[syracusa]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (chicagoastronomer,)
The erraticity of the bible is proof enough that it was written with the dirty hand of man...nothing else. If it was inspired by God, then man wasn't listening and probably was picking his nose while staring into the sun with a full erection. I would expect nothing less.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

I think of myself as a "Christian" and a person who loves and tries to live by the words (those written in red) attributed to Jesus. Though I am not always succesful. I am however NOT a fundamentalist Christian (lots of "left-of-center" views). As Chicagoastronomer said, when I read a lot of passages in the Bible I get that uncomfortable feeling that it was written with the "dirty hands of man...staring into the sun with a full erection".
Very well said. I have to take my hat off to this one. :)

I do have a friend however (well...more like a former friend in high-school, currently an acquaintance that, for whatever reason, I keep in touch with) who is a fundamentalist Christian.
The only thing I can say is that there is not much debating/reasoning/discussing with this type of people - not beyond their well-defined, unchallanged patterns of thought which they unequivocally attribute to God and not to themselves (as they should).
I very much believe that you must have a certain psychological issue/inclination in order to fall into these ferociously fixed and oppressive patterns of thought. I trully believe "the thing" has a psychological (or should I say "psycho") dimension to it.

She often sends me fundamentalist propaganda (having little to do with Jesus and a lot to do with right wing politics) - but she always dresses it up in the "soft", "rightheous" intentions of a pious believer. She never acknoledges that what she is sending is "politics" not "faith".
Of course, I never respond back because it would be vary taxing for me to do so - emotionally and time-wise.

But then again, I cannot say that this type of people are the only ones that can be very obtuse in their ways.
Only recently I had posted on a thread dealing with "men's/women's power - who's got the upper hand type thing) and it was shocking for me to see the kind of poison and obstinant ill-will that some men are willing to spew just to justify their religiously fixated beliefs accroding to which women are horrible witches who have more power than men do and are just trying to emasculate them and keep them down. One of them even said something like "it is time to deal with this danger called WOMAN".
Talk about "oppressive"!

Well...I had to quit posting. There's no debating when people have this frame of mind. You only manage to finish yourself emotionally - AND waste a lot of your precious time - which is downright stupid on your part if you proceed to do that.
Same with the fundamentalist Christians. They conveniently overlook the OBJECTIVE (please let's not get into what is 'OBJECTIVE'! )attrocities and injustices fueled by humans' interpretation of the Bible throughout history - and focuse instead on their subjective and egomaniacal view point. (or in the case of fundamentalist Christian women - subjective, brainwashed, self-loathing view point).