With the input from readers, Shuggy (Hugh Young) has completed work on “The Dummy’s Guide to the One True God,” and you can see the final product here. It now incorporates 7 faiths and 27 criteria showing disparities in crucial theologial matters like the ingestion of bacon cheeseburgers.
Shuggy notes:
I have replaced Hinduism with Sikhism because it is more clearly monotheistic, and added a row “He also likes…” for the various head-slashings, genuflecting, magicunderwear etc that were too much fun to leave out.
At some point I had to give up trying to “correct” it, because what each denomination says the OTG is like is almost as diverent as each from the others, and in the end it’s a bit futile trying to give the “right” version. If anything here looks like a parody of anyone’s [former] church, well, it probably doesn’t to some other adherent of the same church.
This is already available as a poster at this site but it’s not too late to correct any egregious errors remaining.
By way of thanks to all the people who commented, readers should feel free to print out their own copies, but please direct requests for reprints to my shop. (I have serious issues with the whole concept of “intellectual property”: What if Ug had patented the wheel, or Turing the programmable computer, or Berners- Lee the www? Humanity progresses because we can give ideas away and still have them. But devising this wallchart was my work and payment is appreciated.)
I’d recommend buying the poster from cafepress. It comes in six forms, with the large wall version only $21. It would make a swell decoration on the wall of your office, especially if your job is in the southern U.S.!
What, are you trying to reduce your readership through lynchings?
b&
I live in the Deep South and putting this on your office wall, in the midst of people whose emotional maturity was stunted by Jebus at about age 14, is double plus unwise!
But would that realise that it is satire? They might be very interested to learn what all those benighted ones believe.
Very interesting and fun, but having grown up Roman Catholic, there are a few inaccuracies.
Shuggy addressed that:
For example, you might object to the characterization of Papal infallibility. While it’s true that the matter is much more complicated than the Pope never being worng, the Wikipedia entry alone is some ten thousand words — a wee bit more subtlety than can fit in a box on a humorous poster.
Cheers,
b&
I don’t object to the thorny issue of infallibility for the reasons you give. The inaccuracy is over genital cutting, which is not to my knowledge officially forbidden. See here: “The Ethics of Neonatal Male Circumcision: A Catholic Perspective” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1162/152651603766436306
Additionally the dietary restrictions for Catholics is freely interpreted (e.g., some people fast before Mass) and should more closely match the Protestant’s version with respect to cheeseburgers “Yes, except Lent.”
The chart says, with respect to genital cutting, “All officially forbidden.” And, indeed, since 1442, the Church “strictly orders all who glory in the name of Christian, not to practise circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation.”
Canon law requires some form of abstinence on Friday, though it is not required that the abstinence be from meat. Still, especially in an historical context, Friday abstinences are overwhelmingly of meat. I think the chart, again considering its necessarily succinct nature, does just fine. Anybody who knows enough to quibble over the nature of Friday abstinences will get the joke.
Cheers,
b&
Perhaps I should have included the wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_male_circumcision
which describes the Cantate Domino as historical not current.
In my experience I would agree with the statement that the current church maintains a neutral position on the topic…certainly nothing official on the level of its stance on abortion.
That same Wikipedia page quotes the current Pope as saying, “It was only in this way that, in the end, they officially made possible the Church of the Gentiles, a Church without circumcision; we are children of Abraham simply through faith in Christ.”
The Church has no objections to circumcision for medical reasons, just as it has no objections to amputations for medical reasons. But it is and long has been official Church doctrine that circumcision is not part of Catholicism.
Does that mean that Catholics don’t circumcise their boys? Of course not. But Catholics are also quite fond of birth control, and a great many also get abortions. And, yes, you’ll find all sorts of Catholic “scholars” and the like arguing all sides of those issues and many others.
None of that changes the official policy, which is what the chart addresses.
b&
“But it is and long has been official Church doctrine that circumcision is not part of Catholicism.”
And the chart said “all officially forbidden.”
Do you not see a distinction here?
Wikipedia is particularly biased on the subject of circumcision, because one expert Wikipedian who has co-authored papers with titles like “What is the best age to circumcise?” (answer: ASAP) with some of the luminaries of what can only be called the circumcisisionist movement, has made some 10,000 edits to excise any Intactivist content.
