A few thoughts on being an extremely liberal Xtian

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this thread, but hopefully less rancorous given the forum. badchad, in my post in the pit thread I’ve stated the conditions under which I am willing to discuss this topic with you outside the pit.

I call myself a Christian, though in the view of many I am not. I disbelieve in the Virgin Birth, you see, and I am agnostic about the Resurrection but inclidned to disbelieve it. I don’t believe in miracles and have no opinionon life after death, as I have no data at present and prefer not to have such data, as it would involve dying and that tends to be painful or at least undignified.

Here’s what I believe, just off the top of my head and in no particular order.

  1. There is a God, by which I mean a creator of the universe who acts exclusively )(or nearly so) through natural law. This Person is mostly incomprehensible to humans for the same reason that differential equations are incomprehensible to frogs. It is utterly inaccurate and misleading to call God He, or She for htat matter, but do whatever floats your boat. God has vast power but is not “omnipotent” in the sense of being able to do anything that can be expressed in words. For one thing, that’s because a nonsense sentence does not stop being nonsense because “God” is its subject. God cannot make invisible pink unicorns because invisibility & pinkness are contradictory attributes; in the same way, God cannot give a creature free will while withholding free will from it.

  2. To the limited extent that God intervenes in human history, it is through oral revelation. This is expressed differently in differnt cultures, and no culture has a monopoly or anything near to it on being right or wrong on moral issues. Different persons have different needs and thus are attracted to different philosophical frameworks. (That’s ot to say that all philosophies are equally valid; f’instance, the best thign I have to say about Zeno of Elea is that he must have had some really good weed.

  3. The Bible is a book of myth, poetry, moral philosophy, fiction, and a smattering of history. Some of it is beautiful and enobling and wise. Some of it is crap that no one should take seriously, and yes, John Hagee, I’m talking to you.

  4. Jesus of Nazareth propounded not a few wise and ennobling things that the world would be much better off if everyone followed. But not everything attributed to him was said by him, and even some of the things he did say he might have reconsidered recording given access to a PowerBook and Word for Macs.

  5. The sermon on the mount is largely what I’d like to base my ethics on. I fail constantly. Stupid human limitations.

  6. Hell–that’s a town in Michigan, right?

  7. Heaven–that’s a town in Iowa, right?

  8. The story of the Deluge only makes sense if you stipulate that Yahweh retained the Green Lantern Corps to do the donkey work.

  9. Ruth & Naomi were not lovers. As for David & Jonathan, it was just that one time and they were both drunk. Okay, it was twelve times, but they were still always drunk.

  10. It’s way too late for me to continue this, so i’m going to post it, post the link in the Pit thread for Badchad, thendo something else.

2

When I hear of people like this, it makes me wonder what “Christian” means anymore. Let’s look at what you have said that you believe:

Heaven and hell don’t exist.
A ton of things that Jesus said were not really said by him.
Other philosophies were sent to Earth by God (not devised by humans).
There was no virgin birth.

I don’t feel all that antagonistic towards people like you, but it makes me wonder what causes you to consider yourself Christian at all. I generally associate Christianity as being a religion based upon belief in the overall truthfulness of the Bible. To me, this is like someone saying “I do not believe that all people should have equal social status, and I agree with corporatization of economic production, but I still consider myself to be a Communist.”

3

For the most part I’d call myself a Christian agnostic. Culturally I identify with Christianity, but I can’t think of a church that fits me wel.

Actually I was mostly being a smart-ass. (Rhymers are ALL smart-asses. Hence the multiple divorces.) I don’t know what happens post death and am in no hurry to find out as it involves death, which, being a sissy, I’d like to postpone. I disbelieve in the fiery notion of hell, though, and I think concentrating on Heaven to be a really bad idea; it leads to atrocities on Earth.

Change that to things attributed to Jesus, sure. Like I said, I’m a sermon on the mount kind of guy.

Goodie!

I don’t worship the book. It’s a guide, and one with way more hands in the composition than is convenient; much of it is not to be believed. Psalm 137, f’instance. And any suggestion that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would consign anyone to an eternity in Hell.

4

I have a point, though.

When people use a title with regards to themselves, that title usually has a meaning. A Ph.D calls himself a Doctor because that title was given to him by a university. I consider myself a “Power Downie” (self-made term) because I believe that humanity’s only mode of survival is to reverse the industrial process. A Capitalist calls himself a capitalist because he believes strongly in free enterprise.

