Look people, if anybody thinks I have ever equated CJ or Polycarp or anyone like them to fundies, you are out of your flippin’ mind. The only slight exception to this is that I think you both are sure that God exists. Correct me if I’m wrong about this. I trust that is not an offensive statement.
Let’s all get into the Wayback machine and go wayback to 1965. Ministers are in the news, leading civil rights marches, fighting for justice and equality, pissing off the power structure. Yeah, the Catholics are fighting a last ditch effort to keep birth control illegal. There were racist preachers in tbe south appealing to the KKK crowd.
Today, those same ministers, with their act cleaned up, are in their giant cathedrals. The liberal churches have been losing members for decades. If I hated religion I might like this state of affairs in the hope that religion would self-destruct. I’m not saying that no liberal Christian ever says anything. I’m saying is that the message of “God said it, I believe it” is a lot easier for the masses of people to buy than your message of some parts can’t be true for the reasons Poly gave. So you’re speaking, but are you speaking effectively? And this is not a slap, because I don’t have the magic words that will be convincing either. I was saying that I think you guys are more likely to come up with the magic words than I am.
The thing that frightens me is that when these people are absolutely certain that their position lines up with God’s, all normal human ethics fly out the window. That’s the difference between religion and ethics or religion and philosophy - the appeal to the final arbiter.
Do you have reason to believe that your moral authority includes judge of every pastoral decision in every church in the world? Is it just Christians you have this authority over?
The more often I read your posts, Reeder the less I find myself pleased when we are on the same side of a debate. Your pretentious tendency to make sweeping judgements of groups in accordance with your whim robs every other aspect of your posts of validity. It’s embarrassing to agree with you. You sound just like every drive by troll in the world, but you just stay here doing it over and over.
No substance in your attack. No substance in your rebuttals. Just the same ceaseless yammering everyone has come to expect. I wish you were a Republican. It would be easier on me.
Tris
“Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is just another narrow minded asshole.” ~ [sub] hmmmmmmm, I believe I said that.[/sub] ~
Voyager, I once read a book called The Churching of America. It examined the fact that Methodists outnumbered Baptists in 1776, but by 1990, the reverse was true.
In examining the reasons for this, the author came to an interesting conclusion: namely, that a church that doesn’t demand anything from its members, in terms of works, or strict behavior codes, tends to lose members over time. (This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that a church will lose members if it’s too strict – that can happen, but apparently, in this case it didn’t).
One possible result of this would be that religions will be more and more made up of people who have chosen to make substantial sacrifices, and less of casual believers. Which would result in a more committed population of religious people.
While this does not equate to a more lockstep religious population, it opens up the possibility. E.g., CJ and Polycarp are proof that one can be both very religious and knowledgeable and flexible. But people like them may be rarer now than in the past.
Which is a great shame, really. The so-called “great sacrifices” tend to be the type that can be easily seen by others. the real spiritual challenge (and not one for the “casual believer”) is to form your own INDIVIDUAL connection to the Divine. You can’t use one that has been formed by somebody else, you can’t form one for somebody else. The only degree to which this can usefully be a community endeavor is the degree to which people can support and offer examples to one another, and benefit from the examples of others.
Siege, and Poly, and Tris, as well as several others, appear to understand this limitation on religious/spiritual communality, and it shows in the respect they show to others and (typically) receive in return around here.
gobear, good on your bf for providing some loving perspective, and good on you for your willingness to pay attention to him.
Om the subject of the OP, is it clear whether Judge Greer has been asked to leave the entire Baptist community, or merely the congregation he has been associated with? Not that I’m in support of his pastor being an asshat, but I’m curious to know how widespread and well-supported the shunning he’s received actually is.
And I hope he asks for his tithes back. Those are really supposed to be directed to the outlets where he receives his spiritual nourishment, and it doesn’t look like he’s been getting that.
Kaylasdad, your post brings up another question regarding the OP. Several posters have put the pastor down for making a political grandstand play about this. But it isn’t clear that he’s the one that did this.
Does anyone know who released the letter to ther press?