I based “officially forbidden” on
Benedict XIV (1740-58)
“…the amputation of any part of the human body is never legal, except when the entire body cannot be saved from destruction by any other method.”
Pius XII
“From a moral point of view, circumcision is permissible if, in accordance with therapeutic principles, it prevents a disease that cannot be countered in any other way”
and the Catechism:
“Item 2297: Respect for bodily integrity … Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”
“Officially” was actually meant in its ironical sense, since so many American (and Filipino, but virtually no other) Catholics do in fact circumcise.
Regarding Friday abstinence, I suppose if the point is to make distinctions between faiths any slight distinction is fair game. Of course practicing catholics will read it scratching their heads.
A more impressive distinction in my opinion is that whole mess of saints Catholics pray to. Other Christian sects have accused them of idol worship for this.
You’ll notice that the question “asked” of all the flavors is, “Bacon cheeseburger?”
It’s not a sophisticated theological discussion of Friday abstinences in Catholicism. It’s a joke about what he different religions think of the United States’s signature sandwich.
b&
I’m not trying to take it more seriously than it was intended, but this joke works if its premise is accurate. Anyway, I do agree that historically the abstinence was predominantly meat.
I didn’t know that the bacon cheeseburger is the US “signature sandwich” (or even that it had one). I assumed when it was suggested here that its initial focus was on the mixing of dairy and (pig) meat.
Shuggy, the milk, meat, and pork angle is more than enough reason to go with the bacon cheeseburger. And the US certainly doesn’t have anything like an official body that designates something a “signature sandwich” or the like.
But US cuisine is identified by McDonald’s, and they make hamburgers, and, though they’re not particularly known for a bacon cheeseburger (if I remember the jingle right, there’s no bacon an a Big Mac), the bacon cheeseburger is pretty much the standard of the ultimate hamburger.
b&
Brilliant!
Small nitpick to sort for the printed version: typo at “undewear” for mormons.
Sorry, I don’t see it. Please clarify.
This would be why nobody — and I most emphatically include myself — should ever poorfeed one’s own work.
The poster has, “undewear.”
It should instead, have (less formatting, of course!), “undeRwear.”
(“He also likes” for Morons.)
b&
That’s it. Ta, Ben.
I was looking in the wrong place, and wondering if “underware” goes like software, hardware, flatware, whiteware, etc.
Didn’t read the whole thing but as someone in the process of converting to Orthodoxy, the process is much more extensive than ‘saying it in front of a priest.’ For starters, there are almost always classes involved as with Catholicism (though they differ from parish to parish). Also usually takes at least a year to complete the process.. there are required classes, required texts to read, establishment of prayer rule, a renunciation of former heretical beliefs, culminating in baptism and chrismation.
“as someone in the process of converting to Orthodoxy”
Why, for FSM’s sake?!
/@
Bain drammage?
b&
To worship the Holy Trinity, in spirit and in truth, in the context of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church, of course. Why else?
How do you know you have the One True Xian Sect anyway?
There are 42,000 different One True Xian Cults in an ever expanding cloud of silliness.
Chances are very high that you picked the wrong one and are wasting your time on earth and going to hell anyway.
If you really need an imaginary god to believe in, join the Scientologists. For a high but not unobtainable cost, you can become a god yourself and believe in…youself.
Since you mention it, Orthodoxy has the doctrine of Theosis or deification in which one doesn’t become ‘a god’, but becomes more and more divine while being conformed to Christ’s image. And becomes a participant in the life of the Holy Trinity. With the added feature of being True.
As for denominationalism, as I said, that is mostly what drove me to Orthodoxy. Only the Catholic and Orthodox churches can coherently claim to be ‘pre-denominational’ and to have maintained Apostolic succession from Pentecost etc. Which makes other denominations just deviations from the fullness of Faith as located in the One True Church. Denominationalism is a problem for Catholicism and especially Protestantism though. Requires seeing ‘church unity’ (per Christ in John 17) as not actual or physical, but unknown. Hence the development of the idea of an ‘invisible’ universal Church, rather than the concrete one of Orthodoxy (or the supposedly concrete one of Rome).
Oh really?
How do you know that?
All the other 42,000 One True Xian sects say the same thing. Not to mention the majority of the world’s population who aren’t even xians.
This is false BTW.
There was a vast variety of early xian sects that predate the Catholic church and it’s later schism, the Orthodox.