Why do you call yourself a Christian (or a Christian Agnostic) at all? Your beliefs seem so out of the recognized Christian loop that, if I were in your place, I wouldn’t really identify myself as a Christian at all.

5

Well, the point could be made that if you are serious about the evolution of human society you could believe that Communism will appear sometime in the future, in the meantime you should be content by planning or developing socialism. Lenin and buddies’ mistake was that they thought they could skip several steps with no trouble.

As for the OP, I think the American founding fathers would had loved to have a beer with him/her.

6

I can’t see that you can call yourself a Christian if you deny practically every tenet of the faith. And I don’t mean that in any hostile sense. A theist or Agnostic theist maybe (which in my mind is many rungs up from accepting the specific tenets of any defined religion or subscripts thereof)?

We’re all in the West impbued with Christian culture but that does not make us all Christians.

I’m with Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith) on this one - dogmatic faith of any sort is the biggest threat to humanity we face. and I’m with him in making the distinction betweeen dogmatic faith and the ineffable experience of oneness with the universe that can be (I believe although I have not experienced it) reached through meditation, some drugs or even as a flash of revelation.

It really is about time humanity grew up and abandoned all these bronze and iron age ossifications of the central Mystery.

(From The End of Faith)

7

Do you believe that Jesus is incarnate with god and the creator of the universe? Do you believe in any of the miracles described in the bible?

Is your god all powerful aside from logical conradictions (square circles or the examples you gave)?. Is your god sovereign over all things in the universe? Is he omnicient and omnibenevolant?

Have you had an oral revelation from god? If so please describe.

What if philosophies contradict each other?

How do you decide which parts to take seriously and which are crap?

Examples?

Do you have as much admiration and/or worship for secular philosophers who might have said as many or more wise things while saying as few or less unwise things. If not, why?

I assume you are referring to Matthew 5:3 – 7:27. Is that correct? Out of 1300 plus pages of they bible why do you accept only these 4 or so pages as relevant? Are there any other verses you endorse?

8

Were your parents Christian?

9

Personally I thought Sam Harris fell off the deep end in the later chapters of his book with all that talk of spiritualism. What’s that supposed to be anyway?

10

I have never read any of his books, but from what I hear, Sam Harris’s views are as such:

  1. All religious beliefs are irrational and detrimental to society.
  2. Except mine.

Is this a good summary? :smiley:

11

No - it doesn’t even come close as a parody. You are hearing from morons.

I don’t have the book in from of me and it’s been some time since I read it but a closer ‘parody’ would be that he understands that through the use of techniques anyone can master the experience of a sense of a self seperate from the universe can be dissolved (as mystics have been reporting for millenia). What he is unhappy about is turning this experience into institutions that order crusades, tells people to blow up other people, causes untold suffering through attitudes to contraception etc etc. He argues that the technological possibilities for mass destruction are now so great we can no longer tolerate dogma’s such a Islam and Christianity and he is particularly hard on ‘liberal’ religionists who attempt to put an acceptable face on dogma by ignoring the central tenets of their own faith.

In short he draws a distinction between spirituality and religion and as a neuroscientist does not in any of this ,subscribe to mind/body dualism or the Abrahamic distinction between God and Universe that Eastern belief systems don’t make. I guess he thinks there can be a science of spirituality and that this can be a foundation for the ethics we need to avoid killing ourselves. But as i said - I could be wrong.

The book is certainly worth reading and certainly worth more than the dismissive parody someone has presented you with.

Compared to the Bible or the Koran it is a model of logic and coherence.

FWIW I agree with his general tenets. Liberal Christians and ‘liberal’ Islam can only exist by ignoring what the books at the base of their faith actually say and in doing so they run interference for the dogmatists. Given the state of the world I fully share his intense hostility towards organised religion. That in a world where basically WMD’s can be concocted by any biology phd with a high school lab, that so many americans believe in The Book of Revelation (over 50%?) and so much of the rest of the world believe in following the clearly made up to suit his needs at the time shifting ethics of a murdering bandit has to be a cause of over-riding concern.

And with Der Tris and badchat, whatever I may think of their debating style, I can share their passionate loathing of organised religion and the intellectual and moral pretzels ‘liberal’ adherents of books loaded with the most vile moral judgements, exhortations and standards must tie themselves in an effort to hold onto a comfort blanket label.

