On 11/04/2006, at 6:33 PM, Nick Arnett wrote:
He also seems to fail to recognize the difference between
irrational and
non-rational beliefs. And this statement, " Religious moderation
is just a
cherry-picking of scripture, ultimately," is ridiculous. It
implies that
fundamentalism is the only *complete* form of Christianity. Nonsense,
really.
So how do you decide which parts of scripture to follow and which
not? The whole bible? Just the NT? Just Jesus' teachings, and ignore
Paul's commentary?
The implication that fundamentalism is the only "complete" form of a
religion is a perfectly reasonable assertion - as that is a starting
point for measuring how well one would conform to the ideals of that
religion. To be fair, it's harder with Christianity than Judaism or
Islam, as the questions I raised above are fairly fundamental
(heh... ;) ) to the question of "What Is A Christian?"
But by making choices of which bits of doctrine to accept, one
changes the nature of one's faith. Nick's a Lutheran, so I might as
well mention that branch/sect. I have discussed religion with a
number of Lutherans other than Nick (mainly Germanic Europeans,
either in Cyprus or in Australia), and all bar one of those still
practicing that I have met in the flesh (so 6 or 7) are biblical
literalists. They'd regard themselves as Good Christians. I don't
know whether anyone still active on this list is a literalist, but if
one isn't a literalist, then that's a different measure for what
Christianity is or what a good follower means than for those that
are. How do we decide what is right?
To me, this is why the traditional teaching of the major religions
fails, because frankly if one can just make it up as one goes along,
then one might as well do so, pick an ethical code if one is so
inclined, and forget about the rest. Occam's razor comes into play,
why add a whole load of complicating factors...
Faith in a deity/deities/force/whatever is one thing. It's highly
personal. But faith in a book is something else, and that's where the
argument starts - if the book says one thing, but a follower
disagrees and does something else, where's the value in the book?
Charlie
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