Showing posts with label killing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label killing. Show all posts

Wednesday 8 November 2017

Only six of ten commandments of God still important to British Christians

A YouGov pol has revealed that only six of the ten commandments of God are still important to British Christians.
Not to our surprise most Britain's the four which have fallen by the wayside are the requirement not to worship idols, use the God His name in vain, to worship no other God, and to keep the Sabbath day holy.

Concerning the Sabbath or the Sunday since the 2012 ruling by a High Court judge - the first on the issue in nearly a decade - Christians have no right to decline working on Sunday as it is not a “core component” of their beliefs. The fact that some Christians were prepared to work on Sundays meant it was not protected, the court said.
In 1994, when Sunday trading in England was liberalised shopworkers were given a guarantee that working would be strictly voluntary, but the guarantee did not apply to people in other sectors.
The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations, published in 2003, say employers must justify Sunday working as a “legitimate business need” and does not give a blanket right to Christians not to work.
If employers fail to treat staff fairly and proportionately, the employee may be able to claim discrimination, the rules add.
The last ruling by judges was when a quarry worker claimed his Christian beliefs had been treated with “contempt” by employers who tried to force him to work on Sundays in 2003.
Stephen Copsey lost his case at the Court of Appeal in 2005, with judges ruling his employer had “compelling economic reasons” for insisting that he worked on Sundays.{Christians have no right to refuse to work on Sundays, rules judge}
When we look at lots of Christians and see what they do on Sabbath and / or on the Sunday it is no surprise courts consider it not of any religious importance.

Keeping the Sabbath Day holy is seen as the least relevant of the Commandments in the modern era. Fewer than one in five (19%) Britons say keeping Sundays holy is still an important principle to live by, including fewer than a third of Christians (31%) and 7% of the non-religious. Almost half of Catholics said they supported keeping the Sabbath day holy nut by that they mostly mean keeping the Sunday as rest day. Just 29 per cent of Protestants said they felt the same. 

Concerning the first commandment a real Christians must recognise that the majority of Christians do worship more than one god and mostly do not even know the Name of the Holy Father. As such they do not mind swearing or using one of more tittles of God to make their words stronger or to show their disgust over something.
Just under a quarter (23%) of the overall population say that you may not use the word "God" in or as a curse, including 38% of Christians and just 7% of the non-religious.

Less than one in three Christians believe in preserving Sunday as a day of rest, with 38 per cent against using the Lord's name in vain and 43 per cent condemning the worshipping of idols, though lots of them do not worry to bow down in front of graven images or statues and pictures of gods and saints.

On Tuesday the Archbishop of Canterbury signalled support for a day of rest, tweeting that he was "encouraged" by the Chief Rabbi's campaign for people to spend time offline over the Sabbath.
While almost half of Catholics said they supported keeping the Sabbath day holy, just 29 per cent of Protestants said they felt the same.
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, said: " In an age as busy, frantic and feverish as ours I would have thought that keeping the Sabbath, or at the very least observing a balance between work and rest and play was more important than ever.
Sabbath is both a radical idea and a practically useful idea for it simply acknowledges that we need to rest and we need to play. Indeed, it says this is what we are made for."

The Rt Rev David Walker: 'Believers and non-believers alike support the simple, ancient statements which continue to provide the foundations of our legal system and our shared sense of right and wrong.'
The Rt Rev David Walker: 'Believers and non-believers alike support the simple, ancient statements which continue to provide the foundations of our legal system and our shared sense of right and wrong.' Credit: Martin Rickett/PA
He also lamented Christians' abandonment of the commandment about idolatry, saying:
 "Whether it is celebrity, wealth, a certain designer label pair of jeans jeans or a make of car, we have all construct a sense of worth in the desire to own and possess certain things that we believe will give value.
Today we do find lots of christians spending more time on their idols than on the Divine Creator God. In the United States we see a similar trend having 'money' or 'wealth' having become the most important god. There even in mega-churches people have special services to offer them more wealth.

Fewer than a third of Britons (31%) say that people should not worship idols (defined in the survey as statues or symbols). Christians are split on whether they still consider this to be an important commandment, with 43% saying it is and 44% saying it is not. Meanwhile, only one in five non-religious Brits (20%) say it is still an important rule, though most, not to say all, of the respondents who claim to be Christian worship a triune god and as such go in against the first commandment of God.

Only one in five Britons (20%) still believe that the Christian God’s monopoly on worship is still relevant in modern Britain (including 36% of Christians and just 5% of non-religious Brits).


