I think it sets up more like this:
A religion that claims infallibility but is found to be fallible in at least one respect must be suspect in all others. If the religion claims something like “We think we are right most of the time,” then fallibility is allowed, but leaves one wondering when to follow the religion and when not to follow it.
Everybody does the ‘cafeteria’ thing; fundies just pretend they don’t.
It’s possible to consider a holy writing to be an imperfect attempt to portray a genuine truth and to therefore seek that truth aided by the book, but without resorting to slavery to it.
If you start out with the premise that your particular religion and holy book are literally true, direct from the lips of God, then yes, liberal faith is wimping out. That’s not the only kind of religion, though. Believe it or not, atheists don’t have a monopoly on reason. Let’s say your an intelligent person who knows that you have to question your premises in order to find the truth, so you don’t just blindly swallow the faith you were taught as a child. So you examine the evidence, and conclude, perhaps based on your own experience, that God does exist. You then try to learn more about Him. Maybe other people have noticed things about Him that you’ve missed. Sure enough, lots of other people have said all kinds of things about Him, a lot of it sounding just like the Being you’ve concluded exists. Other things they’ve said sound like a crock of shit. So you take what seems useful and reliable, and ignore what seems like nonsense. This is how reasonable people form opinions about politics or morality or any other subject that isn’t a hard science.
What other way is there to live? Fer crying out loud, haven’t you atheists ever heard of thinking for yourself? 
[QUOTE]
Well if it were the way of the world that each person on Earth were free to seek his or her own walk with God then things would be hunky dory. Such is far from the case. If you follow the link in the OP you see that the author’s premise is that historically, blind faith has led to horrible atrocities, and that level of belief coupled with modern weaponry is potentially disastrous.
[QUOTE=SolGrundy]
Perhaps it might if there were such a thing, but as atheism has no tenets save a denial of the existence of a particular god, and that tenet has held forth unchangingly, “fundamentalism” hardly applies.
I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said that the thirteenth chime is bad, not just in and of itself, but because it casts doubt on the preceding twelve.
And a National Lampoon writer (Jack Handy? Peter Gaffney?) wrote: “I believe the Bible means exactly what it says it means; I just don’t attach any importance to it.”
Acvtually, what makes religion/faith any different from any other thing where it is reasonably possible to inhabit a point that isn’t at one exreme or the other?
Had there been no Principia there’d be no understanding of physics today–but that doesn’t mean that Newton was the last word on the subject!
So the stuff that God said way back when was just him sort of figuring out things, and now that he’s had some time to think about it maybe he would like to revise it a bit?
SolGrundy, you are so cool! I would let you have my armadillo if I had one. Would you let me have your baseball cards?
And one thing often missed in the argument about “what to take at face value, what not to”, is that the religions have had armies of theologians putting their lifetimes into figuring that out for two millennia. Every single believer need not figure it out from scratch.
What happens when those armies conflict? Who is to be believed?
Eh? Your response assumes I think the bible contains the literal word of God. I don’t. I think it contains the words of people who were trying to figure things out.
I did not mean to put words in your mouth. Please excuse me.
Newton was “not the last word” on a subject that is open to being proved completely wrong. Can you suggest to me a religion or theory of God that allows for the same?
I think there might be confusion over the way ‘fundamental’ is used, a confusion that has been increased by the fact that many people associate the word these days with unthinking conformity, barbaric behaviour and indeed criminal activity.
If a fundamental is seen as someone who seeks the heart of a belief system, its core messages, then most sincere religious followers would be pleased to be called fundamentalists.
A true fundamentalist would combine a robust defence of his or her core beliefs with tolerance for those who disagree. Especially with those within his or her religion who disagree. A true fundamentalist would never advocate coercion to his or her beliefs, and would speak against violence, in this context, at every opportunity.
I follow what others have said. God sent mankind a message and we can figure it was … well … the Straight Dope. But then people stepped in and added, “what God meant to say was…” and these people are not necessarily repeating the same message as God intended. (I call this the Zottean Theory of Editorial Diminishment.)
So one purpose of theology is to seperate out the parts that came from God from the parts that came from men. (Admittedly another is to figure out if there’s any trace of God at all underneath it all. But’s that’s another debate.)
To me the best course is to stop focusing on the details and look at the big picture. At some point in the Bible it says adulterers should be killed. But at another point it says people shouldn’t kill other people. At this point common sense and interpretation is needed to reconcile these two apparently opposing directives.
O.K., but what I was responding to was your strawman characterization of Eve’s argument where you said:
That was never argued by anyone here. I’m objecting to your contention that Eve is arguing what you call “fundamentalist atheism”:
See, you’re arguing against a strawman.
From what you say above, it sounds like you agree with the argument, and do admit that maybe none of the Bible holds water.
And on a side note, I’m intrigued by your use of quotation marks around the word “truth”. That seems to imply that truth means something different to you. To me, truth, by definition, is objective, and is not changed merely by my beliefs or desires.
This isn’t a contest, it’s a discussion. It’s really not necessary to backslap each other for being on the same team.
Atheists rule! Yee-haw! :rolleyes:
I think the point may be that if you pick and choose which parts of Christianity make sense to you and reject the rest, you may be fooling yourself by calling yourself a Christian. You may still have a perfectly nice and reasonable belief system, but is it actually Christianity? After all, I’m perfectly happy to reject the “bad” Christian notions mentioned above and accept the “good” ones…and I’m not a Christian.
hermeneutic Circle (HER·me·NEU·tic CIR·cle). All interpretation involves a circular reasoning structure involving a projection of a fore-structured understanding, rather than the purely objective relation of whole and parts. Any detail, such as an object or word, is understood in terms of the whole, and the whole in terms of the detail. For example, advocates of the Thursday Crucifixion hypothesis interpret every piece of evidence, not objectively from the evidence itself, but understanding it and spinning it in terms of their mindset. Other examples include astrology, dualism, and scientific creationism. People locked in hermeneutic circles normally remain caught therein until faced with irreconcilable, overwhelming evidence to the contrary. People in this logic dilemma often reject all evidence to the contrary and choose to remain deceived. It is perhaps the most fundamental flaw in hermeneutics giving interpretation a limited, dubious role in the search for fact and truth.