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I think that one advantage that Christianity has is that in the beginning, it was not married to temporal authority. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. Early Christianity thrived in an environment much more hostile to it than anything the SJ or MAGA people are likely to inflict on it.
It rising to a position of temporal authority only came later, starting with Constantine. As an atheist watching from the sidewalk, I have to say that I liked the version of Christianity before the sociopaths took over better.
It might be illustrative to compare Christianity to the other religions of the book. Judaism started out as a tribe/state religion, but thanks to the zealots picking fights they could not win, they got a head start of 2ka in learning to live as a religious minority. (Again, from the outside view, diaspora Judaism seems a lot more palatable than whatever orthodox factions are bent on Making Israel Great Again.) Islam started out with strong claims to temporal authority, Muhammad was a warlord as well as a prophet, after all. While there are certainly Muslims who are good citizens to secular nation states, my feeling is that it is that they have an even harder time justifying that stance theologically than Catholics do.
In short, I think that the wall between religion and state protects religion as much as it protects the state. If organized religion meddles in matters of the state, the consequence will be that it will attract the kind of people who look for temporal power, and before long your religion will be run by sociopaths who sell indulgence to their believers, burn heretics and organize crusades.
It helps that (from my understanding), in Christianity you can be saved even if you live in a sinful state in this fallen world. If you believe that eating seafood or gay/unmarried sex or abortions condemn you to hell, liberalism is very compatible with not committing any of these sins. (Things do get a bit hairy around religious objection to military service though, or if you object to paying taxes which finance what you consider to be sinful behavior.)
Unfortunately, during my edgy teenage atheist phase I blasphemed against the holy spirit - so I can't actually be saved, because that's an unforgivable sin that not even Jesus can get rid of. Since becoming an adult, I've actually pursued a religious faith that's not Christian at all, so even if you expand the definition of blasphemy against the holy spirit to include a continual hardening of the spirit's pull to Christ (which I haven't ever felt) I still qualify. As a result a lot of Christian evangelism doesn't really land with me because there isn't actually any offer of salvation - if I become a Christian I am just guaranteeing my place in the lake of fire. The buddhists at least promise an end to suffering, rather than a guarantee of infinite torture forever no matter what I do.
I remember that; good times. Did you at least get a copy of The God Who Wasn't There in exchange for your immortal soul?
Truly, they had such a refined and rational understanding of Christian doctrine that they failed to so much as open a book and completely misinterpreted it.
I’m glad the Motte exists because it’s a good place for everyone to get their witchy opinions out on the table with minimal drama, but rationalism as a movement has always been a joke.
This was back in 2005; it was part of new atheism, not rationalism. Rationality as a movement didn't start until Eliezer wrote and published The Sequences in 2006-2009 (though, obviously, rationalism was heavily influenced by new atheism).
I know people make this argument, but they are the same movement to me.
Ghostbusters is not heavily influenced by I Want a New Drug, it is I Want a New Drug with some extra cruft added. The heart of the thing is the same. Arguably, they have the same heart as the Enlightenment, which was often equally cringe as the New Atheists and rationalism.
A reminder that this is not a rationalist forum. As for new atheism and rationalism being the same thing: no, they definitely are not. There is definitely some overlap, but new atheism spawned Atheism+ and was a driver of SJW/wokeness, which rationalism has always been ambivalent-to-hostile towards.
As for not knowing Christianity, I kind of agree with you that a lot of people don't actually understand Christianity at all, but at the same time, there are many, many "Christian" doctrines, and even the Christians here on the Motte have a habit of expressing their own interpretation in a doctrinaire fashion as obviously the correct and orthodox form of Christianity, from which any deviation is a misunderstanding at best, heresy at worst.
As for blaspheming against the holy spirit, you know, that is a pretty hard one to get around if you actually believe in taking the Bible literally. As a kid, I once made a Halloween joke about the holy spirit being like a ghost in a sheet or something, and the Sunday school teacher very seriously read me the verse about mocking the holy spirit being an unforgivable sin. Imagine telling an eight-year-old that he's just irreversibly damned himself to hell with a joke!
I get that you have very strong feelings about this, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
There is no meaningful difference between the tentacles of the octopus. The guys touching the trunk, the tail, the ears and the legs of the elephant are all actually touching the same thing. You can say that they are definitely not the same thing, but from over here it just looks you’re touching an elephant.
Calvinism is Christianity just like Catholicism is Christianity. In my opinion, it is weird, dumb Christianity that gets many things wrong and is just barely better than not being Christian, making me at best ambivalent to hostile towards it, but it’s still Christianity. It wants to save souls, its works are intended to save souls, and God willing, maybe it has seen some success doing that. Do I think it would be better if they were all Catholics? Sure, but they’re still part of the elephant.
Fortunately, in no church anywhere is dogma defined by the Sunday School teachers. I’m sorry that happened to you and I bet it was a little traumatizing, but I’m also willing to bet your Sunday school teacher was an untrained volunteer with a minimal grasp of theology beyond Bible stories. That’s why he/she should stick to reenacting Bible stories on a felt board.
This, incidentally, is a point for why I am Catholic. The kids stay in the service, and so a priest is available to catechize. Plus, when catechizing, they have to work out of the literal book of answers to dogma questions.
Maybe it’s a bit of a limb to be out on, but I’m going to trust the past 16-1700 years of Church teaching on what is considered blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, over the opinions of the Rational Response Squad or the knee-jerk reaction of Mr/Mrs Woebegone at Sunday School.
No, not really. I'm not sure why some people think implying "strong feelings" about a statement of fact is an effective retort. It's a gambit obviously deployed in bad faith. It's a rhetorical tactic akin to saying "You're being emotional." You should know better.
No, I don't have strong feelings about this. I just know I'm right and you're wrong because I was there. I don't have an emotional investment in rationalism.
And my Sunday school teacher did indeed scare me at the time, me being eight years old and all, but I merely relayed that anecdote by way of saying "Yes, this is a real thing actual Christians believe." Obviously, even if I still were a Christian, I would no longer be traumatized by what a dumb volunteer church lady said when I was eight.
But I would (and am) aware that for all your magesterial apologetics, there is no meaningful difference between her and your priests.
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