caritas

Though I'm a liberal Christian I always thought I really did care about atheists. I care about the fundies too. And for those fundies who allow their worldview to count me a Christian too I feel I have some (and use ) influence to minimise the chance that this fundamentalist will thuggishly move the US toward a christian theocracy.

If some atheists think I have no real liberal values; that the lib values I claim are just to be fashionable; I can only say I have the liberal values I have. Any liberal values I am missing are ones I never claimed, not the result of any fashion faux-pas.
Robert

Biff the unclean

That's great Robert. The next time some Fundi gets hateful on these boards I look forward to you standing up for what you believe in. It will be quite the welcome and unexpected surprise.

caritas

While I hope my future responses to any fundie getting hateful on this board gives you this welcome and unexpected experience, my main hope is that my comments might enhance the sometimes few and tenuous lines of understanding that links us; human beings all, all at times hypocrites, all occassionally yearning for mutual learning amid the verbal boxing matches.
Robert

sharon45

It is kind of hard for a christian to care about atheists or any other outside the belief, when the NT in no way cares about them.

Does being liberal mean not to bother following the core teachings of christianity, with the only accepted christian teachings of jesus? What does a liberal christian believe in that has to do with christianity if the words from jesus and other highly respected christians are meaningless? How could they even put their 'christian' value system together without there ever being a NT to tell them even that there was a jesus and what he supposable said and did? Do liberal christians just 'construct' their own religion making sure a fellow named jesus is a part of that religion?

Having no clear course to follow yet claiming to be a true follower, gives an outsider not much stock to put into such a person with any other announced claims.

sharon45

By debates you mean, they are not really 'boxing matches' if I understand you correctly. In a real debate, one fighter does an instant KO to the other fighter because he is right, and the other fighter only thinks he is still fighting in his delusional punchy state.

Anything else is not really a debate because neither party is taking the their side serious enough.

Rational BAC

duplicate--

Rational BAC

In a real debate, one fighter does an instant KO to the other fighter because he is right??

Talk about thinking in black and white terms. I have never witnessed such a debate.

(And here I have been accused of showing "vanity" sometimes.)

Starboy

It's the oldest argument in the world. It's called might makes right. The Christian variant is, "my god is more powerful than your god." If you listen carefully to our current Christian president you will hear it all the time. Christians eat that shit up. For many it is why they are Christians. Just a bunch of thugs is all.

Starboy

Rhea

There's a little thing in law enforcement called "The Broken Window Syndrome". This ain't imagination, and it ain't benign. It's real and proven to affect society.

The Broken Window Syndrome states: If you let little things like trashy lawns and broken windows exist in a neighborhood, people will lose a sense of ownership. Criminals will see that no one takes ownership and they will become more bold. Harming safety and security even further at a magnified pace. This is the instance of the TRUE slippery slope. Documented, proven, falsifiable, tested, proven and repeated. You let little "picayune things" go untreated, society suffers greatly in response.


Do a Google on "Broken window Syndrome Programs" and you will find communities which have frightening rates of crime and danger making a plan. A plan to address the "picayune". And when they do, people start to care. About their community, about each other and about "getting along" and what's required to get a safe existance.

You'll find that bigger problems have been shown to go away when they all care about the picayune. Documented, proven, repeated.


You, RBAC are claiming that your neighbor's broken window isn't your problem and the neighborhood should thank you for just living there. But the data seem to suggest, that you just living there isn't helping. And that you ignoring the broken windows is promoting a community of violence and crime.

Hazel-rah

It's very easy for liberal Christians to say that they don't care about "picayune" things like IGWT and "under God," etc. They're in the majority, which is a very comfortable place to be. Because they don't experience, every day of their lives, their rights slipping away from them; they don't experience, every day, their own countrymen declaring that they don't count; they don't look at the money in their wallets and see evidence that they are unwelcome in their own homeland.

They don't see a rock in a courthouse as the first step on the path to being branded a heretic and criminal for not believing in the same god as the judge--and they don't hear their fellow Americans screaming that they should be branded as such.

Complacency is easy from where they're sitting. If the situation were reversed, they'd care about "picayune" things, too.