Febble
Posts: 310
Joined: Jan. 2007
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| Quote (OgreMkV @ Mar. 21 2012,14:11) | I can see the points, but I don't agree with them. I was raised in a liberal baptist church... which means that we weren't fundies like some, but more so than most.
I have a very different view of Christianity. Admittedly, it's a view shared by the fundamentalists. The view is that you cannot really separate Jesus and God from the other concepts of Christianity.
Of course, this is pretty much the same reasoning used y fundamentalists who declare that Catholics aren't Christians. And from that point of view, they are correct. There are a lot of major concepts that Catholics don't do and some that Catholics do that are against the primary teachings of Jesus. Then there's that whole "other Bible books" issue.
In my mind, which has been known to be wrong, Christianity is the Christ centered (well, really Paul, but that's another story too) religion. Without Christ, there is no Christianity. Much like, without Allah, there is no Muslim religion.
Without God, Jews might still exist because it's both a religious affiliation and a cultural system.
Take the Golden Rule as an example. It would totally exist, even without Christ. OK, maybe it's a particularly well worded version. But the Code of Hammurabi, Confucius, Mozi, the Middle and Late periods of Egypt, Ancient Greece, etc. etc. etc. all had versions of the same thing.
The only thing different about the Christian version is Christ.
We'll probably agree to disagree. I really have no horse in this race. It may be much more of a cultural thing than I'm aware of, having been raised in a nearly fundamentalist church. I'll have to think on that. |
Oh I don't disagree with any of that. It's just that if I had to describe the flavour of humanist I am (and I prefer humanist to "atheist" - I still have some kind of meaningful referent for the signifier "God"), it's Christian, not out of conviction, especially, but because that's the religious tradition whose apples I stole. And there are plenty of apples, especially if you spent time, as I did, in contact with Quakers (I was at a Quaker boarding school). We had to learn, by heart, a bible verse or other piece of improving poetry or prose, each morning, before breakfast, and recite, en masse, during. But the verses were carefully cherry picked to emphase all the lefty bits of Christianity, so I left school both a Christian, a Marxist, of sorts, a pacificist, and excited about non-violent civil disobedience in support of civil rights, against apartheid, the bomb, and all that stuff.
In the sixties and seventies, Christianity could be quite radical. We made love, not war, and my brand of love included love thy neighbour as thyself.
It saw me through more than half a century. Then I read Dennett.
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