I don't mean to be hard on the new guy, but I'm about to be hard on the new guy.
As someone who has actually read the bible front to back more than once, I take general offense to people passing dogmatic and political bullshit off as the teachings of Jesus.
In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I believe the Religious Right is a bigoted, fearful, hypocritical and ultimately horribly misguided monster of a political machine that threatens the very sanctity of American freedom, not to mention human life around the world (just ask those one million Iraqis. Does Jesus not love them?)
Southern_Pride, you said this:
1. You're right, I wrote it, not Jesus... Jesus doesn't write for this blog, therefore your first comment about paragraphs doesn't make sense.
2. If Jesus is completely man AND completely God, as Christians believe, then who said he wasn't omniscient? If you think Jesus played all the cards in His deck I'd go ahead and say that you're sorely mistaken.
3. Unless you have one, there's no written record by the man Himself on the Sermon on the Mount. Pretty sure that was written by my man Matthew the Evangelist in his post tax collector days.
To your first point - I apologize for being facetious. It was disrespectful to you and your belief system. I was not forthright in letting you know that I too share many core beliefs of the Christian faith, and therefore was talking a bit out the side of my mouth. I could see how you could misconstrue this as an attack on your beliefs. This was not my goal.
To your second point - Jesus was god in the form of man. This ridiculous notion that he was somehow 200% GodMan has stake neither in theology nor logic. The story of Jesus is a simple and touching one. God so loved the world that he made himself man and walked the earth. He understood temptation, hunger, pain and all number of other horrors before ultimately sacrificing himself for the greater good of all of his most-valued creation.
Don't mar this story with the All-American Christ nonsense about some messianic superhero. It's quite a gorgeous narrative without Jesus knowing everything all the time.
To your third point - You can't have your cake and eat it too. The Bible is either the pure and holy WORD OF GOD, or it's the work of many men who felt they needed to pass down stories that may or may not be somewhat imperfect due to the flaws of their authors.
If you want to argue the latter, you won't get any resistance from me. However, the Religious Right will not be down with your new interpretation of The Good Book.
And finally, to my point - I find it bothersome that the Religious Right feels free to pick and choose the parts of their religious tome and belief structure that should or shouldn't be applicable to politics. This subversive and insidious practice has no place in 21st century America. It smacks of the Dark Ages and bothers those of us who have found a way to adhere to the teachings of a man who may well have been as enlightened as there ever was without being complete fucking cocks about it.
Questions? Comments?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Holy Flame War pt 1
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3 responses:
I'm Joeverkill, and I didn't want to do this just yet, but this is a Right-Wing rant. About religion.
A good portion of people here in the U.S. who consider themselves conservative consider the United States a Christian nation. You know who I'm talking about -- those people who favor prayer in schools, the ten commandments in courtrooms, bans on all abortions, etc. With all due respect to these folks, I feel a need to separate my viewpoint from theirs.
Religion has no place in politics.
I could cite history. The Children's Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition, prohibition, the Catholic Church's complicit relations with the Nazis, the Marian Persecutions... I could go on.
Evangelical Christians generally believe that Jesus is going to return (sooner rather than later) and rapture up the righteous. That's fine. They can believe that, though I don't. However, one must question their willingness to plan for the long term. If you think that the world is ending soon and you're A-Okay with that, you're much less likely to take long-term problems seriously. Example: conventional science tells us that global warming is going to drown us all in the next century. Evangelicals don't care; Jesus is gonna come rapture 'em up before then and reign over 1000 years of peace in a city with walls of lapis lazuli.
Claiming that evolution never happened is an outright denial of facts. Claiming that the world is 6000 years old is an outright denial of facts. Claiming that the Bible is the direct word of God not only ignores the fact that the Bible has been translated multiple times, it also suggests that God is either an idiot or a hypocrite. I don't particularly want to worship a God that advocates genocide (Deuteronomy 20:17, among others) and then turns around a few centuries later and tells us to love our neighbors.
The world of politics has no room for those who believe that their way is necessarily correct simply because an unseen ethereal entity guarantees it. Close adherence to dogma produces closed-mindedness, and closed-mindedness breeds an inability to deal with problems.
What it ultimately comes down to is that faith is not logic, and it's often not logical. For a sovereign nation to make decisions based upon faith is insanity. A person's faith is their own. But when setting policy, the only fair way to do things is to set aside faith and rely purely upon reason.
I'm Joeverkill, and this has been a Right-Wing rant.
poor southern_pride.
your back's up against the wall.
for the record, i agree with joeverkill 100%.
on the rapture and environmentalism - see my post from earlier today about sen. james inhofe and climate change...that says it all. religion has no place in politics, as it is not subject to rationality, the cornerstone of the modern democratic tradition.
thats fine in iran, but the united states of america and its constitution were actually founded on reason, and the rule of law. any other attempt to frame it otherwise is dangerous revisionist history by christian nationalists (aka the religious right) looking to justify their theocratic ambitions. theocracy is not acceptable in this country.
He has one full week to get back to me on this before I kick him off the blog.
I can put up with a lot, but I'm not having some chickenshit who can't even defend his alleged "core values" and "religious beliefs" writing on this blog.
I don't care if we don't have any readers. I don't like punkasses, and that's all there is to it.
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