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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (34503)	4/12/1999 1:50:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Chuzzlewit, I agree with you 100% on this point. It should be perfectly obvious that religions, as well as moral and ethical systems, change and evolve over time, as the circumstances of the people who profess them also change and evolve. In the process, however, I would suggest that individual religions do retain a certain "immutable core" that distinguishes them from other religions. That is why I can't stomach the goody-goody-two-shoes "all religions are essentially the same and profess the same eternal values" Unitarian-Smorgasbordian approach. (And perhaps the conservative Christians are at least partially right to say that Liberal Protestants who reject the divinity of Christ and all the rest of the Pauline paraphernalia are not really Christians at all. Speaking for myself, there was a point after which I could not call myself a Christian any more.) On the subject of the evolution of moral concepts & of the concept of God, you might enjoy (as I did) this book (by an ex-nun turned unbeliever): Karen Armstrong: History of God : The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Armstrong is especially good, I think, on the early periods of each religion; the later chapters tend to resemble laundry lists (this thinker thought this; that thinker thought that; etc., etc.). BTW, I think you misunderstood my comment about "irrelevance." My point was that when you talk about what Jesus taught, most people you are talking to will be thinking of the Jesus they know through the Gospels, not of some hypothetical historical Jesus. That, to my mind, is a fact, whether you like it or not. Take another look at the post. Joan