What it was like growing up in an Assemblies of God cult

[florduh]

59 minutes ago, Robert_Tulip said:

True, but to me that only shows that common definitions of religion are in need of change.  I think of religion as any organised activity that promotes shared social agreement relating to spirituality.  That would mean you can have a secret spirituality that you never share with anyone, or that is just a theoretical philosophy, but as soon as you use your views as a basis for organisation you are practicing religion. 

 

Buddhism is a religion where major traditions jettison supernatural aspects.  Similarly, the liberal Christianity promoted by Bishop Spong totally rejects theism, while holding on to Christian tradition and culture.  These are minority viewpoints, but the fact that traditionalists reject them does not mean they are not religion.

 

The literal original meaning of religion is 'rebinding', from the same root meaning as ligament, based on how ligaments bind our bones together.  That means whenever we try to bind people together around shared views we are practicing a form of religion, even if our connection is defined by opposition to an existing belief system, and even if we don't think of our view as religion.

 

I see a lot of grief among people who respect some aspects of religion but can't abide the absurd dogmatism.  So I prefer to say that such people don't deserve to have their legitimate views treated as heretical anathema by putting them forever outside the pale of organised religion.

I heartily disagree almost entirely. Definitions should not be changed to suit someone's current philosophical musings or make the thing more palatable to a larger audience. A dog is a mammal with four legs and insisting we need to change the definition to a winged avian that barks is silly. It's still a dog, original definition.

 

I've always puzzled over people who claim to be of one religion or another but immediately add, "but I don't believe blah, blah, blah." Then why claim a religion that requires belief in "blah, blah, blah?" 

[Robert_Tulip]

18 hours ago, florduh said:

John 3:16 is a simple, clear message.

No it is not. 

For God so loved the world – does that mean the physical planet, all of humanity, or just Christians?  Its fit is far from simple and clear with messages like 1 John 2:15 “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them”.

“that he gave his one and only Son”, - although Genesis 6:1 and other texts say God has other sons.  And the Greek monogenē could mean “only begotten”, not “one and only” as many translations put it, but that opens the theological dispute of whether the Son is subordinate to the Father, which generated the Arian heresy.

“that whoever believes in him” – that is presented by fundamentalists as simple and clear but in fact is incredibly obscure.  The earliest church appears to have believed that Jesus was actually an imaginary allegory, not a real person.  That means the ‘belief in Jesus’ was intended in this text as an entry point for an initiated community who understood belief in Jesus in purely symbolic terms.

“shall not perish but have eternal life.” Ambiguous.  This can be interpreted to mean living in the spirit rather than the flesh in this life on earth, not going to heaven when dead as conventionally understood. 

18 hours ago, florduh said:

There is a minimum requirement if someone is to legitimately call himself a Christian.

Just because dogmatists have said that for two thousand years does not make it true.  If in fact the dogma is a corrupted distortion of the original teachings, then real Christianity requires a deconstruction of this process of distortion and dogma.

18 hours ago, florduh said:

Obviously there are myriad nuances regarding implementation of specific teachings beyond basic salvation by a resurrected Christ, but that's the nature of any religion, no? Even the very new Scientology already has schisms and factions.

“Basic salvation” is the most unclear thing of all.  Science gives no basis to believe in heaven as a literal place.  And the Bible itself suggests heaven is the image of what earth could become (thy will be done on earth as in heaven).  The “resurrected Christ” makes more scientific and historical and even mythological sense as allegory for the Sun than as an example of God breaking the laws of physics.  Jesus himself suggests the goal is to save the world, making the conventional idea of personally going to heaven for ever in return for stated doctrinal assent very shallow.

18 hours ago, florduh said:

It's not that difficult; a Christian worships Jesus the Christ because of his supernatural standing, not because of being able to twist the story of a resurrected god into some dispassionate philosophic musings. 

What you say has accurately described historically dominant Christianity. It does not describe either the original ideas of Christianity that gave rise to the Bible, or what Christianity has to become in order to overcome its current obsolescence.  I can understand that many ex-Christians want the church to fade away and die.  I prefer to argue that Christianity has enduring value as something that contemporary thinking and ethics should build upon and reform, not discard.

[florduh]

1 hour ago, Robert_Tulip said:

I prefer to argue that Christianity has enduring value...

