To be quite honest, I didn't (and don't) have the patience to wade through that collection of cut-and-pastes and Bible quotes that GfS apparently labored all night to assemble (sorry, GfS, but I'm beginning to find you a bloody bore!), but after a quick scan, I think he/she/it is trying to tell me that I'm an egregious sinner and a hypocrite, and that God's gonna get me for my many transgressions!

Gee! This is a whole new side to GfS! I knew he/she/it fantasized a lot, but I didn't know that included fantasies about being an Evangelist!

"Double-minded?" How did you manage to come up with that? And what is it supposed to mean? Two heads? Or simply undecided about something? And what's wrong with being undecided? Perhaps one is waiting to learn all the facts before one makes a decision.

That's a good thing, GfS!

Well, quoting Bible verses and combing through concordances notwithstanding, everyone who breathes faces conflicts from time to time and has to make decisions. And there are also times when decisions are made for one about which, in good conscience, one can do nothing to alter, and you just have to go along with it.

Yes, I can demolish you in this area, GfS, but I'm not going to waste my time, primarily because none of your Biblical quotes apply to me, either now, or my situation of some decades back, and even if I did take the time to refute you point-by-point, your next move would be just to pick some other irrelevancy and try to attack me with that. So, why should I bother?

By the way, because I belong to a main-line Christian church does not mean that I buy all of the standard dogma, so trying to whip me with the Bible isn't going to work. First of all, Central Lutheran is quite a liberal church, and over the years it's had a number of very bright, open-minded pastors, with whom I've had the pleasure of many interesting, deep discussions on matters of religion and philosophy.

Among other things, I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God. I believe that if there is any kind of conscious entity that might be considered "God," the nature of that entity is so far beyond human understanding that anyone who claims to know "the mind of God" or that they are speaking "the word of God" is engaging in hyperbole at best, or is deluded themselves. Or at worst, is trying to con you.

This does not mean that belonging to a church is inconsistent with my beliefs, nor (since the pastors know my position and find it to be a perfectly reasonable one) does it mean I am sailing under false pretenses.

One of the pastors once held up a copy of the Bible and said, "This is not the Scout Manual. It does not contain all the answers. It contains questions!"

Other than the Bible, I believe the Hebrew historian, Josephus fairly well establishes that there was a historical Jesus, but other than being a "prophet" and eventually being crucified, Josephus doesn't say much more. So I do believe there was an actual Jesus, but as to all the things attributed to him in the New Testament, since most of it was written long after the fact, the evidence for it is all hearsay. Since much of it—and most of the Bible as a whole—appears to be consistent with the mythologies characteristic of all the world's different religions, I feel that the only intelligent position to take is to adopt the position of the agnostic.

Saying that something is "mythological," according to Joseph Campbell, does not mean that it is false: it means that it is often quite true, but it is expressed as a metaphor rather than being presented as an actual historical fact. Hence, there is no real inconsistency between the Creation myth in the Book of Genesis and what cosmologists, astronomers, paleontologists, and anthropologists tell us.

Much of what Jesus is reputed to have said is really quite good. I—and the church to which I belong—generally consider Matthew 25:35-40 to be the core of Christian teaching, although others tend to focus more on Jesus' presumed Godhood, and such things as the Resurrection, being saved, getting to Heaven, and avoiding having Lucifer sink his fangs into their asses. Compared to the Matthew passage, having one's mind so much on Heaven that one is no earthly good, seem a bit self-centered, which ain't exactly a Christian virtue, n'est-ce pas?

So—my main efforts at and contributions to the church go to the free meals program, and to LATCH, a committee dedicated to finding or building low-cost housing for the homeless or folks with very low incomes.

What do you do in your spare time, GfS? Other than hassle gays?

I've quoted my wise old uncle a number of times, but his cogent advice seems particularly germane at this point in the thread:

"My boy, don't waste your time arguing with an idiot."

Don Firth

P. S. I'm sorry to have drifted way off the subject of the thread, but when one is attacked by ferrets, one does tend to try to deal with the little vermin before proceeding. However, as to this thread and it's main subject, I would say that it has long since passed its "sell by" date and is really beginning to reek.