Sorry, Jodi, I do not use little smiley faces, so you have to be able to read sarcasm into my quotes. It was a play on alllll those religious types who “don’t object to homosexuals—as long as they don’t practice homosexuality.”
And don’t toss any Jews in my face, girlie, I come from a long line of 'em. I can match you yenta for yenta.
::amused:: Venom? Eve and Esprix? You have no idea what real venom is like, IMHO.
Of course they’re not the same person. There no way Esprix could pull off the sweater twin sets and pearls like Eve does.
“Am I the only one who wonders if Esprix and Eve are the same person?”
—Oh, Joe, don’t be sill’. Everyone knows Ukulele Ike and I are the same person!
Eve, you didn’t need to smilie for my benefit; despite a rather cursory and long-distance association, I am confident you do not intentionally say prejudiced things, and I understood the analogy you were drawing. But the best way to explain why it would nevertheless strike a wrong note was to substitute “Christian” with “Jew” and repost it, which is what I did.
You needn’t refer to me as girlie, darling; you’re not that much older than me. But I assume you took my point. Pax?
Yes; thank you.
I’d be happy to, since the “homosexual” version is also a idiotic (sorry, Eve) thing to say.
MATT, I too would like to hear your thoughts.
I don’t get this. It was supposed to strike a wrong note, that was the whole point. It was intended to point out that “homosexuals are fine, as long as they don’t do any homosexual acts” was offensive. So why are you complaining that it was offensive? If Eve had used Jews as an example it would have gotten the point across equally well, but using Christians as an example was more appropriate since they’re the ones that we usually hear the “love the homosexual, hate the homosexual acts” bit from, as well as being the subject of this thread.
Joe_cool, that’s just pathetic.
Anyway:
-I see a religion which denies humanity’s ability to construct its own ethical structure. It promulgates moral rules not in reference to any consequences they could have, but just “because He said so”. Its followers are not encouraged to consider local conditions when making a choice, but rather to believe in a chimerical universal moral code, whether or not it is useful in a particular circumstance. It is abstract.
-As a result, in direct contravention of its founder’s dictum that man is not made for the sabbath, every historical indication is of a church that has encouraged its followers to think of the needs of human society as less important than the needs of the church. It is anti-humanist.
-It does not encourage learning and knowledge. Consider the prayer “lead us from doubt to faith”. It is not interested in consideration and questioning except insofar as that would tend to bolster the Christian argument (consider the Scholasticist clerics prior to the Enlightenment). Eve’s eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge caused the stigma of original sin, rather than being rewarded as a portion of the quest for knowledge and understanding. It encourages blindness.
-It includes no reference to balance. It instead urges its followers to identify whole halves of the human condition, whole “others”, and cut them off, rather than attempting to create an eclectic life, learn from every source, balance their experience, sample, stay in moderation, and enjoy. Once one has identified The One Right, Just and True Way, one is not encouraged to pursue it in moderation or to doubt its rightness, but rather to believe that one has God on one’s side in whatever means one might take to that “holy” end. It is unbalanced and dualist.
-It involves a God who rules the universe and is outside the universe. Since humans are created in the image of God, this encourages humans to think of themselves as outside the realm of nature - to “have dominion over the Earth” rather than to consider themselves part of it. It does not recognize the need for harmony with nature.
-The philosophical failings I listed above have been the spiritual ancestors of débâcles such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the slave trade, and the growth of scholasticist rationalism of the Voltaire’s Bastards variety.
As I’ve mentioned, most of these are not the fault of Jehoshua bar-Joseph; they are more or less the fault of Saul of Tarsus and later commentators, who wasted no time converting the popular new cult into an abstract power structure. Much of the dualist and abstract baggage came from the religions of Greece and Rome, and piggybacked quite nicely on the remaining Jewish remnants of Christian doctrine. But there we have it.
This is why I left the Christian church.
Doesn’t this constitute its own thread?
Esprix
Yes, for the umpteenth time; I got that.
