They did. Progressives. Although they seem to be pushing ancient hedonism. Laughably so.
Quit laughing at yourself. Progressives are hardly hedonist. Where do you get such notions and how can you use such generalizations? Progressive would not be pushing anything ancient.
I'm interested in the avenue of "Christian thought" you are an ex of. Care to "enlighten" us? This open declaration is new to your growing profile.
Well if you must know.
I am an ex of much Christian thought and doctrines.
In the most general sense of background I am a Christian do to my culture and past.
I have problems with;
The virgin birth
Jesus as God
The atonement (forgiveness of sin not the “at one” with God) through a sacrifice because of a fall.
The bodily resurrection as fact
The inerrancy of the bible
Now if you still want to say I am a Christian I am all right with it.
The Ebonite seem very Christian and I agree with some of what they believe.
I like the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
I also like the metaphors that see God as lover, friend, and mother.
Here is something I wrote trying to describe my journey. There are not many Christian points of view that I have not once believed or felt.
I was raised a Christian my family was Christian on both sides. My grandfather was a pastor. There is not an aspect of Christianity I have not experienced believed or understood that is presented all others Christians and forms of Christianity. I am not an outsider but I have grown and learned. I reject much of Christianity from a Jewish perspective that I some how acquired along the way. That my family tree is supposed to have Jewish branches of which I am a part is irrelevant to my beliefs. I seem to be some sort of agnostic Gnostic, proto-Christian radical empiricist, naturalist, and process thinker with few illusions.
I still maintain the illusion of hope and good will toward mankind and creation (the universe). It is not factual gospel belief it is your opinion. It is only one among many possible opinions.
The point is that there is no such thing as an infallible inerrant Bible.
There are many interpretations even the prophets didn't agree with each other nor do the gospels. Men wrote it. It may inspire and some times it should disgust us. Ok so God didn't repent he sighed. What is a Spirit sighing for anyway? No one can see God and live yet Abraham feed him milk and meat (not very Jewish). Abraham talks him down to letting the cities survive for the sake of 10 righteous men he started with 50.
No Moabite shall be married to a Jew yet one was an ancestor of David.
Make Saul king then sighs and makes David king.
But Jesus helping God create the universe I don't think so.
God as his Biological father I don't think so.
That just sounds to pagan (not that their is anything wrong with pagans)
The Genesis story goes back to the Egyptian and Sumerian myths, as do the 10 commandments.
I am not making any Godly claims about the Bible. I can use it against you can't me. And it isn't fair. I have no absolute authority that is your claim. Scriptural reference doesn’t verify a claim as yours have shown not to do so well. I argue that you cut and paste from some one else's flawed source, the Bible. And if it weren’t flawed how would you know being flawed yourself? What I am saying is that a flawed Bible was created. And if it were possible to make on we wouldn't know it if we saw it. We are flawed. Men created it.
It seems to me the burden of reassuring beyond a shadow of a doubt is your task. I make no special claims for it.
I am most likely some kind of Panentheist with a cultural connection to Judaism and Christianity and some historical understanding of their development. I don't even believe in the fall that alone the atonement-sacrifice. Fine let them stew but they are cleaver and will go to great lengths to explain it away even if it means re-writing the NT.
I think their defense would be that he was obeying God first and being they have already discarded the Torah except as a Christological proof text they law would be irrelevant to them anyway. No one said they were sane or rational.
Most students in a half way decent seminary would have got over this hurtle but unfortunately they do not share the information with their parishioners because they would be fired, do to the old time religion they have been feed for years.
At least the spirit wasn't named and can stand for anything. It is a pretty flexible spirit. It reminded me of a program on TV where they created an imaginary spirit. I have also seen studies of groups making up a spirit that developed a personality.
So we may be seeing delusional behavior on a group level. With mega-churches you could move whole masses of dissociated people.
I have seen deep thought, personal consecutiveness and justice in atheist some time I have even seen it in Christians who cares are as far away from philosophical arguments they could care less what anyone thinks.
I have moved from Jesus died for our sin to God does not desire sacrifices to God forgives to forgiveness in a human virtue. It is like a child that is told by his parents not to cross the street. When the child grows up you don’t expect then to still not cross the street.
