WrongPlanet.net an anti-christian site?

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Well, about the very part you quoted. I just found ironic, he was insisting that you are wrong was a personal attack because it put a burden on the other person. But under that logic "You don't care" is the same, isn't it?

I am not nice to people. But I do not think I was rude. I was insistent yes. But I don't think that a person being new to the site, should give the person immunity against people arguing with her points. I also think that treating him just like I would have treated leesepho (an old timer) when arguing is the best way to treat a new person, giving them the same argumentation power as I give an old timer. Making them feel at home. So actually, don't you think it is more of a case of being a snub if you treat new timers different than old timers?

I'll be honest that I didn't pay much attention to his post count.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 25 Apr 2011, 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

For the record, I didn't mind going point to point with Ska, but I did call it (in the post) the way I saw it, as far as the wording went.

This is a support site first, above everything else. If you wish simply to argue then you should take it over to Intensity,

Depends on what you are in hearing the new poster's words. The posts themselves can tell you what kind of welcome they want or need. In this case, the poster was quite clear about how she needed to be treated.

Well, excuse me but by the time I joined the discussion he seemed more interested in arguing than in support. (Edit: This was directed towards MLA).

DW_Amom: Well, I didn't see her first post because I joined this at page 29.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 25 Apr 2011, 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

STEPPING Stoned topic

Watch your STEP.

Does that mean we might be on the same page? Well, OK, maybe in the same book, at least? You can see my point?

I didn't have time to check the page number, I remembered it began with 2, so I said, that to be sure I would pick a 9 because that's as high as possible, worst case scenario, the page I joined the discussion in was much lower than 29, but my point will get through.

DW, what welcome do you think these posts suggest?

... I don't buy this argument at all.

Why on earth does it have to be the case that in order to be within that category of "Christian" you have to believe in an inerrant AND literal Bible? After all, "prone to living an ambiguous life" doesn't directly lead to hypocrisy, and... I don't really understand the prone-ness in the first place. After all, couldn't one use a many-pillared epistemic structure in which Christian scriptural claims are just part of the matter?

Would a church have to be guaranteed? Even further, don't the churches believe that they are guaranteed, after all, the church rests its claim upon apostolic succession, and holds that they are heirs to the Christian tradition. Even further, I don't see your "one-man sect" issue as meaningful or a problem. After all, guarantees are not needed to believe or follow something. It isn't as if by saying "I am a democrat" I say that I have sworn to the democratic party's platform at all. In any case, a major issue here is that to be Christian, one holds to the spiritual specialness of the text, this does not entail inerrancy, this only means "spiritual specialness" which does give a person some leeway, as maybe some parts are less important, and so on and so forth.

In any case, the view that "scripture is everything" really seems overly Protestant, as a lot of churches believe that the teachings of the early fathers and of church tradition are of relevance in living the Christian faith. As such, they have another foundation to point towards if they need it. In fact, the Bible itself could not have existed without an early church.

You mean people don't cherrypick in anything else? I mean, the only thing you can criticize is arbitrariness, but YOU HAVEN'T *SHOWN* that non-literality = arbitrariness, as that would entail that you disprove EVERY non-literal interpretation. The problem is that non-literal interpretations of scripture are HISTORICALLY CHRISTIAN. I mean, the major church father, Origen, made arguments for non-literal interpretation as did others, and so, by what right are you going to say that your particular interpretation of the Bible is Christianity? After all, even within scripture, it seems clear that Paul used a non-literal interpretation at points. So..... if Christians behave like X, then how can you say "X is against Christianity"?

Who says you do? After all, without an understanding of Christian tradition, and how this tradition has historically interpreted the Bible, how do you know that you are correct? I mean, you're not just "looking at theology and what is necessary", you're making a particular theological claim here, and basically naively accepting the claims of conservative Protestant Christianity as if they were the only possible claims one could make. The problem is that other claims are logically possible(you haven't disproven them, and your efforts have failed to constitute a logical disproof) AND these other claims can be made with some grounding.

