Quote:
Grrr... I hate that! I usually do a quick Select All/Copy of the text box before hitting submit now. I've been burned like that too many times!

I saw Tom's note about downrevving the board software. That was the only time I got bit.

Quote:
Patiently waiting for reply.

Hokay.

Quote:
You thrive on this stuff don't you?

Well, my fixation with such stuff on the BBS may appear little out of balance. It would not be proper or reasonable to raise some issues like this in a work environment. Friends? Well, they all agree with me, so what's the fun in posing this type of question to them? If I went door-to-door on a Saturday morning asking complete strangers about stuff like this, I couldn't live with myself. But on the BBS you can pose all sorts of opinions, hare-brained ideas and expect that people of many different viewpoints will offer responses that don't involve spitting, gunfire, or putting flaming bags of dog poop on your front steps. Unique, eh?

Quote:
To start off, I guess I disagree with a premise or two that this conversation is started on. First of all, just because someone thinks they know the "message" loud and clear does not in any way mean that they are correct. My wife can attest to this! So, despite the fact these guys are 100% sure "their God" hates homosexuals, that doesn't mean there isn't a huge "communication" problem here.

I think I said it before: three cheers for people in authority who aren't 100% sure what their god thinks. That being said, if a deity is capable (in theory) of creating the whole universe, suns, planets, continents, rivers, beaches, fossils, mitochondria, and can even set the wheels in motion to bring us musicals like "Mamma Mia" then that is pretty friggen' omnipotent. I would expect him/her/it to have plenty of spare cycles left for getting their message across. If WBC is 100% sure, maybe they just happen to be the only people whose transmission was not borken by sunspots (hmmm, sunspots, you'd think He would have his crew work on those).

Quote:
In fact, I'm not aware of the Christian God hating any group of people. Certain behaviors like homosexuality and me not honoring my mother and father might be frowned upon, but nothing to the point of hatred.

If (looking down the page) we just go with the notion that there is one god who has been adopted as the Christian God -- and it is the same Christian God who has been around for many years -- then it would seem like at various times his adherents were pretty damn sure he hated *lots* of different people. Enough to burn plenty of them at the stake, draw and quarter them, stuff like that.

It is my impression that it is your *desire* that the Christian God be of a type that it would not be an unreasonable hater. I'm just not sure what evidence you have for that that trumps the WBC types.
edit: it occurred to me whilst pedaling to work that using the term "desire" could be be interpreted to mean "desire to believe", meaning that you want to believe something (but maybe really don't). I don't want to say that you don't believe something. Not for me to say. How about I translate this something closer to "choose to believe"?

Quote:
More importantly however, I don't buy into the whole "my God" vs. "your God" thing. I don't think there is a Lutheran God, a Catholic God and a W3ztb0r0 B4pt1zt Church God. I'd even go so far as to say I don't believe in a Jewish God, a Christian God and a Islamic God. I believe that there is just one God and there happens to be ton of different interpretations of God. And many of those differences in interpretation happen to be driven by politics rather than idiology. (Does anyone really think the "Protestant vs. Catholic" conflict in Ireland was driven by hatred over Vatican control?)

The notion of "One God, many interpretations" seems like a pretty recent one. Is this liberal ecumenicalism? Among other things, it means the priest, the mullah and the rabbi can all go to the same pancake breakfast and make nice. This is no small thing and wasn't always so. I would say that ecumenicalistic acceptance of other faith beats the living pants off of theological blood feuds and mass murder.

So, three cheers for "One God, just many interpretations." But what makes it true?

Quote:
I've found that most Christians that I've talked to believe this as well. That Muslims, Jews and Christians are all praying to the same God. We just have very differant interpretations of God.

I think I was maybe 14 or 15 when I concluded that I was an atheist. My leap from the decks of the Ark of the Vatican was probably hastened by those scurrilous Jesuits who, in the interests of liberal ecumenicalism, brought a Buddhist monk into our Freshman religion class so we could get a dose of "One God, many interpretations". I thought "That's nice, but if everybody is saying how anybody's interpretation is just as good as the next guys -- yet they are all so different -- that doesn't lend much credence to any of them".

The monk shouldn't blame himself. I was going to jump anyway.

Quote:
So when I come across some group like your W3ztb0r0 B4pt1zts, I rarely ever try to understand them from a theological viewpoint. I know enough about Christianity to know their hatred must be rooted in something else. Their problem is very much rooted in a communication breakdown and is driven, IMO, by something unrelated.

Had I spit at them or abused them in some way, I truly think they would have been thrilled. My my, how some people get their jollies. And while I'd like to think that any supreme being (if one day I am surprised to find that one exists) would not be such an asshole as to sponsor that bunch of jerks, I still have to ask, wishful thinking aside, how do we *know* they are tuned to the wrong station, god-wise?

Quote:
The same could be said for the suicide bombers in Islam. They pray to the same God as more peace loving Muslims, but they are being driven by an outside force (politics, what have you) and are being exploited by people that feed off of that hatred in order to gain power.

I agree that many other things other than straight theological principle feeds the actions of people we consider extreme. I mean, look at Jimmy Swaggert. Does that dude have some bad juju goin' on or *what*?

More to your point, I guess you could say that one reason reason I brought WBC zealots up is that, I think, they are a small domestic representation of the issue without getting into the politics of jihad, radical Islamists all that (and without mentioning Nazis, abortion, or Bush).

Quote:
So, like I said, rather than look at this in a theological way, I tend to look at it in a psyological or sociological way. Most homophobes I know have severe insecurities. I bet their wives can attest to that.

They almost never post, but just lurk here


Edited by jimhogan (30/11/2005 13:52)
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.