Tony Thomas wrote:
<IMSHURKKPWII@spammotel.com> wrote in message
news:b496f240.0403301932.b27c025@posting.google.com...
Paul Bramscher,
You are committing the fallacy of weak induction. The Christian God as
you know it is not the God of the Bible. Ever hear of Calvinism? Start
there if you want to know what the Bible really says about the human
relationship with God.
And why is Calvin the preferred Biblical authority? Christianity has
undergone a tremendous number of schisms, each claiming to be the true
interpretation on the "relationship with God." By centering on Calvin,
you reject more than a millenia of medieval/Catholic doctrine, Luther,
Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish and other anabaptists, Quakers, the
Gnostics, the entire Eastern orthodoxy, Christian mystics (Meister
Eckart) and modern monks (Thomas Merton), Coptics, and protestant
branches exclusive to Calvin. Indeed, you reject the validity of
probably 95%+ of all persons, living or dead, to have ever practiced a
version of Christianity.
Your comments further illustrate the sectarian in-fighting, often
linguistic, cultural, and imperialistic tendencies which should not be
expected of the transcendent or the Universal. This historical
in-fighting demonstrates that Christianity is like any other cultural
phenomenon: locally adapted, subject to political and cultural whimsy,
with no definitive version, and responsible for great chauvinism and
violence when one version is thrust down the throats of people who care
not for its flavor.
You just used the term 'The Bible" to refer to two distinct things.
There is no such thing as 'The Bible'.
If there is a Christian God at all how does he, she or it relate to
the prophet-god-king Jesus? The whole thing is just a ridiculous muddle.
The documents concerned have been lost, found, rewritten and copied
inacurately
That's right -- since there is no definitive version of "The Bible",
we'd probably want to turn to the earliest writings in their most
original form, and examine the practices of the earliest worshipers.
This is generally good historical practice when examining any historical
document: go to the earliest sources, original languages, and
contextualize them within broader socio-political events at the time,
and look for earlier inspiration. Turns out that the early Gnostic
writings were all but wiped out by the imperial statist church that
followed, and Christians still deny that if it weren't for the Sumerian
Flood myth and the Greek gnostics, there may have been no Jewish
versions of these fairy tales making their way into the modern Bible
(RSV, King James, etc.). Rather than contextualize the Bible as a
collection of legends, myths and stories which have precedent before,
they prefer the uniqueness interpretation -- and this is where the
territorial chauvinism begins.
The whole line of reasoning is destined to violence and hypocrisy. To
many religious mystics regardless of faith, anything which promotes
goodness, love, and compassion is "good" or even "God". Anything which
promotes suffering, war, violence, division, etc. is "evil" or "the evil
gods." Christianity has a bootstrapped orthodoxy interjected before
this interpretation can take place. It starts with "You're damned
before birth, and won't make it to heaven unless you believe in God."
Proper conduct is placed LOWER on the totem pole than belief, which is
largely determined at birth: the religious practices of our family,
nation, time period, ethnic group, community, etc.
Indeed, most of us cannot simply switch our beliefs. If we've been
educated as scientists, as historians, sensitive cross-culturally to the
practices of other countries, etc. we cannot simply "flip a mental
switch" and believe in a part (Christianity) which claims to be greater
than the whole (the sum of the human and natural experience).
Christianity's greatest affront to essential goodness is seen today in
the arguments against same-sex marriage. A penis and a vagina,
regardless of how loving the owners are, is the primary prerequisite for
marriage. Britney Spears can get married for a weekend as a joke -- and
it carries more legitimacy than two caring homosexuals who may have
supported one another through sickness and other trials for decades.
The crass reductionism of marriage as a sexual/material contract
determined by birthright rather than proper conduct -- caring,
compassion, support, generosity, committment, etc. -- is the essential
root problem with Christianity and many others steeped more deeply in
their orthodoxy than anything transcendent, Universal, or touching on a
description or prescription for the world around them.
The emphasis is not on the concrete reality of compassion or caring,
regardless of source. Rather, the emphasis is on the authority of the
source (which Christians themselves cannot agree on anyway). This is
perhaps why war can easily be justified, and compassion -- if not from
the proper source -- can easily be damned. This is arguably an
idolatrous situation with regard to orthodoxy.
It places higher regard for faithful evildoers and warmongers than on
caring and compassionate agnostics. This is the mark of racism and
tribalism, not anything remotely transcendent. A preoccupation with
authority of source, rather than with behavioral end-product, should
immediately suggest that such a religion is more concerned with
territory and turf wars than with anything else.
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