Dogen

ziffel,

And then you have the people who claim that God has not been silent and is actually doing miracles everywhere! We skeptics just haven't been doing our part and searching for God.

Truth_Seeker

Great post ziffel. Hell, Satan, and the very nature of an omnimax god are key flaws in Christianity.

Spherical Time

Fundamentalism is one of the fundamental flaws.

The other is trying to claim that the Bible is divinely inspired, and therefore innerrant.

Those are my big two.

EthnAlln

That is to say, these are the fundamental flaws of Christianity wherever it is fundamentalist:

1. It is obsessed with "sin," and interprets human relations primarily in terms of this morbid and useless concept.

2. Arising from No. 1, an indifference to good human institutions that might alleviate social problems.

3. A belief that human beings are incapable of having any good motive or doing any good unless God is jerking their strings.

4. A commitment to defending the morality of an ancient pastoral tribe "whose known rule of warfare is the destruction of all ages and sexes" (to quote Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence), leading to a rabid Zionism exceeding even what is dreamed of by zionist Jews.

5. A commitment to defending the wordview of that same ancient pastoral tribe, issuing in a hostility to well-established science, primarily evolution.

6. A belief in eternal torture for those who do not believe in the factitious affliction of sin and its supposed remedy, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

7. Worst of all, the belief that, like the Red Queen, one can simply decide to believe something and believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Rational BAC

So who gives a crap?

If you want to dump on fundy Christians who actually believe the Bible is infallible --------then dump on them all you want.

It is such an easy dump. And intellectually illegitimate.

EthnAlln

OK, I'm glad I have your permission. Was there a reason why you posted this if, as you say, you really don't care?

"Intellectually illegitimate"??? I know some people are far too refined and sophisticated to dirty their hands with something as plain and simple as the errors of fundamentalism. But more is at stake here than an intellectual debate. These fundies are bending the foreign policy of the United States in a direction that is going to lead to disaster on a number of fronts. If I'm slumming by combating them, so be it. I think the need is there.

The same situation obtains in combating creationism. It's the slums of biology/paleontology, but it really needs to be done. Most scientists are too busy (or too high and mighty to sully themselves with it). But the ones who are doing it are taking on the difficult challenge of entering the public arena inhabited by people without PhDs and attempting to get them to see reason, or at least trying to show the undecided why they shouldn't decide to go with the creationists.

I took the OP here to be attempting to gather material for such an effort, and was trying to make a contribution to it. If you consider that worthless, you are certainly free to ignore the whole thread. In fact, I wish you would.

Chastity

One other flaw that comes to mind is the fact that some specific icons or statues of saints (not all depictions but just a few of them) have the power to heal so many people but in the contrary, other icons refering to the same depiction (say virgin Mary holding baby Jesus) do not pose such powers. This is a pretty standard aspect in my country (Greece) and at many other countries where orthodox Xians live. Now how come the almost smaller part of christian belief variations is considered to be the "orthodox" one is just another issue

To my mind, this healing-power-god's proof thing is a double flaw.

First of all I see a flaw in the discrimination of say two icons depicting the same theme, where one is considered to possess healing powers but the other one is a plain vanilla icon, just hanging on a church wall collecting dust. Those "special" icons have often been surrounded by lost & found legends, by special "signs" that virgin Mary or St. George manifested to help some monks find that specific icon, hidden in a lost underground well.

These specific icons seem to be placed in a (higher) class and esteem of their own, causing hundreds of thousands of believers to seek healing through them (my aspect of healing by some hidden self-suggestion, triggered by this ackward belief complex) . Alas every other similar icons are considered to be some kind of b-class depictions that are incapable of producing similar effects.

Now I wonder, why and who has chosen those specific icons to have something "special" about them but on the other hand all the other similar icons are not worth a fraction of this esteem? Why does God make miracles only through certain icons but seems to be completely absent from the other ones?

My mental patience reaches its threshold when I see those humble believers touch, kiss, talk to () and even lick those icons but at the same time pass in front of (shrugging-off) the other ones in the same church with a simple look. Now this is very frustrating!

Second, this act leads me to severely doubt their denial of idolatry traces in their belief. How come one piece of wood possesses immense powers and heals people but some other pieces of wood are just low-fi painted tablets? Isn't this perspective an act of idolatry or what?

I guess this happens in other countries too, where some catholic statues are considered to possess similar powers.

Needless to say anything about the amout of money that those priests earn from those precious (indeed they are) icons of theirs...

This expands to some other little miracle artifacts such as the holy belt of virgin Mary, the holy scarf of Jesus plus various frightening mummies of saints, shoes, vests, shovel hats, staffs and other garments to name some.

Idolatry? Noo
Profitable? Noo
In-their-face deception? Noo
Lack of rational explanation? Noo

Thanks but no thanks :wave: