notMichaelJackson

It has been asked by both fundamentalist Christians and atheists what the basis for liberal Christianity is. To answer this question, let’s take a quick look at the positions of two very different camps within Christianity: the Catholic Church, and fundamentalist churches.

The issue of non-Christians entering heaven
Virtually all fundamentalist churches claim non-Christians will not be able to enter heaven. The Catholic Church teaches that they can, and to the best of my knowledge, even if they have heard the Gospels.

Political Issues
This thread shows fundamentalists generally defend conservative positions, while the Catholic Church agrees with liberals much of the time.

Evolution
Fundamentalists insist that the world was created as described in Genesis. The Catholic Church teaches that God created the world through evolution.

The Bible
Fundamentalists take it literally. The Catholic Church claims that it must be followed according to the Church’s interpretation.

Birth Control
The Catholic Church teaches that it is immoral, modern fundamentalists generally do not have a problem with it.

These are just a few of the larger differences between Catholicism and fundamentalism off the top of my head. This related to liberal Christianity because no matter what the liberal Christian believes, there is a church that teaches it. Since there is no way to be sure which of these opposing camps is correct, it must be decided by the individual what is the correct manner to worship God.

never been there

I think the main feature of liberal Christianity is in their approach to the Bible. I've been recently lamenting how the fundies and us evil atheists have been collaborating to frame the argument in all-or-nothing terms. The fundies, because they pretend to take the entire Bible literally (although only the verses listed in their study guides), and atheists because debating bible literalists is like shooting fish in a barrel.

The liberal approach is not unreasonable once you assume the existence of a god and his unfortunate son. The Bible becomes a book about god & JC written by men, subject to the pressures of the local dictator and the community. Some nastiness has to slip in, and inconsistencies are natural since all of these scribes never imagined that all of their work would be gathered between a single pair of covers.

Kilgore Trout

But once people admit there are inconsistencies and errors in the bible then there is no way to know what is real and what isn't. They say things like "The holy spirit guides me", but that is a circular argument. The only "proof" that there is such a thing as the holy spirit is in the NT itself, so that is one of the inconsistancies. Nowhere in the whole OT does it talk about this trinity nonsense that the NT made up.

If there are errors in the bible then that means it is untrustworthy. If you place your faith in a book that is untrustworthy you might as well believe in invisible pink unicorns and call yourself reasonable. It doesn't make sense to say "I like what jesus said here, so it must be true. But I don't like what jesus said there so that can't be true."

Rational BAC

"I like what Jesus is purported to have said here so it is probably true. I don't like what Jesus is purported to have said there so it is probably not true" "And I have the Holy Spirit to guide me in this" (Paraphrasing what you said a little bit.)

Bingo------You got it.

That is exactly how I look at it. I doubt the circular reasoning part. The Holy Ghost can be your inner conscience, your idea of what is right or wrong, your personal sense of morality. --------all of which can work quite well to pick and choose without any real "Holy Ghost".

Or it can be the Biblical Holy Ghost. One nice thing about cherry picking is you can pick anything you want to. I pick the Biblical Holy Ghost as a true guiding spirit.------call that part faith based and therefore not subject to rational argument. Too bad. Tough luck.

Kilgore Trout

Very nice. You are admitting you believe in something that has no more logic than believing in Santa Claus and you are telling ME "Too bad"? If you want to live in a fantasy world, that's your problem, not mine. By applying this type of logic people can create and believe anything. This is exactly how people claim the Holocaust never happened. If I have "faith" that I am the President of the United States, then I must be President of the United States. Too bad George Bush.

So I guess if someone wanted to say Hitler was a really nice guy, he would just be like you, and ignore those pesky "bad" things Hitler was purported to say and only pay attention to the "good" things.

Even if I did apply that type of logic to jesus, almost nothing he said would pass the "good" test. Most of what you would say is "good" that jesus said makes no sense. It all goes too far, like he said if someone asks for anything, give it to him. That's the type of silly all-or-nothing ideas he has. If some beggar asks you for $10,000 you better give it to him. If you say that you need to use your common sense to know he didn't mean it literally, well I can already use my common sense for things like that without having to think Jesus is god. Ghandi had some good things to say, but I don't think he's god. (Sorry, I don't know whether you personally think Jesus is god since you pick and choose what you believe in.)


Of course you doubt the circular reasoning part. You don't want to betray the "rational" part of your name and admit that you are using logical fallacies. When you base something on faith you are bulding your whole argument on a fallacy, so there is NO logic in your argument. Your whole "faith" is based on the "fear and greed" principal. You are afraid of death and/or hell and you want the reward of heaven and you don't care whether it makes any sense.

Rational BAC

I don't know how you got all the way to Hitler and the holocaust from the simple post I made.

2 things are completely in error------the fear and greed part. I have no fear of death (even if that death turns out to be non-existence), do not believe in a fire and brimstone hell, and am not particularly greedy.

southernhybrid

Here's the thing I don't get. Why do we atheists give the cherry pickers such a hard time? They are the ones most tolerant of our viewpoint. They are the ones that most often support separation of church and state along side of us. They pose no threat to our freedoms and they at least do use their intelligence when deciding what place religion has in their lives.


Religion has been a way for many people to have a social network for support during difficult times. Some people need the moral guidelines that it provides and others simply like the symbolism of religion or perhaps the cultural influence. While I don't agree with the liberal Xian beliefs, I do respect and understand that his/her religion satisfies some aspect of purpose in his/her life. To deny that religion has never made a positive impact on the lives of some people is both narrow minded and irrational in itself. It's simply not that black and white. None of us are totally rational beings. To claim that we are is intellectually dishonest imo.

never been there

At least cherry-picking requires some thinking, unlike never realizing that there are contradictions in the Bible because you've only ever read the verses listed in your study guide.

Kilgore Trout

Well for one thing, Rational BAC says he doesn't know very much about the bible as I recall. So it's hard to use this to support him.

I'm not saying cherry-picking is better or worse than fundamentalism. I guess they are more tolerant than fundamentalists. If people want to only follow certain thing the bible says, thats great, they can do what they want.

What I find intellectually dishonest is this idea that if you don't like what Jesus said in a certan passage then that means he didn't say it. As I say, its one thing to not follow the "bad" things Jesus says, but to pretend that those things and only those things were lies someone put in the bible later makes no sense. I would agree with you on what you said about it requires thinking if they just said "I don't like what Jesus said here, so I am not going to do it." But when they say "I don't like what Jesus said here so that means he didn't say it" is just living in some kind of fantasy world.

Yes, people are allowed to think anything they want, but this is a discussion board and it makes no sense to say something like that and then just say "This is what I believe so you can't have a rational argument about it."

I am in no way claiming your beliefs are as bad as this, I am simply saying that using your revisionist idea of history is exactly how people end up saying the holocaust never happened. They say the same things cherry pickers do. They don't want to admit that millions of people died because of Hitler so they just say it didn't happen. When you point out all the evidence, they just say that was falsified evidence. Sound familiar? If I point out the evidence that Jesus said in Luke 19:27 that anybody who doesn't want him as king should be killed, you just say that evidence was falsified.

notMichaelJackson

Even fundamentalists "cherry pick" certain things. For example, they don't follow everything in Leviticus because those laws should be "discontinued because of the coming of Jesus Christ."

By some definitions, the Catholic Church preaches "liberal Christianity" because it supports evolution and claims that the Bible should not be taken literally (see opening post).