Your hope and wish is that your debunked Christianity still has hidden gems of relevant wisdom, even Truth. You want or need it to work when it clearly doesn't unless you reduce it to a Philosophy 101 discussion in the Quad rather than what it actually is. Clearly, cherry picking is not just for Fundamentalists!

 

What did Christians believe before there was a Bible? We don't know. Who wrote the Bible? We don't know. Did the writers work together over generations to create a cohesive story with an agenda and goal? It would seem the opposite. Why do some people lend such weight to "revealed" writings and folk tales from the Bronze Age? I'll certainly never know.

 

If you prefer to argue Christianity's value you need to present more than your wishes as evidence.

[Robert_Tulip]

6 hours ago, florduh said:

Your hope and wish is that your debunked Christianity still has hidden gems of relevant wisdom, even Truth. You want or need it to work when it clearly doesn't unless you reduce it to a Philosophy 101 discussion in the Quad rather than what it actually is. Clearly, cherry picking is not just for Fundamentalists!

 

I don't want to turn this AOG thread into a discussion of my ideas, which I have presented to this discussion board in two threads I have started in the General Christian Theological Issues Forum.  More than a hope and wish, the "hidden gems" of scientific validity within Christianity is something I have argued in detail, as presented in my recent paper on Christianity for the Age of Aquarius, linked in that forum.  "What Christianity actually is" is a highly contestable notion, not something that can be simply reduced to prevailing assumptions.  My argument that Christianity began with a now-largely-lost astronomy is not cherry picking, it is a coherent and scientific hypothesis about history. 

6 hours ago, florduh said:

What did Christians believe before there was a Bible? We don't know. Who wrote the Bible? We don't know. Did the writers work together over generations to create a cohesive story with an agenda and goal? It would seem the opposite. Why do some people lend such weight to "revealed" writings and folk tales from the Bronze Age? I'll certainly never know.  If you prefer to argue Christianity's value you need to present more than your wishes as evidence.

These are excellent questions, but the answers you suggest can all be challenged, as I explain in some detail in the threads I have started.  There is good evidence that the authorship of the New Testament involved a far higher level of intellectual clarity than is generally accepted, but this requires acceptance, as Carrier argues, that the ideas in the New Testament evolved as a process of what he calls "sacred allegory", not as an attempt to describe historical events. 

[fallenleaf]

On 9/14/2021 at 1:02 PM, veganbros said:

We made a video explaining what it was like growing up in an Assemblies of God cult. We would love your feedback! Thanks

 

https://youtu.be/OIKVrzpSBug

I doubt I will get any response to this, as you have hit and run this forum.  But whatever.

 

I was raised in the Ass of God as well.  And, my experience is very similar to yours.  Except, I ended up atheist and carnivore.  Why do you still accept Jesus as the explanation for anything, after that experience?

[Narrator]

On 9/21/2021 at 1:18 PM, DarkBishop said:

 

I dont think assemblies of God is the same. I was in The Church of God of the Gospel assembly which was an offshoot of the church of God of the Union assembly. They were very much a cult until the eighties when their beliefs on faith healing caused a child to die with curable cancer. They are the reason why there are federal laws now to protect children from those types of doctrines. 

 

Assemblies of God and Church of God are totally different, in style, origin etc.

Church of God was / is a mainstream style of church, except they originally believed they were the only true church.

It was run by Herbert W Armstrong (and his son, Garner Ted Armstrong). The church was always associated with his name.

AoG is a pentecostal / fundamentalist church. If you don't speak in tongues, you're not a true Christian.

 

My brother was a minister / pastor of the Church of God. When the church tried to go mainstream, he finally saw it for the cult that it was and left them. He's since become a minister / pastor of a regular mainstream type of church.

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

15 hours ago, Narrator said:

 

Assemblies of God and Church of God are totally different, in style, origin etc.

Church of God was / is a mainstream style of church, except they originally believed they were the only true church.

It was run by Herbert W Armstrong (and his son, Garner Ted Armstrong). The church was always associated with his name.

AoG is a pentecostal / fundamentalist church. If you don't speak in tongues, you're not a true Christian.

 

My brother was a minister / pastor of the Church of God. When the church tried to go mainstream, he finally saw it for the cult that it was and left them. He's since become a minister / pastor of a regular mainstream type of church.

