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die thread! die!!

Kill you thread!!! DIe !!! MUsT Stop THiS tHReAD!!! dIE!!!

someone

Wine, women, and music.

I believe strongly in Christianity, but I am scared about how it has become politicized

if

when

mgad wrote:What do you believe in?
Mike

I believe that Plato was on to something with his idea of "the forms." We can't really know the idealized form or perfect example. What I'm getting at is that all this stuff of trying to say "I believe X" is doomed to failure. I'm no Taoist, but I've got a great deal of respect for a belief system whose main text begins "The written Tao is not the Tao." In other words, it's a religion that from the get-go tell its adherents that the holy text is not to be swallowed as absolute truth. You'll note that the text does not say "The Tao does not exist." This is not an argument for total relativism, rather it's an attempt to point out that absolute certainty is only absolutely certainly wrong. Right and wrong exist, but you can never be absolutely certain that you know which is which - it's on your shoulders to think for yourself and do your best to figure it out.

I believe that people who look to absolute or explicit rule systems are looking to shirk their responsibility to figure out right and wrong for themselves. Let me sugar coat this Existentialist idea: I guess that I'm saying that in the case of Christians, attempts to find an absolute answer or to take the Bible literally or to find an answer in a dogma or creed are doomed to failure. We are flawed as human beings and our attempts at discerning the exact will of God in explicit terms are limited by our flawed nature. (Not to mention the fascinating and very political and human history of the writing, editing and translations of the texts that English speakers read today as "The Bible".)

Al Qaeda are great examples of people who believe that they are simply reading their text literally and following God's will to the logical end with a great deal of certainty about the existence of God and His rules for right and wrong. Lots of Americans are doing something similar when they support politicians who espouse their Christianity, but obviously do the wrong thing once in office. "Gosh, I voted for the most Christian candidate - I've fulfilled by responsibility, now I will go back to trying to get rich!" (You do understand that it scares the shit out of me and many people around the world when a President says "God chose me to be president" and "God speaks through me." Right?)

I forget which theologian really developed the idea of the 'leap of faith', but it's an extraordinarily important concept. It means that the faithful person needs to recognize the extraordinary nature of faith and bracket that faith as an exception to reason and logic. It gets back to the original point of this thread. For someone to try to impose their religious ideology onto a science class is nuts - they may believe in the Biblical creation myth, but they have to understand that that exists separate from the empirical, logical world of science. (And, yes, I do recognize that whatever I do believe is a form of faith, and as such is trans-rational)

I believe that this understanding was at the core of the founding of the United States. That our form of government was a project of Enlightenment-era thinking. An experiment in what happens when people attempt to carve out a somewhat neutral ground from the non-rational nature of faith and religion. It's important to point out that the founders did not intend the Establishment Clause to be a total barrier between religion and government. Rather it is described as a "garden wall", over which ideas can pass, but that defines certain territories. It's also important to point out that this separation was meant more to protect religion from politics than vice versa. That's a big part of why I'm so worried by the current state of affiars. It isn't just fundamentalists trying to wedge the Christian creation myth into science classes - it's a Senator who is also a doctor attempting to make a medical diagnosis from a videotape and pass legislation based on his highly religiously biased views. It's an administration that has managed to hijack the Christian creation myth to ease environmental protections. (The highly irrational position that God created the universe and God is perfect, so it's impossible for man to mess it up.). At it's worst, it's an administration that uses 'war on terrorism' as a synonym for 'holy war against Muslims.' It's the link between the people promoting "Intelligent Design" and the use of the US military to fight a holy war that really scares me. (Sorry about the political rant - the issue of the Supreme Court nomination has me thinking about the damage that may be done to this country over the next twenty years)

I was named for Thomas Moore, a man put to death for his faith and principle. He famously once asked a zealot how said he would cut down every last law to get at the Devil. "And when the last law was down," More asks, "and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide?" I'm frightened by an administration whose 'faith' leads them to appoint a man who wrote a lawyerly defense of torture to the position of Attorney General. I'm frightened by a group of Christians fighting a holy war who refuse to recognize the habeas corpus rights of a US citizen (Jose Padilla).

Damn, carpal tunnel and glazed eyes....

but Tom, those are all arguments against a specific person and political ideology, not against Christianity as a whole. Even Bill Clinton said he was a Christian...do you have the same objections with his interpretation of policy as it fit into his faith? I believe both Clinton and Bush were living out their faith in the way they saw fit. For me, Jesus would be a flaming liberal today, but that is merely one opinion.

All those things that you said about Christians and politics I believe. I endorse a strongly conservative court. I believe that the war on terror is a war on idiologies, to think that is was anything less would be foolish. I believe that the Radical muslims want to kill Westerners/Christians/Zionist/Jews/Americans because thats what they believe they must do.
The basic reason that they went to Iraq is working. Terrorists in the form of insurgents are flocking to Iraq and dying wholesale. As it should be.

Apart from all of that..........I do want to say that it worries me too about how the conservatives are getting their way and the liberals are getting nothing done at all. I worry about the balance...