Christian Evangelicals - not all are made equal
- Thread starter Nevermore
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All but one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Protestant.
The greatest scientist of all time Isaac Newton was Christian.
So was Charles Babbage (father of the computer), Werner Heisenberg (founder of quantum mechanics), Blaise Pascal (invented the hydraulic press), Alessandro Volta (invented the electric battery), Francis Collins (mapped the human genome), Florence Nightingale (elevated nursing as a profession), etc.
I'll have what they're having. I'm with them. They're the smartest humans who ever lived, so I think I better listen to him.
The greatest scientist of all time Isaac Newton was Christian.
So was Charles Babbage (father of the computer), Werner Heisenberg (founder of quantum mechanics), Blaise Pascal (invented the hydraulic press), Alessandro Volta (invented the electric battery), Francis Collins (mapped the human genome), Florence Nightingale (elevated nursing as a profession), etc.
I'll have what they're having. I'm with them. They're the smartest humans who ever lived, so I think I better listen to him.
It's also just a ridiculous appeal to authority and doesn't take into consideration the social or historical reasons that Christianity was so prevalent. Much of Christianity was spread and enforced via the sword, easy to make a list of adherents when there's very little alternative.
I think they were /technically/ Protestant/Christian in that it was considered an expectation socially in that era. More of them would have probably considered themselves deists than what's understood from a simple reading of church rolls.
It's hard to get an exact reading on orthodoxy and private beliefs due to those issues. Several were Quakers who had extremely progressive views to begin with in regards to social and religious expectations. They were traditionally considered a Protestant sect, but can be a fair bit, from my reading at least, more universalist.
The idea that "All but one of the signers was a Protestant" is reductive at best, and openly ignores a lot of what we know about the founding father's religious and private beliefs in favor of a 'technical truth.'
For example I am technically a Jehovah's Witness, because despite leaving their faith I've never officially been removed from their member rolls. I do not describe myself as one, and my private beliefs do not match theirs, but if you looked purely at what's on paper, I'd be listed in their ranks.
When asked to define what he means by God he'll start an incoherent ramble that sounds more like pantheism than anything else.
He doesn't believe in a personal god; but he literally said that he thinks atheists should still indoctrinate their kids into Christianity because, being an authoritarian shithead, he thinks being brainwashed to blindly trust irrelevant corrupt authorities is a good thing.
No. Even more than Dennis Prager or Willian Lane Craig, Jordon Peterson is a master of exactly one thing; producing word salad.
At least with Low Bar Bill you can usually figure it out (and realize he's not saying anything that someone else didn't already say more clearly; so why is he so popular again?).
Incorrect.
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, famously made his own version of the Bible that removed all the supernatural bullshit from it.
Benjamin Franklin was a deist; he'd probably be an agnostic or atheist if he'd lived in a time and place where that was more accepted.
Technically I don't think Thomas Paine signed the declaration of Independence, but he was one of the most important people in shaping America's ideals, and he was an atheist.
And those are just the ones who talked about doubting religion enough to know they weren't Christians.
A type of Christian that rejected the Trinity, though.
And you know something he did believe in? Alchemy.
Heisenberg was Christian, yes, but Jewish enough that the Nazis still saw him as a Jew.
And that's a very cherry-picked list. What about Euclid (father of mathematics), Aristotle (who got so much right it took over a thousand years before people could admit he was wrong about big things too), Omar Khayyam (the greatest mathemtician of the middle ages...and he also wrote some poetry or something), Galileo Galilei* (first to use the telescope for astronomy), Benjamin Franklin (inventor of the lighning rod, bifocals, and public libraries), Charles Darwin (originator of the theory of evolution), Albert Einstein (developed the theory of relativity, and is arguably actually a greater scientist than Newton), Isaac Asimov (the most prolific science explainer of all time, all while also being a successful fiction author), Carl Sagan (the greatest science communicator of all time), Stephen Hawking (who contributed more to understanding black holes than anyone else), etc.?
*Technically Galileo was Catholic, but the Church was very famously a hindrance to his work and not an aid to it, to put it mildly
I'm not sure if atheist is the right word for Paine, but he DID consider organized religion of ANY flavor to be evil. Given his writings on the subject, he'd probably end up in the deist camp. He was also a staunch abolitionist, was against capital punishment(which nearly ended up getting him decapitated during the French Reign of Terror), and had views that today would be classified as socialist. He could also be rather abrasive in his interactions with others, which ended up alienating a lot of people by the time of his death.
jordan peterson is an idiot's idea of a smart man.
I was going to list every Jewish Nobel Prize winner but that list would be huge because Jews have won 20% of all Nobel Prizes given. By your arbitrary criteria Judaism is the one true religion because we have a lot of super smart people.
But the real point behind this is that if you look every major religion has its brilliant minds and every religion has its dumb, ignorant idiots. When a religion made up exclusively of geniuses pops up give me a call but until then? Nah. Your argument is flawed.
I listen to old Art Bell episodes. I think he is Christian, but he's open to everything. I think he mentioned he does not have a problem with reincarnation, citing the fact that reincarnation used to be part of the Roman Catholic Bible until it was voted out.
I'm probably going to regret this but...