The church of God church I went to wasn't mainstream. The church of God of the Gospel assembly was started by a man named Waymon Pratt. His Father C.T. Pratt started the church of God of the Union assembly. The union assembly especially was a cult at its height. A fairly Large cult at that. They did believe they were the one true church tho. They are very different from mainstream Church of God. 

 

0ne of the most fundamental differences between them and any other Christian church that I know is that they believe that the Devil, the serpent, and the anti christ are all men. Not a fallen angel. They believe in a Devil spirit that gives certain men power over the world. Hitler was believed to have possessed that spirit. They don't believe it was just Adam and eve in the Garden but a whole community of people and that Adam and eve were set apart from the others through God's commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They believe that tree was the serpent and that he was teaching the knowledge to the people and God didn't want Adam and eve to listen to him basically. 

 

 

 

 

[Narrator]

5 hours ago, DarkBishop said:

0ne of the most fundamental differences between them and any other Christian church that I know is that they believe that the Devil, the serpent, and the anti christ are all men. Not a fallen angel. They believe in a Devil spirit that gives certain men power over the world. Hitler was believed to have possessed that spirit. They don't believe it was just Adam and eve in the Garden but a whole community of people and that Adam and eve were set apart from the others through God's commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They believe that tree was the serpent and that he was teaching the knowledge to the people and God didn't want Adam and eve to listen to him basically.

 

It's amazing how a certain amount of actual theology can be re-invented and expanded to make one group the only one with the truth.

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

1 hour ago, Narrator said:

 

It's amazing how a certain amount of actual theology can be re-invented and expanded to make one group the only one with the truth.

 

Yeah. It's all apologetics from someone's single interpretations. Most of the Union and gospel assemblies interpretations were from C.T. Pratt.  He saw something no one else had. Lots of people believed him. And ended up suffering because of it. He was very big on faith healing and not seeking a doctors services. His teachings killed many. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

8 hours ago, Narrator said:

 

It's amazing how a certain amount of actual theology can be re-invented and expanded to make one group the only one with the truth.

Interesting way of saying how one group can misinterpret a fairy tale differently than another group misinterprets it.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

It's interesting how one group will gravitate towards the magic parts of the Bible which are used to entice people into wanting magic answers to their problems, and others gravitate towards words and minutiae of details of verb tenses to get the Real-Meaning™. I was part of a Baptist church that was for a time tolerating a pastor with a Pentecostal leaning, because most new converts gravitate towards a god that is alive and active. But they eventually kicked him out because they insisted on the doctrine that the canon of scripture is closed and therefore god does not communicate or really do much of anything anymore, essentially becoming like one of the wooden idols he mocks in the OT. I think they reached this kind of belief because they recognize that their god doesn't really answer prayers (they would not even pray for the sick to be healed), but still craved the promised big payout of eternal life in Heaven and so were unwilling to deconvert. Now they sit around enjoying being "right". 

[Narrator]

2 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Interesting way of saying how one group can misinterpret a fairy tale differently than another group misinterprets it.

 

lol.. True.

I actually enjoy theology... not the moral lesson part, but the theology that explains how people thought back then, and also where the influences came from. For example, the two distinctly different creation stories in Genesis, or how much of Genesis was taken from stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, how verbal traditions were passed down and eventually written, how mythos was enacted around camp fires at night to keep evil away, how animism may have been the earliest kind of religion. All very interesting.

 

We look back and want history. We try to be as accurate as we can be, with history. But that's a relatively modern concern. Ancient people didn't think that way. They were interested in story and how story could inform about cultural and spiritual "truths".

[Joshpantera]

20 hours ago, Narrator said:

 

lol.. True.

I actually enjoy theology... not the moral lesson part, but the theology that explains how people thought back then, and also where the influences came from. For example, the two distinctly different creation stories in Genesis, or how much of Genesis was taken from stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, how verbal traditions were passed down and eventually written, how mythos was enacted around camp fires at night to keep evil away, how animism may have been the earliest kind of religion. All very interesting.

 

We look back and want history. We try to be as accurate as we can be, with history. But that's a relatively modern concern. Ancient people didn't think that way. They were interested in story and how story could inform about cultural and spiritual "truths".

