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Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
I'm glad you get what I was trying to say. If a god changes rules only because people sinned against that god, which rules would the god *really* prefer the people to follow: the original ones, or the new ones created in response to people having sinned?
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Yay.
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I can understand you feeling put off by anyone expecting you to learn answers by rote without trying to understand the reasoning behind them.
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I'm just not that sort of person who can accept those kind of answer.
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Geddy, I'm thinking this isn't a problem with Christianity or any religion as a whole, but rather with the philosophy of some of the practitioners. People in secular organizations can also be resistant to the questioning of rules or organization philosophy.
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Major problem I've comes across is that questioning any sort of religious principles or teaching seems to get far more resistance than most.
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Speaking of following rules without questioning them, I remember being befriended by truly very nice members of the Boston Church of Christ, considered by some to be a cult, that was led by a (male) pastor who definitely had a strong aura of authority that didn't seem to invite questioning. During one of his sermons, he talked about how he had once sinned by kissing his wife with lust. He admonished the congregation to rid themselves of lust.
I was surprised, since I thought this was a good way to empty a church, and I hadn't realized that he felt the congregation as a whole should avoid lustful feelings. There didn't appear to be any debate over this issue in the Bible studies I attended as a guest. I thought the lack of debate was interesting and a bit disturbing, since I didn't think the Bible ever said lust shouldn't exist as part of love or should be avoided.
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Wow.
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Often following religious laws seems to translate into following people's interpretations of religious texts, and so the exact law that a particular church may expect the congregation to follow comes down to which group of people has the most power within a religious organization.
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I saw this in my old church. There was a vociferous but fairly small group of people in my church who held some very 'traditional' ideas about the Bible and Christian thought, many of whom were Creationists too. They seemed to wield a lot of power in the church and so I often felt that too much emphasis of my church's teachings was about appeasing this group of people. Prime example is discussion of evolution- we tried to hold a series of lectures on the subject of the Bible and evolution, only to have the idea suddenly and quietly get panned, likely on the say-so of this group of people.
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I do think there must be religious organizations that simply offer a philosophy and leave it up to practitioners to decide for themselves how they interpret it and whether or how they want to follow it. I grew up going to a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which originated from Christian beliefs but is no longer dependent on any creed or faith. The people there always seemed very open-minded. I never actually thought of it as a religion, though. UU is more of a group of people who support some basic principles, most of which I do follow because I think they are kind:
*snip*
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I've come across this group before and it sounds pretty great.