fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3035 ]

[ SECRET POST #3035 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3035 ⌋

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DA

I don't even find this view particularly extreme. I know several people who hold it, and it's not a matter of religious people being evil so much as thinking most religious people are not actually following the book they claim to follow.

The argument would say that to be a Christian, you have to follow the actual Bible. To be a Muslim, you have to follow the actual Quran. And so on. If you do not do these things, you aren't actually following the religion you claim to be following. Unfortunately the books themselves have some awful outdated ridiculous bullshit in them, but you can't pick and choose which parts to follow and which parts not to follow while at the same time saying you follow the book and calling yourself the relevant religious label for it. If you "interpret" the book any which way you please while ignoring whatever you want to ignore, the religion and the religious label ceases to have any meaning, kind of like the term hipster.

TL;DR: people who claim to be theists aren't horrible, they're just not actually the theists they claim to be. if they were the theists they claim to be who followed the rules of the religion they claim to follow, they would be horrible because the books contain horrible things

Yes, this, exactly. Nail meet hammer.

AYRT

It's not just anti-theists anyway. I know this logic is also used by religious people because my family members are like that on the opposite end. To them a true Christian has to follow the Bible which means that to be a true believer you have to think shit like "gay/bi/trans people are unnatural and sinners" and "sex before marriage is a sin and wrong" and "not going to church every single Sunday is a sin and something to guilt over" and if you don't, you're not a True Believer (tm).

While I hate it and completely disagree with their stances, I can respect from a non-moral perspective that they're at least sticking to the book they say they believe in.

You should point out to them all the stuff about like putting people to death for random sins and ask them if they'd actually do that. Or like how the Bible commands you to love your parents but also to hate your family if they don't love Jesus. Etc.

I've tried that, they give me the "love the sinner hate the sin" and point out where Jesus told people to let God judge.

Mostly I and the rest of my generation who are the 20-30 year olds now try to not bring up religion at all with the old guard.

Ugh, "love the sinner hate the sin," I hate that phrase. It's just a justification for being shitty to people they don't like because they can claim it's in those peoples' best interests.

lol the Bible doesn't even say anything about church (at least not in the modern sense of "church you go to every Sunday").

man I get so tired of people parroting out stuff just because it's been drilled into them and not stopping to think.

There's literally no good reason to insist on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible. And even if you did want to insist on it, you can still make pretty legitimate arguments in favor or against most of the moral positions you want to talk about (particularly if you want to start arguing for the New Testament as superseding the Old, and if you want to start throwing shade on Paul). They're complicated, old books that were composed in a variety of languages and times and circumstances. You can't just assert that you have to take everything at precise face value. That's one specific interpretative method, not intrinsically more valid than any other.

The problem that I have with this argument is that it's almost like insisting that all theists act like idiots. I see no reason to do so.

I think they insist on a literal interpretation of the holy books because so many self-identified religious people have historically and are currently using literal interpretations of the holy books to target people like them (e.g. gay people). In majority-Muslim countries even more so. So it's a matter of turnabout being fair play, I guess.

These aren't only Christian friends, anyway. I can't really tell you what their thoughts on Paul are.

Man, this thread annoyed me so much ("What do you mean, you have to follow the whole Bible literally to be a Christian??") until I remembered that Christian fundies are in fact the biggest proponents of that notion. :/

AYRT

If the huge number of conservatives in the US weren't always pushing the idea, there'd be less misaimed backlash at the liberal Christians, I'm sure. Keep in mind though that the liberty to say there are different kinds of Christians and that liberal Christianity is just as valid as the fundamentalist one isn't a liberty held by a lot of the rest of the world. Try saying there's more than one way to be religious in countries with governments strongly influenced by Sharia law or with legal courts for Sharia law where it's fully or partially recognized as a valid secondary legal system, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_of_sharia_law_by_country#Sharia_in_the_world

Separation of church and state is a huge privilege of ours.

Oh, it definitely is. (I keep trying to remind people who want to legislate religion that theocracy is working out pretty poorly for those who have already tried it...)

