interesting extract on christianity

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I'm an atheist. however there is logical fallacy among some atheists. Which is "religion is what is causing all the violence in the world". The problem with that is non-secquir. Why? Because if you took religion totally out of the equation there would still be violence, this is because violence is part of our animal behavior (although arguably declining in humans). Religion is merely a manifestation of our behavior as a meme. Of course it can be powerful, but there are some many ways of achieving the same thing. They have even done social experiment on human complicity in torture with involved without knowledge of religion, race or ethnicity. So people just are impressionable and follow orders.

Religious extremists tap into the same psychological mechanisms as secular extremist, such as persecution complex. Ultra-nationalism vs. ultra-orthodox very similar in indoctrination methods.

I agree with those that say religion is not what makes you a good person, and they are petty rubbish moral guides.

I think with regards to red states, it is much more down to policy than pure demographics, because in some state it is pretty close (swing states), and these are necessarily half as bad. Some of these are worse that some of the pure red states.

Just thinking aloud (or on screen) really. Not sure where that was going.

The interesting question with Christianity is whether the OT is relevant at all. A lot of Christians would say no, but without it, you have a religion based on a man rather than God (who has no direct involvement in the NT at all - everything is through Christ, which is the whole message in any event).

So this leads to a question. If the OT is not relevant, you can't use it as anything more than a historical document, complete with inaccuracies, bias and translation problems. You can ignore all that crap about shellfish, working on the Sabbath and blood sacrifice (yay!) because it's nothing to do with Christianity. BUT this also means you can't credit God for anything either. Flood? Eden? Ten commandments? Red Sea? All stories with no basis in truth, either in the rationalist sense (no evidence for them) or the biblical sense (not mentioned in NT).

Your alternative is to accept that the OT is relevant and accurate, and this means God is a genocidal nutcase, the entire human race has been born from massive incest - twice - and we're all supposed to suffer for the original sin of a couple who didn't understand what they were doing because God created them that way. Any message from Jesus cannot change any of this (for God is unchanging).

Religion would be a lot better if people understood that some of this stuff is not meant to be taken literally. Or that Jesus rising from the dead is the least important aspect of Christianity.

It's pretty standard human nature to form groups. It happens with clubs, political parties, religions, cults, sports fans, nationalism... even more abstract things like the 98%. We want to belong. But human groups aren't inclusive - they are exclusive. A group is not defined by its members so much as the people that aren't in it. You are one of the special people; everyone else is less important.

If a group gets large enough, it can sometimes split. Christianity has split many times. Its not just Catholics and Protestants (a war that has never really ended - European history may be littered with inter-Christian conflict, but Northern Ireland was still actively bombing itself and its neighbours until the 1990s). On a lesser scale, Baptists and Methodists disagree. There are Unitarians and Seventh Day Adventists and the irritating Jehovah's Witnesses, disturbing many a Sunday lie-in with their ironically named pamphlet, "Awake!". All slightly different, all convinced that they have it right and the others are wrong.