I’ll tell you now that if I have a friend, and he has sin in his life that I don’t agree with, they know for a fact that I’ll call them out on the carpet. Whether they lied to me, or cursed at someone, it’s a sin. You can debate all day whether you think being homosexual is not sin. I believe that God created man and woman to be together. Not man and man, or woman and woman. Some people will never believe me, and this is why… because it is foolishness to them. I hate the sin they are doing… not the person.

If anyone is interested you can drop by my blog…
http://www.battleforgod.blogspot.com and I have some information on what God’s story is, and how you have a part to play in that story.

Battle for God!

DJ

So my analysis is that this is sociological behavior and not necessarily religious behavior. The religious dimension simply catalyzes this tendency that so many social groups need to maintain in order to identify themselves as a distinct organization among alternatives.

Yes, I think you’re probably right about that.

Something to keep in mind that you have kind of touched upon is that thinking critically requires one to make a judgment and decide between alternatives. This literally means that upon an analysis you cut out alternatives that do not conform to the standards you are bringing to bear.

Doubting an alternative is one way to approach this. What it requires is that the point of view, argument, what have you in question is justified by assumptions that are rationally explainable. Often in evangelical circles the doctrines are presented as “It is what it is and no other option exists”. The judgment and the decisions have been literally rendered already and therefore critical judgment on our part in a sense places us in the same position as the one who made those judgments namely God. Ironically, it is human beings who have rendered the judgments of doctrinal statements (for an inerrantist more so than for a progressive) and the only way to get out of accepting this assertion is to accept that God literally spoke to people and the simply recorded the language as it is asserted Muhammad did for the Qu’Ran. But even this does not get around the issue that people still interpret this language for each given socio-historical condition in which it is presented.

The point here is that no matter what people assert, they are making critical judgments based on an accepted foundation of norms. The problem is then when we question those norms. The issue that Dawkins and others truly have is that many religions do not and, as you have noted, look down upon any activity that questions the norms that are given. So my analysis is that this is sociological behavior and not necessarily religious behavior. The religious dimension simply catalyzes this tendency that so many social groups need to maintain in order to identify themselves as a distinct organization among alternatives.

However, I should add that one of the things that pushed me out of even that version of evangelicalism was their insistence on a narrow view of rationality. Similar to some atheists, the pastor at my former church (the one I got resigned from) was insistent that not only should Christians think rationally about their beliefs, but also that this rational thinking would only ever possibly lead to one conclusion – i.e. the truth of (his particular brand of) Christianity. He could not accept my more “postmodern” insistence sometimes there are multiple possible answers that rationality can point us to and that therefore it should be okay for us to agree to disagree.

I guess since encountering that narrow view of rationality within Christianity, I’m more reactive when it crops up among atheists too.

Even within my conservative evangelical upbringing there was a high value placed on thinking for oneself and, as we put it, “making your faith your own” – in other words, thinking critically about Christianity and deciding for oneself if you believed or not.

In my conservative evangelical background, true critical and independent thinking was blatantly discouraged. The couple people I knew who did it were called backsliders and doubters and it was assumed they’d succumbed to temptation from Satan and needed desperately to get back on the right path. Eventually, some did. Others did not.

I also heard the phrase “making your faith your own,” which sounds nice, but in actuality it meant having a transcendent experience that equalled “accepting Jesus into your heart” or “being baptized in the Holy Spirit.”

It absolutely did NOT mean going outside of Christianity to objectively explore other religious traditions or critically examining the claims of Christianity. Indeed, those things were considered dangerous temptations to be avoided at all costs. Your experience may have been completely different, of course.

Vincent

Though when I turned a critical eye to such stories I didn’t become an atheist. Instead I discovered something about stories and myths.

Yes, my experience was similar to Dwight’s. I can understand your experience Vincent, as I know there are many forms of faith that do not encourage critical thinking about one’s own beliefs. However that was not my experience. As I said, even as a conservative evangelical I was encouraged to think critically about my own beliefs – including the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, the birth, life, death & resurrection of Jesus, etc. And I firmly believe that rational people can come to differing conclusions about all of these things and yet still be considered “rational”. For instance, I’m not going to accuse atheists of being “irrational” simply because they don’t agree with the conclusions my own rational inquiry has led me to.

I’m not sure that works for a definition of naturalism. Before scientists discovered pandas what was their status of? Where they unnatural, supernatural, or unreal?

This assumes that it was an objective event in space and time for which there is no confirmed corroboration that it happened other than in Acts. That is to say, there is equal probability that the event on the road to Tarsus could have been completely in the mind of Paul and Paul was a convincing enough rhetorician that Luke bought it hook, line and sinker. It therefore assumes faith in the reality of the resurrection. This is why such a story is problematic for a naturalist. Naturalism is not just an understanding that reality is in nature, but an understanding of nature that is externally verifiable.

I think myths don’t contain but can point to God (though sometimes they are more potent than other kinds of descriptions).

If we can talk about those processes that make for life, for good, for human community, for transformation, I believe it’s possible to speak of God or God’s work.