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?
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. 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). Is it that you've decided to become an ex-officio ambassador for the evangelicals for purposes of taking umbrage on their behalf? Have you decided that any time someone says something unflattering about _any_ variety of Christian, you must leap forward and state how shocked and offended you are? (Are you perhaps bored and in great need of a hobby?)
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. (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.)
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.
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?
I wasn't offended by you.
Well, you have a really peculiar way of reflecting that.
Again, in this latest post, you have expressed opinion as fact
Bullshit. Flagrant bullshit.