Yeah I'm Jewish and I've read the New Testament. A few times over. Not only because I considered converting to Christianity at various points but also because I'm a historian and a history teacher. And during my studies I wanted to fully understand what it was that caused the various schisms in the Christian world that helped shape the modern world we live in. The secular history only gets you so far, I wanted to see what it was they were arguing over. So I've read both Catholic and Protestant versions of the New Testament, with a skimming of a copy of an Greek Orthodox Bible.
I'm perhaps not as well versed as someone who was raised Christian, but I have the basics down, I think.
To tell you the truth, you're probably BETTER versed than the average person who was raised Christian, at least on the foundational texts. Culturally, perhaps not, though. On paper, I was born Methodist, but my parents were rather non-devout and I pretty much dropped what little belief I had by the time I left Elementary school(I guess, for some reason, the idea of a supreme creator NEVER clicked with me, even as an impressionable kid). I've personally never read the whole thing, just bits and pieces and in my experience, a lot of Christians have probably read about as much of the books as I have...
The average Christian believes that the Bible says whatever their priest/pastor tells them it says, even if they have read that part and not seen it.
I mean, how else do supposedly "Bible-only" sects believe in concepts like original sin, the serpent being Satan, the idea that Biblical "kinds" aren't the same as the biological species concept, the hyper-evolution that evolution-deniers ironically require to get so many species after a global flood, Jesus being prophesied in the Old Testament, the gospels being a coherent narrative instead of four contradicting versions, the rapture, or that it says "abortion is murder" anywhere in there?
I mean, how else do supposedly "Bible-only" sects believe in concepts like original sin, the serpent being Satan, the idea that Biblical "kinds" aren't the same as the biological species concept, the hyper-evolution that evolution-deniers ironically require to get so many species after a global flood, Jesus being prophesied in the Old Testament, the gospels being a coherent narrative instead of four contradicting versions, the rapture, or that it says "abortion is murder" anywhere in there?
Tell me more:
Why did you consider converting to Christianity at various points in your life?
What stopped you from converting to Christianity at each of these points?
There were two points.
The first was early in my 20s. My mother's family, you see, isn't Jewish. They're Anglicans of British and Scandinavian stock. My mom converted to Judaism when she and my dad got engaged. And my dad's family was mostly in Montreal whereas my mom's family was in southern Ontario where we lived. So I had an upbringing where we celebrated Christian holidays alongside Jewish ones, and I went to church for various family functions on my mom's side. As a kid I thought nothing of it. Synagogue, church, it's all the same, really. A place where some old guy in a robe talks about G-d a bunch, I had to wear uncomfortable clothes to, and it's all just a preamble to food and hanging out with my cousins, really.
But as I got older and questions of identity came up, part of me felt more drawn to my mother's side of my family then my father's side, the Jewish side, simply by virtue of being around my mother's side. So I considered converting to Anglican Christianity for a bit.
The second time was in my mid 20s. And this is kind of wild. I'm gay and I didn't come out of the closet- to myself or anyone else- until I was 25. Shortly after I met a guy, and we fell in love. Like me he was freshly out of the closet and we helped each other through that. He was also a Catholic. And a devout one. Strange given that he was gay, but hey. I'm not devoutly Jewish but I do still have faith so... like... we were a couple of oddballs.
Anyway it got to the point in our relationship where it seemed like we would have to consider our future together. And for a while I considered converting to Catholicism for him. Yeah I know. I would have converted to Catholicism, a religion we couldn't even get married in. Nuts, right? But that's how I felt.
Not to get into the nitty gritty of my love life, but it didn't work out in the end.
The first one was a matter of theology. I was questioning my identity as a Jewish person, hell, as a person in general. And Anglican Christianity seemed to "fit."
But when I got serious about considering it I had to ask myself theological questions. And the big one was "is Jesus the Messiah as foretold by Jewish prophecy?" The central tenant of all Christian denominations is that yes, he is. And I worked on it, I thought about it. I considered it, and it just didn't click for me. And I decided it would be insincere of me to convert to Christianity if I couldn't believe that central tenant.
The second time? Well... I would have converted out of love. Funnily enough what my mom did. When that relationship ended up not working I was in a bit of a state, and religion was suddenly very far from my mind. When I'd gone through my requisite ugly crying and tub of ice cream I just sort of... never thought of it again.
Funnily enough I'm dating another Catholic guy now, but this hasn't come up. Probably because he's the most lapsed Catholic who's ever lapsed and I'm the most lapsed Jew who's ever lapsed
Here's the thing.
I don't hate or dislike Christianity as a faith. When I talk about Christianity's history of antisemitism I'm talking about it as a historical thing that happened, not something I hold over Christians today. When I talk about my- and other Jews- unwillingness to accept Jesus as the Messiah it's not to disrespect Christians who hold those beliefs, but just a statement of fact.
Christian history is fascinating to me- both the good and bad- and I have friends and family who are Christians. I don't have anything against the faith itself, and I admit that as a moral standard Jesus does pretty well for himself. If you actually listen to what he himself says it's a good set of lessons to live by, by and large.
Any issues I have with Christianity in the modern day is less against the religion in general and more bad actors who I feel abuse the words of Jesus, or the Bible in general (New or Old Testaments, take your pick) for political gain and to fearmonger. I don't hate Christianity or Christians though, nor do I hate Jesus.
I have a historical interest in it all, and had a theological interest at key points in my life, but at this point I'm pretty settled being a very liberal Jew.
The same goes for any major religion too.