What a load of twaddle that is.
So Jesus sends the disciples out to ‘preach to all nations’. And they suffer persecution and hide themselves in the catacombs. But slowly, surely more followers are gained. And churches are dioceses are set up all over the ancient Roman world.
And the thing is growing and building until Constantine comes along and says ‘oh don’t bother with all that you can just adopt our pagan gods disguise them with your saints and angels and ‘queen of heaven’ incorporate it into your system with statues just like in our temples and you can live a life of luxury and prestige and power.
And all the Christians jumped at the chance and thought ‘yes why are we always suffering why can’t we lead the high life we want wealth status like everybody else….
And the true church of Christ died and what we got was a counterfeit Christianity for the next 1000 years until Martin Luther came along and brought us back to true Christianity.
What a load of unhistorical twaddle.
Nominated by: Miles Plastic
(More info here – Day Admin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Apostasy)
True Christianity? What is that ? I see no evidence of any such thing. I see Christmas, a celebration of excess and consumerism, and of course it heralds the introduction of Chocolate Eggs on January 2nd.
7
Also that verse of decorating and adoring of trees?! jesus is gonna be fucking pissed seeing all the decorated Christmas trees
Last Christmas I was asked by my mother to help put up and decorate the tree. I sternly told her that I will have no part putting up the satan tree and my hands will not be tainted or cursed of these pagan tree festivities but I will help with making of the fruitcake…
I thought it was Easter after good Friday that heralded the bloody devil rabbit and his chocolate demon eggs?
0
Martin Luther? True Christianity? Never had you marked down as a Proddy, Miles 😀
Luther was actually a nasty bigot. A peasant with a peasants intellect.
The truth is that Christianity would simply not have caught on unless StPaul made a few modifications to enable it to slip seamlessly over the top of existing pagan beliefs. In its pure form, Christianity is pretty austere and hard. A difficult religion. Catholicism at least makes it more colourful and entertaining.
4
Oh no Mmcm you missed my point. The Great Apostasy is twaddle. There never was a Great Apostasy.
2
My apologies Miles. I misunderstood you. Yes – I agree with you.
2
And a good cunting as well. The “Great Apostasy “ is twaddle. The only good result of the Protestant Reformation was that it led to the Counter Reformation, in which the Church redressed the administrative corruption that had given birth to the Reformation. Doctrinally nothing changed in Catholicism, as it had no need to.
It’s interesting to note that after the English Reformation, Catholicism was still popular in England (but driven underground). Even today there are “High Church Anglicans” that are doctrinally Catholic in many respects.
3
Ah so all that selling of indulgences was ‘true Christianity ‘ was it and Luther should have just shut up and got with the programme? Ah , got you.
4
Religion? Apostasy? What a load of bollocks!
14
Twaddle certainly, largely irrelevant to be sure… but is it a cunt?
Furthermore, was it really necessary to start almost every sentence with a conjunction, Miles? It did perhaps wear a little thin; there are four exemplars in the first paragraph alone. Are you limbering up for a career as a ghostwriter for The Sun?
High marks for spelling on this occasion, however.
2
Thank you. I tried harder with the spelling. Yes the conjunction are poor. Must improve there.
2
conjunctions
1
Much the same myself, MMCM, although I didn’t rate Chunghwa very highly although they were nice and cheap. On the other hand, those Red Pagoda Mountain (Hongtashan) cigarettes – despite their eye-watering price¹ – were a very unpleasant, high-tar smoke. I was reliably informed that the whole point of Hongtashan was their high price; they were basically just supposed to be an ostentatious gift. Frequently the recipient didn’t even smoke… it was a kind of “snob” value thing. The taste and smoking experience was very much a secondary consideration.
The only thing I smoke in a pipe now-a-days is Skunk IV or Northern Lights through a fine mesh gauze.
¹ the wide flip-top pack cost around £5 in 2003. You could get a perfectly smokeable pack of Yu Xi for around 20 pence at that time.
2
Genuine question, CS:
I have 3 King Edward Imperial cigars and 5 Castellas, inherited from my father who smoked a pipe (Three Nuns). I’d guess they’re approximately 40 years old but are individually shrink wrapped – do you think they’d constitute a satisfying smoke after all this time?
Good afternoon.
Excellent nom btw Miles.
4
No. Not unless you kept them humidified. And even then they would taste like cardboard.
2
Cheers MMCM. I might try one later, just for jolly, before donating the rest to the local food bank.
Unless CS has a different take – he’s ISAC’s resident tobacco connoisseur – I wouldn’t want to do anything too precipitous.
