I am reminded of Yogi Berra's quote, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

I can't help thinking of C. S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce." There is a dialog between a "solid person" and an "episcopal ghost," where the ghost chafes at the notion of ultimate truth and morality: "It's better to have traveled hopefully than to have arrived." The solid person replies, "If that were true and know to be true, there would be no point in traveling." (Not an exact quote but you get the idea).

True. For all their complaints about the arrogance of dogmatic theists, the UUs appear to dogmatize their own superiority as people who don't dogmatize. Given a choice between a man who firmly believes that God loves him, and a man who firmly believes he's the measure of gods, I judge the former to be less dangerous.

Like many anti-Christs, however, the UUs may be best understood as the mirror image of some distortion within Christianity. There are, sad to say, many Christians whose claim to religious knowledge is of a terribly pedestrian sort that flattens the transcendent Trinity into some kind of simplistic self-validation. That is, there are plenty of us self-righteous Christians, and the UUs justly loathe our self-righteousness---never mind that by their disengagement with Trinitarians they render themselves just as self-righteous as those from whom they distance themselves.

We Christians might be suitably chastened by seeing in the UUs the reflection of our own self-righteousness. We might begin to remedy it by opening ourselves again to the spirit of penance, now almost completely effaced from the season of Advent, and to the Spirit of awe, who inducts us into worship that transcends much of what passes for the contemporary or relevant.

"Searching" is just a euphemism for that smug cliche, "spiritual but not religious."

Well put. It is an odd kind of seeking which allows no finding. See also the bishop in Lewis's The Great Divorce.

Looked at another way, however, all seekers do find something, and Derek does have religious beliefs that he holds strongly - the dogma of anti-dogma, the insistence that no truth can be Truth, and the great feeling of self-congratulation that comes from having seen through everyone else.

As a UU, Derek also likely has the religion of political liberalism, held for tribal and social rather than intellectual reasons. (At least here in New England.)

"Searching"
Indeed.
Can't help but be reminded of O. J. Simpson's claim after his acquittal
that he would be searching for the real killers.

Methinks he is still searching. Like the UU's.

David Poecking: Very good point. Thank you. And I'll add my vote for restoring penance to Advent -- among other things, it has the effect of making Christmas even more fun.

You must all be so grateful that you are "not like other men."

Here is an actual Unitarian-Universalist service called "The Joke's on UU!"

http://www.uubgky.org/uujoke.htm

It is very funny, especially the song, "I am the very model of a modern Unitarian." Of course at the same time it is completely pathetic. I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of these people. Even when I was a communist atheist I despised them.

The service ends with a "peace song." Therein lies the key. If you don't believe in anything, you can't possibly offend anyone and cause conflict, and avoidance of conflict is at the heart of their religion. Their problem is as much psychological as it is theological. Unfortunately for them, they offend anyone who actually believes in something.

Dear Margaret: Well, David isn't "like other men." He writes better. And Judy, don't despise folks, "they know not what they do." Me? I'm hangin' on to the robe of Jesus by my fingernails, glad that the Divine Providence of The Almighty put an ass at the manager--always perks me up to be in the company of my betters.

Mike, When I was a communist atheist I was all about despising, or worse. I hope that as a Christian I do better. At least I try, though it's awfully easy and such a sop to one's pride to despise.

I met my first (that I know of) UU this summer. He was kind of an odd fellow, very nice, but always seemed a bit sad, and different...He firmly declared himself to be UU, but also claimed to be Christian. One day a Catholic priest challenged him on this claim: "Do you believe in the Holy Trinity?" "No." "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" "No." "Then you're not Christian."

While I heartily agreed with the priest, I was struck by the fact that this "Christian-UU" man took great offense at the suggestion that he is not, in fact, Christian. I couldn't help but wonder what was in the name, the label, that was so important to him. He is not an uneducated or unintelligent man; he is certainly aware of the major doctrinal boundaries that traditionally define Christianity. I didn't get why he wanted to refer to himself as a Christian if he doesn't actually believe Christianity.

To my mind, there's no shame in accurately identifying and labeling one's religious beliefs. If someone says to me, "Katie, you are not a Muslim" my response would be, "That is correct, I am not," despite the fact that I share some of same concerns as Islam, such as attention to a rigorous prayer life, peace, and care for the poor.

It's not just the Universalist-Unitarian that is "running here and there as he feels inclined, and he is careful never to get anywhere in particular." It's also the Liberal Emergers and many of the Liberal "Mainline" Protestants who do that also.

You have the UUs all wrong. There are a great many of us who believe strongly. The thing is, it doesn't matter what in, as long as we can agree to certain principles. We work towards truth, and there is no objective truth to be had in religion, so we do not force dogma on our congregations. We place a higher value on community, on respect, and on making this world we share a better place to live.

As for our Christians, they are followers of the teachings ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament, and they believe that those teachings will lead them to a close, personal relationship with God. They simply do not believe 1: that Jesus was some shard of God, the Creator (Unitarian) and 2: that the god who is defined as Love and Righteousness would ever pass eternal condemnation on our immortal souls for temporal transgressions, as the Bible says at Jesus came to save The World, and not the few.

I welcome further discussion from anyone who would like to know more about us.

Thomas,

Right.

"Faith is the important thing."
"Faith in what?"
"Who knows, just faith."

But going back to the pamphlet about Derek, I don't think it's accurate to say the UUs aren't dogmatic. It just seems that their dogma's extremely reductionist, looking for whatever common denominator there is between the different religions, and adhering mainly to that alone.

Sean:

The definition of Faith makes it a personal thing that one person cannot dictate to another. That doesn't mean that we don't each hold our faith to be an important part of who we are, and one of our principles is to encourage each other in a responsible search for truth and meaning.

We don't have a dogma or a creed. We acknowledge the commonalities, we discuss the details but we don't quarrel over the differences when, in the end, we each have only our personal journey and perception to draw from in making our judgments.

We can't each explore the whole world. UUs find it better to learn from the experiences of others than to tune out those disagree. We are not alone in this, and we welcome every exchange of ideas to further our individual quests for meaning.

Margaret: You may well be right, pride being such an attractive sin. I don't think I think I'm better than the writers of the flyer, except in avoiding their intellectual confusion. But morally, probably not. But then I could be wrong about my own feelings, pride being such an attractive and seductive sin.

But one thing to remember is that the claim you reject is made implicitly in the flyer itself. It's a claim to superiority over those who allegedly don't question, search, and think. We know who the writers mean. And your own comment could imply the same feeling, depending on the spirit with which you wrote it. Any evaluation of another can be dismissed as self-righteousness, but they aren't all such.

