Moderate Christians

[dogmatically_challenged]

Christopher Carrion

It is pretty much evident from a cursory reading of the bible, the koran and every other religious scripture that has ever crawled its way from some psychopath's diseased pen that the ideologies they record and promote are intrinsically hostile to one another. They all promote themselves as the absolute measures of truth, and actively condemn those who do not adhere to the perceptual and behavioural tenets they impose on their adherents.

LOL! I enjoyed a god that loved unconditionally. A god that IS love. Reading the O.T. deconverted me and made me feel like a real sucker afterwards.

 

However, if people still want to go around describing themselves as "Christian" without adhering to the full word of Christianity as established in the religion's scriptural core, then so be it. So long as their self-delusion doesn't affetc me or the rest of the world, I really couldn't care less.

 

Does American policies affect the world? Politicians in America are whores for jesus and get votes by pandering to xers. They can solve the non issues that the xers feel are important while doing thier own thing, without a word from thier suckers who voted for them, because the politicians at the very least "tried" to make this a xian nation. People should vote based on what they know and not on what they believe.

 

Nothing disgusts me more than an atheist xian. Or nonreligious that automatically think the xians platform to be honest and good for the country. Christian wannabe politicians and lobbyists and pretend xians who are real politicians really make things hard. Every politician we got pays some lip service to jesus to varying degrees.

[Christopher Carrion]

LOL!  I enjoyed a god that loved unconditionally. A god that IS love. Reading the O.T. deconverted me and made me feel like a real sucker afterwards.

Does American policies affect the world? Politicians in America are whores for jesus and get votes by pandering to xers. They can solve the non issues that the xers feel are important while doing thier own thing, without a word from thier suckers who voted for them, because the politicians at the very least "tried" to make this a xian nation. People should vote based on what they know and not on what they believe.

 

Nothing disgusts me more than an atheist xian. Or nonreligious that automatically think the xians platform to be honest and good for the country. Christian wannabe politicians and lobbyists and pretend xians who are real politicians really make things hard. Every politician we got pays some lip service to jesus to varying degrees.

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Hence the consdition "Unless they affect ME or THE REST OF THE WORLD."

 

 

It's a fair point to make though. America is currently a concern, especially when one considers that the rest of the world is increasingly becoming the collateral in a war between it and Islam.

[dogmatically_challenged]

Hence the consdition "Unless they affect ME or THE REST OF THE WORLD."

 

 

It's a fair point to make though. America is currently a concern, especially when one considers that the rest of the world is increasingly becoming the collateral in a war between it and Islam.

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I am truly sorry yall are having trouble with terrorists over there in Europe. Some Americans are frustrated. Most have'nt got a clue.

[Christopher Carrion]

I am truly sorry yall are having trouble with terrorists over there in Europe. Some Americans are frustrated. Most have'nt got a clue.

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Don't be; it isn't the fault of Americans or America per- se (although alot of people would like to believe otherwise). Islam is a religion that would have its adherents bombing the shit out of none-believers whether or not America invaded Iraq or not. I don't condone the Iraq war; it was clearly a nonsense about oil and Eastern military presence from the very beginning, but it didn;t make Islam an intolerant, violent and uncompromising faith; Islam did that all by itself. The problem with America's current attitudes and actions is that not only has it engaged in actions that have drawn attention away from tackling the real problem on the basis of the personal interests of certain politicians and institutions (The Iraq Invasion), but it has also exacerbated the problem by driving yet more young Muslims into the arms of militant fundamentalism.

 

Britain's current problem is one of overt liberalism; personally, I'm of the opinion that anyone should be allowed to believe and practice however they wish up to a certain point. The moment someone's personal beliefs start impacting upon the lives of anyone who exists outside of said belief-system the obligation of secular society to tolerance ends. Sadly, we live in such a climate of religious and ideological paranoia that no one has thus far suggested that the reason young Muslims are blowing people up is because their holy book and religious leaders tell them to.

[Checkmate]

I think this article will go rather nicely right here.

The Virus of Religious Moderation

by Sam Harris

FROM HERE

If at first you don't succeed, eh Fweethawt? I KNEW this piece looked familiar. http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=2559

See Post #10.

 

And YES, I STILL agree with these words. And YES, they bear repeating. Thanks for the revival.

[Antlerman]

I think this article will go rather nicely right here.

The Virus of Religious Moderation

by Sam Harris

 

....

 

It is in the face of such pointless horrors that many people of goodwill now counsel “moderation” in religion. The problem with religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word “God” as though we knew what we were talking about. And they don’t want anything too critical to be said about people who really believe in the God of their forefathers because tolerance, above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world — to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish — is antithetical to tolerance as moderates conceive it.

