Fundamentalist Christians seem to want two contradictory things: on the one hand they want to believe and preach that everyone who doesn't worship in the manner they approve will be tortured and/or killed by their God. On the other hand, they want to be considered nice, kind, loving people.
To the extent they are sincere, they are not "nice"; rather they are fanatical bigots.
Of course, one could apply your same reasoning to Muslims, who teach that all non-Muslims will go to hell, or to the many hells of the Hindu faith, or to many other religions. But your ire seems to be specifically directed toward Christians. I wonder why that is? It seems that in America these days, all religions except Christianity are welcome, whether or not they have exclusivist beliefs (as nearly all religions do). It's OK for certain schools in California to require their students to learn about Islam by dressing and acting as Muslims do, even acting out Muslim rituals. Imagine the outcry, though, if a school required its students to learn about Christianity by acting out a communion service.
In point of fact, you should probably direct your attacks at some of these other groups much more than at Christians. We only believe that God, whom we believe is a righteous judge, will determine in the afterlife who is saved and who will spend eternity apart from Him; there are many Muslims who are more than willing to take the fate of non-believers into their own hands, as the events of 9/11/01 eloquently bespeak.
I might point out that, in this thread, you are the one who keeps bringing up the topic of God torturing or killing non-believers. DJ certainly never initiated any discussion of it, and neither have I. You seem to have an obsession with the concept. I know there are some fundamentalists (of whom I am not one, and as far as I know, neither is DJ; I can't speak for her, but I consider myself an evangelical Christian) who try to use hellfire to scare people into having faith. I deplore this tactic. When I speak to people about the Lord, I try to emphasize the love of God, and the opportunity provided through Jesus for eternal life.
You call us fanatics and bigots, but I think you are every bit as fanatical and bigoted in your hatred of Christianity. It therefore matters little to me whether a fanatical bigot such as yourself, who has a very large axe to grind, considers me a "nice" person.
Many people, and I include myself, are able to accept that definite answers about spiritual matters are hard to come by. I am willing to allow others to believe what they want without assuming that they will be killed for disagreeing with me.
It sounds as if you are saying, then, that you do not have any definite beliefs about spiritual matters, or at least, not any that you are truly committed to. That is, of course, your prerogative. But when you make idiotic, self-falsifying statements like, "It's OK to think you're right, but it's not OK to think that others are wrong," (I paraphrase), you can't expect to be taken seriously by anyone with a mind. If I believe that 2+2=4, and you believe that 2+2=5, our beliefs are not equally valid. No matter how many times you take two stacks of dollar bills, each with two bills in the stack, and combine them, you will never end up with five dollars. In that situation, I am right, and you are wrong.
Religious truth is harder to determine, it's true. But I believe that absolute truth does exist in the religious realm, whether or not we as humans perceive it accurately. Either there is a God in actuality, or there is not. If there is, then those who say that there is not are wrong. If there is not, then the believers are wrong. We can extend this further: If God exists, either He is a Trinity, or He is not. If He is a Trinity, either that Trinity is made up of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or it is not. Etc. Etc. Etc. At every juncture, in actual fact, one possibility is true, and the other is not. One belief is right, and the other wrong.
As Christians, we believe there is convincing evidence of the Bible's accuracy. We have accepted it as our standard, and believe what it says, though we may fight like cats and dogs about what the specific interpretations should be. If, for example, we believe through our acceptance and study of the Bible that God is a Trinity, then, of necessity, we must believe that those who deny the Trinity are wrong. If we are too unsure of our position to arrive at such a conclusion, then we do not have a solid belief.
Of course, you have every right to hold your beliefs as loosely as you choose. You need not commit to anything if you don't want to, or if doing so would make too great demands on your behavior. But I would ask a little respect for those of us who are more strongly convinced of our beliefs.
And, of course, I reserve the right to defend myself against, and to attack, bigots.
One would hope, though, that you would keep one eye in the mirror as you do so, to ensure that you are not guilty of the same sort of attitudes and conduct that you so vigorously attack. Such caution seems to be lacking in your case.
No part of this is true, and I in particular don't believe that "all beliefs are equally valid": yours and DJ's, for example, suck. What I do believe is that evidence and reason can be used to arrive valid conclusions.
Well, I'd agree with the last part of that. The problem seems to be that, again, once you have arrived at these "valid conclusions," you have no degree of commitment to them. Otherwise, you would be willing to take the position that your "valid conclusions" are right, and that the beliefs of those who disagree with them are wrong. But, of course, that sort of exclusivity is exactly what you are condemning in DJ and me.
What you really seem to me to be saying is that nobody's beliefs except yours are truly valid. It's OK for you to say that others are wrong, but wrong for anybody else to do so.
You'll notice that DJ, and now yourself, carefully avoid discussions of evidence.
I'm not sure what sort of evidence it is you want to discuss. If you're asking for the standard believer/nonbeliever parrying about the Bible's validity, I've been through it all before. It's been done a hundred times on this forum, and, frankly, I try to avoid those threads because I usually find them annoying. That doesn't mean that I avoid considering the evidence on a regular basis. The magazines to which I subscribe, and regularly read, include Biblical Archaeology Review, Scientific American, Discover, Science News, and National Geographic, as well as Moody Monthly, Christianity Today, Discipleship Journal, and a number of lesser known Christian magazines in the field of apologetics. So I think I get a reasonably well-rounded view of the situation.
Besides all that reading, I have a full time job, am currently taking two college courses, and am preparing Sunday School material for my church. I also have a wonderful wife who appreciates my attention from time to time. So getting into online discussions (and doing all the attendant research) about the Bible's validity with unbelievers who have their minds already made up and are unlikely to be convinced (as many previous threads have demonstrated) is way down there on my priority list. Frankly, I probably wouldn't have bothered with this discussion if it hadn't been for your vicious personal attacks on DJ, whom I consider a friend.
And neither of you have made a rational defense of your assertion that your God is going to torture and/or kill me.
You are the one who keeps saying that we believe that. I believe that it is God's prerogative to judge, not mine. My assignment is to present the Gospel: Jesus loves you, and He died for your sins, was resurrected and will come again. What you need to do is accept the gift through faith. That's the essence of Christianity. What penalties God may require of those who eschew the gift He offers are not my concern, and I believe that whatever He does will be perfectly just. It's not up to me to decide what your relationship with God is, or to judge your eternal destiny. That's between you and Him. As DJ said, if you don't like what He does, take it up with Him. We are only the messengers.
I can only point out that DJ speaks sweetly, and has vile beliefs whilst I speak coarsely and have far more tolerant beliefs.
Sorry, but I find your beliefs every bit as vile and especially, every bit as intolerant as you find mine. I further consider you to be hypocritical, since you reserve to yourself the right to declare the beliefs of others to be wrong, even as you preach that others have no right to declare anyone else's beliefs wrong. There is nothing "tolerant" in what you have expressed in this thread.
