Well, Teresa, I have been asked to leave a few blogs myself, so... ;)

I wonder if worldnetdaily would post with the same breathless excitement about the items you mentioned above... perhaps not.

MIT,

Hey, a person probably hasn't said anything worth saying if they haven't clashed with SOMEONE. And the WND would only report on such things if they could somehow work in an angle of racial inferiority...like "look at those Africans thinking they're burning witches" or whatever. Or maybe they could do a hysterical peice about how the "liberal media" are persecuting Christians by reporting them at all.

Still...I HAVE been snarky. But mostly because the tone at Neil's blog and the comments often seemed to be playfully so, and so I figured it was OK to return the tone.

If I was told I went over the line, I apologized.

This particular time, I really felt that I was merely trying to point out holes in his argument/and or determine where exactly Neil puts the line betweeen "intercession" being a proper human function, or infringing on the devine right of the Holy Spirit...and if he had any Sound Doctrinal arguments for it that made sense.

It seems like if it can be described as "evil" and implied to be demonic, there should be some sort of definative point or test to know when you've gone beyond praying for someone, withnessing for someone, bargaining with God on someone else's behalf, etc...and wandered into insulting the Holy Spirit territory.

Which is, of course, the unpardonable sin.

It seems like a kind of crirical point to me, especially if you are going to accuse a very large denomination of your religion of doing said offense.

That was a very revealing read. Every single point of behavior, every act of (claimed) dishonesty and illogic and arrogance, describes to a "T" the way he presented himself when he used to visit your blog. When people like him him show up at the various science blogs they are the same or even worse. Apparently, that sort of behavior is perfectly acceptable for Christians, and if someone dares to call them on it then that person is the one guilty of said behavior. Mind-boggling.

Rick,

There's some sort of impossible disconnect going on here. I don't understand what it is. It seems to be obviously willfull ignorance on Neils part to us, since the explinations are there, and he simply refuses to accept them, despite the fact that they stand up to challenges with consistant and complete explinations.

Yet somehow, we are expected to accept changeable, situational, and directly contradictory explinations as "truth"...and accused of willful ignorance if we cannot.

Like Neil said in his comment, maybe he just isn't explaining it very well...but you think SOMEONE would be able to. Someone in the last 2000 years should be able to give a coherant, consistant, and rationally acceptable argument.

Luther's best efforts lead him to the conclusion that Jews should be disposessed, subjected to forced labor, killed, their law-books burned, and driven from the country. Yet somehow they blame the holocaust on Darwin's theory, despite it's emphasises the importance and value of variation.

Calvin's best efforts lead to the horrible death of Severtus.

And thos guys were supposedly an imporvement on a philosophy that brought us inquisitions and indugences.

The much touted "moral foundation" of religion is a shaky one indeed if no better arguments can be found. Not to say that any of these philosophies MUST result in evil...just that they don't seem any more reliable than secular rationality.

Which is why they MUST misrepresent it.

For instance, no matter how many proofs are offered that "altruism" is an evolutionary advantage, the religionists insist that "Darwinism" says it is a disadvantage! Try to explain it to them, and the just plug their ears and yell "la-la-la-la".

Sigh.

Guys, I think it's something deeper than just Neil. People are jamming their heads into the sand these days with so much force that the impact is registering on Lunar seismometers.

Before I continue, consider this: I'm a Deist. I believe in God. No logic behind this statement, just a faith I've had my entire life. Along with that faith, however, comes the belief that no one religion has "got it right" because, frankly, when it comes to the idea of a supreme consciousness, any "simple" explanation should be immediately suspect.

In short, I believe in God, but I'm not a practicing Christian or, well, anything any longer.

The thing I've noticed lately is the propensity for otherwise rational, sharp-witted people to embrace obvious falsehoods in a desire to shore-up their religious worldview. Take my father-in-law. Kristi had a spirited discussion with him recently about how Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers intended this government to be separate from any established Church. Her father refused to accept this fact. Sources were cited, examples were brought forth, it didn't matter. "This is a Christian country," her said, "And that's that."

If it were just her dad I'd write it off as an example of late-in-life religious fervor. It's not. This "I'm-going-to-push-this-obviously-false-worldview-on-you-facts-be-damned!" behavior is everywhere...and it's terrifying. How else can you explain the sudden backslide to the Scopes Monkey Trial arguments?