Among these were the Marcionites, Ebionites, Assyrians, Nestorians, and a variety of Gnostic sects. When the proto-orthodox gained power, they suppressed these others any way they could, including the occasional murder.
What does being old have to do with being real and true? The Jewish religion is older than they xian one, and in fact gave rise to it. Same for the now obscure Egyptian, Canaanite, Sumerian and who knows how many other religions.
Note I spoke of denominationalism for a reason. It was largely birthed with the Reformation. But yes, there have always been heretics and schismatics.. and?
Also, it only secondarily has anything to do with ‘age’. That is, whoever the true Church is, it will be ~2000 y/o, because that’s when the Church was established. But the age is just a consequence of being the Church who was bequeathed the ‘Faith once received’ by the Apostles. So, yep, age has nothing to do with it.
Here’s the thing, Nathan.
How do you know that the outcome of the Council of Nicaea was divinely inspired and that all the “heresies” they rejected were, in fact, false beliefs? How do you know that that wasn’t the moment when Satan successfully perverted the Church, and that it was one of those long-since-murdered-out-of-existence opposing sects who were the true righteous inheritors of Jesus’s church?
For that matter, how do you know that Jesus was the good guy? He’s on record as having said an awful lot of truly abhorrent things, from Luke 19:27 to Matthew 10:32-39 to even Matthew 5:27-32. And let’s not forget the constant condemnation of huge swaths of humanity to hellfire and damnation!
Cheers,
b&
You are still making stuff up.
And it is still false.
The earliest xianities were a lot more diverse than the current versions. Read wikipedia or Ehrman’s Lost Xianities if you dare. From the very start there were divisions and you can read them in the NT. The first were between Jewish xians and gentile xians.
The reason denominationalism took off after the Reformation wars is real simple. The RCC lost its best defense, the power of the gun, noose, stack of firewood, and sword. They could no longer just kill anyone they wanted.
Who are the heretics and schismatics anyway? In xianity, the only way they have to decide that is war and murder. The heretics are the ones that end up dead.
My natal Protestant church would call you a heretic of course. They fought the RCC and won.
You never did answer the question, How do you know the Orthodox is the One True Church.
Don’t bother. We know alaready. It is because voices in someone’s head told you. All faith claims reduce down to voices in someone’s head.
Raven
You say, “There was a vast variety of early xian sects that predate the Catholic church and it’s later schism, the Orthodox.”
This is certainly not the view of the Orthodox Church. Indeed it was Catholicism [the Church of Rome] that broke away from the Orthodox:
“Almost from the very beginning, Christians referred to the Church as the “One, Holy, Catholic [from the Greek καθολική, or “according to the whole”] and Apostolic Church”.[11] Today, in addition to the Orthodox Church, a number of other Christian churches lay claim to this title (including the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church); however, the Orthodox Church considers these other churches to be schismatic and, in some cases, heretical. In the Orthodox view, the Assyrians and Orientals left the Orthodox Church in the first few centuries after Christ, and later the Catholics did the same, becoming the largest ever group to leave the Church. This event is known as the East–West Schism, and it is traditionally dated to the year 1054, although it was more of a gradual process than a sudden break.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church
And they are right. The Orthodox Church began in Constantinople at the time of Emperor Constantine and can claim an unbroken historical link to the birth of christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire. The nonsense of the filioque was just one of a number of heretical aspects that the Roman Church tried politically to inveigle, including the position of the pope. These were totally unacceptable to the true church, as the Eastern Orthodox claims.
Oh Cthulhu, who cares what the Orthodox claim? It isn’t like they have anything but an unprovable assertion at best and lies at worst.
All 42,000 and growing rapidly xian sects say the same thing, they are all The One True Xian Church.
They can’t all be right. But they can all be wrong.
These guys, Nathan etc.. are just godbotting now. Repeating mindless claims about their particular xian cult as if they were facts when some are lies and others are assertions without proof and unprovable. It’s a form of trolling and boring. And this thread is out of room anyway.
Raven
I’m with you on that. All theistic nonsense still comes under the rubric of nonsense.
Hilarious, seeing the subject is that there is no “one” church.
… oh, you were serious. Even funnier, in a sardonic way. (Will no one think of poor Nathan Duffy, stuck in the Matrix the Guide illustrates?)