Mike Linton: Thanks.

Thomas: Here I was thinking mainly of the writers of the flyer and not every U-U, but my encounters with your brethren, starting with the U-U church in the New England college town in which I grew up, have been along the same lines. And your own description does seem to me, unless I'm missing something, to be a refinement of the same position: a member can believe, as long as he doesn't believe anything definitive requiring him to reject the U-U's skepticism about objective truth. He really can't think things through without leaving your community. That means your "strong beliefs" are really feelings or commitments rather than beliefs, beyond the strong belief that "there is no objective truth to be had in religion." I hope that's clear.

David:

Your speculation only applies at the point where someone begins to think they have "The Answer", and attempt to apply it to other people. I have very strong beliefs, and I have many close friends in my own congregation who have equally strong, but very different beliefs. Even when I know a great deal of their personal story, I have not experienced what they have; I am not fit to judge them or their faith. I am required, by our shared principles, to engage them and to encourage them towards a reasonable, responsible, and hopefully internally consistent theology. After that, it is all academic.

We have very devout Christians, though there are those who would seek to deny them that label for their belief in an all loving, all forgiving god. We have very devout Pagans and more than a handful of reform Jews, too. We also harbor a large number of agnostics who are still searching, and indeed, some who think that admitting to not knowing is the best way honor the divine. We also welcome, and even ordain, humanists and atheists who are willing to admit that their disbelief is no more based in fact than any other practice.

We all agree that we believe in, ultimately, one creation and that, in the end, we will all be reunited with the source of that creation. In the mean time, we work to make this a better world to live in, while encouraging each other to be spiritually healthy. With in those fairly wide constraints, you are free to be as devout or as gnostic as you feel you should be, and we will welcome you into a community built on mutual respect and love.

Thomas,

Regarding your "shared principles", after talking and debating with those who are a part of the UUA, I found that they do not give too much credence to the "Principals".

For instance, the metaphysical UU Principal that there is "The inherent worth and dignity of every person" turns out to be just another UU opinion. The former President of the UUA Bill Schulz did not regard "inherent" as having a real place in the Principal.

Really when all is said and done, as an overarching principal, the UUA is really a conversation club and an action committee for gay rights (all my conversations with UUA members end up at pushing gay "marriage").


BTW, Mr. Mills, I went to Pitt (undergrad) and found that all the Christian Churches and Ecclesial Communities were very involved with each other (while excluding the UUA).

Thomas,

I don't think you guys really do welcome other ideas. I think what you welcome are the cultural artifacts associated with religions like Buddhism, Sufism or Christianity, in a religious tourist sort of way, but the ideas themselves are discarded insofar as they conflict with natural religion, which is what UU essentially is. (pun intended)

I can't tell you how sick I am of Unitarian Universalists shoving their certainty that there is no objective truth to be had in religion, their doctrinaire placing of higher value on community, respect, and making this world we share a better place to live, their dogma that faith cannot be dictated and their certainty that commonalities must be acknowledged and that every exchange of ideas must be welcomed... down my throat.

"We all agree that we believe in, ultimately, one creation and that, in the end, we will all be reunited with the source of that creation."

- It's good to know that UUs don't believe that they're living in two universes at once. It's also good to know that you folks have figured out that bodies decompose.

"In the mean time, we work to make this a better world to live in, while encouraging each other to be spiritually healthy. "

- By whose standards, pray tell? Yours? Mine? God's? Buddha's? The girl who lives across the hall from me and desperately needs to learn to change her cat's litter more often (that would certainly make her apartment a better place, but I suppose you'd demand to know who am I to judge her?)? How can you tell if someone's spiritually "healthy" if you've got no stick by which to measure that health? How can you declare the world a better or worse place if you have no way to judge it?

"With in those fairly wide constraints, you are free to be as devout or as gnostic as you feel you should be, and we will welcome you into a community built on mutual respect and love. "

- Actually, no, your members are not free to be as "devout" as they like, because the moment that they decide that they believe, as most people do, in anything at all that would apply to others as well as themselves, they have broken ranks with your community.

Someone cannot simultaneously hold the propositions, ""X is objectively true," and, "if Bob does not believe X he's still right." If I believe that X is true, then I must also believe that you, if you do not agree with me, are wrong. If I do not believe that you are wrong in denying X, then I do not in fact believe in X. If I believe that adultery is wrong, and you disagree, I shall tell you that you are wrong. If I were to instead say, "Well, yes, I suppose in some cases it might be right, and in any case we mustn't impose our beliefs on others," then I might believe many things, but the proposition "adultery is wrong" would no longer be among them.

In any case, Unitarians are just one more reason that I believe that elementary logic should be required in high school (and, if you believe otherwise, I hold that you are in error).

Thomas:

You claim that "there is no objective truth to be had in religion". In doing so, you are claiming that there is an objective truth in religion, namely that any claim to truth is false. It should be noted that this claim vitiates any role reason has in religious faith, as the process of reason necessarily begins with accepting a proposition (or set of propositions) to be true; therefore, in your removing any methods and criteria by which one may evaluate another's beliefs (which you consider a Very Good Thing), you have also removed any and all methods and criteria by which you may evaluate your own. Therefore, you have no ground on which to claim that any set of beliefs is or is not "reasonable, responsible, and hopefully internally consistent", nor what is or is not "spiritually healthy".

What your claim amounts to is an invitation to intellectual suicide and spiritual navel-gazing, and for those who care about such a thing, it also has absolutely nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Cordially,

JB

Mr. Mills,

Heads up on the poem. I loved it so much that I linked to it elsewhere, and then was alerted (via, I must say, a somewhat-snarky comment about copyright violations) to this:

http://www.christmas-time.com/cp-christ.html

Thomas, I would like to give you as much credit as possible, as you seem a decent sort. Several UU's I know are indeed among my favorite people to work with and run into. They don't come across as smug or difficult, and would be horrified to think of themselves as such. But it leaks out as one gets closer to the logical conclusions. It is almost as if the subtext is: "I am not smug about this idea because I don't feel smug and I want you to keep talking and I will listen to you." It's ultimately logically evasive, not seeking.

And there are others, of course, who are simply smug from start to finish, and I know a bunch of those.

There is a good deal of commonality with a Christian who might say "We see through a glass darkly, and none of us can do better than achieve an approximation of the truth," or a scientist who believes his hypothesis is correct but allows that improvements and new angles might emerge - an entirely reasonable approach. But even this similar view eventually diverges and becomes distinct.