The survey shows that believers and non-believers alike support the simple, ancient statements which continue to provide the foundations of our legal system and our shared sense of right and wrong.

Having been central tenets of Biblical teaching for several millenia 6 from the 10 commandments are still considered of value today.

"Thou shalt not kill" receives 93% of the votes. Most Brits think it is still important to live by this and by the command "thou shalt not steal". In the case of both Commandments, they were seen as still important by 94% of Christians and 93% of those with no religion.

Being honest about certain matters seems surprisingly still important for 87%, though we can see a lot of boasting and hear lots of fake stories and hear a lot of people not telling the truth.
Not bearing false witness (telling lies) about others came third among all groups, with 87% of all Brits, 90% of Christians, and 86% of those without a religion saying that it is still important to live by.

Honesty has also to do with how we treat others and how we behave ourselves in relationships. Though we hear a lot about people having good fun with different people of the opposite or even same sex, close to three quarters (73%) of the population at large say that not committing adultery is still a top life principle, including 69% of non-religious Brits and 76% of Christians. Which is strange that it is so high on the roster because we encounter lots of divorces and mixed families.

Today we also find lots of elderly people left alone in homes. Police also often have to come to help by violence against parents. Though the poll shows that "Honouring thy father and thy mother" is still an important rule to follow for 69% of all Britons, including 78% of Christians and 60% of the non-religious.



The Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said:
 "This survey shows that the practical morality which has lain at the heart of the Judeo Christian tradition for the last 3500 years still finds favour with most British people today, even where explicitly religious commandments gain less support. 



+

Additional reading

  1. A New Reformation
  2. The Anti-Reformation in Todays Evangelical Church
  3. Let us make sure we now believe
  4. Hoogdag voor vele protestanten
  5. Gewortelden in Christus en factoren voor het succes van de reformatie
  6. Relevantie van de de Tien Geboden bij Britten anno 2017
  7. Zijn Beelden een Gevaar of de Redding voor het Geloof?
  8. Hedendaagse protestanten tegenover Katholieken of de Antichrist

+++

Sunday 31 May 2015

Speciesism and racism

English: Peter Singer speaking at a Veritas Fo...
English: Peter Singer speaking at a Veritas Forum event on MIT's campus on Saturday, March 14, 2009. Veritas Forum: http://www.veritas.org/ Photo by Joel Travis Sage: http://www.joelsage.com/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The doyen of utilitarian philosophers, Peter Singer, of Princeton University explains in an interview in the New York Times  that while racism still exists, most people are aware that they are wrong. However, this is far from being the case with animals.

Although it is true, of course, that we have not overcome racism, sexism or discrimination against people with disabilities, there is at least widespread acceptance that such discrimination is wrong, and there are laws that seek to prevent it. With speciesism, we are very far from reaching that point. If we were to compare attitudes about speciesism today with past racist attitudes, we would have to say that we are back in the days in which the slave trade was still legal, although under challenge by some enlightened voices.
Christians should be much more aware of their impact of their food use in this universe. We should be much more aware what we are doing in nature or causing to animals and plants by our choice of food.
one might argue that to kill a normal human being who wants to go on living is more seriously wrong than killing a nonhuman animal. Whether this claim is or is not sound, it is not speciesist. But given that some human beings – most obviously, those with profound intellectual impairment – lack this capacity, or have it to a lower degree than some nonhuman animals, it would be speciesist to claim that it is always more seriously wrong to kill a member of the species Homo sapiens than it is to kill a nonhuman animal.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Maker of most popular weapon asks for repentance

In the world we can find many designers of instruments that can kill human or animal beings. they manage to create a thing able to destroy elements of nature, parts of the creation.

We can wonder how such creators can feel.

Just six months before his death in December Mikhail Kalashnikov described his struggling with the “unbearable spiritual torment” of knowing the carnage the AK-47 rifle wreaked upon the world.

The AK-47, the iconic assault rifle,  best known as the Kalashnikov [Avtomat Kalashnikova (Russian: Автомат Калашникова)], is widely regarded as one of the best - and deadliest in the world. It is is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first designed in 1945 in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov and in 1948 it became introduced as the fixed-stock version into active service with selected units of the Soviet Army.


Mikhail Kalashnikov was born in 1919 to a farming family in rural Russia. His family was viewed unfavorably by the Soviet establishment and deported to Siberia where the young Kalashnikov was forced to hunt with his father's rifle to feed the family. He was a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity.
Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a submachine gun.