Note: I'll side with you that the Christian tradition is just wrong and full of crap, but I don't want to pigeonhole someone into an assumption they don't *have to* make. (If they are obtuse and refuse to make a necessary assumption, that's another matter)

There are more posts, she shows discomfort with the way things are going and wonders if she can handle it. The whole arguing about style showed how she WANTED to be talked to.

You don't have to agree with me. I am just glad that you are willing to think about it and look at it.

I have to say, this is probably one of the most well-spoken, peaceful "anti" Christian statements I've ever heard. I didn't read through all of the post since then, but I know others disagree with me on that and I'm sorry, but I totally "get" what Vex is saying here.. and applaud him for saying it so well ... This is exactly what led me away from Christianity.. This is exactly what caused me to doubt the Bible as "truth". Once I doubted bits and pieces, I had to doubt all. (I will however allow that there are some probable bits of history tossed in.) ... And I do think you can be Christian while only considering parts of the Bible fact. My understanding of the definition of being Christian is that you have to believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin and became man and died to pay the ransom so we can all live happily ever after. Jesus left 2 commandments, neither of which said "Believe this book is 100% true".
But, although I differ on those two points, I just wanted to say that I appreciate the way Vex said his piece.

All fair. And I must say you are correct. I am not sure if I explained myself correctly or that I actually said what I wanted to say. What needs underlining really, is that over all, it is just what happened to me, and that should have nothing to say with what other people experienced, at the end everyone finds his own truth and I bet I am miles away of finding one to which I will stay faithful for long.

Can you be a Christian and have a partial interpretation of the bible? I think that you can. But you'll be lying yourself. Ok, so the part about Noah's ark does not make a lot of sense once you count the number of species, you can decide to consider it just an allegory, but then which parts of the bible are an allegory and which parts are not? And then the issue becomes, who decides which parts of the bible should be taken seriously and which parts are not?

A Church? That is so simple, to outsource your ethics and opinions to an old organization. If my Church does not really agree with this, why did they include it in their bible? Then overall, what if you disagree with something? Change Church? Look away?

Yourself? You become your own priest and you no longer belong to a community you don't have peer pressure nor anything and you can begin deciding things yourself and making the bible say basically anything. But this ends where?

Then you have to consider that your holy book contains part that you greatly disagree with. Why were these things you consider horribly wrong added to the book at all? And how? You have to begin wondering that the council of people that wrote the stories and laws all over the years did something wrong. But if they did so many things wrong, what assurance is there that the other parts are not also fiction? And again who decides that?



At least in my case, this slowly turned me into a non-Christian, I did not even notice until much later.

Actually what I meant is that I don't.

I meant to say that when DW said "You don't really understand the bible then you are wrong in ..." to me, she was using a good argument. It is true that I don't fully understand it and it put me in some corner. My point to make was that this argument was very nice and not a personal attack and that is what ska did a long time ago when he talked about the god of the gaps.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 25 Apr 2011, 9:50 pm, edited 6 times in total.

Vex's piece there led me to conclude that further discussion would be pointless. He has accepted as a basic postulate a position with which I profoundly disagree, and declined to consider the possibility that his postulate might be correct. (One might speculate this could have something to do with a fear that if he had to consider this possibility, it might cause him to doubt his own religious position. This, of course, may or may not be correct...) Forty years of experience have taught me that in such a case, continued attempts at discussion will lead only to more abuse, and I get plenty of that out in meatspace, thanks.

Please specify which piece. The "You are wrong" one? I guess not because there is nothing religious in that position and you talked about me doubting my own religious position. Or is it the one I made about not taking the bible literally? That one I had not even begun to try to defend in a discussion by the time you made the post so I guess that was not either.

I am no longer afraid of doubt though.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 25 Apr 2011, 9:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.