 

(....etc)

 

Sam Harris is author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

 

FROM HERE

I see a number of problems here. First off, I am an atheist so I'm not prone to defending religion. I would be happy to see the world abandon it. However here a couple of thoughts:

 

-Get rid of voices of relgious moderation and tolerance and you wind up creating more extreemism in religion because they have no place to go, when the secular world has nothing to offer them. Do we think that everyone will just head toward secularism when their beliefs are taken away? Look at the Soviet Union. I believe there needs to be some middle ground to bridge that gap between fundamentalism and secularsim, at least for quite some time yet until we learn to live god-free for ourselves.

 

-The wars are more to do with politics than religions. Religion is used to rally people behind a cause, but take it away and then they use Nationalism (Sing it: I'm proud to be an American..."). People will continue to fight no matter what. Politicians always find some rallying cry.

 

Off the top of my head, I think all voices are important as part of the evolution of our human society. They're a drug to lessen the pains of the world's child birth. The child being human reason.

[waynus]

Hi Waynus, thanks for your post.

So then you just believe the bible is the inspired words of humans who invented a God in their own image? If your concept is that they were "striving after the divine", is that implying all they had was a concept of what a God might be? Especially the god of the OT who is characterized as a god who thirsts for bloodshed and death and resembles the groups of people who invented him.

I don't believe the bible is "inspired" it's just a book that holds great cultural and religious significance. In that sense it is no different to the koran, the gita or the buddhist scriptures. Is ee the God of the bible as the increasing sophistication of those people in understand what a divine being might be like. Of course God resembles us, how else could we understand God???

 

If being born-again is merely a metaphor, then isn't God and Jesus also a metaphor or maybe even a figure of speech?  Do you believe that Jesus literally spoke those words when he said you must be "born-again?"  do you believe the Jesus of the bible was a literal/historical figure who actually lived at one time or was he just another mythological pagan godman?  Or was just another segment of the metaphor that men were seeking for a changed view of the world?

Isn't there anything about the bible you believe is supernatural?  you call yourself a Christian but doesn't that mean you believe that Jesus was born from a virgin girl who became impregnated by a ghost?  isn't that one of the requirements for being a Christian?  Do you believe in the literal resurrection of Christ or do you believe it was just a metaphor/figure of speech? Is it possible to be a Christian and not believe in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus?  How about the Trinity.  Isn't that considered supernatural and that Jesus is God Almighty or is that just another figure of speech/metaphor too?

 

I think Jesus was a man who had a profuond impact on his time. As a result of that hsi status was raised after his death by followers, who told tales of miracles to enhance that status. Because I believe the bible contains great truths does not mean I think it literally happened. Truth and historical events don't have to go together. Myth contains great truths but is not literaly true.The trinity is a conception of God, it is not a complete statement of god's existence and never was intended to be.  Jesus as the incarnation of God I consider to be one of the most profound Christian truths. It is a second century conception of a time when the divine is not totally behond humanity.

 

I was a fundamentalist Christian for nearly 20 years and when I came to the conclusion the entire bible was nothing more than past pagan legends and myths, I could no longer consider myself a Christian, fundamentalist or liberal/moderate. So what I'm wondering is, why would you want to consider yourself a true Christian if you think the bible is nothing more than man's invention of a long list of metaphors and parables/figures of speech? 

 

Me too. Because the insights the church had, led to key moments in human thought the reformation, the enlightenment,  modern science. These all grew out of the Christian tradition. I place myself in that tradition.

 

Well I'm not accusing you of being an unbeliever or a non-theist, I'm just trying to understand how moderate believers are attempting to make sense about what they believe about the bible they somewhat believe is the true picture of God and the Jesus of that book but at the same time do not believe it literally and pass it off as not the inspired words of a literal god.  It almost gives the impression that moderate Christianity is just as much a contradiction as the fundamentalist view where they view the bible as inerrent when it is riddled with errors and contradictions.  That said, the bible is not an amazing book. 

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I believe the books in the bible are one picture of Jesus and God. There are many other pictures that never made the bible they too have some merit. All are flawed human constructions of what God might be like. I think if a God exists that being will be way behond our comprension. The bible is an amazing book because of the influence it has had not for any other reason.

[dogmatically_challenged]

Waynus

I believe the books in the bible are one picture of Jesus and God. There are many other pictures that never made the bible they too have some merit. All are flawed human constructions of what God might be like. I think if a God exists that being will be way behond our comprension. The bible is an amazing book because of the influence it has had not for any other reason.