3
I rather like King Edward cigars, Ruff. True, they are a cheap cigar. But the smoking end is sweetened with something which tastes rather nice. But they are not the sort of cigars that age well.
3
I should doubt it, RTC. Not only will they have most likely dried out decades ago, slow oxidation will have caused a marked change in flavour. Swishers were always a fairly hot, coarse smoke in any event, and Castellas were downright nasty, as I recall.
Mutatis mutandis, and worse still: if they have been stored in a damp environment, even more detrimental deterioration will have probably occurred due to acid hydrolysis (as well as oxidation).
Don’t take my word for it, however. Crack one open and strike a match. If they are very dry, it might be a good idea to store an opened cigar in a sealed polythene bag with a cut potato for a day or two to reinvigorate the leaf. You never know, they may even have improved in flavour, but that would be surprising.
2
Cheap? Surely not. There’s a picture of Eddy sporting the iron cross on the packet. He was Jack the Ripper, you know, it says so in a book I’ve got so it must be true.
4
Thanks CS. Last time I smoked a Castella I was still at school, so didn’t know any better, apart from the cheap cheroots brought back from holiday in Spain.
Good idea about the cut potato, I’ll give it a go.
2
I recall this “last hurrah” of tobacco advertising in UK. Get ’em together: a pint and Castella. A nasty smoke, though.
The father of a girlfriend at University was a male model in the twilight of his autumn and featured in a Christmas advert for Henri Winter man’s cigars on the back cover of a colour supplement ca 1989. Quite sad really to see him wearing a paper hat from a cracker and looking pretty fucked (he had just been diagnosed with MS).
He was given some samples but he didn’t smoke, so I was the “lucky beneficiary”. They were even worse than Castellas, Hamlet et hoc genus omne. Oily, tarry and bitter with a cloying and unpleasant metallic aftertaste, iirc. The only cigars I ever really enjoyed were H Upmann Corona¹ Tubos, but in those days they were far too costly to be a regular pleasure.
¹ untainted by tobacco mosaic virus, or any other – name notwithstanding
1
Probably explains why I never graduated from No.6 and No.10 occasionally) tabs to cigars, apart from the expense, of course.
1
Have you tried the Upmann Half Coronas, CS? A lovely smoke if you only have half an hour or so.
1
I think I probably have, MMCM, but certainly not recently. I haven’t smoked a cigar in years. Curiously, perhaps, my smoking history started with fine Dunhill and other pipe tobaccos and expensive Sullivan Powell cigarettes (&c) but has since become more prosaic. The best cigarettes by far were cherry-red soft pack Xiao Xiong Mao from Yunnan, which I smoked when I lived in China in the Noughties. When I returned to UK, I brought back approximately 20 000 in my heavy baggage, which lasted around three years.
These days I chiefly smoke weed, with a preference towards sticky sativas, bolstered with Rothman’s “tailors”.
The Upmann tubos I recall from decades ago were particularly fine; far smoother and more pleasantly aromatic than the Punch or Montecristos that I also occasionally smoked in those days. Quite possibly it was simply an exceptionally good batch.
4
I have come back from China with loads of their cigarettes as well. I have stopped smoking cigarettes now, but I loved Panda and Zhonghua. China is still a smokers paradise.
I smoke the occasional cigar but prefer pipe smoking for recreational purposes. But I don’t smoke much these days. .
2
Xiao Xong Mao is in fact Panda, isn’t it? I still have a stash in a drawer from three years ago. Wonder if they are still smokable?
2
I thought this nom was gonna be about a Victorian escapologist….
6
Sky fairy bollocks, all of it…
8
True there Baron, though makes a cyange from the constant Vegan/football/cyclist/Covid nominations which are boredom itself. Even the Pâki criminals ones are becoming dull as they’re so common. I like the ones concerning baby jeebus, who after shagging his mum Mary, became his own son.
9
Religion and theology discussions go way above my head. Although having said that it is always refreshing to read noms from Miles, even though I rarely fully understand them (not because of him but because I’m a thick cunt on the subject).
I’m an atheist I guess, although I do respect other religions. But the only memorable thing that still lingers with regards religion is looking up the skirt of Ms Kirkman, our RE teacher back in the late 70s, and her white & pink spotted knickers!
Apart from that, and acknowledging what Easter and Christmas is all about (that is until the Woke rewrite it all), I am totally ignorant.
6
The twaddle is the whole ethos of Catholicism. There is no historical anything. All Abrahamic religions exist to keep the rich man in his castle and the poor cunts in the fields.
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Well said CC… 👍👍👍
3
The poor man at his gate, actually.