Mikhail Kalashnikov himself personally negotiated many contracts for weapons exports and licensing.  Over the course of his career, he evolved the basic design into a weapons family.
He created the AKM , the RPK, the general-purpose PK machine gun.

On his 90th birthday on 10 November 2009, Kalashnikov was named a "Hero of the Russian Federation" and presented with a medal by President Dmitry Medvedev who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of".

In the months before his recent death, the world's greatest gun-maker Mikhail Kalashnikov suffered 'unbearable' pain over the lost lives caused by his weapons, an extraordinary new letter reveals.  
He sought urgent spiritual guidance from Russia's top churchman on whether he was guilty in the eyes of God, according to his emotional appeal to the Orthodox Patriarch.
"The pain in my soul is unbearable,"
he wrote.
 'If my machine gun has taken lives of people, does it mean that it is me, Mikhail Kalashnikov, aged 93, the son of a peasant, an Orthodox Christian, who is guilty of the deaths of people, even if they are enemies?'
"The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression. Everything changes, only a man and his thinking remain unchanged: he's just as greedy, evil, heartless and restless as before!"
In his letter to Kirill, which was reproduced by the Russian daily Izvestia on Monday morning, the aging designer explained how he turned to God as he grew older.

Mr Kalashnikov wrote that he his conversion began with the sense of “excitement” he felt when he first entered a church at the age of 91, later being baptised into the Orthodox faith.

A spokesman for the Church said Patriarch Kirril had welcomed the letter and even written a reply.

“This letter was very welcome at a time of attacks on the Church. The Patriarch thanked the legendary designer for his attention and position and answered that Mikhail Timofeevich was himself an example of patriotism and appropriate attitude to the country,”
Patriarch Kirill’s spokesman Alexander Volkov told the paper.

When we look at the answer we only can find it strange that those who call themselves man of God can give such a reply:
"If the weapon is used to defend the Motherland, the Church supports both its creators and the servicemen using it."
The poor excuse of Mr. Alexander Volkov did not help:
“He invented that weapon for the defence of the country, not for the use of Saudi Arabian terrorists.”
This clearly should let the members of that church think about the closeness of that church with the Creator and should wonder how much love they have for the Creation of the Supreme Being.

It is good to notice that this reply may not have comforted the dying Kalashnikov, who began visiting Church at the age of 91 in his working hometown of Izhevsk. At his old age perhaps the sense of responsibility for what one does came to him and made him question all his previous actions.

Even when Kalashnikov would not have killed any people himself, he should have been aware of what the tanks he worked at, the guns he designed and let been manufactured would have done to many people and destroyed many families. His designs remains eminently deadly to this day.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Sunday 15 May 2011

Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?

Apocalypse Now
“While he was sitting upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached him privately, saying: “Tell us, When will these things be, and what will be the sign of your presence and of the conclusion of the system of things?” And in answer Jesus said to them: “… and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another…” (Matthew 24:3-7)

In the March-April issue of Newsweek the question is posed who ignorant you are, and there is looked at the changing world full of earthquakes, tsunamis, meltdowns, economies on the brink, pestilences [disease epidemics], food shortages, so much fighting on in the world, revolutions, wars?

In the 20th century, well over 100,000,000 people have been killed in wars, more than four times as many as in the previous 400 years put together!, and that was just a start it seems. The killing continues and gets into extreme forms. (Hutus against Tutsis, Muslims against Hindus and Christians, etc) Yes even religion against religion. Does that not ring a bell?

The 21st century is still young, and it has already suffered a spate of catastrophic earthquakes across the world -- from Haiti to Chile and New Zealand. The numbers of people exposed to risk has risen from thousands to millions.
Tsunami risk is also growing in coastal mega cities. Videos of the unstoppable advance of the waves driving through Sendai were a terrifying reminder of a tsunami's power.

When we look around us we hear also a lot of stories of people enjoying a lifestyle which seems at first great to them but utterly destroys them.

Interesting would it not be to take the Newsweek article and compare all that being summerized to what is written in the Bible.

When you look into the Bible do you not recognise certain situation foretold? Bible prophecy foretold the moral collapse so evident throughout the world today: "In the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power . . . Wicked men and impostors will advance from bad to worse." (2 Timothy 3:1-13)

When you look at the signs: can you just stay ignorant?


Latest Earthquakes in the World - Past 7 days