Yeah, I'm alive...
...and reading LJ again, and maybe even writing. Oh, and I changed my userpic to something that I'm more certain is public domain. And I even downloaded the GIMP just to crop and rescale the original png and not use the dinky thumbnail. Geekness.
So I was reading donaithnen's entry here and was inspired to rant expostulate a bit, and figured I should do it here rather than in his journal.
(Note: This is not a rant at Geoff, just a general rant. Or maybe ramble. I'm not sure how cohesive I can make the thoughts spinning around in my head.)
So, as a lot of people know, my father is a Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ minister. I grew up in a Christian family, and although I consider myself pretty much agnostic atm, I certainly don't think Christianity is evil, and I haven't gone through any massive rejection of the faith I was raised in.
It bothers me a lot when people bitch about Christianity when what they really mean is that they disagree with a few loud radicals who have decided they're entitled speak for God as well as a few billion other human beings. Their problem is not with the belief system, but with the practitioners. And only a subset of them, at that.
It also bothers me that intelligent, educated people who wouldn't dream of demonizing, say, Islam (and are appalled at the current trend in the US of doing so) or any other belief system have no objections to denouncing Christianity. (I find this somewhat akin to the idea that racism and sexism are evil, but there's nothing wrong with slamming white males. Hello? You're judging someone based solely on their RACE and SEX.)
The above said, there are still certain things that seem to be relatively fundamental to (my understanding of) Christianity with which I disagree. I just hate to see people knee-jerk against it because it's there, it's big and powerful, and a handful of loons are doing their best to make people hate it because they are bigoted fools.
Hmmm...I had more to say, but I've been working on this off and on for a couple hours now and my brain just doesn't seem to be functioning today. So, yeah. I feel vaguely like I'm waving my hands in the air yelling "don't be meanies" without any particularly solid grounding. Anybody have anything more coherent to say on the subject?
So I was reading donaithnen's entry here and was inspired to rant expostulate a bit, and figured I should do it here rather than in his journal.
(Note: This is not a rant at Geoff, just a general rant. Or maybe ramble. I'm not sure how cohesive I can make the thoughts spinning around in my head.)
So, as a lot of people know, my father is a Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ minister. I grew up in a Christian family, and although I consider myself pretty much agnostic atm, I certainly don't think Christianity is evil, and I haven't gone through any massive rejection of the faith I was raised in.
It bothers me a lot when people bitch about Christianity when what they really mean is that they disagree with a few loud radicals who have decided they're entitled speak for God as well as a few billion other human beings. Their problem is not with the belief system, but with the practitioners. And only a subset of them, at that.
It also bothers me that intelligent, educated people who wouldn't dream of demonizing, say, Islam (and are appalled at the current trend in the US of doing so) or any other belief system have no objections to denouncing Christianity. (I find this somewhat akin to the idea that racism and sexism are evil, but there's nothing wrong with slamming white males. Hello? You're judging someone based solely on their RACE and SEX.)
The above said, there are still certain things that seem to be relatively fundamental to (my understanding of) Christianity with which I disagree. I just hate to see people knee-jerk against it because it's there, it's big and powerful, and a handful of loons are doing their best to make people hate it because they are bigoted fools.
Hmmm...I had more to say, but I've been working on this off and on for a couple hours now and my brain just doesn't seem to be functioning today. So, yeah. I feel vaguely like I'm waving my hands in the air yelling "don't be meanies" without any particularly solid grounding. Anybody have anything more coherent to say on the subject?