Any mainline Christians on here?

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Clearly we have a lot of intelligent people on the WP forums. However, any time there is any discussion on Christianity I basically see only two viewpoints represented: fundamentalism and agnosticism. There can be an intellectual case built for either position, and I'm not trying to downplay anyone's personal beliefs...but where are the moderates? Are there any Presbyterians/Methodists/Episcopalians/Evangelical Lutherans/etc. on the forums? People who maybe do not use "literal" Biblical interpretation, who believe that the earth is about 4 billion years old, or who fight for equal rights, perhaps?

I'm kind of tired of seeing this pattern on WP:

Person #1: What's your favorite Bible verse?

Person #2: I like the one about killing people

Person #3: Person 2, I hope you like the verse about killing people WHEN YOU"RE BURNING IN HELL!

I think there is a date problem here. The post above says "Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 12:28 am". I am reading it on Thu Aug 01, 2013, 09.41 am... I understand that the HOUR can be different in different time zones, the DATE can be different around the date change like (close to Kiribati and Fiji in the middle of the Pacific), but more than 24 hours difference???

(By the way, I am near Montréal, Canada, EST. Thus nowhere near the date change line.)

Someone invented the time machine?
___________________________________________

Edit : my onw post (this one) says "Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 12:48 am". I dunno if I am on a wrong plante, but WP's clock definitively seems to have a problem!)

Last edited by Fetika on 01 Aug 2013, 8:53 am, edited 2 times in total.

Mine says August 1st. Date settings in your profile, perhaps?

Or maybe you have the time machine, in which case your life is about to become very awesome.

Eastern Orthodox here.

Kraichgauer is a liberal Lutheran iirc.

I used to be a liberal non-dom, but gradually my metaphysical beliefs have been slipping and I'm now more like a Christian sympathiser.

@ N0tYetDeadFred
You are right. I checked my profile and it said "GMT+10". Here, I am at "GMT-4". The only mystery left is how it changed by that much considering that
1° it was correct yesterday, and ;
2° I didn't change it since (except for the correction I just did).

Now, about the topic, I agree with you the conversations on WP should not resemble comments on Youtube! Personally I was Roman Catholic as a child until I noticed that people in our parish did not live as suggested by Christ. I looked around and noticed that all religions (except the Sufi) have one thing in common. And that is "We, and only we, possess the only truth". Most religions also believe that "In the world, there are two kinds of people : the bad guys and us".

About holy books, they are supposed to by written by God himself. But I insist it is a man who was holding the pen (or the feather).

Most religions base their argumentation on apologetics, which I HATE! This is THE anti-truth. Why? Because here is how they proceed. First, they KNOW they know the truth and they are infallible. Thus, if we present them facts that contradict their beliefs, they try to rearrange the facts to fit their beliefs. I sincerely believe that honesty and love of truth is the other way around.

The other way around is the scientific method (examining the facts and rearranging our beliefs).

You hate apologetics and yet you're practicing apologetics. Interesting irony, is it not?

Christianity does not holistically teach that there are "bad guys and us." Christianity teaches that ALL people are "bad guys." Because of this, we are all in need of salvation through repentance. All that is required of us is to confess that we are sinners in need of forgiveness, believe Jesus' sacrifice is the final word on our atonement, and simply accept God's forgiveness as a free gift. I think the most difficult thing about following Christ is its simplicity. There's nothing complicated, hyper-intellectual, or pretentious about it.

That's not to say Christianity is anti-intellectual, either. Some of the most brilliant minds out there have been, and continue to be Christian.

There are those who call themselves Christians who are and seek to make the religion recondite, pseudo-intellectual, and pretentious. I'm not denying that. Some of those might genuinely be Christian and well-intentioned, but I have my doubts about a lot of them. I try to lean more favorable towards an authenticity relative to how following Jesus is presented in the gospels and epistles. I don't like getting hung up on details the way cults like Watchtower and Adventists do, among others who claim that only THEIR church or sect will be saved.

I believe all who place their faith in Christ will go to heaven, no matter what church or denomination. I don't believe there will be a need for denominations in the hereafter. We'll all be Baptists, anyway, so there won't be much point.

The fundamentalists and agnostics are willing to shout louder and longer driven by their 'passion'.

The moderates are just.................moderate.

Where?

The apologetics I hate is that which has an answer to any and everything. Like the following sample which is factual. I was discussing with a Witnesses. I asked them what, in their opinion, would be the temperature on earth if there were no sun. They answered "Very cold". I asked them if there could be liquid water and palm trees in these conditions. They answered "no". Then I reminded them that, in Genesis, it is noticeable that God created heavens and earth, Then light. Then he called light "day" and darkness "night : so there was an evening, then a morning ...with no sun. That was the first day. Then he separated water above from water below. Then land from water. Then he created grass, trees etc. on the third day. Then he created luminaries : a large one for the day and a small one for the night, and stars all of that on the fourth day. Question : how could grass and trees survive a day )however long that day may be) at hundreds of degrees below zero? They answered that God had created light before. Where was that light and that heat coming from? Answer : "Nothing is impossible to God".