Shurely … the Guide IS the Matrix?
(No, I probably haven’t seen more than 1.5 of the films ; I’m not even sure if I saw the first one all the way through in one sitting. but there’s a meme like that in the affable claptrap that passes for a storyline?)
I have previously given “God is a spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth” as one of my favourite deepities. Just what is difference between worshipping him and spirit and worshipping him in truth?
Actually, that’s too flippant.
I would seriously be interested in knowing why you think Orthodoxy preferable to whatever you were.
/@
That’s a long answer, but in short, the divisions in Protestantism were the main initial impetus. Combined with lots of reading of church history and theology. Resulting in a rejection of sola scriptura — the Church, not the Bible, is the ‘pillar and ground of truth’ (the Bible came out of the Church, after all)– and an embrace of Holy Orthodoxy.
Also, the development of a sacramental and liturgical worldview had a lot to do with it.
Again, very attenuated answer.
@ Nathan Duffy
Posted October 6, 2012 at 9:57 am
Then you will know, Nathan, that St. Peter and all the earliest Christians did not believe that Jesus, per the Nicence creed, was of one substance with God – homooúsios. They didn’t even believe he was any part of God; they thought he was the Messiah, God’s chosen one, but not divine.
So how did Christ’s nature change in the three centuries between Peter and the Council of Nicaea? For the sake of argument, let us admit that there is an unbroken chain of Apostolic succession between Peter and Nicaea (even though it is not proveable in historiography). We have evidence that the Church can change its teachings about one of its most fundamental points – the divinity or otherwise of Jesus. And yes, there was a Church before Nicaea, a dominant strain with a Canon ratified by the Council.
You say your allegiance is to the Church, ‘the pillar of ground and truth’. In that case, which one? St. Peter’s Church? The one that thought of Jesus as a – and I do mean ‘a’ – Chosen One? Or the Nicaean Church? The one that elevated Jesus to consubstantiation? To Godhead?
To approve of Apostolic succession, yet to affirm the once-and-for-all truth of the Nicaean creed is to ignore the development of Christology. Peter did not think of Jesus in remotely the same way as the Nicaean bishops.
Dermot, your Petrine scholarship is, shall we say, highly dubious, but we can mostly ignore your errors anyway. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth today; it was in 1054; it was at the 7th ecumenical council; it was at Nicaea; it was at Pentecost. The Gospel of Christ is unchanging, though refinement of understanding, precisely defining doctrine, defending against heresy (and using new language to do so) etc. all takes place in the life of the Church.
Also, Nicea is extremely important — being the first and given the topics it addressed –and it is authoritative, but the Orthodox Church holds *all* ecumenical councils to be authoritative. Your suggestion that Nicea was fundamentally unique in some way isn’t Orthodox teaching, and so any problems that arise from that position are not our problem.
And what, exactly, makes you so sure that this Church promulgates the “truth”? What is the independent evidence for its tenets besides its adherents’ interpretation of the Bible. Before you can post again, let us know what you see as the EVIDENCE, the incontrovertible evidence, for not only the existence of God but the truth of Orthodox teachings as opposed to say, Muslim teachings?
Oh dear, Nathan, I think you need to go back to your sources. My characterisation of Peter’s Christology merely reflects the overwhelming consensus amongst modern Biblical scholars on his ideas; and not only those of Peter, of ALL the early Christians.
Before you become enamoured of and imprisoned by the meaningless poetry of the Christian and Orthodox demotic, read critically the evidence of your own earliest documents, Papias, Ignatius, 1 Clement, the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, the NT and the four canonical gospels, for a start. By the way, there is no Gospel of Christ.
My point stands; Christology changed in a fundamental way within the church, it did not, in some purely academic, detached, non-violent and Socratic way, ‘nuance’ its way to some sort of closer understanding of God. It comes into the world dripping with the blood of its enemies, its erstwhile co-congregationalists.
St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of the leading (and winning) elements in the fourth century debate, was horrified at the carnage and intra-Christian blood-letting that the homoousion/homoiousion schism engendered. Kill your Christian neighbours for the want of a vowel.
In parentheses, I note the difference between the relatively open-minded tone of your first comment and the scornful, unfalsifiable and authoritarian attitude demonstrated by your last post; I should worry about this, if I were you.