Well if that is how you feel about that book I guess church is totaly not an option for you if do not want to be a big fat hypocrite. Also, if this is how you feel about that book then using it as a moral compass is also not to be done anymore either. The bible is only a human invention and should not be used as an authority in morality or for anything else for today and in the future in any way. The bible is irelevant now, so it should be read the same as any story book. right?

[waynus]

Well if that is how you feel about that book I guess church is totaly not an option for you if do not want to be a big fat hypocrite. Also, if this is how you feel about that book then using it as a moral compass is also not to be done anymore either. The bible is only a human invention and should not be used as an authority in morality or for anything else for today and in the future in any way. The bible is irelevant now, so it should be read the same as any story book. right?

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Church is an option, it is a community to which one belongs. Although we are not talking about a fundamentalist/evangelical church here.

 

The bible is not irelevant. It is like any other book that contains material of value to an individual. So yes it is in 'type' like any other (religious, holy, inspired)book and in 'content' only different as every book differs from others.

[dogmatically_challenged]

Church is an option, it is a community to which one belongs. Although we are not talking about a fundamentalist/evangelical church here.

You are saying you know of churches that understand the bible as you have explained it here? If so, that is AMAZING.

 

If not then you are a bit of a fibber in attending a church that does not percieve the bible the way you do, unless of coarse you let people know your preception of what the bible really is.

 

The bible is not irelevant. It is like any other book that contains material of value to an individual.

So we should just read it for what it is; a mythology book based on very little history, just like any other mythology.

 

 

So yes it is in 'type' like any other (religious, holy, inspired)book and in 'content' only different as every book differs from others.

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I'd like you to explain what value there is in a story of little children being mauled to death by two bears just because they made fun of an old mans bald head. Why would god inspire the writer to write that? What is the moral of the story? hehe.

[dogmatically_challenged]

I was the one with a straw and spitballs in sunday school. hehe.

[waynus]

You are saying you know of churches that understand the bible as you have explained it here? If so, that is AMAZING.

 

If not then you are a bit of a fibber in attending a church that does not percieve the bible the way you do, unless of coarse you let people know your preception of what the bible really is.

So we should just read it for what it is; a mythology book based on very little history, just like any other mythology.

 

I'd like you to explain what value there is in a story of little children being mauled to death  by two bears just because they made fun of an old mans bald head. Why would god inspire the writer to write that? What is the moral of the story? hehe.

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http://www.tcpc.org/ is a good place to start for churches like this in the US.

 

As to what value, who knows. It must have served some function to someone at sometime. Otherwise why was it put there?

 

I have not said that the bible is inspired.

 

Certain sections make no sense to me at all. Bottom line if it doesn't make sense, so what. Nothing earth shattering hangs on it.

[dogmatically_challenged]

http://www.tcpc.org/ is a good place to start for churches like this in the US.

 

As to what value, who knows. It must have served some function to someone at sometime. Otherwise why was it put there?

 

I have not said that the bible is inspired.

 

Certain sections make no sense to me at all. Bottom line if it doesn't make sense, so what. Nothing earth shattering hangs on it.

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Thank you very much waynus for this information. I am very interested here.

 

This is the most bizzar kind of xianity.

[waynus]

As an aside.

Why is it that ex-fundamentalists are so hard line on liberal/progressive Christians?

 

It seems to me that it could be a hangover from their fundamentalist days. That is they rejected liberal Christianity as sinful and in error back then; and have never rethought that position.

 

As a group liberal/progressive Christians do not believe in an inspired scripture, do not believe in evangelism or superstision and base their moral choices on reason. This seems to match what many on this board are saying.

 

So why the hostility? ( in a philosopical sense, not a personal one)

[dogmatically_challenged]

As an aside.

Why is it that ex-fundamentalists are so hard line on liberal/progressive Christians?

 

It seems to me that it could be a hangover from their fundamentalist days. That is they rejected liberal Christianity as sinful and in error back then; and have never rethought that position.

 

As a group liberal/progressive Christians do not believe in an inspired scripture, do not believe in evangelism or superstision and base their moral choices on reason. This seems to match what many on this board are saying.

 

So why the hostility? ( in a philosopical sense, not a personal one)

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Now your brand of xianity is even more progressive than any I've heard so far. Right now I don't know what t say about it.

[dogmatically_challenged]

The other Liberal xers still hold that the bible is inspired by god and the book is PERFECT for teaching morality. I am against anyone who spreads that virus.

[Stormwarden]

You guys make want to google the name "John Shelby Spong." He wrote a paper on how Christianity killed Matthew Shepard, and a book called "Saving Christianity from Fundamentalism."

 

A lot of Fundies criticize him as a borderline athiest. This may be a good case study in the case of a moderate.

