What distinguishes Non-Fundamental Christian beliefs?

[Zzyzx]

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What distinguishes Non-Fundamental Christian beliefs from Fundamentalist Christian beliefs?

In a current thread someone complains that ‘Fundamentalist Atheists’ (whatever that means) cannot / do not distinguish Non-Fundamental Christian beliefs from Fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

What, exactly, do Non-Fundamental Christian believe that is DIFFERENT from Fundamentalist Christian beliefs?

Which position speaks for Christianity in general?

[SallyF]

I wish it WAS a joke, but Fundamentalist Christians take it very seriously indeed … and they now know why the Dead Sea is so salty.

Liberal, almost-Atheist Christians don't find it funny at all … it's a further embarrassment that has to be made to look like other than what it quite clearly says:

26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

Looks pretty darn clear to me.

[Divine Insight]

Perhaps you have never been in love?

How is that going to help this Biblical folklore?

The story has it that man and beasts were made from the ground, but woman was made of better stuff, from living flesh. For those who struggle with grasping subtleties in meaning, the theme is spelled out quite plainly in the twenty-fourth verse; it's discussing why women can hold such a powerful bond with men, even moreso than their own parents:

• 7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. . . .
  
  19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. . . . But for the man no suitable helper was found. . . .
  
  23 The man said,
  “This is now bone of my bones
  and flesh of my flesh;
  she shall be called ‘woman,’
  for she was taken out of man.�
  24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

No doubt there are some folk who, searching for scientific data in the comparison of a loved one to a summer's day, find only the silliness with which they are choosing to approach the literature; who given half a chance would loudly and proudly voice their 'correction' that a chap's better half is neither 50% of his body nor quantifiably superior. But I suspect that many folk - even among the religious, with all the funny things that can sometimes do to one's reading ability - are able to digest the story without so spectacularly missing the point.

Oh please give me a break!

To begin with love between men and women is not all that great. A great majority of marriages end in divorce. So the love wasn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Moreover, many marriages where people stay together for social reason are often nothing more than two people continuing to live together just to hold up a social facade, when behind closed doors they really aren't enjoying each other company anymore.

What you have posted above appears to rely on romantic love that is the stuff of novels. An unrealistic ideal of love that is seldom found in real life.

So that's hardly going to help this broken folklore.

Besides, let's face it. Almost all attractions between young men and young women are sexual attractions, not love. And evolution explains that perfectly. Far better than a myth that some God created a woman from the rib of a man.

Besides, think of how utterly ridiculous the whole scenario is to begin with.

Why create a man and then give him a woman as a "help mate"?

That's ridiculous. Not only that but what was it that Adam would have needed help with? What was he supposed to be doing that he needed help with?

The fairy tale would have made far more sense for God to have created a child-bearing woman first. Then it would have made sense that her purpose (which was to raise children) required help. So then it would have made sense for God to have given her a help mate.

But that's not how the story goes. As it's written it's just plain ignorant.

What did Adam need help with?

What was he supposed to be doing that he needed help?

If he was supposed to be tending the Garden of Eden why not just give him a tractor with implements?

Seriously.

I mean, we're supposed to believe that God wanted to help man, and yet this God didn't even tell the first man about the wheel? Men had to invent the wheel on their own much later?

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

[Zzyzx]

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Why create a man and then give him a woman as a "help mate"?

Might it just be possible that the 'help mate' idea was inserted by male chauvinist Bible writers to bolster their assumed position as being superior to women?

Many centuries later societies are still crippled by that false notion.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 12 by Divine Insight]

Maybe next we can hear your carefully-argued critique of the Three Little Pigs, assuring us with all seriousness what a silly tale it is, that pigs can't build houses. Seems to me that folk looking for scientific rigour in bronze age fables all deserve equal respect given to their views, whether they are religious fundamentalists or critics with an almost identical mindset.

[bjs]

What distinguishes Non-Fundamental Christian beliefs from Fundamentalist Christian beliefs?

What do you mean by “fundamentalist�?

The literal definition of Christian fundamentalist is someone who believes the five so-called fundamentals of the faith: The inerrancy of the Bible, the literal nature of Christ’s miracles, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, Jesus’ physical resurrection, and the doctrine of atonement.

The founding document of Christian Fundamentalism is The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. We could argue that a fundamentalist is someone who agrees fully with that document. However, that is problematic since several contributors to that 12-volume collection of essays stated that readers did not have to agree with everything in The Fundamentals to be a fundamentalist. They pointed back to the main five fundamentals as the defining beliefs of a fundamentalist.