Cheers.
the Church, not the Bible, is the ‘pillar and ground of truth’ (the Bible came out of the Church, after all)– and an embrace of Holy Orthodoxy.
I love the smell of circular reasoning in the morning…
smells like… napalm.
Of the various Christian denominations, Eastern Orthodoxy is simultaneously the most “mystical” and most “rational”. For one example, the “Church Fathers” (and a few Mothers) – those who wrote in the first few centuries AD, whose writings form the core of Church teachings – did not have a literal view of Scripture. A few (St. Marcarios for example) had a downright evolutionary worldview. In Orthodoxy there is no one “Fall” precipitated by a literal Adam or Eve. At some point (as Marcarios wrote in the 400’s IIRC) humans evolved/developed a sense of right and wrong. Each person “falls” when they are old enough to be aware of right and wrong, but choose poorly. Nature isn’t fallen – only creatures with reason can fall. If you loose the Augustinian view of sin (which Orthodox reject), the problem of natural evil largely goes away. That said, there are more than a few Orthodox who have some pretty bizarre “village beliefs”, and a few modern Orthodox theologians like Fr. Seraphim Rose who are extremely anti-science, but they are not mainstream, and arguably are not holding traditional Orthodox beliefs.
I’ll fix it.
I couldn’t fit it all in, and had to reduce it to
“Classes, heresy renunciation … baptism, chrismation”
(Now I bet the Catholics will want all that too.)
I assume chrismation is anointing with oil. Why is that necessary as well as baptism?
(As a child, when we sang “My head he dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows” [Ps 23] I naturally assumed it overflowed with oil….)
Personality traits should be included. Is the OTG loving, petty, vindictive, jealous, egocentric, forgiving, bitter, hopped up on goofballs, etc…?
Errr, all of the above ; variably and often several characteristics simultaneously?
Some of those are there under “Character” but I must say I like some of yours better.
Sorry, I missed that. I was thinking of how god is portrayed differently in different parts of the Bible.
It’s a pity Jesus n Mo don’t have posters.
By the way – new cartoon which I thought Jerry would like…
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/06/23/size/
Very good, except I can’t respond without giving the joke away. (Yes, it’s that good!)
Another OT subject would be Ratzinger’s servant that is subject to court procedure in the … wait for it … Vatican “state”!
Isn’t it time we make a ruckus of how one church can’t be privileged, or rather how no one can be accorded secular status?
Ditto
That is so good. :o)
Wouldn’t posters bring down fatwas?
The phrase “The One True God” just makes me think of Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica. . .
My wife made me look up “ineffable” after I told her it meant “unable to have sex”.
That comment wins the thread.
Once a pedant, always a pedant.
Besides the “undewear” mentioned earlier in the comments, I see three other typos:
1) At “Protestant” and “Mary is” “Noone” should be “No one”.
2) At “Jewish” and “He also likes” “lightswitch” should be “light switch”.
3) At “Protestant” and “heresies” the extra “s” at the end of “Jehovah’s Witnessess” needs to be removed.
Also, though I hate to get into religious controversy, at “Mormon” and “He also likes” do you want to use the British spelling “baptising” or the American spelling “baptizing”?
Superb chart–thanks!
Done. Why is it “baptize” but not “baptizm”?
Hi Shuggy:
As my wife says, when teaching ESL to adult immigrants, “Because it’s English!”. No rhyme, no reason, and the “rules” are mostly exceptions!
But when Webster reformed the spelling, presumably to make it more rational, why so half-hearted: “neighbor” not “naybur”?
If “sulfur”, why not “fotograf”?
as the old US commercial used(?) to say:
“Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry!”
I’m not kidding, btw, that ad is a real one.
Pedant’s reply to the pedant!
OED and Cambridge give ‘baptize’ with the latter explaining ‘baptise’, usually the British spelling. And similarly with other -ise erm… endings, nearly said ‘suffixes’, there, but is it ‘suffices’? Enough said.
I’m a stalwart of British spelling (living in the former colony that has a Labour Party, next to the one, Australia, that has a Labor Party) but after much humming and haa-ing I thought it would raise too many hackles to see such an Amurrican church as the Mormons with “baptise”.
Terrific chart. Interesting that you flushed out someone converting to “Orthodoxy” – a beautiful example of a person who has entirely missed the point! It is much like watching someone explain the how all those other hacks have been doing their horoscopes rong.