Catholics and Orthodox in Search of a Common Date for Easter

[Meriweather]

Plagiarism is a sin, Shirley?

Ever see a landscape design you liked, the paint color on a house, use a picture as inspiration for a bouquet of flowers, to decorate a cake, or decide on a birthday gift? Ever exchange recipes or copy one from a book or magazine? Ever sing a song you did not write yourself? As kids we played Hide and Go Seek, Button, Button, Who has the Button, Find the Thimble, and hunted Easter Eggs. Which games do you decree as unacceptable and why?

 

[presonorek]

Why not use the same methodology used by European pagans to celebrate the holiday that commemorates the fertility goddess Eostre?

You seem to be saying that Christians are not allowed to use Spring decorations and play games that were picked up from other cultures. Sounds like ham, flowers, carrot cake, and barbecues are off limits as well. And heaven forbid there are any jelly beans in sight. I am certain nearly everyone can understand growing celebrations of redemption and the victory of life over death, and that most can do it without scowling at those celebrating.

No. I recommended using the same method for calculating Easter as the method used for calculating the celebration for the fertility goddess Eostre. I never said it was off limits. It is just my recommendation for picking a date to celebrate Christ’s resurrection.

 

[DudleySmith]

There were two Passovers in the week Jesus was crucified by the Babylonian criminal cultists. Christians should make it a week long celebration instead of just one Sunday anyway, it being a much bigger deal than Christmas or any other significant time in history for them.

lol @ the pagan rubbish claims. Such silliness needs to go in the conspiracy forum.

 

[Devils_Advocate]

When they figure that out maybe they can figure out Christmas because they also celebrate it on two different days...

I will stay with the Catholic tradition...

 

[ding]

One of the benefits of acknowledging the Creator of existence is we don't have to believe other religions are all wrong.

Just most of them.

C.S. Lewis responds:

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic — there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others. The first big division of humanity is into the majority, who believe in some kind of God or gods, and the minority who do not. On this point, Christianity lines up with the majority — lines up with ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Stoics, Platonists, Hindus, Mohammedans, etc., against the modern Western European materialist. Now I go on to the next big division. People who all believe in God can be divided according to the sort of God they believe in. There are two very different ideas on this subject One of them is the idea that He is beyond good and evil. We humans call one thing good and another thing bad. But according to some people that is merely our human point of view. These people would say that the wiser you become the less you would want to call anything good or bad, and the more dearly you would see that everything is good in one way and bad in another, and that nothing could have been different. Consequently, these people think that long before you got anywhere near the divine point of view the distinction would have disappeared altogether. We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer. It all depends on the point of view. The other and opposite idea is that God is quite definitely "good" or "righteous." a God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another. The first of these views — the one that thinks God beyond good and evil — is called Pantheism. It was held by the great Prussian philosopher Hegel and, as far as I can understand them, by the Hindus. The other view is held by Jews, Mohammedans and Christians. And with this big difference between Pantheism and the Christian idea of God, there usually goes another. Pantheists usually believe that God, so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost is God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, "If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God." The Christian replies, "Don't talk damned nonsense." For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world — that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God "made up out of His head" as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again. And, of course, that raises a very big question. If a good God made the world why has it gone wrong? And for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling "whatever you say, and however clever your arguments are, isn't it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren't all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?" But then that threw me back into another difficulty. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

 

[BreezeWood]

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.

.
funny how christians sugar coat their history ...
.

.
uninterrupted without remorse to the present day. bing - the crusader.

 

[ding]

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.

.
funny how christians sugar coat their history ...
.
View attachment 476085
.
uninterrupted without remorse to the present day. bing - the crusader.

Says the avowed communist.

 

[BreezeWood]

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.

.
funny how christians sugar coat their history ...
.
View attachment 476085
.
uninterrupted without remorse to the present day. bing - the crusader.

Says the avowed communist.

.

Says the avowed communist.

.
how the crusader crucified the 1st century religious itinerant when truth, the religion of antiquity - finally hit the fan. and their uninterrupted history of crimes since that time.

 

[ding]

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.

.
funny how christians sugar coat their history ...
.
View attachment 476085
.
uninterrupted without remorse to the present day. bing - the crusader.

Says the avowed communist.

.

Says the avowed communist.

.
how the crusader crucified the 1st century religious itinerant when truth, the religion of antiquity - finally hit the fan. and their uninterrupted history of crimes since that time.

Says the avowed communist.

 

[presonorek]

This is a chart for calculating Easter forever but I can’t make any sense of it.

 

[presonorek]

When they figure that out maybe they can figure out Christmas because they also celebrate it on two different days...

I will stay with the Catholic tradition...

Celebrating Christmas in England and in the United States was illegal because of its violent nature. It was basically the celebration of Saturnalia but called Christmas. People would go to the houses of the wealthy and demand to be given food and money. “Give me some figgy pudding” This was not a peaceful celebration.

Yule is a more peaceful celebration from ancient Germany that marked the beginning of the winter. They killed all the livestock they could not afford to feed for the winter. They invited as many friends over as possible because some of them would die through the harshness of the upcoming winter. It would be the last chance to see them. They decorated an evergreen tree as a symbol of survival. They wanted to live through the winter just like the evergreen. This was a somber, sad, but joyful time. Our “Christmas” traditions in America have more in line with Yule than with Saturnalia or Christmas. I would even argue that Americans celebrate the pinnacle of what Yule was all about. Our excessive access to goods is a very strong indicator that we will comfortably survive the upcoming winter. I’m more inclined to wish someone Yuletide greetings than to wish them a merry Christmas but I just say, “Christmas”.

 

[cnm]

Ever exchange recipes or copy one from a book or magazine?

Always with attribution, I never pretended it was my recipe.

 

[cnm]

'If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.'

He goes from 'wrong all through' to 'the main point', shifting the goal posts within a single paragraph.
His books sucked, too.

 

[cnm]

funny how christians sugar coat their history ...

As though charges of heresy could not hinge on the most minor point.