You know, Miller, ever since you announced that you are bi, you’ve been a sanctimonious bitch, especially here in the Pit and particularly towards gay folks who disagree with you. Quit trying to prove whatever it is you’re trying to prove. Everyone knows we don’t march in lockstep, so you don’t have to make a point of demonstrating it.
I won’t attempt to answer for Reeder, as it is clearly not my place to do so. However, I do think the current power-surge of the whacky religious right and their increasing meddling into social issues that affect everyone should be faced head-on – and that includes judging ‘pastoral decisions’ For isn’t that exactly what said pastors are doing from their hate-pulpits? Judging everyone that doesn’t comform to their mythical mores.
I like the way Krugman frames the issue in his Op-Ed piece.
First of all, I’ve always been a sanctimonious bitch, and I have the cites to prove it.
Second, it’s not that I disagree with you, it’s that I find you disagreeable. You’re absolutely right that the rising tide of Christian extremism in this country needs to be fought, and that it can be best fought within the church itself. I agree with you that more moderate and liberal Christians need to make their voices heard. Where I part ways with you is that I don’t think the best way to do that is by being insulting and dismissive to one of the precious few people out there who are already doing exactly what you want them to do.
And that goes for you, too, gobear. I appreciate that you’ve got no use for religion of any stripe, but is it at all possible for you to articulate that viewpoint without consistently insulting people you claim to like, respect, and/or lust after? It’s gotten so bad with you that you’ve started pre-emptively hijacking your own damn threads. You keep making the same damn broad over-generalizations that you know are just going to lead to yet another fight with people who are on your own side of the debate, but you’re so insistent on riding your Jesus-shaped hobby horse that you don’t care who you insult, apparently under the mistaken impression that you can make some skeevy flirt post after the fact and all will be forgiven. That might have worked the first dozen or so times, but you know, after a while, it starts to sound more than a little hollow.
Say huh? I made a perfectly neutral theological point (religion over not love) and your boyfriend and his pals immediately started in with the hostile comments. don;t decalre war and then act surprised when you get a hostile response. In post #113 in this thread, Dropzone was rude to me, he got rudeness back. Hamlet politely made the same point a few posts later; I listened to him, considered what he ahd to say, and acknowledged he was right.
So, I’m the only person whose temper gets out of control in this board and needs to be reminded more than once to chill? Hmm. And more to the point if this is the response when I listen to you, why should I bother to ever listen to you again?
You curse me if I’m intemperate, and you curse me when I admit you have a point. Where’s the incentive for me to ever be civil to you when civility gets me as much contempt as hostility does?
In addition, you accuse me of “over-generalizing” when I specifically enumerated “religious conservatives” as the target in my last OP? If you’re just posting out if general spite and don’t even bother to read my posts when you attack me, why should I pay you any mind at all?
It’s gotten so bad with you that you’ve started pre-emptively hijacking your own damn threads. You keep making the same damn broad over-generalizations that you know are just going to lead to yet another fight with people who are on your own side of the debate, but you’re so insistent on riding your Jesus-shaped hobby horse that you don’t care who you insult, apparently under the mistaken impression that you can make some skeevy flirt post after the fact and all will be forgiven. That might have worked the first dozen or so times, but you know, after a while, it starts to sound more than a little hollow.
Please. You don’t listen to me, or anyone else who calls you out on your on-going grudge match against God. You post one of your rants, you get in a fight, you say you’ll “dial it back a notch,” and then you just go and do the same damn thing over again. Why should I think your little revelation about your rhetoric in this thread is going to be any more permanent than the last one?
I’d be a lot less contemptuous towards you if I believed for one minute that your promise to be civil from now on was going to last longer than the amount of time it takes this thread to drop of the front page of the Pit.
Which is exactly my damned point. You know exactly what sort of rhetoric pisses off the people you claim to respect, because you actually managed to create an OP that didn’t fucking use it. Except you still couldn’t let it go without adding a pissy little post-script to draw attention to how the mean ol’ liberal theists of the board are so unfair to you. Because, y’know, when you insult someone, it’s their fault if they get angry at you. You were just making a “neutral theological point.”
