Hi Is Mise,

Thanks for that correction. Yes, I should have known - Mother Teresa was a wonderful example (even to the genuine Left, if there is one) in her actual work, not just her prayers, for the most disadvantaged in Calcutta. It's possible that she had lost much of her faith even as early as the fifties, but still kept going with her deeds. Into her late eighties.

I wonder if there are any 'Left' projects, anywhere in the world, with that sort of dedication to the most oppressed and downtrodden. I wonder if any 'Left' person has actually ever done anything for anybody else like that.

I'm racking my brains: no, I don't think so.

Nope, still can't think of any. Any ideas, Paul, Steele ?

Joe

“Deceit”, runner?

<<... since your description of Christianity is either based out of ignorance or deceit ...>>

I’m not the one trying to link homosexuality to child sex abuse in the total absence of any evidence for a causal link.

I haven’t described Christianity, either, and for the simple fact that, with all the scriptural contradictions (http://bibviz.com), doing so is difficult and certainly not possible in 350 words. The over 30,000 denominations are a testament to that.

The Bible is one big Choose-your-own-adventure.

<<... so I doubt whether you conclusions are very accurate.>>

Shall we test that then? No, I didn’t think so.

' I’m not the one trying to link homosexuality to child sex abuse in the total absence of any evidence for a causal link.'

no you are in denial that many if not most of the paedophile done by priests were homosexual acts.

You say that the Bible is one big choose. And yet the big bang and evolution fantasy is not one big choose. Give us a break AJ. You know that the gospel message is very plain and simple. Your issue is found in John 3:17-18 not in an intellectual barrier. That excuse is deceit.

'Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. '

if a man (priest, minister, any male) has sexual relations with an underage male then he is a homosexual by definition.

"homosexual

adjective
1.
sexually attracted to people of one's own sex.

noun
1.
a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex.
synonyms: gay, lesbian, gay person, lesbigay...."

Well, I don't have the statistics, runner, but I'm happy to grant that you're right, because correlation doesn't imply causation.

<<... you are in denial that many if not most of the paedophile done by priests were homosexual acts.>>

I have given you a credible reason for what's going on in the priesthood. Unsurprisingly, you have not addressed it.

<<You say that the Bible is one big choose. And yet the big bang and evolution fantasy is not one big choose.>>

What's a “choose”, and what is your evidence for evolution and the big bang being one? Always so light on the evidence.

<<You know that the gospel message is very plain and simple.>>

Yes, so simple that Christianity split off into over 30,000 denominations. Your god's not a very good communicator, is he?

<<Your issue is found in John 3:17-18 not in an intellectual barrier.>>

What issue?

<<That excuse is deceit.>>

What excuse for what? And how is it “deceit”?

--

Is Mise,

I think runner's clear on that much.

Hi AJ,

Sorry for butting in, but your observation that "..... Christianity split off into over 30,000 denominations..... " is so true, and that explains how all manner of semi-religious and non-religious and even anti-religious ideas might have also 'split off' from the orthodoxy, to provide a vast and fractious forest of ideas that eventually, after many burnings at the stake, provoked various strands of the Enlightenment, in all its imperfections, up and down, forward movements (says who, forward?) and back-slides.

So, indirectly, and most certainly not intentionally, one of the eventual outcomes of all the wars within Western Christianity after, say, 1520, an incredibly mis-shapen chid, was the Enlightenment, in all its Frankensteinian forms, which continue today.

In that sense, Christianity was most certainly one of the unintentional parents of the Enlightenment: tiny buds of ideas in the Renaissance, resurrected from Greek and Roman and even early Christian ideas, most of them stomped on by the church authorities, with some flowering, coupled with the new technologies of knowledge, such as telescopes, which allowed/forced new discoveries and pushed other ideas along willy-nilly.

Even Marx, if he had been completely honest, would admit that some of his principles derived, one way or another, from Judaic and Christian, and certainly from other Enlightenment, foundations. We stand on the shoulders of giants, to coin a phrase, and - even from this atheist's point of view - some of the lofty principles we espouse, usually from a safe distance, spring way back from those sources.

What do you think of all that rambling ?

Joe