Because it IS offensive. What is so hard about this? Oh, I see – if person A posts something idiotic and offensive, and person B posts something similarly idiotic and offensive, then person C is not entitled to point out that BOTH are offensive. Well, sorry; I disagree. I think it was a silly thing to say, and I wouldn’t change my opinion if you inserted any number of groups in the place marked “Christian.” And kindly stop explaining what she meant; I knew what she meant and I objected to it anyway.
Yes, it does. After Matt expressed his dissatisfaction with Christianity in principle over on the BSA thread, I had just gotten through suggesting he start one for rational discussion of what exactly his points were. I’d love to see him C&P the above as the OP of such a thread.
Please, Matt?
Ooooo-kay. So if a Christian posts and says “those faggots better stay with others of their kind and stay away from decent people,” and I chime in sarcastically and say “those Christians better stay with others of their kind and stay away from decent people,” I’m being offensive. I know my response would be on-the-surface-offensive–that’s the point, to show how stupid both are–which means I’m not really intending offense, but am instead intending to highlight the offensiveness of the original post by putting it in a different context. I guess I’ll have to say I don’t get your sense of humor and sense of offense and leave it at that. 
And I better never tell you the joke about “what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?” 
MATT – I’m not going to cut-and-paste this because it would be too long. My comments are in italics.
"I see a religion which denies humanity’s ability to construct its own ethical structure. Do you mean ethics or morals? It promulgates moral rules not in reference to any consequences they could have, but just “because He said so”. The unthinking reason for following any rule-system is “because those are the rules;” the thinking reason for following rules is because you personally see the validity and utility of them. Just because one can be an unthinking Christian doesn’t mean one has to be. Its followers are not encouraged to consider local conditions when making a choice, but rather to believe in a chimerical universal moral code, whether or not it is useful in a particular circumstance. The existence of universal moral rules – it is wrong to murder, for example – does not make those rules chimerical. It is abstract. All religions are to a great degree abstract; concrete religions are not flexible enough to survive or universal enough to prosper.
-As a result, in direct contravention of its founder’s dictum that man is not made for the sabbath, every historical indication is of a church that has encouraged its followers to think of the needs of human society as less important than the needs of the church.Perhaps historically accurate for Catholicism (I’ll let a Catholic fight you there), but not historically or generally accurate for Protestantism. It is anti-humanist. It is only anti-humanist to the extent that it recognizes that human wants cannot out-weigh God-given responsibilities. Just because you want an apple doesn’t mean you can steal it.
-It does not encourage learning and knowledge. . . . According to my experience, this is absolutely and demonstrably incorrect, both in terms of modern moderate Christianity and in terms of historical contributions to the universal body of knowledge.
-It includes no reference to balance. It instead urges its followers to identify whole halves of the human condition, whole “others”, and cut them off, rather than attempting to create an eclectic life, learn from every source, balance their experience, sample, stay in moderation, and enjoy. I frankly don’t know what this means. Once one has identified The One Right, Just and True Way, one is not encouraged to pursue it in moderation Assuming you are confident you have ahold of it, how and why does one pursue justice or truth in moderation? or to doubt its rightness again, incorrect in my experience; Christianity is not incompatible with thought or doubt., but rather to believe that one has God on one’s side in whatever means one might take to that “holy” end. Christianity is not Machiavellian; it does not stand for the proposition that the ends justify the means. It is unbalanced and dualist.
-It involves a God who rules the universe and is outside the universe. It involves a God who is throughout the universe. Since humans are created in the image of God, this encourages humans to think of themselves as outside the realm of nature - since God is not outside the realm of nature, neither are humans – especially since science, not religion, has established that the human animal is nonetheless an animal. to “have dominion over the Earth” rather than to consider themselves part of it. Humans manifestly “have dominion” over the earth; I don’t think this is arguable. I also don’t think it can be credited to or blamed on Christianity. It does not recognize the need for harmony with nature.
Great evil has been done in the name of God; great good as well. Again, Christianity can neither accept all the credit nor take all the blame for this. Do you have the same problems with Islam and Judaism?
