I don't disagree that it is true that there are moral busybodies. but I have seen that conversation happen way more often than I have seen moral busybodies. the key is we will need to police our own better than the left does.... Only they then advocate to governments to legally stop people from doing X. Would be nice if this reflected reality, it's a shame it doesn't.
The Crusade's, the moral 'Satanic Panic' over things like D&D/Rock n Roll, the pedo protectors in the Catholic Church and other denominations, the inter/intra-sect wars in Europe over who's version of Christianity is 'right', and the fact that Christians will ignore all those things, and then wonder why people don't take them as 'moral' authorities anymore.
The only reason you're likely to have most Christians not acknowledge those things right off is because most Christians today don't have the historical perspective to recognize those things as an issue at all.The Crusade's, the moral 'Satanic Panic' over things like D&D/Rock n Roll, the pedo protectors in the Catholic Church and other denominations, the inter/intra-sect wars in Europe over who's version of Christianity is 'right', and the fact that Christians will ignore all those things, and then wonder why people don't take them as 'moral' authorities anymore.
I do not assume all Christians are morally bankrupt.The only reason you're likely to have most Christians not acknowledge those things right off is because most Christians today don't have the historical perspective to recognize those things as an issue at all.
Most of the things you mention are 40 years in the past, and Catholicism is in the minority, especially in America, when it comes to Christian faith.
I'm a Christian, I don't expect or WANT you to accept my moral authority because I don't have any. That belongs to God. I've had the previously posted conversation with a number of people, and I've seen that conversation play out many times.
Please stop assuming that all Christians are morally bankrupt because some of us screw up. Because that's how you come across.
But I do expect most of them don't care to hear about their faith's dirty laundry, or like it to be viewed as a peer and equal to other religions in a historical sense, instead of as the 'one true faith'.
Only thing I'll say here is that your expectation will often find what's it's looking for. I think you're short-changing yourself with this predisposed belief in what you'll find. Funnily enough, this is the same kind of mental exercise that you claimAnd I do expect busybody, historically ignorant Christians to outnumber those who understand, or even want to understand, their religion in a context that doesn't center on dogma over historical fact.
are using. Be cautious you're not blinding yourself to something.the 'Christians' who use their religion as a club to use against anything they dislike,
Nothing wrong with this.I've found more divinity and connection to the divine in nature, than in any church or mass, and when people keep trying to use their religion as a weapon/club in regards to social issues (not just Christians, Muslim's are often guilty of this too and get help from the wokies) it only shows why so many no longer feel any connection to the divine at all.
It is an expectation that has more often than not been correct, in my life and and experiences.Only thing I'll say here is that your expectation will often find what's it's looking for. I think you're short-changing yourself with this predisposed belief in what you'll find. Funnily enough, this is the same kind of mental exercise that you claim
I do not think I am blinding myself to anything by taking into account history and facts that most Christians are ignorant of or simply do not like discussing in a 'non-positive, non-dogma friendly way'.are using. Be cautious you're not blinding yourself to something.
Of course the divine has a sense of humor; just look at the platypus.Nothing wrong with this.
I've often found nature is a wonderful way to find some quiet allow myself to really contemplate my role in God's tapestry.
I'm going to leave off other thoughts about what Christianity is and all that for different threads. I just saw what you wrote something that needed responding to. I've been extremely doubtful about my own faith, and in no way am I trying to condemn you for your own doubts. They need to happen if we are to truly strengthen our own faith. For which I know God has a sense of humor.
... Only they then advocate to governments to legally stop people from doing X. Would be nice if this reflected reality, it's a shame it doesn't.
Or, don't pretend the religious rights are tolerating things the religious right actively campaign for government to stop.To paraphrase an ancient Roman poet: if you want to be tolerated, don't be intolerable.
Or, don't pretend the religious rights are tolerating things the religious right actively campaign for government to stop.
Mass lobotomy/castration of gays for being gay happened 60 years ago. The prohibition was campaigned for by the religious. They haven't left this idea that salvation can come from government rule.
Like take Alabama. There are still congress people holding that smoking weed is against their religion, and so do not want to pass legal weed. Same for alcohol, by the by.
See, it's quite easy to establish tolerable as "Only behaving within biblical dictates". So next time, just own it. Just say "I don't like what you are doing, and I want government to stop it". Be honest.
No, they come from communism which comes from statism (the idea that the state will solve your problems), but no, I'm also not playing this game.If we're going to play the 'you are accountable for every person who claims your creed and misbehaves' game, then all you atheists and agnostics had better start owning up for the 'Great Leap Forward,' the Holodomor, the Khmer Rouge, and the damned holocaust.
Because these actions came from atheism.
So no, Christians aren't libertarian by rule. Some happen to be so on many issues, some aren't. The pretense that they all are, and are thus innocent of the use of force, is just that, a pretense.
A) it wasn't relevant (the meme was about pretending Christians don't use force, when they do, not about proportionality), and B) I did cover it:You have completely ignored my second point.
I don't care about proportions of groups. I care about individuals and what they do. But if your group did have a significant chunk of individuals do X and you claim that the group didn't, I'll point out it's dumb. And yes, those chunks are significant, at the very least because (other than the porn one which thankfully never takes off) they affected other people's lives in significant ways. So no, C) the proportionality doesn't work either. However rare you might consider them, them forcing their beliefs on others had a real and large impact.There are also Atheists who fall in the same two boats. And liberals, conservatives, LGBTs and Straights. If 'Christian' had been replaced by any of these groups, the meme would still be wrong in all of it smug, self-satisfied glory (as a note, these days straights (in America at least) aren't forcing LGBTs to do anything, so maybe not them).