THAT is the apologetics I hate! No matter what facts you bring, they can invent answers faster than you can question them. That is what I was referring to : adkusting the "facts" to fit one's beliefs. Using apologetics, the Roman Catholic Church justified the "Holy"(???) Inquisition with the words of Jesus!

Is it clearer now?

What about the others?
What about those who aren't?

I agree. Although you seem to distinguish between moderate and fundamentalist christians, but not between fundamentalist and moderate agnostics. Not all agnostics are fundamentalists (the fundamentalists agnostics are anti-theists) ; most moderate agnostics are scientists interested in learning how things are made and work instead of explaining them with à piori "reasonings".

I am agnostic, but not anti-theist. "Agnostic" means "one thos is not liked to a gnose, to a group", not to be confounded with "anti-theist". I do believe there is a God, but not as described in the Bible or other holy books. For me, it is damn obvious that those who wrote the Bible did not know that Earth is a tiny planet in the immensity of a Universe containing trillions of galaxies : for them, what falls from heavens must fall on earth ; they could not conceive there are many other places. This is very understandable from people thousands of years ago and I don't blame them. I just blame those who insist that this was written by the Creator, which means that He did not know what He created.

I do admire many works of the religions. Yes, as AngelRho pointed out, many geniuses came from therein. But those I admire most are not the geniuses, but those who did practice and live universal love, who were committed to social and racial justice, who devoted their life to helping the needy, to denounce oppression wether it came from the "pagans" or from within their own religion.

Last edited by Fetika on 01 Aug 2013, 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hello Fetika, I was referring to the OP's original question regarding the discussions on WP. You could substitute any other of the typical disparate group conflicts seen here with moderates still in the middle being moderate. I agree that I did not use appropriate terms, the comment was directed more towards human nature in general. I'm leaving the discussion now, I'm an atheist but not anti-theist.

Perhaps 'Moderates' are people who do not discuss or debate outside outside of their respective groups.

Perhaps the discussions to which the OP refers are due to some evangelicals and some atheists having missions to push their views, not that all atheists or all fundamentalist are on crusades, so to speak.


Sylkat

Thank you, The_Walrus. I should point out, while I am a political liberal, I probably fit more into the moderation of the Neo-Orthodox Lutheran mindset - politically to the left, accepting of modern science, but holding to traditional theology.
While I myself am a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, there are plenty of people like me in it's rank and file, regardless of the fact that the leadership in St. Louis Missouri more times than I'd like to admit want to make me hide my head in a hole in embarrassment . On top of that, I live in my church's Northwest district, which has the reputation of being more "progressive" than the greater part of the Missouri Synod located in the Midwest.
But yes, I certainly consider myself to be a mainline Protestant, as are most Missouri Synod Lutherans in my neck of the woods.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I probably qualify as this. I came to my Christian beliefs mainly through my University days while studying philosophy, history, religion, and my own analytical thought, rather than going to church (I grew up in a non-religious family). I've attended several churches' services out of interest before, but never considered myself to belong to any one particular religious organization or doctrine.

I wouldn't really call myself religious at all. I just don't get it.

I am by no means the style of Evangelical dogmatist you speak of - nor any other kind, just a Christian sui generis.

But except for a sporadic visit like tonight I am no longere around - got fed up with pointless discussion in a forum where at sany given tikme abojut 5 knew how to think.

I guess I qualify in that section, though I have no denomination.
Not to get into a metaphysical/religious debate, but I think the reason people have the issues that they do about the bible (or possibly even christianity as a whole) is because they interpret it very literally. The Bible is full of wordplay, exaggeration, and simile in order to try to describe it's contents in ways that most would understand, and because people take it so literally in meaning, they often misinterpret the verses and then form an inaccurate opinion based on that.

What I believe:

The Earth is at least 4 billion years old (I say at least because we have never analized the core (as far as I know) so it's speculation at best).

The Earth was created in 7 of God's days (his ways are not our ways, time measurement has changed since then, etc.), which could very well have been thousands of years to us. God's concept of time is not like ours, so to assume that the bible means 7 earth days is rather preposterous.

We have been put on this earth to learn to live life in the physical plane before moving into the next phase (after death/new earth, whichever comes first for us).

The Bible is a teaching tool meant to show us the proper way to live life more than abundantly.

We are meant to accept others, regardless of difference, as family. There are a lot of people claiming to be christian that are so far from this, it gives the rest of us a bad name.

These are just a few, I don't want to list them all because I doubt most people would read it anyway, and I think I've made my point.

God Bless.