to fear the lord is to hate evil

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

it's good to bear in mind that "fear" is a pretty thin word for what is a pretty thick concept in hebraic literature. Don't assume that what we see on quick read, 3,000 years later, is what was meant by the writer.

What? You mean every word in the Bible isn't supposed to be taken literally as the divinely inspired word of God?

Oh, great. And here I went and became Pagan for nothing. I thought I had to buy all of that stuff verbatim, and I just couldn't do that.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

Not really sure why, but this really tickled me.

It's the wool that tickles you.

[Elspode]

.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Elspode

What? You mean every word in the Bible isn't supposed to be taken literally as the divinely inspired word of God?

Oh, great. And here I went and became Pagan for nothing. I thought I had to buy all of that stuff verbatim, and I just couldn't do that.

Well now, don't you feel silly?

I know and like several pagans, but I just don't see the point of going pagan. Ethical monotheism (viz., Dennis Prager) seems to me a step up.

[wolf]

The point, I think, is that we have a different direct experience of diety, and also a sense of the web of interactions between all things that is sometimes referred to as the Life Force.

[Elspode]

What she said. That, and not having your dogma handed to you in a package.

I think monotheism is lazy.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Sounds like a couple people here have no experience with the Unitarians. With that lot, you have to order the components separately, which demands that you have to have enough sense to choose good ones.

Now, for a different approach, the Episcopalians would hand you a package, but you're rather expected to open it, take out the contents, and fiddle with them your entire conscious life, examining them closely and intelligently -- the popular Episcopalian metaphor of the stool with three legs applies here: tradition, reason, and Scripture, and that it doesn't work too well as something that would support you if one of the legs is lost. Thinking is not merely allowed, it is downright encouraged, and getting rigidly dogmatic about anything is not the via media the Episcopalians and the rest of the Anglican Community so cherish, and so frequently find the way forward in. This does, however, often produce the effect that for any three Episcopalians there are four opinions, or so.

In my opinion, the best Christians credit dinosaurs and the dumb ones don't, and the poor bastards miss out on the vaster picture of creation thereby. The anti-evolutionists seem all to be wasting their time trying to use Darwin as a straw man. It comes of thinking that science is just another belief, which happens to somebody when they are educated only in belief systems. Science itself is not a thing of beliefs, of faith -- what science is, pace Stephen Jay Gould, is a way of knowing. Yet even the least spiritual of scientists is no stranger to faith -- faith in the integrity of his colleagues, that they are speaking such truth as they know.

If you've an ambition to create, and literally all the time there is, where's the problem with taking thirteen billion years to get it done right? Certain people should stop trying to nail God into a crate built to human specification.

Monotheism has a virtue of being nice and clear: it's binary; there is God and there is not-God. "On this hangs all the law and the prophets." It's as simple and as not-simple as chess. And that's my smiling remark.

[Tonchi]

Well well well, how did it happen that UG and I discover something ELSE we have in common? First it was the solo gourmet cooking and now I find out we both read Steven Jay Gould and were raised in the same denomination. I still remember the Confirmation classes where they told us what he just summarized.

This does, however, often produce the effect that for any three Episcopalians there are four opinions, or so.

So true, that. QED

[DanaC]

What she said. That, and not having your dogma handed to you in a package.

I think monotheism is lazy.

........or do away with dogma altogether.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

Here in Central FL we get a lot of nutty church billboards.
As for me, don't believe in evil and hate is poison to be avoided at all cost.

nutty church billboards?

Redundant?

[9th Engineer]

As for me, don't believe in evil and hate is poison to be avoided at all cost.

Should be simple given that hate doesn't exist any more than evil. Well, that depends on your definition of evil I guess, but I'm sure it can be rationalized away.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Evil is debatable, but not hate. The World is full of hate, often irrational, but it's there.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

Should be simple given that hate doesn't exist any more than evil.

I don't think I understand exactly what you mean.
Could you expand on that a little?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by wolf

Usually Catholics avoid such things as the movable letter signboard. Unfortunately the Catholic Church up the street from me is trying to be hip, perhaps to attract more Protestants, since nobody listens to the Pope on that no birth control thing anymore. Two recent signboard notices have been ...

"If God had a wallet would your picture be in it?" and "The best vitamin for a Christian is B-1."

In front of a Catholic church, I once saw "boys wanted for sex with preists". Ok, not really

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Flint

I don't think I understand exactly what you mean.
Could you expand on that a little?

I don't see any possibility of a rational argument that hate doesn't exist. Maybe that it shouldn't, or that it's not logical, but to deny it exists is whistling in the dark.