What exactly are you trying to say, here, Homebrew? That you weren’t being insulting or dismissive, or that you just weren’t being insulting and dismissive by the standards of the Pit? Please let me know, so I can correctly divine if you’re being an asshole, or an idiot. It’s an important distinction, and I’d hate to call you one when you are, in fact, the other.
Intentionally obtuse doesn’t become you. There are two points. I was being neither insulting nor dismissive. Blunt, perhaps, but not insulting. The second point is that you are either acting like a hysterical twit for pretending to consider it insulting OR you are way too thin-skinned and sensitive for The Pit and might want to stay out of adult conversations in general*. Calling someone down from their cross would pass muster in either Great Debates or MPSIMS and it certainly doesn’t even approach crossing a line in The Pit.
The level of hypersensitivity is getting absurd. Can nothing be criticised anymore without folks whining about it? Criticism of religion is not hate speech. Telling an adult to quit whining isn’t insulting.
*See, that was insulting. Can you not see the difference or you comprehension impaired?
All right, all right, gobear. I’ll play with you. You can stop calling for me.
I’m not exactly sure what to add, since I’ve already said everything I have to say on the subject of religious tolerance, many times over. And Miller has done a better job than I could at describing how your schtick went way past tiresome a while back. (For those coming late to the thread: Miller is my boyfriend, a fact which is apparently somehow relevant to this conversation, although I can’t imagine how). Still, far be it from me to stand between a man and his raging priapism, and you can apparently only come to orgasm when you’re railing on a perceived fundie, so I guess I’m stuck with spooge duty.
Even if it’s just pointless repetition. We’re not enemies, gobear, or friends, or friendly rivals, or whatever it is you’re looking for. I don’t like to be rude, but I have to say that I really don’t care to deal with your nonsense any longer. I freely admit that in the past I’ve gone in for a couple rounds of your cycle of: blanket inflammatory statement -> personal attack -> claim to back off -> another personal attack -> arrogant psycho-analysis -> insincere half-apology with vaguely creepy sexual undertones -> martyrdom. But it only took a couple go-rounds to see how hollow and meaningless it all is.
You claim that your beef is with organized religion and you still have respect for “the good ones,” and then you show how empty that “respect” is because you keep making deliberately inflammatory blanket statements. Whenever you get called on it, you make cheap-shot attacks in response, and then somehow end every thread with you as the martyr who got dogpiled.
In your self-hijacked thread, you made a big show about how you were a free-thinker and open-minded and were being careful in your wording so as not to offend the closed-minded Christian apologists, proving that you learned absolutely nothing about genuine open-mindedness and true religious tolerance.
You claim that you just talk about the issue and don’t go off on tangents, but you can’t seem to participate in a single discussion on any topic – from theism to movie rentals – without making some personal comment dragging a poster’s relationship, politics, religion, sexual orientation, “personal issues,” whatever, into it.
I’ve seen so many people scold you by saying “that’s beneath you, gobear,” that I can’t imagine where they got the impression that you were ever above it. You say you’re going to take it down a notch, and then within minutes you’re right back to your same tired old shit.
And while I have to admit I find it comical that you’re so bent on setting up a nemesis to rail against, that you’d group an avowed and even vocal atheist in with all the supposed Bible-thumpers, I feel it’s my duty to point out that Miller’s religious beliefs are nearly polar opposite to my own. We’re different people, you see, and lumping him in with me because of our relation and some bizarre vendetta you have does nothing more than make you look stupid. Er.
There is one point in regards to religion that Miller and I agree on, though: religion and faith are personal, and should stay that way. It’s not anyone’s business to change those beliefs, and it’s everyone’s business to make sure that those personal beliefs don’t spill over onto other people. You want to make a difference? Then attack the actions of people, don’t insist on knocking down their beliefs. You want to just sputter and rail against something? Knock yourself out; just don’t expect everyone else to have enough patience to stick around long enough for you to get it all out of your system.
And Homebrew, you’re slipping. You’ve been so busy with the personal attacks that you actually made a post that doesn’t complain how the church is threatening gay marriage. How are people going to recognize the true enemy unless you keep telling them about it?