Or by “fundamentalist� do you mean someone who agrees with other beliefs that some people have associated with fundamentalism, such as pre-millennialism or a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. I think that this is what most people mean when they talk about fundamentalists today. The problem with this view is that The Fundamentals does not include pre-millennialism, and one of the essays directly contradicts that idea the first chapter of Genesis must be interpreted literally.

A fourth possibility is to replace “inerrancy� with “literalism� when interpreting the Bible. This would mean that virtually every passage of the Bible must be interpreted literally. I have never met anyone who thinks this way. I have only seen this view as something non-fundamentalist assign to fundamentalist as a way of attacking fundamentalism.

So what distinguishes a non-fundamentalist depends on what you mean by “fundamentalist.�

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 12 by Divine Insight]

Maybe next we can hear your carefully-argued critique of the Three Little Pigs, assuring us with all seriousness what a silly tale it is, that pigs can't build houses. Seems to me that folk looking for scientific rigour in bronze age fables all deserve equal respect given to their views, whether they are religious fundamentalists or critics with an almost identical mindset.

When I look at the Bible I'm not looking for "scientific" anything. Science isn't even required to see how absurd the Bible is.

What everyone should look for in the Bible is a "Divine Level of Intelligence". Period.

And that is something the Bible fails to deliver. Instead of intelligence we see a God behaving in a way that would be totally unacceptable in modern day society.

In fact, when we see people behaving as the Bible had God commanding men to behave we call them "Terrorists".

Who approves of the Taliban? Or ISIS? Or Al Qaeda? Yet all those groups are defending their actions by appealing to the foundations of this very religion.

Christians may not like it, but they really can't ignore the Old Testament. No matter how nice Jesus might have seemed to be, nothing Jesus could have done could erase the ignorance and immorality of the original God described in the Bible.

Jesus can't make up for Yahweh. It's simply far too little too late.

Christians are stuck with Yahweh whether they like it or not. And apparently they hate Yahweh pretty much as they are quick to want to replace him with Jesus. They don't want to talk about Yahweh. They want to talk about Jesus. The too-little, too-late guy.

[William]

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Divine Insight: Jesus can't make up for Yahweh. It's simply far too little too late.

Christians are stuck with Yahweh whether they like it or not. And apparently they hate Yahweh pretty much as they are quick to want to replace him with Jesus. They don't want to talk about Yahweh. They want to talk about Jesus. The too-little, too-late guy.

William: I think you are correct about the Bible in relation to it not giving adequate explanation which would serve us all with the provision of answers.

But I also see clues within the Bible which point to something far more substantial outside of its confines.

Jesus offered the general public clues rather than revelations. The revelations he reserved for his Inner Circle.

I think it is a mistake to think of Jesus and Yahweh as two separate beings, and that Jesus was referring to Yahweh as 'The Father'.
I think that those mistakes have cost uncountable lives and caused terrible misery in the history of humankind to date.

One can argue as to why GOD didn't just make everything known to us, that we would not have to engage with mystery, but I think this is an argument which stems from our willful ignorance.

Obviously if the question can be asked, answers can be found, but to assume from the go-get that the only answer has to be "an inept GOD" then those who make that argument are showing their on ineptitude and even apathy in relation to actually working out the mystery presented.

[SallyF]

And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. 3And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. 4And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

Fundies again are quite happy to take this literally. It's god-magic in a collection of god-magic pamphlets.

It's more stuff almost-Atheists have to make excuses for.

However …

Professor Benny Shanon's controversial hypothesis speculates that the key event of the Old Testament might refer to a psychedelic experience with DMT. Some varieties of Acacia trees that grow in the holy land contain the psychedelic substance DMT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_bush

Drug-taking explains a few thing in the biblical make-believe.

"God" explains nothing at all.

[SallyF]

Not a hieroglyph to mention the global Flood that Jehovah sent at the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty.

Not a hieroglyph to mention all the plagues - especially the deaths of all the firstborn …?

A whole bunch of wiggling to do here if this isn't meant to be fundamentalist fantasy too.

We're starting to run out of things we actually believe are actually true …!

[SallyF]

Yeah … kinda hard to hide that sea-parting with the magic wand business under transcendent, figurative, poetic philosophy. And the pillars of cloud and fire won't disguise it either …



Damn those fundamentalists …!