lotharson

I think that the presence of terror texts within the Bible is a problem for all kinds of Christian. While we certainly reject the attributions of the crimes to God Himself,. we are still confronted with the problem of God allowing lots of people (worldwide) to have harmful false beliefs about Him. How do you deal with this? Lovely greetings from Europe.

Thank you Kate, it is always a pleasure to hear such sincere compliments. You might perhaps also appreciate my interview with Kimberly Knight. Cheers.

I consider it morally wrong to ridicule a nice person, no matter what her beliefs are. There are lots of respectful atheists out there who use rational arguments instead of shunning. The most evil aspect of the New Atheism is that it precognizes to be mean and mocking towards religious liberals too, because they (supposedly) allow the existence of fundamentalism. They are completely oblivious to the fact that progressive Christians spend a great amount of their time criticizing fundies.

They are well organized, possess internet websites and gather together. Mockery, ridicule, shun and intolerance are their main features. I want to emphasize I highly value dialogs with respectful atheists challenging Christianity by using rational argument. This whole culture war makes me sick. Progressive Evangelical theologian Randal Rauser wrote a book arguing against that climate of intolerance called You Are less crazy than I think . Cheers.

This is going to be a very controversial post but I do hope we will be able to dialog in a spirit of respect and love. As I made it clear at other places, I have a huge respect for many modern and past atheistic philosophers such as Nietzche, Sartre, Camus, Macky or Comte-Sponville. They are or were great and honest thinkers having had a tremendous contribution to the advancement of philosophy. I do, however, strongly despise the New Atheists (like Denett) who are to atheism what fundamentalism is to Christianity: a shame and an embarrassment. The New Atheists (also called anti-theists or militant atheists) are a particular group of atheists who advocate the use of emotional bullying, mockery and ridicule towards every religious believer. I think we have strong grounds for concluding they are a hate group with a far right ideology. We also have good evidence that they are people who have had a very bad (often traumatic) experience with religious fundamentalists. Did you yourself had interactions with them?

"just take what you need and leave the rest" Hello Tariki. I dealt with this in an old post. I believe that fundamentalists are the ones who pick and choose. Owing to the fact that the Bible is hopelessly contradictory, they are always going to have to choose some verses to interpret literally and other verses to distort. There is no consistent inerrantist out there, it is just logically impossible. Cheers from Europe.

I think that if people worship an evil God, they will inevitably bring about evil deeds, unless they are utterly unconsequent.

I have written a series of posts on my blog entitled "Naked Calvinism". In my first post on that topic, I explained what my motives are and why I think that Calvinism is a blasphemous non-sense. What are your thoughts on that? What are your own experiences with this belief system? Best wishes from Europe.

Pete: I have been living in Lancashire since October and I fear I am a bit scared by British politics (facking among other things) too

Thanks Anny, I will write another tale with the same characters for Easter and who knows, maybe the glow worms will rise from the dead

The religious right is a terrible thing, in another post I pointed out the huge discrepancies between their approach and the own priorities of the Gospel Writers. Best wishes from Europe.

Yes, the main problem is their assumption that the Bible is flawless.

Hello Ronald, I am eager to get to know you :-)

Thanks for your kind compliment! I posted a link to another story I wrote, this time a parable of Jesus I adapted to the Bible Belt. Lovely greetings in Christ.

I (re)wrote this parable because I am deeply bothered by the priority of Conservative Christians in America. I'd be glad to know your thoughts on that. Cheers.

Matt: I find panentheism interesting and would love to discuss with you in the future about this. I think I will write a post on my blog in the weeks or months to come on that subject. Given the existence of an infinite multiverse, there could be an ontological argument for the existence of a panentheistic God (even if naturalism were true). I am a struggling and agnostic Christian with a lot of douts. And yes, you are going to find self-righteous and arrogant individuals everywhere. Liberals are no better than Conservatives in that respect. NORM: I don't like excluding people at all. But it seems to me that if you don't believe that God revealed Himself through the life, death and ressurection of Jesus of Nazareth you cannot be meaningfully considered as a Christian. As I emphasized, I utterly reject the idea that God will damn non-Christians and I want to have good, harmonious and loving relationships with everyone. This, of course, is a constant struggle against sin in one's life. Lovely greetings from Continenal Europe.

I would not consider your views Christian. This, however, in no way means that you are a bad person or that you will end up in hell and so on. Actually I largely prefer the company of Western pantheists like you (correct me if I am wrong) to that of most Conservative Christians and their dogmatic and immoral beliefs. And I think that everyone cherishing love, altruism and sacrifice will eventually find God, even if they don't believe in Him in the first place. Be blessed.

Well, I believe anyway that many non-Christians honor Jesus and God in a much better way than many of his followers. As I pointed out, I believe that many non-Christians will be with God in heaven (and I certainly reject the blasphemy of eternal hell). But it seems we really do need a definition. If a Christian is just someone loving Jesus, many Muslims, Buddhists and atheists are Christians even though they would themselves reject that label. If dying as a non-Christian does not damn someone, it does not disturb me to define Christianity in a way which exclude many people. The same has to be done if you want to define communism, capitalism, atheism, Rastafaris and so on and so forth. Lovely greetings from Continental Europe where we miss snow.

Well we could agree to disagree on that point :-) I think that in order to be a Christian, you don't mecessarily have to believe in the trinity but at the very least that God showed us His true face through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Otherwise it seems to me that liberal Christianity is indistinguishable from "atheism for Jesus".

I am not sure of the answer. The traditional Western view is that God first cursed the whole mankind with a sinful nature as a punishment because two persons ate the wrong apple. As a consequence everyone is evil and will eternally burn in hell unless they put their trust in His son Jesus. As I have explained, I consider such a view to be a blasphemous non-sense. I think that Jesus came into the world for the same kinds of reasons that the alien in "Contact" (Carl Sagan) took on a human shape. First of all, God can only fully reveal Himself by becoming a man. And this is also a way to truly teach us how we are supposed to behave. And by dying due to an atrocious injustice and rising back, God showed us the ultimate victory of goodness over evil in the most beautiful way.

I tried to articulate this difference in a post I wrote several months ago. Do you rather agree with this, or do you think I should modify my view to respect the way people label themselves? Lovely progressive greetings from continental Europe.

Hello, I am a progressive Christian and am very glad to have discovered this forum :-) I am a Germanic Frenchman and have written a Christmas story taking place in Lorraine, my homeland. I would love to learn your thoughts on that. On my blog I deal a lot with philosophy and theology from a progressive standpoint and I hope we will have lots of interesting conversations in the future :-) Mery Christmas to all of you!