I've not really been one to ask many questions (I much prefer to read through threads like this rather then chim in) however, as I am dabbing into writing fiction and I aim to tackle the creation of a fictional religion/faith, I do have some questions and might be a tad more vocal:
First off, I aim to create my religion in model of the abrahamic religions, might you be able to source me some materials about their beginnings and rise?
Second, I am also looking through common stories and looking for new interpretations; I've begun with the story of Adam and even in its most basic features. If its not too much to ask, are there any seperate interepretations between the abrahamic religions, and are there any secular interpretations? (by that I mean, interpretations of symbolism and common story elements outside a religious context?)
Might I get some help along these lines?
This is a bit of a big question really, and I'm not sure how best to answer it. I don't know much at all about this sort of thing - ancient Judaism, Jewish origins, and Jewish mythology are very much not my area. To find good sources on the origins of the Abrahamic religions - or indeed on anything - I would recommend going to
www.copac.ac.uk and trying search terms there. It's an aggregator of all academic libraries in the UK (including the British Library and other copyright libraries) so it will turn up pretty much everything in the English language and a lot of other stuff too.
On interpretations of the Adam story, I'm afraid I don't know anything at all about how other religions have viewed it, so I'm not much help there either. Sorry!
Plotinus: did any of the early (say, up to 700ish or so; I know this isn't particularly 'early' but meh) Christian groups have female or partially-female priesthoods? If there were any, could you give me a brief rundown of what is known about them?
Yes, the Montanists are often thought to have had female leaders. They certainly had female prophets, notably Priscilla and Maximilla, who seem to have been more significant than Montanus himself, at least after the beginning. But we don't know much about their organisation. They had an offshoot called the Quintillianists who apparently ordained female priests and bishops, apparnetly on the basis of one leading prophet who had a vision of Christ as a woman. However, there's no evidence that most of their priests or bishops were women.
Also, there's some evidence for the existence of female deacons, at least, in the mainstream church. Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan about Christians identifies the women he has questioned about the religion as deaconesses.
There's a popular image of the Montanists as being proto-feminists while the orthodox Christians were fusty old patriarchalists, but as these points indicate, it wasn't quite that simple. Also, of course, Christians in general were rather more female-friendly than ancient society in general, and women may well have outnumbered men in most churches (as opposed to men outnumbering women, as they did in Roman society as a whole).
I was thinking about
Perfection's thread and just wondered: is it common doctrine that "God has a plan for us all?" If so, what of the atheists and people of other religions? Did God plan for them to be atheists?
I think it's perfectly common to suppose that God has a plan for everyone. So in the case of atheists and people of other religions, it would presumably be his plan for them to be that way. It really depends on how you view divine sovereignty. Theists who believe that everything that happens does so in accordance with God's will are obviously committed to the view that this includes people being atheists or otherwise misguided. Theists who believe that at least some things happen
not in accordance with God's will, because of creaturely freedom, are not committed to that view. It's no different from the different attitudes that theists take to moral evil.
Question for Plotinus.
What do you think of this Father Barron? Have you ever seen his videos on Youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlRtlJnLN68&feature=player_embedded
His presentations sort of reinforce my perception of how the religious elite view the majority. Like the majority of people are drunken godless heathens who do all the wrong things, celebrate for all the wrong reasons, always just plain wrong in everything they think and do. They're just a mob of vulgar and spiritually unclean brutes. I wonder how such views relate to the views and teachings of the "real" Jesus?
Every "Father Barron" video I've seen so far I get this picture in my head.
There seem to be different ways of approaching things intellectually:
1) I'm among the very few who sees things the way they really are. Everyone else is part of the herd and a bunch of mindless lemmings.
2) Ordinary people have it right and I'm the mixed up one who is trying to figure out how things work in this world.
3) I'm too busy thinking to worry about what ordinary people are or aren't.
I think after Nietzsche the most "common" (please excuse the pun) trend in intellectuals seems to be #1, to think that I, the intellectual am above or better than the crowd.
EDIT: Although this sort of thinking does go back as far as Plato and before, it seems to me that since Nietzsche the idea of the lone thinker has become more popularized in our culture.
I've never heard of him before. The video you linked to seemed quite reasonable to me and obviously correct, at least as an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount goes, so it's exactly the sort of thing one would hope a Catholic priest to be saying on that topic. I don't get the impression from it, as you seem to, that he has nothing but contempt for ordinary people; on the contrary he seems to go out of his way to state that he understands their view. He certainly doesn't insult the people whose behaviour or attitude he is objecting to, and he commends plenty of people who he thinks got it right, including the US servicemen who buried Bin Laden. So I don't quite see what it is you're objecting to. How do you think he should have said it? Surely all moralists speak in this way, whether they are religious or not. They all pick up on things that they think are wrong and explain why, with varying degrees of politeness.
On intellectuals in general, I'd say that most of them are more like your (3) with a few in (1) and (2). The only reason people think most intellectuals are like (1) is that intellectuals who seek publicity tend to be the (1) types. The majority, who are (3), aren't the kind to write divisive books, appear on talk shows, or found ill-conceived private "universities" parasitising the facilities of the University of London. So the public perception of intellectuals is inevitably rather skewed. Just as the public perception of Christians is rather skewed, since it's the fundamentalists and evangelicals who tend to make the most noise and therefore give the impression that they speak for most Christians, when in fact they don't.
On Plato, by the way, surely his works embody your (2) almost perfectly - at least, that is how Socrates is always presented, as someone much cleverer than everyone else who nevertheless takes a humble approach, claims to know very little, and speaks to other people because he hopes to learn from them, not teach them.
), I'm going to wave vaguely at 