Here is the point at which I think you might begin to see inside the contradiction: your own comments. In the first, the verb "force" is used, in the second "tune out those who disagree," and in the 10:56, the first sentences of the first two paragraphs we see a sneering The Answer - not that you imagined that tone of voice or meant it to sound that way, but it's there, and "deny them the label." It is not a matter or rewording them to make them nicer, or taking exquisite care not to offend, which UU's can be quite good at. It is because the heart of the meaning behind those statements cannot be anything but insulting, and as exclusive and dogmatic as any fundamentalist. Having a gentle disposition and feeling of goodwill ameliorates the offense, but can never eliminate it. UU's are indeed often socially nice people, perhaps even believing in a gospel of niceness (which they share with some Christians, actually). But strip away the social nicety and the doctrine gives offense. There is no way around it. To say that no one who believes in any ultimate truth is correct is an enormous dogma. Protestations that UU's don't feel dogmatic when they say it or don't want it to seem that way doesn't change that, it merely injects some fuzziness and vagueness into the assertions. Doubt can be a religion, as can holding all certainties uncertain.

"I suspect the Dereks I’ve known would stay in the fields with the sheep sharing their journeys." -- Great line! I am reminded of St. Augustine, whose "spiritual journey" is the equal of any 20th century person's, and whose conclusion about it was that it was a colossal waste of time. That conclusion was a real shock to me, the first time I really understood it. So much of modern Western thought is based on the supreme importance of one's own personal journey. Like Thomas commenting above, we pride ourselves on how spiritual and open and deep we are on our "journeys" while we sit around and do nothing about actually arriving anywhere.

Thomas, no Christian believes that Jesus Christ was/is a "shard" of God. I've known lots of UUs and even investigated becoming one when I was still on my "journey," but I decided that I was already a member of several intellectual clubs that liked to talk and what I was looking for was God, not another one. The decider for me was a man from a Russian country who spoke at one services. He was a Unitarian (not a Universalist) coming to UU churches to ask for money. He spoke very movingly about the persecution his church faced because they did not believe in the Trinity, and there was such an obvious difference between his faith -- although I thought it was wrong -- and the surrounding people who didn't share a faith in anything.

Thomas,

Thank you for writing. Please ignore the insults and continue to explain your positions. I'd especially love to hear more about how you all handle those "fairly wide constraints." What brings people into your community and what causes them to leave? I'd be grateful to hear you clear up any misconceptions.

It's easy to criticize Unitarians and Universalists for not being dogmatic when one is a slave to dogma. For my part I have somewhat more admiration for those denominations (who, at least, freely admit that they DON'T have all the answers) than I have for those who need to fall back on their church's dogma at every step of the way simply to find out what they should be thinking.
Given a choice between trying to make sense of adversity or pretending there's some sort of divine plan behind it, members of some religious groups (no names mentioned, mind you) shut their brains down and rely upon fantastic stories of parthenogenesis, corpses rising from their crypts and promises of pie-in-the-sky when they die. Their delusion, called "faith," is the inability to accept reality even when it's kicking them in the teeth, the misguided belief that some bearded old fellow on high will solve all their problems if only they supplicate him sufficiently.

Thank you, but given the choice between cluttering my mind with irrelevant dogma about some conjectured deity's plan for my life and throwing myself on his imagined mercy, or standing on my own two feet like a human being, I'll take the latter every time. And if the Unitarian-Universalist "search for meaning" draws its members to that same conclusion, all the better for them. After all, don't people have better things to do with their lives than fantasize?

The Pharisees came to the very, very firm conviction, that their angle on Judaism, was the only right one; and that therefore, Jesus needed to be executed.

Torries and monarchists, came to the firm conclusion that monarchy was the only good system of government - and attacked and tried to end Democracy, and America.

"For my part I have somewhat more admiration for those denominations (who, at least, freely admit that they DON'T have all the answers) than I have for those who need to fall back on their church's dogma at every step of the way simply to find out what they should be thinking."

When I was studying organic chemistry, which is a B****H at its higher reaches, I practically slept with my textbook under my head as a pillow. I studied and memorized for hours, and did thought problems when I showered. I went to that book for everything I couldn't figure out with the knowledge I had gained so far.

And behold! Some logical path would be laid out there, with what I already knew, plus more facts I hadn't absorbed yet, and I could even see how I could have figured it out on my own, had I recognized the pattern and logic already displayed in another reaction.

Do you think there is a difference? Of course not - the Church thinks, posits, argues, concludes. Thousands of years, thousands of scholars and geniuses, new facts coming all the time from every side.

It's just as interesting to watch the development of church teaching over the centuries as it to compare my 1980 textbooks to today's.

Paterfamilias:

"After all, don't people have better things to do with their lives than fantasize?"

Apparently you don't, as every sentence in your post proves. Perhaps you should invest a little bit of time in finding out what Christians (and believers of other faiths) actually believe before you embarrass yourself further.

Cordially,

JB

I knew Joe the Human would show up in this thread sooner or later.

As he often does, David Hart puts it well, arguing that the modern relationship to God, which UU's exemplify to a T, does not approach God with the "fear and trembling" of our ancestors. As Hart says:

"This is especially obvious at modern Western religion's pastel-tinged margins, in those realms of the New Age where the gods of the boutique hold uncontested sway. Here one may cultivate a private atmosphere of 'spirituality' as undemanding and therapeutically comforting as one likes simply by purchasing a dream catcher, a few pretty crystals, some books on the goddess, a Tibetan prayer wheel, a volume of Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung or Robert Graves, a Nataraja figurine, a purse of tiles engraved with runes, a scattering of Pre-Raphaelite prints drenched in Celtic twilight, an Andean flute, and so forth, until this mounting congeries of string, worthless quartz, cheap joss sticks, baked clay, kitsch, borrowed iconography, and fraudulent scholarship reaches that mysterious point of saturation at which religion has become indistinguishable from interior decorating. Then one may either abandon one's gods for something new, or abide with them for a time, but in either case without any real reverence, love, or dread. There could scarcely be a more thoroughly modern form of religion than this."

As I see it, there are two choices: Recognize the truth of Philip Rieff's "sacred order" and the fact that the existence of God compels us to subscribe to certain objective views of reality and behaviors, or, should you prefer, pretend that Nietzsche didn't destroy the UU philosophy before it started, and engage in religion as interior decorating.

I know which I'm choosing.

"After all, don't people have better things to do with their lives than fantasize? "

Conceivably. Making a fuss because other people "fantasize" is not one of those better things to do.

