Dawkins : "I'm a cultural Christian".

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Professor Richard Dawkins has said the he is ' A Cultural Christian'.
In a news story on the BBC website, he declared that he has no wish to see Christmas cancelled, or see Britain lose any part of it's Christian heritage. This may come as a surprise to some, but his website tends to direct its venom towards the more negative aspects of religious belief.

These include the Catholic Church's stance on child molesting priests, it's opposition to contraception, and its condemnation of gay people. Yet Protestant believers come in for criticism too. It isn't simply a belief in Adam and Eve that Dawkins criticises, it's the Old Testament's account of Joshua's conquests, the concept of Hell and the moral standards taught in the O.T. that also provoke his ire.

Well, my take on it is as follows -
the Jews didn't really do the conquest of Canaan like the Bible says,in fact they didn't conquer Canaan at all - Joshua's campaign was largely a propaganda exercise done in a later period;
the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment rests upon misinterpretation and misunderstanding of certain Biblical passages, as well as a certain amount of Hellenistic influence;
the sexism, racism and homophobia are all there in the Torah, but the Jews themselves got over a lot of it before Jesus came along and finished the job.

If we were to teach History in school and pay more attention to events in the Levant around the Bronze Age, it would do a lot to dispel the negative influence that religious mythology still has on society. We can dump all that stuff and still have a version of Christianity that is different from Atheism. And, yes, I would be happy to explain the specifics in the comments - if I get any:)

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that reply bears no connection to my statement. I kinda feel like I'm missing something in Minto's reply, like he's coming here to have an argument with people who aren't here, so he's just responding to everyone else with the stuff he cooked up for these other folks...

[midsummerskies.livejournal.com]

yeah, that actually makes the most sense of the situation

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

well, no. my point is that the Apostles did have a lot of trauma in their lives, but Jesus Himself did not harm them.
There are many churches today , though , that abuse their members, and it isn't something that jesus encourages or approves of.

Sorry - LJ eating lots of my replies. Will try to get back on all your points, but may not succeed.

[midsummerskies.livejournal.com]

but where are you seeing anyone using a_new_machines assertion to support child abuse, racism or classim?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I am not - why do you ask.

I am simply saying that Jesus did not abuse any of his disciples, and there is therefore no excuse for the church to be abusive towards their membership.

You : I found the theology around the T/B traumatic.
Me: meeting Jesus was not a traumatic experience for most.
ANM: It was, in lots of ways, for his Apostles.
Me : But how much of that came directly from Jesus , and how much from people outside His circle? Compare this to churches directly responsible for abuse themselves.

Go where you want from here, but I don't see Christ as an abuser myself. I think he suffered a lot at the hands of others, and he tells us that following Him will cause us to suffer as well, but I don't think He causes any of it, and nor should his church , if acting in accord with His teachings .

[midsummerskies.livejournal.com]

nobody is saying Christ is an abuser but you seem to be assuming that acknowledging that the disciples had traumatic experiences means people are somehow using that to condone abuse

you said Well, I don't use any of this to support the view that Catholic priests are OK to abuse kids in their care, as if other people do

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

nobody is saying Christ is an abuser but you seem to be assuming that acknowledging that the disciples had traumatic experiences means people are somehow using that to condone abuse
So what point is A.N.M trying to make here?

I have no idea if you are a Catholic or not. I am not having a go at individual Catholics, but the RCC has shifted priests from one parish to the next, knowing that they are guilty of abusing young people, and thus allowed them to reach new victims. The church, as an institution needs to clean up their act.

The Evangelical churches - more fringe than mainstream but still, they are also guilty of taking it upon themselves to be 'lording it over the flock' and pushing a narrow interpretation upon people with the implications that you are not really following Christ unless you see it their way. Again , this is just giving ammo to the aggressive atheism that Dawkins preaches.

No, sorry , you don't have to live by Deuteronomy to be a Christian, in my view.

[midsummerskies.livejournal.com]

I think their point was that following Jesus can be traumatic.

I'm not a Catholic, which you would know if you paid attention because I already told you in this post that I'm the same denomination you are. I do know the history of abuse in the catholic church though. It's not just the catholic church in which child abuse happens though so I don'y know why you are behaving as if it is.

of course churches do bad things sometimes, what would the point of church be if everybody was perfect?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

There are no pedophiles outside the Catholic Church. And, even if there were, every case of sexual abuse outside the Catholic Church would be reported -- and the perpetrator would, in every instance, be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.