Btw, does this apostasy guff have anything to say about inappropriate horns perchance?
Ecstasy’s not bad for the inappropriate horn, I seem to recall.
3
Sodom and Gomorrah was all about inappropriate horns Ruff. Beware.
And surely ecstasy is a religious experience for all but the bases of beings.
3
I rather think CC and RTC should give up the knuckle shuffle for Lent, and repent your long list of sins (including pinups of AnalEaze, Dawn Butler and Katie Price)
4
MDMA, Cuntstable.
2
You’ll get no argument from me Techno, I’ve been saved.
2
Christianity corrupted long ago, this works is Satan’s domain. Confusing because Satan is lucifer and lucifer was the bringer of light as was Jesus.
I attended a baptism at the weekend, the whole service seemed like and induction into the church and not a lot to do with Jesus.
The only way to god is through Jesus but some damn church or other will tell you the only way to Jesus is through them.
Organised religion serving itself since man first asked himself origin questions.
4
I am in direct communication with God. Don’t need no middle man/woman/trans/gender neutral cunt.
3
I’ve always wondered why the amulet in Bedknobs and Broomsticks was named after one of Satan’s fell fallen goatboys (Astaroth)
1
*fellow
1
Luckily we ignored the second commandment and had the Renaissance, unlike Islam that blew up the Binyamin Buddhas. Cunts.
9
Miles you certainly skate through history at a terrific speed with the millennia passing by in the whizz of an eye but how about a few more details for those of us who are trying to follow you but can´t understand what your point? I thought you were a Pape so why are you hailing Luther?
1
Miles was being ironic.
3
it’s all a load of twaddle if you ask me. People want to believe in some religion or other because they can’t stand the thought of dying and their lives being meaningless. But that’s all there is, we die and that’s it. Yes it’s all pointless, so we might as well just try to enjoy it as much as possible while we’re still breathing.
8
Summed it up perfectly Allan.
2
As an elderly gentleman said to me back in the seventies: “When you die it’s like pulling your hand out of a bucket of water; there are a few ripples and then it’s as if you were never there.”.
5
Even though I found that vaguely depressing Arfurbrain,
Theres no denying the truth of it.
You well mate?👍
2
Yes I’m fine thanks mate. Hope you’re well also?
2
Cant smile wide enough Arfur.
Glad its a bank holiday weekend.
Im looking forward to having a few ales and playing out with the missus an dog in the peaks.
I enjoy working but its nice to be able to unwind isnt it?
👍
2
It surely is MNC. I’m retired now so every day is Saturday. Enjoying the more relaxed life style and guilt free. Worked fifty-two years mostly unsocial, not to say antisocial hours and on call much of the time. Reckon I drove well over a million miles some in London. I know the Peaks a little, used to visit JCB in Rochester in the seventies. You and the missus have a brilliant weekend mate!
1
Rocester even. Ducking spell check.
1
To clarify. The Great Apostasy is really the biggest Conspiracy Theory of them all.
Constantine was genuine in his conversion. In his letters to Eusebius he displays that.
I believe in the famous Chi Rho in the sky.
‘By this shall ye conquer’. Before the battle of Milvian Bridge.
He convoked the Council of Nicea to sort out the problem of Arianism. Thats not the reaction of a disinterseted player.
He was Christened an Arian though.
There is no doubt he was a shrewd political operator. But at his core he was a believer
Once he converted all the blood games and questionable cultural events were dropped by the Empire.
2
I’m not disinterseted¹ in plain Nice biscuits, though less keen on the coconut ones.
¹ ahem
3
What about lazy ones?
2
Not tried those, as far as I’m aware. Do McVities manufacture them or Bahlsen or some such? Probably perfectly delicious, if you like that kind of thing.
1
Used to love Barmouth biscuits… Are they still around?
1
An awful lot of off-topic guff here, Miles. Eusebius, now, returning to the subject: wasn’t he the guy that got Athanasius exiled? By virtue of Eusebius’ very handy role as an advisor to Constantine? In which his tongue performed the essential function of keeping that rather dodgy but successful emperor’s fundament polished.
It’s as if you are inclined to believe a Mandelson biography of Blair, perhaps.
Constantine seems to have been reluctant to distance himself from the Apollo cult, too. His objective was most probably to syncretise this with Christianity, and get the best of both congregations as regarded the divine right of emperors. Those were times when demonstrating the approval of the Eyes in the Sky was absolutely essential to survival as a despot – which the very cuddly and oh-so-Christian Constantine was.
Also he knocked down a lot of beautiful and even then historic buildings. He was a vandal and a cunt.