Instead, treat Christians, atheists, and all others, as individuals, and stop judging/praising them as a group for anything more than declaring membership in the group.
Despite it being illegal, teachers in public schools still lead their classes in prayer:It ain't just marriage. I just listed the alcohol/weed example. A little over 20 years ago, it was illegal to have anal sex in Texas.
Love how you ignored the whole 'they were lobotomizing gays for being gay' issue and pretend people just 'tuttut'd' at homosexuals before SCOTUS and DC put a stop to it, or that religious people didn't shrug about gay's being lobotomized.If we're going to play the 'you are accountable for every person who claims your creed and misbehaves' game, then all you atheists and agnostics had better start owning up for the 'Great Leap Forward,' the Holodomor, the Khmer Rouge, and the damned holocaust.
Because these actions came from atheism.
Are you also going to ignore the issue of proportional depiction?
Let's take, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church. A tiny little 'cult' church that had less than 100 members, less than 50 IIRC, that was famous for its nasty and intolerant attitudes and protests. How often did the political left/atheist aligned media put them on national media? How often did they try to imply or outright state that 'this is what Christianity is?
Conversely, how much coverage does/did the March For Life receive, an annual event which has hundreds of thousands of people assembling from around the country to protest the murder of unborn children?
How often has Hollywood depicted religious people as hateful, close-minded, stupid, bigoted, and spiteful? How often has it depicted them as principled, humble, and empathic? How often has it depicted them as struggling between the two?
On the pedo-priests issue, how much attention has that received, compared to (prior to the last year or so) the far more common issue of schoolteachers committing acts of pedophilia?
How much of your perception of Christianity has been shaped by the media deliberately highlighting and focusing on the bad, while either minimizing the good, or outright pretending it doesn't exist?
And that's before we get into the media and the political left's tendency to take their old shames, and act like it was always the right, or even specifically the religious right, that was entirely behind such things? Tipper Gore and a number of other leftists were big on the 'violence in video games is horrible!' thing, but now somehow the retrospective accounts claim such things were entirely the fault of the religious right?
I grew up in Christian Evangelical circles in the 90's and 2000's.
How evangelical?
My parents went to the Arab muslim world as missionaries. That's how deep into that part of the culture I grew up.
And let me tell you, even within the intensely fundamentalist parts of the Christian subculture, the things that people have been talking about on this thread were only supported by the fringe.
I, and all of my friends, grew up being able to play the same video games, watch the same movies, and read the same books as children from secular families. I can think of one family that didn't let their kids read Harry Potter, and most Christian families were more picky about movies with sexual content, and might make you wait until you were 14 or 16 to watch anything with an R rating, but there was no blanket 'none of this in here!' within those families, much less trying to ban it in society at large.
Such families were more likely to sit down with their kids and say, 'Okay, so you understand Harry Potter is fantasy, and this kind of magic isn't real, right?' And that was about the end of it.
This also isn't just a singular perspective from one niche culture. We had contact with Evangelical/missionary families from all over the country, and all over the world. If you had a big enough gathering at a missionary conference, you'd usually have one or two families where the kids weren't allowed to read Harry Potter, or maybe watch certain movies/TV shows that were 'occult,' but they were quite rare.
As the internet started to grow, some of the first adopters of widespread internet chat were missionary families, so they could stay in contact with friends and family overseas, which naturally also lead to being in contact with each other. I personally talked with dozens of people from all over the place, and even among families that home-schooled their children to protect them from secular school influences, the general rule of thumb for how 'strict' they were was something like 'no M-rated video games for my middle-schoolers, and they have a 1-hour a day limit on video game time.'
Sure, the 'Chic Tracts' might make for amusing meme material, but the 'accepted mainstream' of the fundamentalist Christian right, groups like Focus on the Family, Mars Hill, or Christianity Today, generally held positions of 'each family should decide what is right for their children, and at what ages.'
Bluntly put, the political left has been deliberately creating a boogey-man out of 'repressive right wingers' for decades, blowing the position of a tiny fringe way out of proportion, and ignoring that you're more likely to find a larger proportion of regularly church-going Christians who held the opposite position, much less that most Christians held what is, yes, a very libertarian position of 'each family should decide for themselves' with most material.
The only real exception to this is the issue of 'gay marriage.' Not 'tolerance of homosexuals,' but specifically 'gay marriage,' because that's an argument over what the fundamental meaning of marriage is.
Love how you ignored the whole 'they were lobotomizing gays for being gay' issue and pretend people just 'tuttut'd' at homosexuals before SCOTUS and DC put a stop to it, or that religious people didn't shrug about gay's being lobotomized.
That's not even going into religious groups who treat the 1st Amendment as if it;s only supposed to protect religious freedom of expression, but not artistic freedom of expression.
Plus, well, there is a whole 'Southern Baptists helped keep slavery going by teaching slaves that it was their Biblical lot in life to be a slave' that no religious folks like to admit happened.
Oh, and let's not forget the whole fight around evolution and denying it because of being afraid of large numbers/'atheist indoctrination' that happened at the end of the 1800s/early 1900s.
No it is not.Evolution,as dreamed by Darwin,is hoax,so they have right of it.
Ignoring my point is exactly what you are doing.A) it wasn't relevant (the meme was about pretending Christians don't use force, when they do, not about proportionality), and B) I did cover it:
All I'm asking for is some honesty, not a pretense of perfection and woe is me. Don't pretend to be some perfect group on a topic where you have glaring failures.