Re: Immaculate conception

On May 16, 3:12 pm, remysun2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> Thanks for toning the rhetoric down, Darren. The whole numbers analogy
> brought up an interesting point. I'll leave anything else up to Jim,
> since I find myself agreeing with him.
>
> On May 16, 8:49 am, Darren Delgado <darrendelg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > Well, as someone else in this thread said, would you laugh at someone
> > who believed that 2 + 2 = 47?  I'd probably laugh inwardly and dismiss
> > him as a crank.
>
> Maybe not 47, but maybe 11, and I can tell you that it's a fact that
> 1+1=10.
>
> In fact, 10 is how computers see it, and they should be less error
> prone than we are.
>
> I am of course, referring to base 2 (and base 3 for the first), but it
> goes to show that we do tend to think along certain lines, like base
> 10, unaware of the multitude of other perspectives. There is nothing
> wrong with holding our perspective, or we would be lost in a sea of
> uncertainties; but if someone can explain their own perspective, it
> does not necessarily lose its validity because it conflicts with our
> own.

These are all good points in and of themselves, but not applicable to
this discussion here.  We're not talking about something that is up
for interpretation, really.  The heinous stuff in the bible is pretty
concrete, and strongly advocated by god in the bible.

So, either you accept it, or you don't.  If you don't accept it, and
you still say you're a Christian, then you're picking and choosing
which parts of the "word of god" to believe in, which seems
counterintuitive to me.  How could a god be wrong?  Do you have better
judgment than a god?

And more to the point, if you have enough of a moral center to decide
which parts of the bible (slavery, stoning of suspected witches, etc.)
are reprehensible (as most Christians do, IMO, as they rightly ignore
the bad stuff, if they do know about it at all), then to me, you are
demonstrating that YOU are a better arbiter of being good and kind
than the bible is.  So why do you need it?

> You may counter that religions often carry an authoritative view that
> excludes other perspectives, but again, I say that is a generalization
> based on a vocal minority. Everyone's faith is unique to their
> experiences, what they've been taught, etc. To mock that deprives us
> of our own chance to better understand ourselves.

I disagree with this.  I think that the vocal (insane) minority -- the
ones who are xenophobic and racist and bomb abortion clinics, etc. --
they interpret the very straightforward terms in the bible
accurately.  The bible is pretty clear in its authoritative view that
excludes other perspectives.

The majority are the ones who misinterpret the bible, by pretending
that it's full of really nice inspiring sweet stories, when those are
by far the exception and not the rule.  I do not mock the majority of
people who are Christians, because most of them do not believe the
mock-worthy contents of the bible, and most would be shocked to find
out that they appear in the bible, and with such frequency.  The real
problem here is that most people who claim to be Christians just don't
read the bible.