 

In the debate forums there's a debate on Genesis as demonstrably false. It's between myself and an apologist LuthAMF from youtube. Pretty much each point you mention above was aired out in the debate. What really put the apologist against the ropes nearing the end of the debate was my focus on presupposition and assumptions at the core of theistic and especially christian belief. 

 

That brings it back to the issue of claims of absolute truth. 

 

The absolute truth is that none of this begins with a firm, demonstrably true claim. It begins with the unsupported assumption that a supernatural god must exist in order for anything to exist. They presuppose that it's true without first establishing it as such, and then logic leap forward into the bible to establish YHWH as the supernatural god. This sets up a house of cards, obviously. 

 

The one truth in this world, according to what is demonstrably true, is an agnostic foundation. Because the truth is that positive theistic claims remain unproven.

 

The one true church would have to be a church that begins with the truth, which, is that theistic claims are not proven and represent an unknown. They have to start with an 'agnostic premise' to have any chance at claiming truth. Now that's entirely possible. There could be a movement of 'agnostic theists' taking over some time. Who have learned from debate and experience that they can't prove any of it. They could lay back and stop trying to prove anything. Claim that the existence of god is unknown or unknowable, but that they have "faith" and "believe" despite the lack of evidence for the positive claim. And look at evidence and science as an aside to true faith and believe. 

 

That would represent a newer type of believer who isn't trying to prove anything, and so can't lose a debate based on the premise of carrying a burden of proof requirement. Sort of a last stand as christianity gradually crumbles. 

 

How would you approach an agnostic theist as described above?  

[TheRedneckProfessor]

3 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

How would you approach an agnostic theist as described above? 

Theist:  I don't know if god exists.

 

Me:  I don't either.

 

Theist:  I believe god exists, though.

 

Me:  I don't.  

 

Theist: ...

 

Me: ...

 

Me:  Okay, then.

 

Theist:  Okay.

[Narrator]

3 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

How would you approach an agnostic theist as described above?  

 

As I deconverted, I didn't go straight to atheist. In one sense, you could say I'm still agnostic, because it's unprovable.

 

I consider myself effectively atheist.

 

If there is any kind of deity, I don't believe any religion has a handle on it. If there is any kind of deity, then that deity has not made itself known in any way that isn't rationally explainable by more natural means. Effectively nullifying any such existence.

 

As for an agnostic church, I've seen one in action. My best mate, his family came from a German church called The Temple Society. There was no minister, priest or pastor. We used to shake our heads at them because their Sundays were a forum for open discussion about anything, and any point of view. My Christian friends and I thought they were foolish. But it was us as Christians who were the fools. You could be an atheist and feel a belonging with those people.

[Joshpantera]

16 hours ago, Narrator said:

As I deconverted, I didn't go straight to atheist. In one sense, you could say I'm still agnostic, because it's unprovable.

 

I consider myself effectively atheist.

 

A lot of us are technically agnostic - atheist because they respond to two different questions. Gnosis responds to the question of knowledge and theism responds to the question of belief. We can't know whether any gods exist so the honest claim is agnostic. Based on the evidence of man made mythology and religion we see no good reason to believe in the existence of a god any more than the existence of anything else clearly made up by humans. 

 

The two work together and answer two different questions. 

[DroidGnosis]

Back to the original video, what's up with the references to "Vodka is vegan"?  They are now agnostic vegan alcoholics?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On 12/14/2021 at 1:16 PM, Narrator said:

 

As for an agnostic church, I've seen one in action. My best mate, his family came from a German church called The Temple Society. There was no minister, priest or pastor. We used to shake our heads at them because their Sundays were a forum for open discussion about anything, and any point of view. My Christian friends and I thought they were foolish. But it was us as Christians who were the fools. You could be an atheist and feel a belonging with those people.

 

Sounds similar to the Unitarian Universalist church.

[Narrator]

57 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Sounds similar to the Unitarian Universalist church.

Heard of them, but never looked into them.

[Narrator]

On 12/15/2021 at 11:22 PM, Joshpantera said:

 

A lot of us are technically agnostic - atheist because they respond to two different questions.

 

Off topic... apologies. Josh, your avatar looks like the Wheel of Time symbol. R. Jordan fan?