Jodi, I am responding to you in the new thread I set up on this subject: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=49890
Oh, sure, suggest moving it after I’ve answered. Actually, go ahead; on second thought I think I’d rather see how Poly handles this anyway.
I do best with Christians who actually DO practice Christianity. My experience is that rather few Christians focus on Christ’s message, which to me means that they’re not actually practicing Christianity.
I don’t recall Christ saying anything about gay people. On the other hand, he did say something about the old law being set aside. So it seems to me that being gay and being Christian aren’t incompatible. You just have to toss out all that stuff said by that heretic, Paul.
On hand, I think, “love the Christian, hate Chrisitianity” is as foolish as the fundie version using homosexuals. There are good, kind, intelligent Christians like Polycarp who do not deserve to be bundled with the hate-filled ignorami like James Dobson. I respect people, event when I disagree with them, if they are polite and use rational arguments to advance their viewpoints.
[hijack]
On the other hand, I think it will be a grand day for humans when we outgrow the need to believe in gods and spirits. There is not one shred of evidence that a Supreme Being exists, and there is a great deal of evidence showing that the framework of every religion on the planet is either rooted in superstition and/or internally illogical.
The greatest philosophical hurdle to overcome is the problem of evil. What omnipotent, omniscient, and onmibeneficient god would allow children to get cancer? Why do the innocent suffer? Why does God ignore prayers? The God of the Bible acts like a demented child pulling the wings off flies.
Then there the historical problems. Why are there no corroborating accounts of the Exodus? How can the account of
creation in Genesis be reconciled with modern biology?
IMHO, religion was created to answer the origins of natural phenomena (We hear thunder because Thor is throwing his hammer, to offer hope of life after death, and to give divine authority to societal rules (The king has a divine right to reign). Frankly, I believe it is time to retire religion and superstition to the nursery.
Espirx, I assume that your Methodist parents were as upset as my Methodist self with the results of the last Convention as relates to homosexuality. It pisses me off that one of the more tolerant denominations still can’t get it’s collective shit together on this.
Now, about “Christianity” as a big whole- being a Methodist, I don’t really identify with Catholics, Baptists or Mormons, for example. We may all be Christian, but don’t necessarily share all the same beliefs, even among the Protestant religions. Now I know that I am not the most educated person in the world in terms of religion, so I don’t want to sound stupid. Are the basic principles close enough to each other that all Christian religious denominations should be painted with the same brush, even if the specifics aren’t?
I know for myself, that I like Methodism’s idea that someone who does not question or use his head, isn’t doing it right. Having been brought up in a great congregation with great spritual leaders, I have never been exposed to the all-or-nothing, “do this or you’re hellbound” kind of thing.
Anyway, I guess my not-so-clear point is that I’d hate to be lumped in with some of these other “Christian” denominations on most subjects, especially homosexuality and the rights of women.
Except that nobody said that here, did they? How about you posting your sarcastic little bon mot in response to . . . oh, wait, it’s not in response to anything, is it?
Well, yes. To Christians. Obviously.
Which, of course, is precisely what I did by substituting “Christian” with “Jew.” I mean, that’s exactly what I did. So, since this is all so self-evident to you, I’m really at a loss to imagine that you didn’t get that.
I didn’t think it was funny; I thought it was offensive – for precisely the same reasons you thought the same statement would be offensive if it dealt with homosexuals. Apparently this is what you don’t get, but whatever. Since I think everyone else got the point, maybe it would be better if we just dropped it?
Goboy,
So since you do not have any belief in anything(but you did once but lost it), you are going to decide for everybody shouldn’t have common sense and believe there is something more to this world than intellect can figure out. How quaint of you?
I’m not sure I understand what WB is saying, but it seems as if the gist is that A)I am arrogant in not being religious
B)Religion is a matter of common sense. Wrong on both counts. It’s up to the religious to prove there is a God, since they’re the ones making the claim. B)Believing in talking snakes, making people out of ribs, axes floating on water, bears eating kids who dissed a prophet and so on are not matters amenable to common sense.
Bill- what the HELL did you say?
Take a deep breath and post that again, being sure to include proper grammar and punctuation so the rest of us can understand it.