I never even considered that people were taking living by the book as the defining characteristic of being of a particular religion. That seems weird to me considering how recent the advent of mass-produced books is and how many religions in world history have never had books like the bible or the quran.

To me, if you believe in the god(s) that are central to the religion, then you are of that religion. Or if it's a religion/belief system with no gods, then it's based on the central tenants and not the smaller details that have led to arguments and schisms throughout history.

What about different translations of the bible? Two people end up taking different instructions from the same text. Which one is the Real Christian? I'm guessing in this view, they're both Christians since they're both trying to follow the rules? But then what about other kinds of different interpretations that look at the text metaphorically or take context into account in a way that other people don't? Does that still count as following the rules? Because that's what a lot of the people who are accused of picking and choosing are doing. I'm assuming some of them are Real Christians and some of them are not.

I've made peace with people thinking I'm not a Real Christian and I readily admit to picking and choosing (I care most about the things that are attributed to Jesus directly), but I really would like to understand the atheists who insist on telling me I'm not a Christian.

You're American, right? I can tell you for sure that a whole lot of countries out there like to take the Quran at its word and a whole lot of horrible shit has happened because of it.

I'm not sure how to address this argument because you're arguing from a very narrow Christian perspective against a stance that's anti-theist which is more broad. I'll ask the anti-theist people I know if I remember to.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea how this is a response to what I said. I thought we were talking about whether the definition of being a member of a religion was based on its holy books or something else. Where did the consequences of basing it on the books come into this?

You were asking about how to define what the holy books mean and so on, I don't have an answer to that. I was pointing out that a lot of countries seem to have figured the answer out though because lots of them have religion-based law or law heavily influenced by the literal word of their respective holy book.

I can't give you the answer to how they did it, but it's provably not an impossible feat.

Oh okay. I don't know how they came to their conclusions either. I'd have the same arguments about various interpretations with them as I do with fundamentalist Christians and atheists.

Same anon.

I'm reasonably confident though that there's a difference between an individual identifying and whole groups or countries identifying. You identifying as a Christian but not following the book to the letter doesn't hurt anyone as far as I know. Usually the people that get this argument tossed at them are the groups already claiming to be the True Whatevers of God and using the letter of the holy book to oppress others while ignoring what they want so it's more retaliatory than aggressive.

Usually the people that get this argument tossed at them are the groups already claiming to be the True Whatevers of God and using the letter of the holy book to oppress others while ignoring what they want so it's more retaliatory than aggressive.

But - not to disagree or anything - but there are people who are using the argument against the moral liberal and progressive members of the religion. Not the fundamentalist hardliners.

For instance, that's the argument dethtoll was making

so I'm not sure how far that goes.

AYRT

He wasn't until someone asked him about it IIRC, plus this thread is already on the topic of anti-theism so that's a bit of a biased judgment. Usually the liberal members don't do anything to warrant people being defensive so it doesn't come up at all. This is all in my experience though so YMMV I suppose.

I don't know, I've had this argument told to me way more often since I stopped being a fundie. Although even back then I kept telling my brother and other people to stop saying Catholics aren't Christian because that's for Jesus to decide.

Are you counting this case as an instance of it being told to you? Because I wasn't, if that's the case. I'm just saying how other people believe it.

It really doesn't matter at all to me whether you're Christian or a real Christian or not, whatever being a Real Christian means to you or someone else. I'm really the wrong person to ask for a definition, all I know is that other people have one.

No I'm not. And I'm okay with it even when it actually is a case of someone targeting it at me specifically. I'm just saying that it's something that I've come across a lot even though I'm not the type that claims to be the One True Kind of Christian.

FWIW I've tried asking the Christians who claim to be the One True Kind to explain why their interpretation is the right one out of all of them, and mostly all I get is "it is what it is, my God must be different from their 'God' and I know mine is True and Right" so... :\

I know how to speak their language and I still can't get any answers out of them on this. I know it can be frustrating.

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