filtherton

I always find it kind of odd when anyone coming from a contemporary christian perspective claims that you can't "pick and choose" when it comes to religion. I mean, it makes sense i light of the fact that they're most likely coming from moderately repressive religious belief structure- they almost have to have this perspective, why else would they willingly expose themselves to such drivel unless it was the only true way to salvation?

The interesting part is that a cursory examination of religious history is all it would take to reveal to these folks that their particular form of christianity is the result of picking and choosing as well. Unless their particular denomination predated the reformation and hasn't changed since- which is pretty unlikely.

It's this odd phenomena of people whose religious beliefs are based on arbitrary interpretations of religious media who scoff and raise their noses at other folks whose religious beliefs are based on different arbitrary interpretations of the same religious media based on the fact that the people who don't think like them are basing their religious beliefs on arbitrary interpretations of religious media; it betrays a certain amount of intellectual dishonesty.

Especially because differences in religious perspective most likely aren't a simple matter of picking and choosing, they often result from looking critically at the information and trying to make sense of it and coming to a different conclusion than someone else. Anyone who thinks christianity is necessarily a rigid, unchanging thing should stop talking only to fundamentalists about it. There are plenty of christians who accept the existence of jesus, but go it alone as far as reading and interpreting particular religious texts and it's only natural that they should come to different conclusions based on what they've experienced. I have a hard time understanding how this is such a difficult thing to comprehend, other than to modify an old saying; it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his eternal salvation or his smug sense of self righteousness require that he not understand it.