jimmiej said:
You act like Christians are dim-whitted, mindless idiots! I won't speak for anyone else, but I made a conscious decision to become a Christian. I've seen the Light & His name is Jesus! To insinuate Christians are living a "shackled" life is at best condescending & at worst downright rude! IMO, you're making yourself look bad by talking down to people who believe differently! Unless you've experienced the power & love of Jesus Christ, you should refrain from comments like those quoted.
Nobody said anything about all Christians. I (and I think most others) are talking about evangelists, "born again", and/or creationists. Those are the ones who are busy trying to destroy science, those are the ones that are flying banners over WDW, and those are the ones that make other Christians look bad.
Here's a newsflash for you. I go to church every Sunday! I'm even in the choir! Naturally, it's a Protestant denomination (I shan't go into specifics), I'm there for the community (I grew up in this church) and the music (mostly classical, no praise music.) I'm well aware of religion. I don't tar all Christians, or any other religion, with the "nutjob" brush. In my case, as I grew older, I found myself drawn to more skeptical readings (starting with Snopes, many years ago, now on Randi's page, Skeptical Enquirer, Bob Park, Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan, Penn & Teller's "BS" show on Showtime, etc) and the more you read, the more your mind starts to question everything. I now consider myself a secular humanist (or athiest, take your pick) but I can certainly survive stepping into a church without being hit by lightning.
Healthy skepticism - even if you are religious - is one of the most valuable thinking tools there is. It helps you avoid health scams, get-rich-quick scams, political lies, and all manner of crooks.
Back on religions. Here's my test to tell how I feel about Christian religions.
The more you talk about Jesus and the less you talk about God, the more stubborn, judgmental, and offensively evangelizing you are. I prefer religion to be about a GOD, not his son. (And don't give me that whole "holy trinity" thing.) Keep me far away from the anti-evolution, speaking-in-tongues, hating-everyone-not-like-them folks! "Power and love"? Again, there's nothing that anyone has experienced that cannot be explained by natural causes.
Anyone ever see the movie "Hell House"? Terrifying! It sounds like the new "Jesus Camp" could easily play in a double bill with it. The evangelists seem to not realize that their extremist is driving others away.
Oh, and the whole "why is it a theory" is as insulting and ignorant as saying "evolution says we came from monkeys" - like someone said, a theory is the HIGHEST HONOR that a scientific idea can achieve, because science is self-correcting. Gravity is a theory. Entropy is a theory. The crime is that so little basic science education is taught in this country. People are intimidated and confused by science, and will happily repeat a lie or mischaracterization told by someone with a clear agenda.
