Actually, there's three kinds of folk.

Those who can count and those who can't.

Merci, dear Poirot

Evidently david f

Is one of us "don'ts"

I think I'm actually witnessing 'Christphobia' in real time.

"After the age of the apostles, the theory arose that God was through with the Jews,"

Do you see how it works ? "the theory arose".. nice. That was the point in David's phobia where he ventured out into the deep unknown of 'the theory'.

Who's "theory" ? Why? how does this 'theory' connect with the inspired Word of God? if such a 'theory' is in flagrant disagreement with the Word of God...of what value is the 'theory' ? It might as well be something I personally make up right now!

But.. "the theory" can serve a purpose.. it can be magnified, exaggerated, repeated... to the point where it becomes "established fact".

Just like in Pakistan right NOW... there is a christian woman up on 'Blasphemy' charges based on rumor. Just like the raging mob of some 25,000 Muslims who hysterically burned, raped, and murdered Christians because of 'the theory'/rumor that they had desecrated the Quran.

Some "Theories" are very dangerous. Even more dangerous when people use them as a replacement for fact and foundation.

The Biblical record is adamant and clear

(Rom 11 Pauls words)

//1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.//

So..any THEORY which goes against the primary proponent of Gentile Christianity, is not worth a crumpet other than to demonstrate 'Christphobia' in this forum.

David Judges 'Christianity' by the actions of a few.
Should others Judge 'Jews' by the insideous actions of a few porn merchants?
If David was consistent, he would equally Judge all Muslims by the actions of those who wish to blow us up. In the absence of such consistency..I have to suggest there is another 'emotion' at work.

Dear AGIR,

I have not judged Christianity by the acts of a few. The Inquisition, the Wars of the Reformation, the Christians who participated in the Holocaust were the acts of many Christians.

I have acknowleged the Christians of goodwill such as Bishop Spong, the Evangelical Sisterhood of St Mary who have acknowledged and tried to make amends for the bloody Christian past. There are other Christians who have tried to atone for their past such as Pope John XXIII who changed the liturgy.

There are many Christians of goodwill.

You are not one of them. You merely accuse a person who brings up the bloody Christian record as an enemy.

Not only that but you ignore the fact that massacres of Jews and other non-Christians often followed their rejection of Christian missionaries. In spite you continue your unwanted missionising.

I think most Christians in Australia at this time accept multicuralism and want to live with people of different beliefs and ideas. They are decent people who are what they are and are willing to let other people be what they are.

David f.,

Thank You for this thread. I've been reading everyone's comments with great interest. Tor Hundloe has this to say, in his book, "From Buddha to Bono: Seeking sustainability," : "While I can empathise with any living thing, it is my thoughts, my feelings, not its thoughts and feelings, which I am forced to bring to bear on what I do. I cannot escape being anthropocentric..."

And George Soros tells us:

"The Enlightenment constituted a giant step forward... Allowing reason to decide what is true and false, what is right and wrong, was a tremendous innovation. It marked the beginning of modernity... The philosophers of the Enlightenment are no longer read...indeed, we may find them unreadable - but their ideas have become ingrained in our way of thinking. The rule of reason, the supremacy of science, the universal brotherhood of man...The political, social and moral values of the Enlightenment were admirably stated in the US Declaration of Independence, and that document continues to be an inspiration for people throughout the world...Instead of accepting tradition as the ultimate authority, the Enlightenment subjected tradition to critical examination. The results were exhilarating. The creative energies of human intellect were unleashed."
(George Soros, 1998).

The dichotomous nature of most public debate lends itself too easily to explanations that allow for simplistic oppositions to be defined. The print and electronic media cannot deal with complexity - hence its need to reduce complexity to sound bites and easily understood analysis for their audiences. The consumers of these media products grow up understanding the world around them through these reductive re-productions of reality. This does not mean complexity cannot be presented, indeed it can be.

But unfortunately this complexity of knowledge has become commodified and is organised hiearchically in most western societies. So it is often the elite who endowed with knowledge of the complexity but then they too commodify it for profit.

This is a crisis in the redistibution of knowledge for all and this usually underpins the us/they social and cultural and religious conflicts.

In societies that are organised around exploiting the labour of many (industrialistion) this knowledge by dint of its distributional rationale will naturally create a up ward pyramid.

In societies where civil society is the organising objective, you will find a greater number of people understanding complexity as a normative condition of their citizenry and thus less conflict over simple us/them conditions. This civil society is occuring online.

Hence the reason why so much is being researched on the collapse of community, the im-plosion of social capital etcetera.

Civil society, however, is for a large portion of younger generations an online and global phenomenon with online resources to maintain online social capital, trust and engagement.

It is time to thoroughly define and empirically grasp today’s forms
of civil society made by contemporary people with contemporary means,
in a contemporary world. For massively going online may well be the
21st-century expression of community, civic involvement, connectivity
and identity.