In article ,
gregpresley wrote:

"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
If the best you can do is deny that a parable is a parable in order
to promote your bigotry, I suggest you take your irrational hatred
elsewhere.


billo

Bill, I have no problem believing that much of the Bible was written in the
form of parables. You cannot imagine the arguments I have had with
fundamentalist Christians when I have suggested that the creation outline of
Genesis, could, without loss of religious significance, simply be
interpreted as a parable intended to show that God took a personal interest
in the development of life on the earth. THAT way of looking at Genesis was
never acceptable to them. Their response was inevitably that the creation
story is meant to be read as the literal "truth" and as the only valid
"scientific" explanation - and internal inconsistencies, such as the two
completely different and mutually incompatible explanations of the creation
of man are glossed over with far-reaching and unconvincing semantic
gymnastics. It creates a problem for those of us who are not hostile to
Christianity, but who would like some acknowledgment that religious issues
and interpretation are not always matters of black and white, right or
wrong, my way or the highway.





The problem is not that you have issues with some fundamentalists. The
problem is that people pretend that one, usually incomplete and
inaccurate, view of fundamentalism represents all "Christians." The
same people are quick to point out that such generalizations are wrong
for other things -- that anybody who sees all Moslems as fundamentalist
islamofascists, or all African-Americans as pimps and crack addicts, or
all Jews as money-grubbing bankers are acting like bigots -- are
equally quick to embrace bigoted characterizations of Christianity.

In fact, Christianity, because of the inherent ambiguities I mentioned,
covers a profoundly broad swath of belief. People who opine about
fundamentalism forget that it is a *reactionary* belief in opposition
to Protestant Christian liberalism that formed the mainstream of the
early 20th century, and that fundamentalism even in itself, covers a
broad range of belief.

I don't ask that you ignore real differences you have with certain
kinds of fundamentalism. As a mystical Christian, I also have a
very hard time with certain tenets of it, and they with me. What
I ask is that you do the same thing that any enlightened person
should do with any broad heterogeneous group. Recognize that it
is broad and heterogeneous. Holding up a crack whore and claiming
that she represents all women, or all members of her race, or all
members of her social class, or all members of her political
affiliation -- **or all members of her religion** -- is simply
a bigoted generalization.

I don't know anything about you. I don't know your religion, your
sex, your race, or where you live. But I bet that I could find
an asshole of any such, and pretend that it represents all people
of your religion, your race, etc. Would it be correct for me to
do so?

People who blather on about Christianity, who drag up pronouncements
from a thousand years ago, who want to characterize modern Christians
by stories from half a millenium ago, who pull out bad examples and
ignore the millions of counterexamples are simple bigots.


billo