Amazing that you expect ME to read YOUR post in the context and humour in which it was "intended", yet you fail to do the same for me.

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 6:37 AM, Rick Moen via luv-talk <luv-talk@luv.asn.au> wrote:
Quoting Michael Scott (mds@inoz.net):

> Rick, without elucidating on every point of your colourful "response", what
> I take offense to is not that you expressed your opinion on luv-talk.

In that regard, for context, please remember that I was responding to
Trent Buck saying _he_ found the Bible inpenetrable after a few pages,
i.e., was not able to read far into it.  Therefore, I was replying back
to Trent (Cc to the luv-talk assembled, of course) suggesting _another_
way to approach reading the Bible that could render it appealing, i.e.,
by interpreting it using a secular framing, seeing it in light of
politics and local history and literature, rather than through the
interpretive lens of religion.

IMO, it really should not have been necessary to salt and pepper my
prose with 'Of course, this is par-excellence NOT the only way to read
the Bible, for many, many reasons including people starting with
radically different assumptions about the universe than mine, e.g.,
those, not to put a fine point on it, who are devout and for whom this
is a holy book.  For gosh sake, wasn't that obvious enough without my
needing to expostulate about it personally?

You did more than just advise Trent another way of looking at it. Given that it IS a "religious" text, written in the first case for the Jewish people, and later for Christians, maybe it should be interpreted in the context in which it was written, rather than as a history textbook.

> It is that if _I_ came on luv-talk expressing my opinion about the Bible,
> about Christianity, about a certain kind of "Christian", I would probably
> be howled off, because I hold the views of a Christian, so I would be seen
> as "bible-bashing", "evangelising?", annoyingly expressing my religion in
> public.

Once again, you appear to be confusing the verb 'evangelise' with the
adjective (and noun) 'evangelical', even though those are extremely
different things.  I will make no apology whatsoever for saying I find
evangelicals very alien to customary, traditional, and otherwise
universal characteristics of Christianity.

No, I'm not. If _I_ came on expressing my opinion of something Christian, I might be evangelising, but be seen as being evangelical in your eyes. Either way, it would probably not be accepted by most of the audience.
 
You aren't even an evangelical, so why the Gehenna are you offended?
The strange subtype of alleged-Christianity of which I wrote isn't yours
at all (you say).

Here's where we might be confusing each other. Evangelising is INSTRUCTED in the New Testament. If I express my religious beliefs I may be seen as evangelical to you, but not to me. I'm simply expressing my religious beliefs. You're putting labels on different "types of Christians", where I'm saying that some who identify as "Christian" are not following the teachings of the Bible. You've rounded them into your definition of "evangelical". I'm saying I'm not one of the ignorant people who identify themselves as Christian but do not follow the teachings of the person they claim to follow.

Label me with anything you like. I told you WHAT offended me. Not WHO offended me. If YOU can't see that, you're doing just what you're criticising me for.




> But those who come from the opposite end of the spectrum, who agree in the
> negative, can BASH the Bible and Christianity with impunity, without
> expecting any negative response.

Au contraire, Michael.  Go back and read again what I wrote.  You will
find that I neither 'bashed the Bible' nor 'bashed Christianity'.  So,
stick your offense-taking in a pipe and smoke it, sir.

I used "bash" in a broad sense to show the IRONY of the term "bible-bashing". You said what you thought of the Bible, in no uncertain terms.

(Well, there was one small exception, the bit where I was startled by an
Israeli asserting that I am 'a Christian' simply because I had mentioned
observing Christmas as a secular holiday for the first ten years of my
life until my father, Pan American World Airways Captain Arthur Moen,
was killed in an airplane crash caused by employer negligence at
Christmas 1968.  My subsequent swipe at Christianity as a
'Middle-Eastern death cult' was just a bit unkind, but IMO was
forgivable because it was also witty.  If you cannot look past that one
ideological sharp slap, then you're far too hypersensitive, and the hell
with you.)

There you go again, missing the whole context of my original post. Hypersensitive? I told you where I was coming from. Standing back and watching swipes at the Bible, at Christianity, every day, and saying nothing. Not being allowed to mention religion...it's just not done... but atheists can do it with impunity.... did you miss that point? Hypersensitive?


> And you, in one fell swoop, did a nice summary of BASHING the Bible in one
> email, in response to Russell bashing one kind of "christian" and the
> Bible.

If you call that bashing the Bible and bashing Christianity, then you
need to learn to read better, because it simply wasn't.

Again, as I said, I was using the term "bash" to show the irony.
 
> Yes, you're right, there is a difference between evangelical and
> evangelising. They ARE different. But the discussion about evangelical
> "christians" turned to why a certain group don't read the Bible.

Which I objected to Russell saying, please note, because it was
illogically arrived at and simply untrue.  So, I was ON YOUR SIDE
on that matter, yet you're complaining?  Really?

Again, I was responding to both you and Russell at the same time. I DID say that I applauded you.


> I wasn't offended by you.

Well, you have a really peculiar way of reflecting that.

Who's hypersensitive?


> Again, in this latest post, you have expressed opinion as fact

Bullshit.  Flagrant bullshit.

Nope.... I don't know what happened in Moses' time, neither do you, and archeology is finding evidence of all sorts of things all the time. Don't accuse me of ignoring science while science catches up every day. It certainly hasn't disproved the Bible account. How you read the Bible account, literally, figuratively, differently depending on what evidence turns up, can shape your view of WHAT was written.
_______________________________________________
luv-talk mailing list
luv-talk@luv.asn.au
https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-talk