[dogmatically_challenged]

You guys make want to google the name "John Shelby Spong." He wrote a paper on how Christianity killed Matthew Shepard, and a book called "Saving Christianity from Fundamentalism."

 

A lot of Fundies criticize him as a borderline athiest. This may be a good case study in the case of a moderate.

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If they openly admit that the bible is a human invention and that it is terribly flawed, then I have less to complain about I guess.

 

 

A lot of Fundies criticize him as a borderline athiest.

HAHAHAHA!!!! I can certainly see why! hehe.

[dogmatically_challenged]

Progressive xians should not call themselves Christians. It ain't honest.

[dogmatically_challenged]

waynus. Did you read this?

 

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Virus of Religious Moderation

by Sam Harris

 

PERHAPS it should come as no surprise that a mere wall of water, sweeping innocent multitudes from the beaches of 12 countries on Boxing Day, failed to raise global doubts about God’s existence. Still, one wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it.

 

God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the earth. Given the degree to which religion still inspires human conflict, this is not the good news that many of us imagine it to be.

 

One of the greatest challenges facing civilisation in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest concerns — about ethics, spiritual experience, and human suffering — in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Incompatible religious doctrines have Balkanised our world and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed.

 

Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians)and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.

 

It is in the face of such pointless horrors that many people of goodwill now counsel “moderation” in religion. The problem with religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word “God” as though we knew what we were talking about. And they don’t want anything too critical to be said about people who really believe in the God of their forefathers because tolerance, above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world — to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish — is antithetical to tolerance as moderates conceive it.

 

In so far as religious moderates attempt to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion, they close the door to more sophisticated approaches to human happiness. Rather than bring the full force of 21st-century creativity and rationality to bear, moderates ask that we merely relax our standards of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos.

 

But by failing to live by the letter of the texts — while tolerating the irrationality of those who do — religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practising their freedom of belief. We can’t even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. It is time we recognised that religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.

 

Religious moderates imagine that theirs is the path to peace. But this very ideal of tolerance now drives us toward the abyss. Religious violence still plagues our world because our religions are intrinsically hostile to one another. Where they appear otherwise, it is because secular knowledge and secular interests have restrained the most lethal improprieties of faith. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

 

Moderation in religion has made it taboo even to acknowledge the differences among our religious traditions: to notice, for instance, that Islam is especially hostile to the principles of civil society. There are still places in the Muslim world where people are put to death for imaginary crimes — such as blasphemy — and where the totality of a child’s education consists of his learning to recite from an ancient book of religious fiction. Throughout the Muslim world, women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed.

 

And yet, these same societies are acquiring arsenals of advanced weaponry. In the face of these perils, religious moderates — Christians, Muslims and Jews — remain entranced by their own moderation. They are least able to fathom that when jihadists stare into a video camera and claim to “love death more than the infidels love life”, they are being candid about their state of mind.

 

But technology has a way of creating fresh moral imperatives. We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation — because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words like “God” and “Allah” must go the way of “Apollo” and “Baal” or they will unmake our world.

 

Sam Harris is author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

[dogmatically_challenged]

Still I do appreciate the link. This is still very interesting to me waynus. I wish I would have been brought up progressive, like what you shared here, and not fundy. I think things would have been different. My parents would not have been pentecostal fruitcakes and they would have moved away from our relatives who are bigoted SB fruitcakes. Id be living with my folks right now maybe had it been different.

[waynus]

The other Liberal xers still hold that the bible is inspired by god and the book is PERFECT for teaching morality. I am against anyone who spreads that virus.

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I am not a liberal Christian. I would be termed a progressive or post modern Christian.

[dogmatically_challenged]

I am not a liberal Christian. I would be termed a progressive or post modern Christian.

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Well, you got your answers as to why some of us got a beef with Liberal xers.

 

In your case just ignore us when we use the word christian in criticizm as that label obviously does not apply to you.

 

You are a post modern christian and not a xer that we are talking about.

[waynus]

Still I do appreciate the link. This is still very interesting to me waynus. I wish I would have been brought up progressive, like what you shared here, and not fundy. I think things would have been different.

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I don't know any brought up progressive. Most of us sought of grew into it once we rejected the faith we grew up in. Thats why I enjoy boards like this one.

[dogmatically_challenged]

I don't know any brought up progressive. Most of us sought of grew into it once we rejected the faith we grew up in. Thats why I enjoy boards like this one.

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I really have a beef with how people think of and use the bible. The bible in many places offends me, yet in others I like a little bit of it.

 

I am mot a magical thinker , but I do cherry pick a lot of ancient philosophies and religions because some of the writing is beautiful and sometimes very intelligent.

 

Taosim and Buddhism I kinda like. I cherry pick.