"The Pharisees came to the very, very firm conviction, that their angle on Judaism, was the only right one; and that therefore, Jesus needed to be executed.

Torries and monarchists, came to the firm conclusion that monarchy was the only good system of government - and attacked and tried to end Democracy, and America. "

Likewise Jesus came to the very, very firm conviction that His angle on Judaism was the only right one; and that therefore Pharisees were a brood of vipers.

And likewise the Continental Congress came to the firm conclusion that monarchy was an unacceptable system of government and attacked and tried to end it's presence in America.

If you are insulted by the idea that your Faith is, at it's core, a guess, then I am done here. Faith, by definition, is a belief in the unprovable. If it cannot be proved, it is a guess. It may be an educated guess; it may be the only logical conclusion based on your personal experience. Unless those experiences can be duplicated and shared, then they are not proof.

Thus, there is no right answer in religion. I am willing to listen, and accept that the answers I currently adhere to may not be the best answers in the long run. They are guesses, and while they are MY guesses, I understand that they should be open to change as new information comes to light.

So, while I welcome anyone to contact me for further discussion, I see no reason to continue here where people have already decided that UUs are smug or condescending for admitting that your guess may well be as good as mine. I don't begrudge you your faith if it leads to a constructive and happy life filled with friends and family. That is the only observable measure of a life well led. What happens after death is all guesses.

If UU's have no dogma or religious requirements, then why does every UU I know drive a Subaru with a "COEXIST" bumper-sticker on it?????

Thomas: Need any more rope, there? "If it cannot be proved, it is a guess." Well, there goes the entire civil court system then, in every time and place. Nearly nothing in life can be proved. Everything that we do and decide is on the basis of evidence, not proof. Try and prove that parents love their children, that your name is really Thomas, or that Napoleon ever lived. We use evidence to show that some answers are better than others.

You have inflexible dogma, which you call by another name, and then insist you have none as badge of intellectual honor. You could not have illustrated my point better.

"It's easy to criticize Unitarians and Universalists for not being dogmatic when one is a slave to dogma. "

I think the UUs are being criticized here for being dogmatic, not for not being dogmatic. They just call it not being dogmatic.

And yes, I'm a slave to dogmatism. I can't imagine how one would safely make it to the bathroom in the morning absent dogmatism, let alone form beliefs about the nature of reality.

Paul, that's not fair. Most of the ones I know drive Volvos.

Advent, a time to post snotty diatribes against people whose religious practice you do not approve of.

The Christ Child would be so proud.

>>Tories and monarchists, came to the firm conclusion that monarchy was the only good system of government.

Monarchy IS the the only good system of government Yes, Viva Christo Rey, but even a bad king is better than a demagogue.

Mr. Beckett: Perhaps you'll be kind enough to explain the underlying rationale of the Christian worldview. I assume you've thought the matter through for yourself, as have I, although in doing so I found that reason and logic were continually standing in the way of really "getting into" Christianity. So then, how are you able to adhere to the basic tenets of Christianity without making a fool of yourself?

Tom Beaudoin over at America's blog "In All Things" does a fantastic job dismantling most of the common rhetorical tropes David Mills invokes in the course of this piece, albeit with reference to another project. Like those behind the "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" charge, Mills commonly invokes a conceptual opposition between the individualistic vs. communitarian forms of faith, self-actualization vs. obedience, and forms of multiple religious belonging likened to shallow promiscuity vs. fidelity to a single normative tradition - always situating conservative forms of Christianity on the latter, supposedly normative side of the opposition. Beaudoin shows that not only is the opposition much more messy in real life, but it is not even clear that one side of the opposition is normative for Christianity. As these are recurring rhetorical devices in Mr. Mills' writing, it might be helpful for him to acquaint himself with this literature.

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3670

Paterfamilias:

"Perhaps you'll be kind enough to explain the underlying rationale of the Christian worldview."

You criticize Christianity and Christians without even knowing the underlying rationale of the Christian worldview? Of course. If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest man on earth.

"I assume you've thought the matter through for yourself, as have I, although in doing so I found that reason and logic were continually standing in the way of really "getting into" Christianity."

Given your comical caricature of Christian belief in your earlier post, your "reason and logic" merely compelled you to abandon a Christianity that exists nowhere but in your own head.

"So then, how are you able to adhere to the basic tenets of Christianity without making a fool of yourself? "

Which "basic tenets" do you speak of? The resurrection of Christ? Is that "basic" enough for you? Fine. I can find no compelling reason to doubt the witness of the disciples, all of whom (except John, who lived to old age) were tortured to death for saying they had witnessed a resurrected Jesus and none of whom recanted. Or does your dogmatism against the possibility of a supernatural miracle (a dogmatism I'm certain you refer to as "logic and reason") compel you to embrace a psychological one?

Of course, you'll reply with some ill-researched screed about how the Church and Bible "really" came to be, and how "unreliable" they are, etc., to which composing a reply correcting your misinformation might have held some interest for me some 20-odd years of NT and Patristics study ago. However, as you have no interest in actually engaging Christianity other than to continue to give the strawman version of it in your head a good thrashing, why on earth should I share the fruits of a couple of decades of reading, inquiry, and writing with someone with as little respect for the subject at hand (not to mention faith in general) as you have?

Cordially,

JB

Pentamom: Really? You can't find the loo without your Baltimore Catechism firmly in hand? Now that says a lot for parochial education.

Thomas: I'm glad to see that at least one other person on this thread has a realistic view of life. I think the supreme witness of emotional stability is when adults stop having faith in the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin; that is, when they start trying to deal with life's "crap-shoot" rationally, instead of crediting good things on ethereal beings that float around in the clouds, and blaming evil on some guy in a red union suit.

JB:

You are certainly passionate in your beliefs but, unfortunately, not very convincing. Neither you nor anyone else can present an iota of proof, other than reference to anecdotes in the Christian Bible, that Jesus rose from the dead, let alone that his disciples were tortured to death for believing in his resurrection. You might have been a little more credible had you suggested that Jesus' disciples were executed by the Romans for lese majeste which, if they were executed at all, would have been a reasonable possibility. However, that wasn't exactly the kind of basic tenet I had in mind. Why not try expounding upon something a little more illustrative of the underlying unreason of dogma --- such as the doctrines of original sin, vicarious atonement, transubstantiation, the virgin birth, papal infallibility or perhaps, the second coming? Decades of studies in New Testament and patristics have no doubt prepared you to engage in serious discussion with like-minded individuals, to declaim at great length upon the number of angels capable of dancing on the head of a pin. But I doubt that they have prepared you for dealing with reality.

