Welcome to the Episcopal Church: Part 1- Beliefs and Practices
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- Опубликовано: 14 фев 2022
- The first of a two-part presentation and discussion providing an overview of the beliefs, practices, history, and polity of the Episcopal Church. Download a .pdf copy of the slides, here: s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachme...
Thank you so much for posting this. I have been trying to find resources that explain the Episcopalian faith in easy to digest ways and this lecture has been by far the most insightful!
Thank you for the video I am interested in converting to the Episcopal Church this is helpful.
1. Is there only one god, or are there multiple gods? If multiple, how is a person to choose which deserves obedience? If there is only one good, who is Baal? If Baal is a false god, precisely what makes your god NOT false, aside from it telling you that is the case?
2. Would you agree that before anything can exist, something has to create it?
Did your god create everything? If yes, who/what created your god?
3. Is your god infallible?
4. Is your god omnipotent?
5. Is your god omniscient?
6. Is your god benevolent, or malicious?
7. If your god cannot make mistakes, then it follows that everything it creates is either perfect, or that your god intentionally makes things that are flawed. Would a benevolent god intentionally create something likely to suffer because of its flaws?
8. If your god can do anything, and it created the universe, why didn't it simply create a perfect world inhabited by perfect beings? If your god wanted obedience, and god is not malicious, why did god make disobedience possible?
9. If your god knows everything, does it already understand every thought and feeling you have? Does it instantaneously know everything you say and do? If yes, what is the point of religious rituals, such as prayer?
10. Why would an omnipotent and omniscient god not communicate directly and unambiguously with individuals, with no need of books, churches, prophets, signs, miracles, etc?
If a person is not intelligent enough, or not "worthy" enough to speak directly with god, whose fault is that? Who made the person in the first place? If a person is unworthy or incapable of directly communicating with god, how can that person be capable of recognizing a valid spokesperson for god?
11. Think about the person/people who convinced/persuaded/ordered you to believe in a version of god. Are they infallible? Is it at all possible for them to tell you something they sincerely believe, but for that thing they tell you to be actually incorrect?
12. Are feelings reliable tools to guide actions?
Suppose I hear a person in my neighborhood talking a lot about the presence of violent break in robberies nearby, and I get apprehensive. I am convinced by the passion my neighbor puts into this story, even though I've seen no tangible evidence.
That night, I hear a noise. I FEEL certain that it is a robber breaking in to harm my family. I get out of bed, pull a pistol from the bedside table. Without opening the bedroom door, I shoot through it to get the robber. When I open the door, there is my son, lying dead on the floor from my bullet.
I was sure. I relied on my feelings. My fear of a robber. My hope of being a defender father. Feelings, not facts. Was that a good way to live my life?
Is faith factual knowledge or is it just a feeling, something you choose to believe, without any rational proof?
There are things science does not yet have good explanations for. However, unlike religion, logic and science eagerly accept doubt, challenges and skepticism, and are eager to be revised and improved. They don't claim to be perfect. Religion does.
Religion demands blind obedience, with harsh horrific punishment in this world and the next if you fail to obey. If you ignore science, it doesn't change the facts of science, so no one has to threaten you about it.
Science built the machine you are reading this message on. Religion blows up clinics and puts burning crosses on people's lawns. Religion persecutes and murders and starts centuries of war.
Religion rapes little kids, then covers it up. Religion tells underage girls they have to get married and have kids like a farm animal slave. Religion is about ignorance and enslavement and threats and judging others for being different. Religion is about cowardly conformity. Religion is about keeping people UNquestioning and OBEDIENT, aka, slaves.
Science is about rational independent thought.
14. Do you deny that religion (superstition, irrational behavior) is the root cause of most human conflict in history, that for centuries millions have been tortured and murdered "because god told me to do it"?
13. Suppose a person has a book full of maps to guide a group journey. They rely upon it, but the group is perpetually lost.
You question the book, but your friend insists that the book is accurate.
"How do you know?" you ask.
They reply, "I know that this book is accurate and perfect, because it says so in the book."
Your friend insists that the book is information directly from god....but some other people wrote the book, based on their interpretations, and all of them disagree.....but that is okay, because of how passionately they shout about their version of the maps, and how strongly it makes your friend feel.
When you show them hundreds of self contradictions in the book, they get upset and say that you are just not reading the book correctly.
Which person is messed up? You, or the book fanatic?
How do you justify cherry picking of which parts of the bible to follow? Leviticus much?
Murdered and burned many animals as a sacrifice, as you are required to ?
How many NON religious books have you ever read?
14. If the point is to die and go to heaven, why not simply commit mass suicide and get it over with?
Christ was quite literally a kamikaze; is that what you preach should be emulated in daily life?
15. Why is it necessary to use superstition and irrationality to justify your practical principles?
Why treat humans like a donkey in need of the stick of hell and the carrot of heaven?
If you want positive secular behavior, why not justify that behavior in practical terms?
Religion preys upon the weak and the stupid.
Rationalization is not scholarship.
If your god is so wise, so powerful, WHY is it so petty as to demand unconditional obedience? What kind of god would need much less DEMAND that we grovel and call ourselves unworthy? Unworthy? Who made you in the first place!
If your god is so benevolent, and so omnipotent, why does it deliberately
cause suffering?
Why the grotesque elaborate torture scene of Jesus, when god could have simply changed the world in the blink of an eye, effortlessly?
Oh, your god cannot be understood? Then HOW can you know it even exists?
Where is your factual tangible irrefutable proof?
Suppose I "believe" that you deserve to die and I am allowed by god to kill you. How are you feeling about faith NOW?
Thanks for this!
Thank you
🙏
A toastmasters class would do you quite well.
Yes it would. I could be become engaged because of too many ums in the speakers sentences.
Why are you wearing the collar?
He is ordained as a priest. Why wouldn't he be wearing a collar?
Deacons in the Episcopal Church wear this type of clerical collar. Priests in the Episcopal Church wear the collar that is white all the way around the neck. This man is obviously an ordained deacon
The clerical collar originated in the Anglican Communion, not the RCC
Not very welcoming to hide from the public comment
I believe the white part represents Jesus' purity..... Not the Priest's. This Roman collar is mostly black because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I much prefer it to the simple "dog collar".