The Islam Thread

[The Batlord]

Beeritual right here.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

The Bible can be against homophobia, but you can believe that the book was written by inspired humans (not God) and as such is a product of its time

You can but then once you start questioning the accuracy of the book you get into the question of did Jesus really die for your sins or is it all a big metaphor. Which, at that point you're hardly even Christian. You just identify with it culturally, like I said


The vast majority of moderates actually accept the book was divinely inspired and come up with other convoluted rationalizations for why the text doesn't mean what it clearly says.

[jwb]

It's not the entire point though. There is an ideological component whether you like it or not. The term dogma literally comes from blind faith in certain ideleogical suppositions ordained by the church.

Obviously you can always split a religion into sects but there's still a common ideological core the sects share in common. Otherwise they aren't sects of one religion but entirely different religions.

So let's say you pray to a holy banana tree and you think Jesus was a liar but you call yourself a Christian. For all intents and purposes, you're not one and no fellow Christians will recognize you as such. In detaching the word from any inherent belief structure you render it meaningless.

[jwb]

It also strikes me that the thing that actually created progressive religious people was criticism from secular society. 500 years ago there was no such thing as a progressive Christian or Muslim. The fact that people see it fit to reform the religion in order to preserve it is evidence of the fact that they're losing the culture war.

[Frownland]

*googles*

It's been exactly 500 years since Martin Luther's reforms....

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Frownland

*googles*

It's been exactly 500 years since Martin Luther's reforms....

Catholic Church be like

[Frownland]

Fun fact: MLK was only whitewashed because americans mixed him up with Martin Luther and accidentally bought his books. Similar deal for George Washington Carver.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

you're trying to justify your No True Scottsman in total bad faith

anything written in The Bible about Jesus could be subject to interpretation

no, you're just refusing to engage with reality.

Obviously anything is open to interpretation. Not all interpretations are equally compelling though. It's not surprising, when the text says kill any man who lays with another man, that most interpretations come out anti gay. That's a reflection of the text, simple as that.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by Frownland

*googles*

It's been exactly 500 years since Martin Luther's reforms....

ironically the reformation didn't actually question any of the parts of the Bible we don't like these days


Hence why the worst Christians in contemporary America are Protestant Evangelicals.

[jwb]

Except that it is and has been the way religion has been practiced for thousands of years. Only in the very recent death throes of religion has the trendy version of religion been to ignore most of what the text says and pretend that's just another way of reading it.