Paterfamilias:

You are all too predictable. In regards to the reasonableness of believing the witness of the disciples, to avoid asserting the psychological absurdity of 10 out of 10 men allowing themselves to be tortured and killed for something they knew to be false, you were not content to do exactly what I said you would in regards to the Bible, but you further claimed as unreliable both Christian and non-Christian writers who recorded the accounts of the deaths of the disciples. For example:

Peter: attested to by Tertullian at the end of the second century and by Origen (as recorded by the historian Eusebius in his Church History); also attested by Caius, a Roman

James, brother of John: circumstances involving death recorded by historian Eusebius, citing both Clement of Alexandria and the Ethiopic "Acts of James"

James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem: Jewish historian Josephus, as well as Hegesippus, a Jewish convert to Christianity

Matthew: The Apostolic Acts of the Pseudo-Abdias, Acts and Martyrdom of St. Matthew

I could go on, but I think even you may get the point. Some were killed by the Romans (certainly for lese majeste, i.e. declaring the resurrected Christ to be God, a fact which you are determined to ignore), some by Temple authorities for pretty much the same reason, and some by various "pagan" (for lack of a better word) leaders who found the notion of Christ as God repelling. Of course, you will most certainly appraise these accounts (without knowing a damn thing about the works or their authors) as unreliable "anecdotes" - not as the result of anything resembling reason or logic, but simply because your dogmatism against religion demands it. I can find no compelling reason to doubt the witness of the disciples, and you have most certainly not provided one.

As for "reality", it is something that you feel entitled to invoke (along with "reason and logic") in your favor without putting forward even a single argument as to why your unbelief is any more reasonable, logical, or in accordance with reality than my (or anyone else's) belief. All you have thus far demonstrated is that your militant atheism is just one long exercise in self-flattery and willful ignorance.

Unfortunately for you, one of the things that "Decades of studies in New Testament and patristics [sic]" has enabled me to do is determine which individuals are familiar enough with actual Christian belief to be capable of serious discussion, and which individuals (such as yourself) have little to no understanding of actual Christian belief, but are somehow convinced that the more they taunt Christians and flaunt their ignorance of Christianity and history, the more I owe them a lengthy explanation and defense of it. You may believe that engaging with someone this way belies cleverness on your part, but in reality it just makes you a jerk.

Find somebody else's time to waste.

Cordially,

JB

My dear Mr. Beckett:

I notice how adroitly you attempt to avoid any discussion of Christian dogma. I must suppose that you're simply unable to defend the reasonableness of the virgin birth, original sin, vicarious atonement, etc. So, as passionate as your denunciations (not to mention your self-aggrandizing) may be, the fact remains that you're simply weaseling away from the core of the discussion which, on this thread, has to do with the imagined virtues of dogma.

Though you are obviously a man of many words your silence on these matters is deafening. What seems the most likely explanation for your silence on these matters is your inability to formulate any reasonable defense of them --- other than that old canard "faith." Your non-position would be laughable if it weren't so pathetically irrational.

Oh, Mr. Jerry a Beckett: I nearly forgot to add: my "unbelief" (to use your terminology) need not be defended; you are the one making claims about the virtues of religious dogma but avoiding the challenge of proving them. Have you no other witness unmotivated by the promotion of Christianity except Flavius Josephus?

Paterfamilias,


I ‘m sure Mr. Beckett can respond for himself if he chooses to do so. But I couldn’t help noticing that you went in a blink of an eye from asserting that, “Neither you nor anyone else can present an iota of proof, other than reference to anecdotes in the Christian Bible…” to acknowledging – but then dismissing - all of the examples Mr. Beckett then provided of references outside the Christian Bible.


Which seems to me to suggest that either you knew of his examples beforehand and your first post intentionally left them out, or else that was the first you’d heard of them and you were able to research and evaluate them all between the time of your first and second post.

JDD:

Actually I WAS aware of the sources, and anticipated Mr. Beckett's citing them. While not an expert in the field I developed an intense interest in it several years ago when my daughter was earning a Ph.D. in Early Church History and shared a number of them with me (she went on to deliver a paper at an International Conference on Patristic Studies meeting in Oxford a year or so later). Perhaps Mr. Beckett has had a similar experience.

As you, and anyone remotely familiar with ancient history know, Christian history was written and re-written during the 2nd through the 4th centuries C.E., to fit both the known and the desired facts of Jesus' life and the objectives of an emerging orthodox Christian theocracy. The first three centuries C.E. were filled with accounts of the life and miracles of Jesus, and many early Christians simply picked and chose from among those that best supported their positions. Mr. Beckett cited Flavius Josephus as an authority to substantiate the resurrection of Jesus, yet that is contested by others. Mr. Beckett was obviously referring to Eusebius' account of what Josephus said, rather than Origen's. Eusebius attributes the following to Josephus: "About the same time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is proper to call him a man. This was Christ. Pilate . . . inflicted the punishment of the cross upon him . . . [but] those who had been attached to him before did not, however, cease to love him: for he appeared to them alive again on the third day, according to the holy prophets, who declared these and innumerable other wonderful things respecting him" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1. 11). It seems likely, however, that Eusebius was relying on a forged text. Compare his writing to those of Origen who, some 40 years earlier, stated in Contra Celsum Book 1, 47 that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as Christ."

Mr. Beckett has also asserted that the resurrection of Jesus must have been factual since his disciples were willing to suffer death for it, but this is simply the argument of early orthodox Christians like Tertullian, that suffering and death were prima facie evidence of the truth of the Gospel, and thus the martyrs’ theological take on Christianity must have been the right one. Not everyone thought so (the Gnostics, for example), but as scholar Elaine Pagels points out, once Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire the orthodox Christian establishment gained enormous power to suppress opposing points of view. Justin Martyr went so far as to call the lack of Gnostic persecution a crime. Prior to the closing of the biblical canon in 382C.E. there had been numerous Gospels, but those excluded from the canon (such as the Gnostic gospels) were systematically suppressed afterward.

