OK then, say it. It’s definitely time to be courteous to others, and pull our little back-and-forth out of the other thread.
But it would be tough for anyone to “disagree with [me] that participation in the faith community requires a physical presence in a specific facility” because not only have I never made that assertion, but I’ve said exactly the opposite several times in that thread.
I have a pretty high opinion of you as a poster, on the whole. But your anger at being called out over one point seems to have, in that thread, repeatedly gotten in the way of your normally excellent reading and comprehension skills.
How about we go to the very beginning of the exchange. Just so folks can appreciate the bigger context and judge for themselves who was putting words in someone’s mouth.
You didn’t wait for me to make an assertion before calling what I said “bullshit”. You assumed I was making an assertion (“Everything a person can get at church can be 100% replaced by alternatives”) that I didn’t make, and you continued to double-down on that wrongness even after I explained myself. And now you have the nerve to lecture me yet again. You’re an exasperating person.
You know, we could have had a totally different exchange if you hadn’t thrown “bullshit” at me. Imagine how our interaction could have gone if you had just posted something like, “Hey, I really hope you are not implying that churchgoers can be completely satisfied spiritually just just listening to radio programs and watching TV shows. Because that doesn’t jibe with my experience as a Christian.” I would have then replied with something like, “Sorry for the misunderstanding. I can see why you’d think that, but I’m not saying that church can be totally replaced by digital means. I know that going to church is an important for lots of people because the church experience has a number of intangibles. But I just don’t agree with the idea that the essential activities of church can only be experienced at church.” You started this thing between us by putting words in my mouth and not treating me respectfully. If you hadn’t attacked an argument I never made, then the two of us wouldn’t be shouting at each other now.
As far as what brings is to the Pit goes: I surmised that your point–based on your disagreement over my posts–is that there is something from church that cannot be simulated at home. And the lack of that something is what is causing lots of Christians to pissed off at lockdown orders. That something would be (to use your words) participation in the faith community. Another way of saying this is that you believe participation in the faith community is what makes going to church essential. Yet another way of saying this is that it is “bullshit” to tell Christians (or other believers) to turn the dial, click the clicker, hit a button, or pick up a phone to get their weekly dose of religion because these alternatives don’t allow them to participate in the faith community to the degree they feel they need to.
Did I summarize your position accurately? If I didn’t, can you explain what nuance I’m missing from your position?
And if I didn’t summarize your position accurately, do you think perhaps I would understand your point better if you hadn’t jumped down my throat earlier in the thread? Do you take any responsibility for the poor communication between us? Or is all of this my fault?
By the way, when I realized you had beef with my terminology, I apologized for the misunderstanding since it wasn’t my intention to offend. But you never apologized for calling what I said “bullshit”, even though it was clear that you had offended me with that term. So forgive me if I don’t think you’re really looking for a civilized debate.
Yeah, well, to me, that first quoted statement of yours sure reads like you’re saying that anything people get by going to church, they can get just as well from TV, radio, computer, etc.
You did make this assertion: “At any given moment, a person in need of a good ole churching-up can find what they’re looking for by turning a dial, clicking the clicker, or hitting a button.” And I can understand why someone might call this out as “bullshit.”
Wait, “At any given moment, a person in need of a good ole churching-up can find what they’re looking for by turning a dial, clicking the clicker, or hitting a button” isn’t an assertion?
Because that’s what I was calling you out over.
Sure looks like an assertion to me.
Or “There are plenty of devoted Christians who cannot go to church, but they are still manage to participate in a faith community. Why do you think televangelists are so successful? Do you think the people who tune into the 700 Club every day aren’t participating in something much bigger than themselves?”
Again, looks like an assertion to me.
And I can’t believe such an assertion is coming from someone whose mother is a minister. I could only think such ignorance about what church is, could come from one of the ‘invisible sky pixie’ crowd. It would take someone who didn’t know or care about the Christian faith, I would have assumed, to believe that a Camazotz illusion of fellowship and community like televangelism and the 700 Club had anything to do with the real thing.
Yes, you did eventually come up with some other alternatives to being physically present at a church service that could to varying extents allow for genuine fellowship and community, like the small-group Bible studies on Zoom that you suggested in post #42 that I’d actually suggested myself in post #36. But since I was never arguing that the nature of church as faith community implied that physical meeting was a necessity (quite the opposite, see post #26 for starters), this wasn’t a rebuttal to me, but rather to your impression of what I must have said.
