Sabine Grant

Your sentence made me think of someone saying " I like all people even blacks..." How about " there are a lot of intelligent people on this board including theists"... rather than " even the theists"... can you see the difference?

Rhea

I am good friends with several of these. Sometimes we debate and they consider my ideas. Sometimes they disagree. But they remain open to new information and they remain christians.

Not surprisingly, they are very tolerant of others.

BibleBelted

I guess I shouldn't be hasty. I haven't read enough of spurly's posts to judge him and, of course, I was speaking in very general terms.

I also differentiate between what I would call normal christians and fundamentalists (those who vehemently oppose evolution, gay rights, and church/state separation).

It is the fundamentalists that I find most robotic - and disturbing.

spurly, I apologize if you thought I was casting aspersions on your character. Not that I'm above such a thing, but I haven't formed any grounds with which to attack you (yet).

You say you are searching out your beliefs, but do you ever allow yourself to think that your entire premise may be false? It is one thing to read apologetic books written to comfort the believer, and something else again to allow yourself to honestly examine the case against theism. Have you read anything from the II Library, like this piece by Robert Ingersoll?

About the Holy Bible - Robert Ingersoll

sourdough

here's some more to irritate the believers
www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

long winded fool

I think if the word Christian only describes a follower of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Bible, (as it should) then all Christians are open-minded and willing to adjust their beliefs towards what appears to be the logical truth. If a Christian is merely someone who wants to have that label and the benefits it entails and who may ignore the teachings of Jesus in practice if not in conversation, (as it does) then "Christian" really doesn't describe anything at all about a person. At best it is a huge club of insecure people adopting the name, and by doing so, the benefits (they assume,) of those few people who actually do (or did) follow the teachings of Jesus above their own personal desires.

I personally know a few (very few) Christians of the first definition. I know countless Christians of the second.

Tercel

Hi Jake,

I strongly suspect that this behaviour isn't confined to or monopolised by Christians. I'd say it's a fairly common trait of humans. Cherished beliefs die hard I'm afraid.

I believe I am such a one. I was brought up in a Christian home and when I was about 16 went through a phase of questioning "is what I've been taught really true?". Since that time I have done my best to learn as much as possible about Christianity. This led me to reject many of the things I had been taught (by fundamentalists) but I am still a committed liberal Christian today. I have also spent over two years now in these forums reading what atheists have to say, and continually testing my beliefs.

That's why I'm here.

Opera Nut

Don't forget what Jesus said about splitting up families, coming with a sword etc!! They're certainly busy breaking up families, if the track records of lots of the atheists here testify to multi generational family splits over religion or lack thereof.

Matthew 10:35 ROCKS!!

"By their fruits ye shall know them"......... family discord, fights, screaming matches, insults, name calling, estrangement for decades..............

Tercel

"They admit that, if the four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they must have been written in Hebrew. And yet a Hebrew manuscript of any one of these gospels has never been found."

This doesn't seem to make sense. Did the scholars of Ingersoll's day really think this? Does he really mean Hebrew, or is he thinking of Aramaic? Why would anyone think this was the case? I mean, I can understand thinking that Matthew was originally in Aramaic because some of the early writers tell us it was... but why would anyone think Mark, Luke and John weren't written Greek? And if I recall correctly we do have copies in Aramaic that are pretty much as old as the Greek copies. Are these all recent discoveries, or was Ingersoll mistaken?

Opera Nut

Thus bypassing the point that the four gospels all contradict one another and were written at different times, none of them being an eyewitness account..................

Tercel

Er, Opera Nut, I'm a fairly knowledeable liberal: Nothing Ingersoll said was new to me (except the part I quoted where I think he's talking rubbish), and most of what he said was either typically twisted apologetics or I didn't have any major disagreement with it. (Well, I don't approve of his anti-Christian position, and I think he's effectively straw-maning Christianity when he gives those arguments and thinks he's proved something. But then I couldn't expect atheist apologetics to be able to tackle real Christianity, so I'm sympathetic.) While his arguments may be new and stunning to those who have been brought up in ostrich-head-in-the-sand fundamentalism, to most liberals they would be nothing new or worthy of commenting on.

To respond to your comments. Yeah sure the gospels contradict each other on minor details many a time, and there is contradiction between John and the Synoptics at the basic framework level. Yet they are in substantial agreement on the major points such as his unusual birth, his baptism, Jesus' divine status, his role as a teacher, the use of parables, the two greatest commandments, his condemnation of the Pharisees, the general content of his teachings, his disciples, his role as a healer, his feeding of the multitude, his calming of a storm, the last supper, his entry into Jerusalem, his trial before the Jewish authorities and Pilate, his death by crucifixion, his Resurrection etc.

"and all were written at different times"

Well presumably they were... and...? ...this proves something?

As far as them not being eyewitness accounts go, I see little reason to doubt that they are all based on eyewitness accounts. Certainly the final writers themselves were not eyewitnesses, yet I see no good reason to deny that much of their source material came from eyewitnesses, which the early church writers tell us was the case.