I think it is noteworthy that there is not a single contemporary documentary account of the supposedly miraculous events surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus, although one would expect such monumental events to have been noted by someone, somewhere at the time they occurred. Indeed, there are no accounts of these matters at all that pre-date the crucifixion. Mark, the earliest of the three synoptic Gospels (earliest, that is, if we accept the two-source rather than the Augustinian hypothesis) makes no mention of the virgin birth or the miraculous childhood of Jesus, but commences with his baptism by John. Matthew, which many scholars believe to be derived from Mark and a second source called “Q,” contains the traditional Christmas story account of Jesus’ birth (Matthew Chapters 1 and 2); yet it also is the only one of the synoptic Gospels that also traces the parentage of Joseph back to David (Matthew I, 1-16) --- an exercise that suggests that when it was written the “son of David” prophecy concerning Jesus’ ancestry was still prevalent had not yet been supplanted by accounts of Jesus’ having been fathered by the Holy Spirit. By the time we get to Luke, whose provenance is quite similar to that of Matthew, the Davidic ancestry of Joseph (hence, Jesus) disappears altogether, and Mary is told by an angel beforehand that the Holy Spirit is going to impregnate her and that she’s going to give birth to the Son of God (Luke 1, 35). These kinds of conflicts are often overlooked by those whose "faith" clouds their ability to reason.

It’s regrettable that Mr. Beckett is so full of himself and his supposed erudition that he feels free to sneer at Unitarians and Universalists, yet refuses either to see "the beam in his own eye" or to enter into any kind of discussion of his dogmatic theological positions. His self-defensive tactic of listing some of the authors with whom he’s familiar and then dismissing all who argue with him as wasters of his time (which, no doubt, he values excessively) hardly speaks well of his approach to religious scholarship.

“Actually I WAS aware of the sources, and anticipated Mr. Beckett's citing them.”


So then you pretended that there wasn’t extra-biblical proof, (even overstepping with “if they were executed at all” - really!) One wonders if you would have been content to let that argument stand if unchallenged.


Then the plank in your own eye is that you are trying to win an argument more than you are trying to have an honest discussion and ‘wrestle with truth’ with another person.




“…my daughter was earning a Ph.D. in Early Church History and …went on to deliver a paper at an International Conference on Patristic Studies meeting in Oxford a year or so later.”


Congratulations to you daughter.



“Have you no other witness unmotivated by the promotion of Christianity except Flavius Josephus?”

That’s quite a turn of phrase. You mean if I become convinced of Christianity, then my defense of it may be summarily dismissed on those grounds?



“It’s regrettable that Mr. Beckett is so full of himself and his supposed erudition that he feels free to sneer at Unitarians and Universalists…”


Says the man who, paragraphs earlier, inquired of a virtual stranger, “So then, how are you able to adhere to the basic tenets of Christianity without making a fool of yourself?”

Gosh, JDD, I thought you said Mr. Beckett could answer for himself. Are you one of his clones?

Anyway, I must say that your response to my commentary was breathtaking both in its brevity and lack of substance. Still, since we're talking about dogma (at least I thought that's what this thread was about) how about hearing YOUR take on the doctrines of the virgin birth and transubstantiation? Do you really believe that virgins can get pregnant via a "spirit" and that wine changes into blood when a priest utters an incantation over it? Do you really believe that dead people get up, walk around, greet their friends and neighbors, and then take off into the great beyond like "beam me up, Yahweh?" Do you think it's at all reasonable that some deity who can will the entire universe into existence has to resort to becoming his own son and getting himself killed in order to atone for your sins, when all he'd have to do to get the job done would be to wave his magic wand --- or better yet, to just think about doing it?

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to offer a rational explanation of these so-called mysteries --- or to tell us why anyone should believe them to to the exclusion of similar folk tales about Mithra, Zeus and Apollo. And perhaps you'll also tell us whether and why you agree or disagree with the comments about Unitarians and Universalists posted above.

Meanwhile, Season's Greetings!

Brevity: if you can say it in ten words or less, do.


You know, I’m willing to give anyone a shot or two at convincing me they’re serious about conversation – but how do you expect to have a discussion about God if you can’t get through a paragraph without insulting your fellow man?


Hmm... you’ve essentially telegraphed your opinion that if one actually believes Christian tenants, they have disqualified themselves from defending them. With a foundation like that, how far into discussion do you expect to get? Would you welcome a discussion with a Christian who treated you likewise? The only conclusion you appear to respect is…not having come to one. From my particular background, I find that unreasonable – and internally self-contradictory. As the song by Rush goes, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!” And that by the way is what I think about (usually good people) Unitarians.


I’ve seen a ‘kitchen sink’ post before. For a reproduction of a defense of all of Christianity, I’ll direct you to the thought of Augustine, Chesterton, Newman, C.S.Lewis. For a life-changing book on actually living out Christianity, I recommend “Return of the Prodigal Son” by Nouwen. If they can’t budge you a bit then I’m not sure how I’d do much better.


And since Christianity is not merely an intellectual exercise but an ongoing encounter with the Living God, the better way to have this discussion would be over lunch, a few times a month, for a few years. I hope God puts someone in your life to do just that.


Paterfamilias, I do have a response to one of your points, if you want to focus on one at a time. But a lot is going to depend on your next post.


There are plenty of other people out there interested in cordial conversation.

"Pentamom: Really? You can't find the loo without your Baltimore Catechism firmly in hand? Now that says a lot for parochial education. "

Wow, there's so much that could be said here. I'm a Protestant with a public elementary/secondary education, and a liberal Protestant higher education. Making baseless assumptions based on no data whatsoever is apparently now a mark of an excellent education, and mental superiority.

But if I were not dogmatic about the necessity to put my glasses on and keep in mind the laws of gravity, making it to the bathroom would be rather tough. Do you live in a dimension where that does not hold true?

JDD: Once again you're evading my questions. I'm not interested in being converted, least of all by the writings of Chesterton, Lewis or Cardinal Newman. I'm interested in learning how those who call themselves Christians justify some of their more outrageous beliefs. Apparently you have no answer to offer about any of the dogmas that I mentioned. I find it sad that you claim to believe in something you're apparently unable to explain in a reasonable manner. How DOES one explain the resurrection of the dead, original sin or transubstantiation in the 21st century without sounding---well, kind of strange? It's not an insult --- it's simple curiosity.

"I'm not interested in being converted,..."


I frankly never asked. That's your business. I wonder if you misread my post - I wondered if you were serious about conversation(!)


"...least of all by the writings of Chesterton, Lewis or Cardinal Newman."


I see. So have you read them?

JDD - Clever boots! You're continuing to evade my questions about dogma. Let's not get distracted by who read what. I asked: "How DOES one explain the resurrection of the dead, original sin or transubstantiation in the 21st century without sounding --- well, kind of strange?" If you have an answer, let's hear it.

"You're continuing to evade my questions about dogma. Let's not get distracted by who read what."


