The most useful thing for me that you've said so far was: You cannot take [Christ's] words and use them like mathematical equations.
This is still, and since about our second post, a sticking point we have. Your Christianity is one thing, and that thing is just too narrow a definition to encompass 15th century Popes, evangelical radio hosts, modern Lutherans, George W. Bush, and the average liberal Christian in America.
Christianity today, and its history as it informs today's morality is going to have to be subdivided if we're to make much progress. My thinking on this starts with assumptions that Sam Harris made in The End of Faith and how that dis-serves you.
He makes the argument that functionally, thinking about the Almighty as a Muslim leads to very different results than thinking about the Almighty as a Christian. In fact I think I remember his reference to India's Jains. Harris makes the claim (very supportable, I think) that one main difference between a Jain and a Muslim from a real-world-results point of view is that you simply can not be a Jain and make enough leaps of logic to become a terrorist (perhaps he said suicide bomber). That Jainism's basic assumptions are fundamentally incompatible with the conclusions one would have to come to in order to decide on martyrdom as a course of action. I agree with him about this, and I'd expect you would too.
An earlier argument we had was whether your understanding of Christianity can represent enough of the American Christianity to make useful comparisons. I think we're in a position to decide that now. My interpretation is that we are going to have to crack Christianity apart in order to make progress.
Four years ago a CNN poll reported that almost 60% of the nation believes that Revelation prophecies are going to be a literal reality. I think we have to agree that someone with that position is pretty fundamentally different from you in how they gain their moral compass. As different as Jains and Muslims? No, I don't think so, but certainly how and why a person's moral compass may migrate over time (and into his progeny) has to be very divergent on whether they think the Rapture as depicted in Revelation is an inevitable reality for human beings.
This is one exemplar of what I think we would find would be a dozen fundamental differences between you and large numbers of American Christians. I won't push further into the argument I made lightly last month that maybe you and they are not both Christians, but I will assert that in terms of how your interpretations of Christianity will inform the logical extension of your morality, you are not headed in the same direction.
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Jim: First off, I think we can explore some of this issue in continuing our discussion. In other words, as we look at the words and deeds of Christians and non-Christians we will come to a better understanding of what is the necessary result of following Jesus.
However, I need to make some important consessions at this point. Most Christians believe differently from me. (Some Christians even believe non-Christians will go to hell, but they are the extreme minority. http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_savn.htm) But many believe that Jesus is the best way to Heaven. Many believe the words in the bible are literally true. (Whatever that means for a collection of history, literature, poetry and social commentary.)
Of course, the polls are the resut, in no small part, of many have failing to do the work to make their faith relevant to their life. They just say, "Yeah, that's what I believe, the one about Jesus." I think that has made Christianity vulnerable to attacks from people like Harris (and Bishop Spong for that matter) AND I think the most common defense is to claim you cannot question the religious belief of another. That is bad for religion and, if not corrected, will lead to the extinction of religion. So, I accept that I'm in the minority and it bothers me.
That said, I still think that strong Christianity does not necessarily lead to bigotry. And what I meant by saying you can't use Christ's words as equations is that when a faithful person reads the words of Christ, the faithful person is doing more than when a lawyer examines laws for the "plain meaning." Even someone who believe the Bible is the word of God. (A belief that is unsupported by the Bible itself and Christian tradition.)
This is a deep idea. It is not easily expressed, and so I think we can proceed looking into the words & deeds of Christians, but come back to this point over and over again.
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