I have no answers here. I'm just terrified by what I see. Remember, folks, mobs are bad news all by themselves, but mobs that think they have Gaw-HAW-wud on their side? Those are just dangerous.

Tony,
I think what u are seeing with the
'I'm-going-to-push-this-obviously-false-worldview-on-you-facts-be-damned!" thing is fear of Modernity. A type of Evangelical Christianity that does not believe in much education has thrived in the American South (and near by) in the last century or so. This mind set has been very provincial and sort of feeling in a "circle the wagons" kind of mode. Since Television has become so ubiquitous, modern culture has poured into the area from the coasts. It has been shocking to the good people at First Church on the corner. I can tell you that people who are 60 now grew up in a world that was amazingly different than people who are 35 in the same cities.

They don't want facts, they don't want overly educated people explaining things, they want Mayberry back, and that, I feel is that.

MIT,

Actually, that was a darned good show. Very wholesome. That Opie sure was a pistol.

That was the one where Mr. Roper carried a bullet in his shirt pocket, right?

See, the world could be a little more like that. Cops who carry their bullets in their pockets.

"Tony, I think what u are seeing with the 'I'm-going-to-push-this-obviously-false-worldview-on-you-facts-be-damned!" thing is fear of Modernity."

You nailed it, MIT. The worst thing that ever happened to the world, as far as the Neils and Huckabees and Cheneys and Dembskis of the world are concerned, was the Enlightenment. And they've been fighting it tooth and claw ever since. It's not enough for them to hide in oppressive darkness; they want to force the rest of us to dwell there, too.

Rick,
I think one reason why they want force others to believe the same way, is that they (deep down) are kinda scared they might be wrong. They have never critically viewed their own beliefs, and ANY one doing so must be punished! I hear over and over that if there is one tiny flaw in "the Bible" or whatever then the whole edifice comes crashing down.

Naturally there ARE inconsistencies and issues with our text of the Bible, but, so what? I have examined my faith, I know what "flaws" are there, and to be honest, no big deal to me. My faith is far stronger now than it was long ago.

Frightened, uneducated Fundamentalists don't realized it, but they are historically, barely even Christian. God is the ultimate lover and mystery!

MIT --

I agree with your assessment, both of the "fear of the Modern world" and of the fact that the "Fundamentalist Christian faith" is barely even Christian.

I made a point of perusing Neil's blog yesterday. When I saw the discussion dive into the nitty-gritty of this verse versus that, or how the Dawkins atheists had got that niggling point wrong (oh, the nerve!), it all reminded me of discussions I read back on the USENET in 1990 that went something like this:

"No, that WASN'T Doctor McCoy on the Enterprise D in 'Encounter at Farpoint'! They never said his name!"

"They didn't *have* to say his name, numb-nuts! It was freaking McCoy! He even made a 'Vulcan' reference!"

"So? Lots of people in Starfleet had to know Vulcans! Unless they SAID it was him, it WASN'T him!"

(And no, I'm not kidding. That's a pretty close paraphrase of an argument that I saw (and, honestly, engaged in) back in 1990 about whether McCoy was in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

This obsession with the tiniest details at the expense of the main message was something I observed initially in those fandom circles. I later saw it in everything from straight literature (oh, the arguments about Shakespeare!), to physics.

Finally, in 1992, I came across the wonderful criticism by L.C. Knight entitled "How Many Children Hath Lady MacBeth". Knight pointed out that people had been trying to figure out how many children the character had, due to her commenting on dashing her infant's head against stone. Rather than accept the line as analogy, allusion, or even hyperbole, literati insisted that Shakespeare had meant to demonstrate that Lady MacBeth was already a murderer.

Knight's essay was essentially a way of saying "Wow, did you guys miss the point!"

By focusing on the minutia, the readers had *missed the entire message*. They were so desperate to find additional meaning in the passage that the lost Shakespeare's original point.

That article worked as a philosophical touchstone for me: "Find the message first." A corollary would be "Don't sweat the details." Stay on message and you'll be fine.

Which brings me back to religion.

For me, the central tenant of *any* religion boils down to this: Do not do to others that which is hateful to you. Anything beyond that is semantics. Further, to kill other human beings over different interpretations of this pretty piece of poetry or that is not only not holy, it's abhorrent.

Sadly, I'm in the minority. So I sit back and quietly observe the scuffles, all the while watching to make sure that the fights don't spill onto my front lawn.