Paterfamilias, we're getting there. Let's see if you stick with me.


These examples of writers are just a small sample of the persons who have developed and explained Christian dogma. What I'm asking you is, have you even bothered to read their own works? (and by this I don't mean someone else's critique of their works.) Have you gone to the horse's mouth?


If you're serious about a discussion about dogma, then I hope you'll see why this is important. It's amazing how many skeptics, agnostics and atheists out there claim to have thought seriously through all that Christianity proposes, but in the same breath will tell you that they don't want to read any Christian writers. In the very next breath they'll list the number of books they've read which dismiss Christian arguments. And, taking one more breath, they'll tell you that they have thought the whole matter through fairly and exhaustively.


A young teenager who I challenged at a retreat about ten years ago understood this disconnect right away - he told me had rejected his faith, and I asked him had he studied it? He said no - and I told him, well that's his decision - but then he hadn't really rejected Christianity. And it would be hypocritical of him to go around telling other he had done so, while at the same time making pronouncements about how nonsensable Christianity was. He said, well that's the first thing that anyone had said to him all day that made any sense at all.


Paterfamilias, if we were to have a discussion about mathematics - say geometry - and to defend a certain concept I wanted to cite the works of Euclid and Pythagorus - would you say it made sense for you to tell me that you didn't want to bring those guys into it?


I'm sticking with you in this conversation thread, but this is an important juncture. I'm quite honestly trying to tell if I'm talking to a serious man, and I'm sure you understand the difficulty of doing that over blog posts. Humor me. Have you read any of these four Christian writers' original works?

Paterfamilias:

And you wonder why I refuse to enter into a debate about the rationality of Christian dogma with you, when you either misread (I hope) or mischaracterize (more likely) or are outright clueless (bingo!) about what I have written:

=====
"Mr. Beckett cited Flavius Josephus as an authority to substantiate the resurrection of Jesus, yet that is contested by others. Mr. Beckett was obviously referring to Eusebius' account of what Josephus said, rather than Origen's. Eusebius attributes the following to Josephus: "About the same time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is proper to call him a man....."
=====

"Obviously", huh? My sole mentioning of Josephus was citing him as a source for information about the death of James the Just. I did not refer to Josephus whatsoever in regards to anything appearing in his works about Jesus, as I know full well that the passage that you (erroneously) claim that I was "obviously" referring to is considered by most historians to range somewhere between "partially spurious" and "completely spurious". No historian to my knowledge, however, has challenged the authenticity of Josephus' account of both the character and death of James the Just.

You claimed that my "Decades of studies in New Testament and patristics [sic]" could not have prepared me to deal with reality. What prepared you to flub as badly as you did here?

You then interpreted my mere defense of the reasonableness of believing in the Christian tenet of the resurrection in such a way as to sever it from the challenge of yours that I was answering:

=====
"Mr. Beckett has also asserted that the resurrection of Jesus must have been factual since his disciples were willing to suffer death for it, but this is simply the argument of early orthodox Christians like Tertullian, that suffering and death were prima facie evidence of the truth of the Gospel..."
=====

No, I made no such assertion of the factuality of the resurrection, a futile undertaking if directed at someone who does not even believe in existence of God (or any deity, for that matter); that would make as much sense as asserting that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb to someone who didn't believe in electricity. It was in response to your claims that belief in any of the "basic tenets of Christianity" is delusional and foolish that I stated in regards to the resurrection that "I can find no compelling reason to doubt the witness of the disciples...". I did not state "There is no compelling reason...", nor did I state that it is impossible for such a reason to exist or to be found, only that I have never encountered one. What I proceeded to argue from that point in regards to the resurrection and the disciples was that dismissing one claim (the resurrection) due to it being miraculous (and therefore, to you, irrational to accept) only to de facto posit what amounts to an even bigger miracle (10 out of 10 men willing to die for something they knew to be false) IS irrational. Thus, I did not claim to you that the resurrection was a "fact", only that your assertion of the belief's irrationality was itself irrational. Perhaps in the future you'll respond to what I actually wrote instead of what you wish to argue against.

Moving on, I find it interesting that you doubted that my study of NT and Patristics has left me able to "deal with reality", and then later admit to undertaking similar study. I see that your study did not enable you to avoid the usual mistakes in your exegesis of the gospels' treatment of the "supposedly miraculous events surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus":

1. You imply that because Mark does not mention anything in regards to Jesus' infancy that no such information or tradition was known at the time and/or that the infancy narratives were created later. Mark's account focuses on Jesus' ministry only; indeed, his accounts of Jesus' ministry often go into more detail than Matthew or Luke. The gospel's almost incessant theme is that the kingdom of God was now at hand, and one must repent and have faith; it is difficult to see how any foray into any narrative about Jesus' birth would serve that theme. While assuming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence in regards to Mark's narrative is a common enough mistake, it is still unwarranted.

2. You wrote:

=====
"...when [Matthew] was written the “son of David” prophecy concerning Jesus’ ancestry was still prevalent had not yet been supplanted by accounts of Jesus’ having been fathered by the Holy Spirit."
=====

Matthew goes to great pains to show how Jesus fulfills the OT, and is eager to show His Davidic ancestry; however, claiming that Matthew is hinting here that Joseph was Jesus' biological father a) contradicts Matthew's own text (Matthew 1:18), and b) is ignorant of the fact that, in first-century Judiasm, an adopted son enjoyed the same status in regards to ancestral bloodline as a biological son; indeed, in lineages no distinction was made between the two. Therefore, Jesus need not be Joseph's biological son to be a "son of David", as His status as Joseph's adopted son fulfills this requirement.

3. Luke's not including a list of Jesus' ancestors (through his adoptive father, Joseph) = "the Davidic ancestry of Joseph (hence, Jesus) disappears altogether"? Did your Dan Brown-style hermeneutics of conspiracy cause you to forget Luke 1:27: "...to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David,...."?

To paraphrase someone you may be familiar with, these kinds of errors are often made by those whose hermeneutic of suspicion and conspiracy (and "faith" in Elaine Pagels' a-historical "marketplace of competing gospels" nonsense) in their study clouds their ability to reason.