1John2_26:
Progressive/liberals/the clubmembers, get all huffy and puffy from even the slightest hint of dissent from their anti-crusading. I realized that the first time I spoke to this queer little person known as a "freethinker." Oddly they do not allow for diversity it appears. Seems "freethinker" is a locked in proposition. Uhhhh, yeah.
I don’t see freethinker locked in to anything. You seem more like the child that still can’t cross the street on their own. You seem to be the one that refuses to allow others to dissent your intolerance. So now you call freethinkers queer little people or just this one?
1John2_26:
Arabic culture brought us the university concept. And the pilots of the planes that flew them into the Twin Towers on 9-11. Christians brought us Harvard and Oxford, ET AL . . . Do the math.
Arabs brought you soap, math and the Renaissance. It is an exaggerated example and you know it. Don’t you?
1John2_26:
Atheists revel in the convenient deaths of "unwanted pregnencies" and the un-academic realtering of marriage and family, without looking at the evidence for the human beings being murdered and resclassified for the comfort of his or her parents to deny culpabilty, accountability, responsibilty and of course complicity. It is unethical to say you are alearned thinker and hold to many of the absolutes of anti-Christ ideology and politics.
I don’t think it is limited to atheist and surly Christians also do the same things. It is a false generalization.
1John2_26:
I have the God of creation to worship and trust, do you think shallow pouty self-centered insults, directed really at God, can "hurt me, a Christian?" I too insult God in many ways, and in that aspect fearing an anti-Christ would be like hating myself. I cannot do that either as I am indeed made "in the image" of God. Too.
They are not being directed at God.
1John2_26:
Look in the mirror. You are now proclaiming that you left being a Christian and now are presenting an opposition in lock step with the basic anti-Christian. That would make it fair for me to "lump you in" with a crowd of thinkers that are very much homogenized. I would assume you should proudly declare your oppositional side and fight from there. But alas once more, the typical anti-Christian feins a queer innocence while at the same time "doing" their opposition to Christians. Where once in history "the Church" ran the education system, it is now been outlawed to hold corporate prayer. Corporate prayer, one would think, could not possibly be of any insult to a true atheist. I view I once helf and practiced. Where once my peers were praying, I was persoanlly and more importanantly introspectively denying without a moments discomfort. Truly, truly, it is within the anti-religious and anti-Christ majority, that we see a far greater hypocrisy.
I am in no lock step program. That seems more descriptive of you. My complaints are from with in Christianity not from outside. I am hardly an anti-Christian. I have not left being a Christian. It is still part of who I am. I might be a recovering Christian much like some one would be a recovering alcoholic.
You seem to be the only one that wants to homogenize. You assume way too much.
1John2_26:
Yet you actively attack Christians that "say" and teach that sodomy is inappropriate and means should be established to promote the keeping of normality . . . and yet remain silent to those murdered and raped in the millions by proponenets and adherents of Islam. Please how me where I should not have the contempt I do for anti-Christians? And when you pick up your discarded ex-Bible as a "former Christian," I will agree 100% that I should not have the utter disdain of anti-Christians, because it violates factual Gospel belief. That in turn and in fact you deny.
Again I am not attacking Christians. I am attacking you arcane ideas. I am not teaching sodomy and you know full well that is not what homosexuality is all about. You just enjoy bringing it up often. I am hardly silent when it comes to any murder and rape. It seems you are using Islam as a diversion and is off topic. The last two sentences make absolutely no sense. It only shows you have contempt for non-Christians and you want to make some slur about being an ex-Christian. Maybe I am more of a recovering Christian. I have not discarded the bible. I just don’t see it as perfect and an unquestionable source of the Devine will.
1John2_26:
From your one-track ideology that is not only laughable, but, I have the right "AS a Christian," to see the spirit of anti-Christ for what it is.
You have the imagination to see anything that does not fit your one-track ideology as anti-Christ. I have the right to laugh at you …so what?
1John2_26:
The Christian response to homosexuality and the social politics it promotes, is to see it for what it is . . . just another membership aspect of the anti-Christ crowd of opposers of the Gospel of life.
Yours is only one Christian response and a limited one at that. No all that disagree with you are anti-Christ or atheist. Opposition to your bigotry is not the same as opposition to the gospel of life.
