Rationalizations (It's Not This, It's That)

[jackbauer]

One of the traps I always feel into with Christianity was how they responded to common's objections. They'd attack the "strawman", but their real position wouldn't be much better than the strawman they attacked.

 

Example: The sin of "lust", (a major anger button for me). The "strawman" position is is that having sexual thoughts is a sin. The "real" position is not that having the thoughts is a sin, but "entertaining" them. In other words, if you do get aroused and stop yourself, you're fine, but if you continue to lust, you're going to hell.

 

Theologions and apologists try to make this sound like a reasonable middle of the road position, by debunking the myth that God is going to punish us for something we can't help. Instead, it's only a sin if we do it "willingly" (that's the Catholic Church's position on mortal sins). Unfortunately, we're being punished for THOUGHT CRIMES which is ridiculous whether it's intentional or not. It's still making sex, something that God supposidly programmed us with, into a curse (or at least something to be tip toed around). It's like trying to rationalize beating kids for screw ups by saying you don't beat them for things they can't help. The thing is, it's still beating your kids for minor offenses, which is fucked up.

 

I blame those kind of rationalizations on why I wrestled with the beliefs. Yeah, they sucked, but they could be worse. Sadly, the traditional evangelical system did look middle of the road compared to some of the other scary beliefs I found.

[Legion]

THOUGHT CRIMES

 

It's all about control man. That's what it's all about. And this is not confined to Christians. Many of the new atheists are guilty of the exact same thing.

[Kurari]

I see what you're saying. It reminds of the "Hate the sin, not the sinner" crap...which I almost always only hear when discussing homosexuals, as if that makes everything better.

 

They are a total mind fuck, and not in the nice way.