5
Sorry. For “off-topic guff”, please read “intentional spamming”
Presumably some here feel that posting on religion ought to be suppressed.
They are cunts.
Ban me, Mods.
6
Such bad manners.
But what about the arguement Komodo that these early Christians endured fierce persecution in early centuries. Then along comes Constantine and makes the religion legal in 313 and the Christians cave in to a syncretism with pagan religion which Constantine wanted all along for his political ambition.
Forget about all your persecutions you need to fit in now.
It just doesn’t seem probable.
That is The Great Apostasy idea.
I know you hold to saying that Christ’s message itself was twisted by early followers. So that puts The Great Apostasy back even further. Maybe 200 AD?
Others around 100 AD when the last Apostle died.
There are even some Protestant thinkers who put the Great Apostasy back to ‘Acts’ in The Bible itself.
It never happened.
2
I think there’s an analogy with Brexit here. Constantine was leary of backing Christianity 100% – while his womenfolk were going wild about baby Jesus, the establishment wasn’t. OTOH Her Indoors was giving him GBH on the earhole. So, C. made a song and dance about his vision and the need for whatever Christianity was supposed to offer – an end to wars, perhaps? (LOL) I don’t know what the marketing strategy would have been, but I bet Eusebius did. While at the same time nodding and winking at the pagans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_of_Constantine
Think Christianity In Name Only….and then it got rather out of hand. Kudos to Julian the Apostate (qv) for trying to reverse the reforms, but persecuting the cunts only encouraged them,
rather like conspiracy theorists today.
The Great Apostasy? Paul. This is not a doctrinaire response, btw. Without the dubious benefit of indoctrination as a Prod, it’s always been pretty clear to me that what Christ was teaching, from the few surviving unedited fragments, was as near as the Jewish tradition could get to Buddhism, although within the practise of mainstream Judaism. The basic message was reconcilable with the Hindu Tat tvam asi – heaven is here, you’re all children of the same father, doesn’t really matter what you worship.
Then the formalising, systematising, self-promoting Pharisee Paul got hold of it. And the rest – divisons, sects, squabbles, is history.
3
I guess it won’t be long before Jesus and his 12 disciples becomes non-binary Jesus and its 12 gender-fluid disciples.
Mary was a transgender
Joseph was a black gay
and God is now a sentient being who is environmentally friendly, vegan, colour-neutral, asexual with a hint of a Brummy accent.
5
There’s a Black Grape song along those lines.
Don’t talk to me about heroes
Most of these men sing like surfs
Jesus was a black man
No, Jesus was Batman
No, no, no, no, not at all
That was Bruce Wayne
4
Careful Technocunt! I know there is no god, I run a V6 motor car, I eat meat, I am white, I am definitely not asexual and having lived in Buckinghamshire for twenty-two years people still spot my Brummy accent. But really, no offence taken.
2
Harry Secombe was a shouty old Windbag.
4
‘Hghway’ was it called? Yeah that was a funny carry on with Harry. Every week there he was belting out some hymn in a farmer’s field. The cows looking on bemused.
5
Horrible voice Harry Secombe.
Nothing angelic about it.
Cursed by God.
Funnily enough he thought it was fuckin marvelous didn’t he?
Couldn’t stop the cunt!
I heard the other Goons planned to have him killed.
Cant prove it like,
But its probably true,
I like to think so anyway…
3
I think the secret of his success was that as a comedian he was a better singer than the average opera singer is a teller of jokes.
3
He always sang flat, IIRC.
3
If only the Almighty One had shown more discretion during the flood and refrained from drowning all of those animals he took hours creating I might have a bit more respect.
I hope his mum told him off.
2
Great nom Miles!
I used to drop the odd apostasy on a night out when younger!
Loved it!
In fact loved every one and everything.
Why I stopped.
1
It’s mental how Henry VIII invented a whole new religion, just because he wanted to divorce his first wife and marry his new slag, Anne Boleyn (no, not the Channel 5 black one). All those monks and people getting burned and murdered. Just because Big H thought with his dick.
6
I like him Norman.
He was a ‘doer’.
A problem solver.
Admittedly a cad with the ladies but they love all that dont they?
Attracted to bad boys!
Bet he was swamped with fanny when he had Annes head relocated!!
An he took no shite of monks, or priests either.
How a king should be.
Big, fat,bearded, shouty, and chops cunts heads off.
Magical.
2
John was a top notch king as well, MNC. A total cunt, but also a fanny magnet and he offed any cunt who crossed him or stood in his way.
2
Henry was a cunt. It’s so incongruous how he is still held up as one of the “Great Britains” in our times. They make a movie or telly show about him every five years.
