Jered left a comment on a recent blog post. Per my comment policy, comments should generally be no longer than the post its in response to. There are obvious exceptions, a 300 word comment in response to a 50 word blog post wouldn’t be a big deal, but a 1846 word comment in response to a 500 word blog post is more than a bit excessive.
Had Jered kept it to what was addressed in that blog post, then it would have probably only been a few hundred words, but he didn’t. If you want to comment on the entirety of 500 blog posts, then please send it to me in an email. That way the comment thread keeps clean and I can address it more completely as I have time, assuming its worth a response. If it’s good enough, there’s a really good chance I’ll post it here.
Due to the length of the comment, especially when combined with my response, it will be broken into three our four pieces.
Hi Dustin,
I almost sent this to your facebook, but it made better sense for me to respond here, since you are ‘airing’ things out in the open.
Thank you, I like keeping things in the open. I appreciate you being willing to do the same.
Hypocrisy is a difficult one. You are right that there are a lot of inconsistencies between Jesus’ instructions and what SOME of His professed followers practice. It is downright shameful. You are right. I have long been of the opinion that it is more of a question of WDJD (what DID Jesus do) rather than highly subjective opinions based on WWJD. It would be nice if more Christians did what Jesus actually said.
While it is true that there are a lot of posers out there, believe it or not, there are genuinely honest, authentic, good people who live out faith and love according to the instructions in the Bible.
I know that a lot of Christians are good people and just about every Christians honestly think they are living according to the Bible. What separates you from other Christians is that you select different passages than they do when cherry picking. And don’t think that you don’t cherry pick things out of the Bible. Do you wear mixed fabrics? When was the last time you stoned a homosexual? Do you allow women to speak in Church?
I am very thankful that the vast majority of Christians are hypocrites who ignore most of the instructions in their holy book, otherwise our corner of the world would look a lot more like Iran or Uganda.
Let me ask you something. If you don’t believe in this stuff, why have you made it such a calling of yours to fight against it? Why is it that so many atheists feel that they must fight so hard, and express so much anger against the idea of Christianity and of God? If He is nonexistent as you claim, why concern yourself so much with refuting Him? According to your own paradigm, you are fighting a nonentity; you are spending yourself against a vapor–which from a logical standpoint seems absurd.
You are correct that it would be illogical to fight against a nonexistent being. Fortunately that’s not what I, nor any other atheist, does. We argue against the irrational beliefs.
As for why I argue against that one kind of irrationality more than the others, it’s because its what I know. After all I do have a BA in Theology and spent three semesters in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. I know faith and I know religion, so that’s what I write about.
I have also always been a fan of trying to gain a better understand of the world around us. I have also always valued the quest for truth over “the Truth,” and I have always wanted to share that with others. I guess the old cliche “once a preacher, always a preacher” holds true for me.
As for why Christianity is the main target, its because at least here in America it’s what’s all around us. It is Christians who try to legislate morality, restrict the rights of women, deny equal rights to LGBT people, restrict the teaching of science in school, have created a defacto religious test for public office, and who see to blend religion and Government. If you want atheists to back off then you need to talk to the Religious Right.
To be continued…
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I want to begin by apologizing for not being aware of your comment guidelines. I'll keep this one shorter.
I can't agree more about the muddied waters when it comes to the 'affair' religion and politics have been having. Actually, if you recall from your studies, it is Seventh-day Adventists who have historically championed the separation of Church and State. While there exist Christians who do try to legislate morality, the SDAs by and large are not in that boat. You know from your study why we aren't: because once that happens, religious freedom goes out the window, of course. We believe the union of Church and State will pave the way for the enforcement of Sunday laws, according to Bible prophecy. (There are many SDAs of course who don't believe this now, but that is our official tenet according to Scripture.)
Given your comments, I feel that you try to throw a blanket categorization over Christians including SDAs, in this religio-political movement aimed at destroying people's freedom to live the way they wish. This is inaccurate and unfair, given the facts I cited about our stance on the separation of Church and State.
It is not an issue of 'cherry-picking.' Your citations are about specifics, apropos to cultural context and God working not only to help people rise above their culture, but also taking them only as far as He could, given their culture. He had to change them gently. Ex: 'not boiling a kid in its mother's milk' from the Pentateuch: probably a Canaanite fertility ritual, irrelevant today. Stoning is no longer a punishment–and, once again, that punishment was in the context of a Theocracy. The punishments God delineated for offenders were far less severe than those of the nations round-about. Relatively speaking, He was showing mercy in the way offenders were punished. Today God has postponed punishment in favor of mercy so that many can come to a knowledge of Him.
What I'm getting at, is that the specifics you mention are apropos to time and place, while the overarching principles of God's law of love are universally binding. So I admittedly 'cherry-pick,' as you call it, but cherry-picking is not the point but simply the result of a principled approach to the Scriptures informed by God's universally applicable Law of Love: the only approach that will make sense of a very diverse and colorful book. The sordid things of the OT must not only be seen in their historical context, but through the lens of God's approach: gradually bringing people out of a very dark place into His marvelous light, as shown in the face of Jesus Christ. I see the life, death, and resurrection of Him as the clearest, most compelling picture of what love really is.
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I am not including all Christians any every statement about "many Christians." I no more lump in Adventists with Dominionists than I do Catholics or Episcopalians with creationists.
I write about Christianity because it is what I know best (especially Seventh-day Adventism) AND I am surrounded by Christians AND SOME Christians are fighting a war against the separation of church and state including my congressman.
You can't say that the laws in the Bible were more humane than those of the nations around them, after all it is the Bible that commands the stoning of disobedient children, women who are not virgins on their wedding night (or who just happened to have not been born with a hymen or it ruptured some way other than sex), and homosexuals. Few cultures, even then, were that wicked and few methods of execution are worse than stoning. Aside from that, the god of the Old Testament also commanded genocide, infanticide, and rape. The Old Testament is a tale of horrors and atrocities condoned and commanded by an all powerful being.
As far as Jesus goes, there is no contemporary extra-biblical evidence of any man who fits the description in the Gospels and the earliest portions of the New Testament, a few letters of Paul contain no details of a real human life. Even if it were all a true story, the doctrine of salvation is grotesque at best, but I've addressed that before here and here.
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A fantastic post indeed! Thank you very much!
Laws of thinking