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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DLL who wrote (16225)	5/24/1998 1:30:00 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 39621

DLL, I think everyone has a different way of expressing what they are trying to say. Sam is an older man who has had lots of physical problems in his life, and may even be in pain as he is writing. I do not know that, and do not want to be presumptive, but certainly there are many styles of discussion. Perhaps his general zeal, or the sense he is running out of time, his basic temperment, and a lot of other factors come together to make his style difficult for some to understand. And certainly, what he is saying would be very disturbing to a lot of Christians. Since I wrote to you earlier, I have read a lot more of his posts. While I don't know much about the Biblical period, I do know more about medieval and modern history, and the history of Christianity during these more recent times is indeed filled with many millions of deaths at the hands of Christians who were trying to conquer land, convert people, rid themselves of irritating neighbors, or kill just because they believed other groups to be evil. So when Sam writes about all that, or quotes sources that do so, I do agree with him. Your posts are very polite, and do deserve answering, in my opinion. Like Sam, however, I have had the experience over here of trying to answer some people's posts candidly and at length, and ended up just getting insulted in the end. If I am asked to provide information, for example, then when I do the information is ruled to be the work of Satan. DCF, I belive, asked me to provide an actual list of Bible verses that were very negative towards women, I guess assuming I could not. When I did, then he demanded that I give the context in which they all occurred. I mean, why? I already proved my point. If he wants to dispute that they are negative by putting them in context, perhaps he should take the time to do that. Maybe Sam doesn't answer sometimes because he knows what will happen next. I think Sam is being very honest about the way he believes. Some of the historical data is disturbing, particularly to people who take the Bible literally. But Sam is not even saying he doesn't believe in God!! He is just saying that the Bible doesn't hold water as a document, and the history of the early Christians is not so pure as it seems. If your beliefs are strong, Sam's views should not really matter. But I would urge everyone to read widely, and consider many points of view. I think that is why when children go away to college, many of them change their religious beliefs, or drop them. They discover religion from a historical point of view, and really get turned off to all the bloodshed that has occurred "in the name of God". I don't want to be offensive, but something in a Woody Allen movie really stuck with me. A character is saying that if Jesus came back now he wouldn't be able to stop throwing up after he saw what people had done in his name. That is very close to my own belief about Jesus, as well. And I think he would feel the same way about the hate and bigotry and ignorance often expressed right here on this thread.