On Tuesday, January 21, 2003, at 09:53 PM, Matthew Palmer wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Hugh Saunders wrote:this technique will also fail when you come across christians who are genuine in their faith; their love for the lord is more important to them than issues of doctrine.From experience, I'd estimate that this sort of Christian makes upperhaps... 1% of all church-goers. And they're not evenly distributed throughout congregations, either.
I'm not sure if 1% is low enough. So far I know of myself and one of my religion teachers from highschool. (I went to a private Catholic Highschool)
You probably don't believe that a Catholic HS religion teacher could be more concerned with loving the lord than any of the catholic doctrines but it's true. If time hadn't wiped most things from my memory I could give you enough examples to fill 10 threads. A lot of what he taught to the ones willing to listen was that bible is primarily just a book (or at least originally was) of short stories and poems based loosely on actual events and many (such as the creation stories) are pure fiction only intended to make a point. The bible is not supposed to be taken as an almanac of historical events. It is a story book. We did go over a lot of stories, mostly the gospel, where he gave us his interpretation of the real action event that may have taken place actually was. The one that really stuck in my head had to do with the story about the loaves and fishes. In the bible it says that Jesus performed a miracle where he magically multiplies the bread and fish to feed the whole gathering of people with plenty left over. I don't think that Jesus was this obvious. I think what really happened really had nothing to do at all with Jesus other he was there. When the boy brought his bread and fish to Jesus willing to share it with everyone, the crowd was so moved that they did the same. Everyone sharing with everyone was the real miracle. (hey isn't that what we are all trying to do with this open source stuff afterall?) Of course this everyone sharing with everyone is a miracle idea is kinda lost on most people. They would be more impressed by magic tricks, so that's what was told so that people would remember the stories.
You really can't take anything in the bible literally. The bible was passed entirely verbally for many hundreds or thousands of years before it was written down. Things are bound to get changed as they are passed from one generation to the next and even across languages. And of course don't forget that when King James finally had pen put to ink I'm sure a lot of politics went into it. It's a shame there are so many Christians that take the bible so literally. And really you can pick any point you want to prove and find one or more passages in the bible that taken out of context will prove your point. Both sides of any argument can do it. It really just comes down to who has more of the bible memorized for the particular argument. Crap like this gives us good sane Christians a bad name.
In his class we also had long open discussions about things like whether or not sex before marriage or even abortion were wrong. Of course by Catholic Doctrine they are mortal sins, but that wasn't what we focused on. He always gave us both sides of an argument and never said this is what is right and wrong. He said that God leaves that up to you to decide. So long as you do what you feel is right, God will agree with you. I could go on and on but I really should be working right now. ;-)
One thing I also came away with from his teaching was that the existence of God will never be proven. This is by God's design. Yeah I know it sounds like a bullshit theory. But seriously. God gave us free will. Part of that free will is deciding whether or not we want to believe if she actually exists. God left it up to us to decide for ourselves--he didn't leave a bunch of sloppy proof laying around to make the decision easy for us. If we some day found "proof" that God existed, then we would all be forced to believe in God and any other stupid rules that someone wants to attach to the existence of God, such as abortion or pre-marital sex or even birth-control are sins. That's just stupid and God knows better. She knew that if some stupid zealot could make a bunch of rules claiming they came from God and then show proof on top of it that we all would be forced to believe. Good bye free will and then the world would be a pretty boring place more likely than not.
Well anyway I've probably given enough reason for people to hate me now so I'll stop.
--Paul Baker == a Catholic who doesn't care if you believe in a different invisible man than he does
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
GPG Key: http://homepage.mac.com/pauljbaker/public.asc