Charles Laughton (sodomite) played him in the 30s
Robert Shaw played him badly in The Man for All Seasons (Oscar nominated!)
Richard Burton played him quite well in Anne of the Thousand Days (also Oscar nominated!)
Charlton Heston (eh?) played him in The Prince and the Pauper (“get your vagina off me, you damn barren bitch!”)
Ray Winstone played him in his typical Cock-nay style in 2003 on ITV
Richard Burton said that, “ANYONE can play Henry the Eighth, even Robert Shaw”. King Penda (last pagan King of Britain) and King Alfred were awesome. The rest were mostly all cunts.
As you have gathered, I’m not a fan of having someone rule over me and tell me what to do up here in Scotchlandshire, so tyranical Kings of England are high up on my list of historical cunts!
1
Robert Shaw has never played anything badly accept the piano.
Im not keen on Alfred,
Hiding in marshes and burning bread goods?
Sounds a bit mr Bean.
1
The best acted Henry VIII was Keith Michell in the BBC series from 1970.
1
I reckon that the major characters of the Old and New Testament never existed. There’s no evidence that they existed. I think that they are symbolic representations of the organs and glands of the human body. The body is the Temple of God. A substance has to be generated within the body called the Chrism and it has to “Ascend” up the spine to the brain where it will bring about profound enlightenment and you then become a Christos, an “anointed one”. This is what the real goal of alchemy, not to turn base metal of lead into the shining gold but to turn the base, crude human body into the shining golden body of God.
Christians pray but they should be deeply meditating for hours every day to experience Christ which means to experience the ultimate change in themselves.That’s what Revelation is all about – the events where the wheat (those who have attained Christos) is separated from the chaff (those who live the life of Earthly concerns) and then those of the Christos ascend to the “higher” plane of existence, like a character going to the next level in a video game after attaining all the gold rings or similar goodies.
This makes more sense to me than interpreting the Bible literally the way people have been for the last 2000 years and getting embroiled in the historicity of the the figures and finding Noah’s Ark, bones of Jesus, Creation v Evolution false dichotomies and general nonsense of organized religions.
That’s my take on it all. It isn’t a popular one. It’s called esoteric syncretism, it doesn’t just draw upon Christianity, it draws upon ALL the major philosophies, mythologies, astrology (not the Russell Grant kind), alchemy, ancient and modern science, all kinds of crazy shit.
Just send $79.99 per month to me and I’ll tell you all about it! And your wife is my wife now!
0
I think Pilate existed and that he sentenced whoever Jesus was to be crucified. I think that is actually in some sort of Roman records. As for the rest of it? I reckon a lot of it is twaddle, but that some of the actual people did exist.
2
The Bible was and is the most powerful document of all time for a reason. Savage, bloody wars are not fought over fiction for 6,000 years. But to misdirect the masses over what the contents of the Bible mean, the most powerful men over the ages cleverly made Christianity out to be something to take literally, like the burning bush, which was actually the acacia tree which contains the psychedelic chemical, DMT which sends your mind to another dimension. You’ll never be taught the esoteric truths of the Bible in a church or orthodox seminar, those guys will teach you the exoteric, literalist or semi-literalist version of it all because that has a feel-good vibe to it that can be forgotten about after you go home and turn on TV. That’s why Christianity has failed, it was DESIGNED to fail by the Vatican, but they practice Satanism, they don’t even go down the esoteric path of the Christos. It’s all a massive deception that takes years to unravel.
1
One has to give you respect Miles, I can count the true Christians I’ve encountered on one hand, I count you as one of them. My experience with the CofR, CofE, CofS, evangelicals(blechh) etcetera drove me to find comfort in devotion to other Gods, Sun Wu Kong, Eris, Woden,Yasur, Bez are my current favourites and of course my local deity, the Wagaarl. Don’t let the detractors beat you down, KBO!
2
It’s like George Lucas had that quirky idea of making Star Wars episode four, a bit of a joke, to give it that old matinee serial vibe. The next thing you hear is that it was planned all along, and he had this universe and all the extra characters and back stories already sorted. Horse cocks he did, the fucking chancer had no idea it would be so popular it would be, so he fucking made it up as he went along.
Well, it worked for the bible…
4
You blaspheme George Lucas!!? The fucking NERVE!
1
Remember the ‘Three Little Pigs’ who doesn’t build a sold house will fail. Well Christianity is built on Saul, Not Jesus, Saul never met the man yet he dictated the meaning of Jesus, go figure, as it keeps breading the fatal mutation just gets more ugly as it has. Says a lot about the human psychic doesn’t it?
2