It still blows my mind that anyone familiar with Christian community could in any way confuse being part of a televangelist’s audience with being part of a faith community. This is my issue with you. If you have been confused about this, you can stop being confused now.
Yes, I can understand that. But when I expanded on my initial post and clarified that I wasn’t saying what RTFirefly accused me of saying, he continued the offended Christian bit to an annoying degree.
And now he’s acting like I’m the bad guy for misconstruing his point about the importance of church, when the point I assumed he was asserting the whole time is (IMHO) a reasonable inference drawn from his earlier postings. If “participation in the faith community requires a physical presence in a specific facility” is not a message that RTFirefly agrees with and has not been endorsing implicitly or otherwise, then I’m very confused why he took such a harsh tone with me in the first place. Does he believe that it is possible for someone to participate in the faith community outside of church, through the technologies available to us (technologies like radio, television, internet, and phone)? I hope so, because I totally agree with that idea and I think Christians should be encouraged to have his way of thinking, for everyone’s safety. If I misconstrued RTFirefly’s assertion, then I don’t know what he’s been arguing with me about. But I’ll apologize when/if he explains how I’ve misunderstood him.
I actually like the guy. But I’m not going to apologize just because he’s taken me to the Pit. Not without an exclamation and “bullshit”-free explanation, at least.
It is an assertion, yes. But it isn’t the assertion you accused me of making.
You called me out on something you THOUGHT I said.
YES, I was asserting that there are millions of people who don’t physically attend a worship service (because maybe they have to work on Sundays or maybe they are laying up in their sick beds and can’t physically go anywhere) but still feel totally connected to a faith community. Do you disagree that there are a ton of people who are just as spiritual and devout as you, but they still manage to get “churched” through digital means? You were the one who made an assertion about “participation in the faith community.” I asked if you thought those who access church remotely were not really participating. Why don’t you think this reasonable question deserves an answer? I wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. And do you not think your answer might help to elucidate what your fucking point is? Because to be honest, I’m confused what it is.
I can’t believe that such arrogance is coming from a Christian.
I’m not a member of the “invisible sky pixie” crowd, unless you’re throwing anyone who isn’t a Christian into that group. For your information, I was born and raised in the Pentecoastal church. I stopped going to church as an adult–just ten years ago. I joined the board back in 2002 sincerely believing that I was in the “God is all” crowd, but it took about eight years for me to realize that wasn’t me. I have always been honest about my disillusionment with both religion and Christianity here, but I have never been disrespectful to Christians who are reasonable and intelligent. I don’t have much patience for ignorant blowhards or hysterical kneejerking idiots, but these kinds of individuals come in all persuasions. I definitely don’t have any respect for people who would prejudge someone just because they have different beliefs than they do.
Since you bring up my mother, who I’ve been talking to a lot lately now that we are in such scary times…
My mother loves online church services! She actually feels more connected to her flock now than she did before the lockdowns. Why? Because congregants that were too shy to approach her in real life now have an excuse for reach out to her via technology. They call her up. They email her. They even TEXT her and she responds back!! She now has an excuse to get over her fears over technology and actually use it like a modern day saint. She says church “attendance” has never been better, because now people no longer have an excuse not to “come”. Like not wanting to deal with traffic or not being able to get off of work. Or not having anythingto wear. Technology has promoted her faith community, not broken it down.
So maybe you’ll understand why what I said doesn’t strike me as BULLSHIT. I can see where someone would disagree with the phrasing I used, but I can’t see how a reasonable person would think what I said was BULLSHIT unless they were just looking for a reason to be butthurt. Now, if you’re looking to literally embrace people during the altar call and wipe away their tears, you aren’t going to get that through dial-up. But if you need someone to pray for you? You want to pray for someone else? You want to hear the word and absorb a good encouraging message along with it? You want to get pumped up by the praise team? YOU CAN GET ALL OF THIS THROUGH THE RADIO, TV, INTERNET, AND PHONE. I think 99% of Christians would say that praise/worship/Scripture/sermon are what church really means to them, and the “participation in the faith community” that you speak about is simply doing these things along with other people. Which can still happen from one’s living room, ffs! The things you can only get within the four walls of a building called “church” certainly exist, but they are not what actually sustain the faithful. No matter how self-importantly they choose to declare it so.
