I don't get what objection an atheist who has rejected Judaism entirely could possibly have that is relevant to the observation that Christianity was a. founded by Jews, b. based on a central figure and authority who was a Jew, c. that the earliest people now considered Christians were just about all Jews, d. that the earliest people who were both followers of Jesus and considered themselves Jews accepted the Jewish scripture as authentic and authoritative (not to mention they attended synagogues and went to the Temple daily), e. that they accepted gentile converts to their movement and eventually agreed that there were aspects of the Jewish Laws that they, as gentiles, were not bound to follow, etc.
Atheism rejects all of Judaism, Christianity accepts the authority of the Jewish scriptures and much of the Jewish Law, especially that emphasized by Jesus who said he didn't come to overturn The Law.
Why an atheist would have anything important to say in a matter, insisting on distinctions among things they reject, completely, is something I need to have a convincing, rational argument to support. As far as I'm concerned, they've got no standing in the argument. No more than I as someone totally indifferent to and ignorant of Major League Baseball would have to say about which team is better. Though I can make a rational argument as to why baseball is not nearly as depraved as American football.
And, yes, part of the reason I'm posting this is to annoy the atheists who troll me. The reconciliation of Jews and Christians and Muslims is something they just hate with a passion, they would rather divide us and promote conflict. That reconciliation is the important reason for pointing these things out. Eighteen hundred years of misunderstanding is something you should get around to settling. The Vatican finally did in 1965.
But atheists know more about Christianity than Christians do, because atheists have reason and Christians don't (don't tell the atheists about Aquinas, just for starters; or the Jesuits, for that matter; or...oh, never mind, too many to list) and atheists are smart and Christians are dumb and atheists are smarties and Christians are just poopy-heads! So there!
ReplyDeleteThe change that exposure online has brought to my view of atheism and the culture of a-religious secularism has been profound. I went from, seven years ago, writing that we should all just bury our differences to understanding that, at the very root of things, there is no making peace with materialism because it contains the denial of everything that everything I value depends on. Even on a political level. It was reading atheists that did it to me, mostly, with a tiny bit of mild but deadly criticism such as Marilynne Robinson made of Dawkins and others made of Harris. The rest of it was a gradually building appreciation for the con-job nature of such sciency holdings as Dennett, Blackmore, the Churchlands, Peter Singer, etc. expounded.
DeleteI've been tempted to revive my unanswered questions about how the genesis of ideas was supposed to happen in the materialist model brain. I've posed those for two years now and I haven't found a single atheist who can get past an evidence and logic free repetition of "DNA" and "Natural Selection", unable to explain how those were supposed to address the issue, when pressed. I really think they figure it isn't fair for someone to ask them what they mean by those. I have gradually come to see that is pretty much the entire shtick of atheist-materialist-scientism.
These hot afternoons I've got to do something after I've done the dishes and swept the floors.
Oh fuck off. The idea that you can't be moral unless you subscribe to organized religion is beyond offensive.
ReplyDeleteSeriously -- go fuck yourselves. Both of you.
You know, I'm aware that since you can't address what was said, you, like Donald Trump tries to change the framing to something that was never said. I never claimed that you can't be moral unless you subscribe to organized religion, I've never made that claim in my life. Though you might, actually be doing what Bertrand Russell said stupid men do when they're confronted with people who aren't as stupid as they are, they translate what they said into something their stupidity can deal with. Either way you and Trump, two pees in a pod. Though it's a shame to waste a pun and an allusion to such a dolt as you.
DeleteOf course that's what you're saying, you lying sack of shit.
ReplyDeleteOK, quote exactly what I said that said that. I ask knowing that you won't because you can't.
DeleteI'm not saying what you're imagining I'm saying because you're too stupid to imagine what I did say. That's a problem with atheists who make the mistake of believing they're on the left, they can't handle anything that isn't in their limited fund of generic ideas that they move around in lieu of thinking.
And I'm not an atheist, as you well know, you immense lying sack of shit.
ReplyDelete