place no more mystical "significance" in eclipses, and indeed comets and constellations, than in ley-lines, but would enjoy the astronomy as normal to God's cosmic works.
Most American towns seem inspired by the colonialists' home towns or personal names, or were the indigenous names for that patch of land, not Biblical references for no special reason. Interesting questions of local histories, though.
Evidently all those "Salems" were named after the Hebrew original cited in that rather aggressive psalm about a Zionist belief in a rather tetchy deity, but that's not what set their locations.
Anyway, a solar eclipse creates a latitudinally very long shadow across a wide stretch of the Earth, so including a septet of Salems in its progress is not that remarkable, especially if they are all along old settler routes West. Making a magical triple link between a place named in an ancient Middle Eastern psalm, a few 19C colonial settlements in North America and a 21C solar eclipse, seems rather more like ley-line plotting than worshipping God. Some people do like to produce straight lines joining two ancient sacred sites on a map until they meet others, and thereby pronounce them "ley-lines" - but it's still only by chance.
If I were a practising Christian I'd place no more mystical "significance" in eclipses, and indeed comets and constellations, than in ley-lines, but would enjoy the astronomy as normal to God's cosmic works.
Most American towns seem inspired by the colonialists' home towns or personal names, or were the indigenous names for that patch of land, not Biblical references for no special reason. Interesting questions of local histories, though.
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Carazaa No. I am not an atheist but an agnostic, but I am actually quite happy with my life and I hold my beliefs for me, not other people or institutions. Those beliefs include knowing the difference between a deity and a code written by people to define and worship that deity.
I have though taken a lot of time to ask, "Why religion?" (not Christianity or any other single faith, but religion generally); and realised that most religions known, extant or extinct, have much the same basic purposes.
Though they differ very much in approach, and I thought one likely reason why the Abrahamic ones too over from the Greek, Roman and Egyptian beliefs was not that the latter were frankly daft soap-operas, but they proposed assorted deities for whom humans were merely servants and offerers of offerings for nothing in return.
I have personal friends who are religious, including two who are (or were, I think now retired) Anglican priests.
I have though taken a lot of time to ask, "Why religion?" (not Christianity or any other single faith, but religion generally); and realised that most religions known, extant or extinct, have much the same basic purposes.
Though they differ very much in approach, and I thought one likely reason why the Abrahamic ones too over from the Greek, Roman and Egyptian beliefs was not that the latter were frankly daft soap-operas, but they proposed assorted deities for whom humans were merely servants and offerers of offerings for nothing in return.
I have personal friends who are religious, including two who are (or were, I think now retired) Anglican priests.
Carazaa · F
@ArishMell Please don't listen to priests but to God's word! Jesus warns in the last days many will be deceived and listen to antichrists! Make sure please you follow Jesus in the Bible who died for your sins and is coming again in our generation to judge the world and make a new heaven and a new earth! You want him to say "Good and faithful servant" Not "I never knew you"
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Carazaa Oh, don't worry, I don't listen to priests, except at a funeral which is the only reason for my attending church these days; but the ones I know do not try to proselytise!
Nor do I listen to "antiChrists", if they are people who positively oppose, even despise, Christianity. I have nothing against the faith as such.
I do though often hear on the radio, people representing different Christian sects, and other faiths entirely; and it is interesting to hear their angles on things; and to try to understand their beliefs. Useful too, as my nephew from a neutral background (our family background was nominally Anglican) has married a Moslem!
Oddly perhaps, though not particularly religious at all, I can be moved or inspired by the art and architecture that Christianity has brought. Although I am not blind to the social significance of it all in past centuries, when raising great cathedrals or living in self-imposed, monastic poverty and chastity was thought a better way to serve God, than by helping the many poor in the flock.
A point not lost of course, on the Lutherans, Methodists and the Society of Friends (the 'Quakers'); and the Methodists amassed big congregations in the 18C-19C industrial areas of Britain - when not writing stirring hymn-tunes. While the Society of Friends tended to attract industrial-ists, the factory-owners, who saw it as serving God to treat their employees much more humanely than many of their contemporaries did in the early Industrial Revolution.
Even so, you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be affected by an 800-year-old cathedral or little village church still in its unbroken, regular use as a church; or a great chorale, a plainsong by the Abbess Hildegarde of Bingham; or a service like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols on Christmas Eve, from King's College, Cambridge. (The original Cambs., in England; not the Mass. one!)
Nor do I listen to "antiChrists", if they are people who positively oppose, even despise, Christianity. I have nothing against the faith as such.
I do though often hear on the radio, people representing different Christian sects, and other faiths entirely; and it is interesting to hear their angles on things; and to try to understand their beliefs. Useful too, as my nephew from a neutral background (our family background was nominally Anglican) has married a Moslem!
Oddly perhaps, though not particularly religious at all, I can be moved or inspired by the art and architecture that Christianity has brought. Although I am not blind to the social significance of it all in past centuries, when raising great cathedrals or living in self-imposed, monastic poverty and chastity was thought a better way to serve God, than by helping the many poor in the flock.
A point not lost of course, on the Lutherans, Methodists and the Society of Friends (the 'Quakers'); and the Methodists amassed big congregations in the 18C-19C industrial areas of Britain - when not writing stirring hymn-tunes. While the Society of Friends tended to attract industrial-ists, the factory-owners, who saw it as serving God to treat their employees much more humanely than many of their contemporaries did in the early Industrial Revolution.
Even so, you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be affected by an 800-year-old cathedral or little village church still in its unbroken, regular use as a church; or a great chorale, a plainsong by the Abbess Hildegarde of Bingham; or a service like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols on Christmas Eve, from King's College, Cambridge. (The original Cambs., in England; not the Mass. one!)
ArishMell · 70-79, M
Only a co-incidence of course, but a neat one!
Morvoren · F
Salem. The same place where Christians murdered 60 people in witch trisls
SW-User
I say this with all the love of God in my heart:
This is just stupid.
This is just stupid.