So what you’re telling me is people who can only experience church through radio and TV aren’t sufficiently Christian for you. Doesn’t matter if they read their Bibles every day. Doesn’t matter that they participate in a faith community through message boards like this one or through social media. Doesn’t matter that they are in constant prayer and mindfulness and that they serve others in a capacity unaffiliated with a specific church. These people just don’t “get” the Christian faith like you supposedly do, and there’s no sense in you laying out cogent arguments to try to convince anyone otherwise, since people who disagree with you probably all belong to the “invisible sky pixie” crowd anyway.
I don’t like you. I thought I did, but I was wrong.
Feel free to roll tape, then. Nothing I said in that thread or this one has been erased.
IYHO. You refuse to substantiate your accusations.
No, I was asserting that one-way communications like televangelism, the 700 ‘Club’, and dial-a-prayer lines - your examples - have zero in common with being part of a faith community.
If you’d read my posts, I think I was pretty clear that it depends on the type of ‘remotely.’ Lots of multi-way interaction between members of the congregation, good. Watching/listening to your regular minister give a sermon, weak but better than nothing. 700 Club, illusory.
I can understand some degree of confusion, but (1) from the get-go, I’ve been clear that Christians shouldn’t expect any special dispensation to meet that others don’t have, and (2) what’s more, they shouldn’t need it more than anyone else. I’ve been saying that since before your post that I called bullshit on.
My point with you has been that those things you called a ‘good ole churching-up’ aren’t even a poor substitute for church; they aren’t a meaningful substitute at all.
That doesn’t mean there ARE no meaningful substitutes, just that the things you called a ‘good ole churching-up’ lack the very essence of church that even my suggestion of small-group Bible studies on Zoom provides at least some degree of.
I don’t see what’s arrogant about calling a spade a spade.
You, OTOH, could have simply said, “you’re right, those aren’t ‘church’ in any meaningful sense. I really should have suggested things like small-group Bible studies on Zoom which really do help preserve some sense of community while everyone’s physically isolated.”
You did, actually.
Well, this is great! But it has nothing in common with “At any given moment, a person in need of a good ole churching-up can find what they’re looking for by turning a dial, clicking the clicker, or hitting a button” or “There are plenty of devoted Christians who cannot go to church, but they are still manage to participate in a faith community. Why do you think televangelists are so successful? Do you think the people who tune into the 700 Club every day aren’t participating in something much bigger than themselves?”
That’s what I was calling ‘bullshit.’
So - let me get this straight - I shouldn’t have called the examples you *originally *gave ‘bullshit’ at the time, because of these examples you’re giving now.
Um, unidirectionality of time??
And no, it wasn’t your phrasing that I had a problem with - it was the examples themselves.
IMHO that thread took a wrong turn right about here:
First, that’s a crappy analogy. The comparison that better reflects reality is, “What if an in-person church experience were replaced by a message board like the SDMB?” The answer is that it wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it could certainly be an enormously helpful, meaningful substitute if circumstances warranted it.
AFAICT, monstro agrees with that proposition. I’m honestly not sure what RTFirefly believes. It’s kind of a weird argument they’re having.
I am confused too. A guy jumps down my throat because he thought I was saying that radio, TV, internet, and phone can replace everything that church provides. And then when I make the (IMHO reasonable) inference that his reaction indicates he believes there is something very important about church that can’t be replicated outside of it, he accuses me of putting words in his mouth.
Does he think that participation in the faith community can occur via radio ,TV, internet,or phone? Because if he does, then he is a kneejerking idiot who disagreed with my initial post for no reason.
If he believes that participation in the faith community can only occur within the walls of a church, then he shouldn’t accuse me of putting words in his fucking mouth.
So you’re upset that you think monstro violated some technicality of debating etiquette or something, and that’s more important than the merits of the issues. I have no idea about that.
But since you’ve started a Pit thread, I’ll take the opportunity to comment less politely on the something that you did say:
Fuck people who claim that their religion is not really about the dangerous superstitious nonsense that religions often teach, their religion is all about spirituality and community; yet somehow they can find no acceptable way to celebrate their beliefs other than to recklessly endanger the health of their entire communities.
I’m not sure of the importance, but I feel like it should be noted that one-way communication from Cecil to the masses is exactly why we’re here today.
Are you entirely unobservant? It’s one guy looking for a fight. He has a painted on mustache and huge eyebrows which he wags up and down as he sings an insulting song. Rufus, just apologize for the “Bullshit” comment and agree to agree. I see little daylight between monstro’s explicated position and yours; and it’s a clarification you could have and should have (one self proclaimed Christian to another) reached without that stupid chip on your shoulder.
