emotional

I totally disagree with you. Only fanatical, fundamentalist religion damages the world. Liberals don't shut their minds off; if they did they'd be fundies.

HelenM

Well, for whatever reason, the people I know who truly read their Bibles are not that way.

And they aren't liberals either; I'm talking about people who believe the Bible is the Word of God and they would tell you they believe all of it.

Maybe I'm forgetting something but I can't think of anywhere where the New Testament encourages people to 'burn and kill the heretic'. And maybe the Old Testament that you believe encourage that, are not seen by Bible-believers as applicable to the world they live in.

Helen

happyboy

emotional: explain to me how you can believe in a giant sky daddy and be using rational thinking?

a very confused happyboy

Spaz

Well what pisses me off is that they should give up on it altogether. They somehow pick christianity, even though it's not all that different from the other religions, dismiss the others as being false, and then the liberals try to rationalize everything bad and accept everything good. They can't just say it's a story, they have to keep the religion while making it seem nice and pretty. I can't think of any good analogies right now. It just seems to me that they know it has its bad points but they're just so damn scared of going to hell that they believe in it.

happyboy

even if the christian God, as depicted in the old and new testaments was real, i'd still spit in His face. any Deity that does the things He does doesn't deserve my worship. i'd rather be in hell for all eternity than bow down to a monster like that.

happyboy

beth

There are some really good Christians out there who truly have a loving heart and they practice their faith in love. The best woman I know is a Christian. She put up with me and gave me guidance when I had none. She was a devout Church of Christ woman, but saw in her Bible a message of love and humility and servitude. She always had injured animals that she was nursing. She took care of the sick and infirmed elderly. This is an example of goodness coming out of religion. I never heard one bad thing toward another person come out of her mouth. This is what I think a true Christian should be. If more Christians were like her, this world would be a better place.

emotional

Maybe not explicitly, but the fact that the heretic is hellbound gives implicit permission to treat him badly. And even if you avoid the implications of the passages about hell, the NT explicitly tells believers to be separate from unbelievers (the "unequally yoked" stuff).

The scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, taken at face value, foster separation and hatred between human beings. If one is liberal, one could reject those parts of scripture that encourage polarity; but the fundamentalist has no choice, so this is why liberalism is harmless while fundamentalism is harmful.

happyboy

religion in general does that, emotional. it breeds a sense of superiority in believers, that THEY have "the truth", and all others are poor, deluded souls in need of salvation.

happyboy

emotional

People pick and choose in what to think rationally about. If a liberal Christian doesn't want to relinquish belief in God, for whatever reasons, then it doesn't matter, so long as he doesn't believe the same God has issued a political order. Even fundies pick and choose: they pray for the soldier in battle, but they send the child who had broken its arm to a doctor for healing.

emotional

So what? I think I too have the truth, which is atheism, and all others are poor, deluded minds in need of salvation (or enlightenment). But that doesn't make me hate theists. If their beliefs make them happy, then so be it, as long as it's not on my expense.