Finally, Paterfamilias, just as you confuse my dismissing only you with "dismissing all who argue with him as wasters of his time", you are likewise confusing a supposed inability to defend Christianity with my unwillingness to bother doing so with you. Where, exactly, have you given any indication that you are interested, or even capable, of thoughtful, intelligent, and informed discussion about God, Christian doctrine, and history with me, either in your initial comment or in comments addressed to me? Was it when you asserted that religious people "shut their brains down", or when you stated that faith is the "misguided belief that some bearded old fellow on high will solve all their problems if only they supplicate him sufficiently"? Was it when you asked how one could adhere to Christianity without making a fool of oneself, or that religious study involves absurdities about angels on pins (dancing or otherwise) and leaves one unable to deal with reality? Or was it in a later comment, when you transformed what I actually had written into what you wished to argue against?

So, why should I bother arguing Christian doctrine with someone who has as little respect for the topic or myself as you do? Because you'll claim my unwillingness to engage on the topic with you as some apologetic victory on your part? In that case, do you really believe that if you demand something from someone, and they don't deign to give it to you, it is proof that they don't possess it? If so, get thee to a logic course.

Or is it because you honestly believe that I owe it to you to present a convincing argument or arguments for Christianity? If so, on what grounds to you claim this is owed to you? Furthermore, do you honestly believe that any such argument or arguments would be potentially compelling - or even intelligible - to someone who dogmatically rejects even the possibility of the existence of ANY deity, as you did in your initial comment? If so, refer to my earlier Thomas Edison analogy. If not, then coming full circle, why should I bother?


Cordially,


JB


____________________________________________

PS - To all, Merry Christmas and Happy Bowl Season!

JB

Your dismissal of Elaine Pagels' work says all that needs to be said about the quality of your scholarship. Call me when YOU have a professorship of religion at Princeton. Until then, keep on parroting the fundamentalist canard that there were actually people named Matthew and Luke who were the sole authors of the Gospels that bear their names. Keep on suggesting that the same documents weren't embellished by addition of selected O.T. prophecies during the 1st through 3rd centuries C.E., in order to give them greater authenticity. You'll simply succeed in making yourself out to be a bigger fool than heretofore.

The fact remains that you've been unable to offer a shred of evidence that the dogmas to which you subscribe (virgin birth, transubstantiation, vicarious atonement, etc.) are anything more than a pastiche of 3,000 year-old folk tales hammered into the beginnings of an organized religion by a bunch of 3rd century C.E. churchmen. If they didn't know we were discussing Christian dogma an observer might suspect we were discussing Bacchic worship which, as you may know, included ripping apart a sacrificial animal (which at that very moment, became the god Dionysos) so that they could "commune" with him by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Sound familiar? Ever read Frazier's "The Golden Bough"?

Happy Saturnalia!

Paterfamilias:

My opinion of the work of Professor Pagels is much in line with the opinion of mainstream biblical and patristic scholars (the dean of biblical scholarship of the last 50 years, Raymond Brown, rather sharply critiques her here: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/nba-Pagels.pdf), not to mention the authors of this very publication. Do a search here of her name and see if you can find one writer - usually a professor him/herself - that agrees with her view of patristic-era Christianity. Hell, try to find any orthodox scholar who shares her view of patristic-era Christianity. Good luck. That you hold her views in such high regard is highly amusing, and very telling: you swallow whole any claim made by "alternative Christianity" folks like Pagels, Crossan of DePaul, Tabor of UNC, etc. and either dismiss the views of orthodox scholars (who also hold chairs at prestigious universities, including my alma mater, considered by the editors of this publication to have one of the two best theology departments in the country) or are unfamiliar with them.

Oh, and I never said there were people named Matthew and Luke, nor did I say that they were the sole authors of their namesake gospels. I used "Matthew" and "Luke" to denote the content of their gospels. Professional bible scholars do this. I do as well. If you had read the works of bible scholars as much as you claim to have, you would know this.

=====
"embellished by addition of selected O.T. prophecies during the 1st through 3rd centuries C.E., in order to give them greater authenticity."
=====

Since we do not have the original copies of those gospels, we don't know for certain what their original drafts look like. However, you will not find any Christian writer in the first three centuries who speaks of the gospels as being "documents... embellished by addition of selected O.T. prophecies". I know that the major figures of orthodox biblical scholarship of the last 50 years - among Catholics, the aforementioned Brown, John Meier of my alma mater, and Joseph Fitzmeyer - do not hold this view.

As for your evaluation of my scholarship, anyone who wrote what you did above about Matthew and Luke in regards to Jesus' infancy - where your claims about each are contradicted in each by the text itself in the same chapter - and then criticizes someone else for shoddy scholarship truly has no sense of irony.

Oh, gee, you want to play "Have you read ___?". How cute. I'll play along: Have your read Chesterton, who tears Frazier's strain of anthropology of religion theory to shreds? Probably not. Oh, well. You'll apparently believe anything about Christianity except what actual Christians say about it.

Finally, why do you continue to believe that I am under some requirement to prove any tenet of Christianity to you? How can one have any sort of exchange about (for example) transubstantiation when the other party does not even believe in God? I have explained at length why I refuse to engage in a debate over Christian doctrine with you. With every foolish, inaccurate, and quite frankly laughable screed you write, you further vindicate my position.

JB

Oh, Paterfamilias:

As I will be traveling for the next 10 days with no reliable computer access, you may continue to hurl personal insults and laughable assertions at me unabated. Though your pseudo-historical claims, comical biblical exegesis, and reading miscomprehension made you a rather inept debate foe, I'll kind of miss you.

Merry Christmas!

JB

Boy, now I've really seen everything.


Mr. Beckett, if you don't want to keep having this conversation - then don't.


I'm hardly moved by Paterfamilias's responses so far, but at least I'm not incensed by them.


If you think the conversation worthless, then please find a new one. You're hardly doing good for the Christian faith by persistent mockery of your opponent. You have all the bedside manner of a cactus.

And behold! Some logical path would be laid out there, with what I already knew, plus more facts I hadn't absorbed yet, and I could even see how I could have figured it out on my own, had I recognized the pattern and logic already displayed in another reaction. "The Pharisees came to the very, very firm conviction, that their angle on Judaism, was the only right one; and that therefore, Jesus needed to be executed.

Dear Margaret: Well, David isn't "like other men." He writes better. And Judy, don't despise folks, "they know not what they do." Me? I'm hangin' on to the robe of Jesus by my fingernails, glad that the Divine Providence of The Almighty put an ass at the manager--always perks me up to be in the company of my betters. We all agree that we believe in, ultimately, one creation and that, in the end, we will all be reunited with the source of that creation. In the mean time, we work to make this a better world to live in, while encouraging each other to be spiritually healthy. With in those fairly wide constraints, you are free to be as devout or as gnostic as you feel you should be, and we will welcome you into a community built on mutual respect and love.