IMHO if you have to strain at gnats and selectively parse the Bible and the Koran, or as in the case of the OT basically ignore half the book, to come to some halfway decent ethical stance you might as well just have the courage and the integrity to throw them away and fly on your own moral wings.

My own position is that I’m basically ignostic but cannot ignore the direct experiential accounts of mystics. That there is something ‘going on’ spiritually is I think, certain. But the path to it is science and philosophy, not institutional religions of any sort.

IMHO if you are inclined to follow a spiritual path you should have the courage to do so outside of institutional bounds.

12

I’m happier with the fire and brimstone condemnation of dogma too but am quite open to the possibility that altered state of consciousness can tell us something about the wider nature of the universe.

If there is a possibility that this can de developed into an ethical framework rooted in neuroscience rather than the contradictory and hateful blatherings of the Bible or the shameful words and deeds of a murdering bandit then I say - go for it. I doubt it’ll end up with the adherents feeling it is fine to blow people up, oppress a whole sex, or deny the use of life enhancing technologies like contraception and stem cell research.

It’s the 21st century and it is high time humanity threw out every last scrap of all that nonsense.

13

[QUOTE=tagos]

My own position is that I’m basically ignostic /QUOTE]

Ignostic being a less noble version of agnosticism. :smack:

14

[QUOTE=tagos]

Actually, as I recently learned in a similar thread here, ignostic means that the question of whether there is a god or not is not something that one really cares about. I described myself as an agnostic apathetic (I don’t know and I don’t care) and was told that the proper word was ignostic.

15

I’ll speak some support for the Rhymer, being a liberal Christian (but not “extremely liberal”). I believe in the Resurrection, and Heaven and Hell, and the Truth of the Bible. My greatest inspiration comes from the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew Chapters 5-7) and the “Greatest Commandment” (Matthew 22:34-40). Anyone who accepts the truth of those passages is welcome to label themselves Christian, in my opinion.

One of the great disservices done by fundamentalist Christians is their focus on the exact literalness of the Bible. It leads to false dichtomies and other logical messiness. The Bible can be true without interpreting everything as an exact recounting of the past. Limiting myself to only a strictly literal reading, violates the “all your mind” part of the Greatest Commandment, in my opinion.

Thus, the “what the Bible says” arguments as to who is Christian or not don’t hold much water for me. It is possible for Christians to disagree about the interpretation of any particular verse and still both be good Christians.

The other commonly misinformed requirement for Christiainity is the ritual and hierarchy. They are both traditional parts of the religion, but in my view unessential. Very little Biblical support for either, and open to interpretation. I see no reason that Christians cannot choose organizations and rituals to their own liking. It’s the thought that counts, not the form.

16

I thought it was because you guys were all obeying the nominal imperative and scalding each other. Or do you just hate poets?

17

[QUOTE=jayjay]

Ignorance successfully fought, thanks.

18

It’s perfectly possible to be a Christian Agnostic, especially if you don’t believe he said everything attributed to him.

Christian, at its core, means Christ-like. If you aspire to emulate Christs behavior as you understand it you can certainly call yourself Christian. You’d be more Christian than a lot of the hellfire-and-democide extremists who seem to have only read Paul and the OT and skipped what Jesus actually said and did.

19

The problem is with the greatest commandment part 1

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

is that this is Route 1 to the whole fanaticism, blowing yourself up, killing poeple over cartoons religious nonsense. It absolutely is not a requirement for behaving like a decent human being or treating others with their due respect. It is not a component of living like a decent human being.

Just like loving your country or your ‘volk’ or any other abstraction. I’d venture to say, along with Harris, it is quite the opposite. Whose god, whose definition?

Follow the holy gourd, No, follow the holy shoe. </life of brian>.

Apart from the problem that the Koran and the Bible make it pretty clear God is a raging sociopath. At least the Cathars had the biblical god labelled as the evil demiurge and the ‘real’ God as outside of this world. And look what other Christians did to them, in direct contravention to the whole love thy neighbour bit.

In a world of kitchen-sink WMD’s humanity can no longer afford to indulge itself IMHO etc.

20

Come over to Cafe Society sometime. Reading a few of my shallow, sexist, objectifying remarks about the likes of Alyson Hannigan & Carla Gugino will leave you in no doubt as to my gender.