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Again, I'm not trying to be sarcastic or whatever, I just want to understand this. (I have asked similar questions of conservatives and have received some pretty unsatisfying answers.)
1. Fundamentalist Christians are intolerant. No argument here. Also, Fundies believe in the Rapture (tm) of which there is no consensus among Christians generally.
2. Fundies are actively trying to impose that intolerance on everyone else. They are hardly alone in that, but still no argument here.
3. Moderate Christians generally are not intolerant.
4. Since Fundies are intolerant and believe in an unorthodox end time, moderate Christians may ridicule and cast judgment onto Fundies.
I assume you are using the condemnation of the corrupt Pharisees in the NT to justify this abrogation of the injunction against judgment.
As a factual matter, I have to take issue with the idea of moderate tolerance and the whole rapture thing. First, the Rapture has a longer pedigree than the Left Behind books. It goes back at least as far as the 19th century.
Second, does not all of Christianity believe in the injunction to: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Matthew 28:19, 20 kjv.
Sounds to me like a convert-the-world command. Or is this one of those things about Christianity that is somehow unchristian like misogyny, slavery and redemption through suffering?
Isn't the whole idea that one cannot question religious opinion, a unique deference, despite valid and compelling reasons to criticize it, a form of imposing your views on others? Doesn't the fact that the great majority of Americans who are moderate Christians provide the support for Fundy thinking? Do you think the fact that half of this country thinks that evolution and creationism are actually competing theories has anything to do with our religiosity? Would Bush have been "elected" if moderates did not think that the arguments of the religious right had at least some merit? Had the bishops not directed their flock to value embryos more than people, would Kerry be in the White House today? Does not the emphasis on faith over examination made the whole country less able to defend its rights from the abuses of authority? Does not the tax exempt status of religious temples, a privilege unique among businesses, not shift the nations tax burden onto every other business and consumer?
Of course none of this even touches on the objective fact that god almost certainly cannot exist and that the whole idea of divinity is certainly human-made.
Again, I don't intend any offense, though that may be inevitable at this point. I just don't think the line between one form of Christianity and another is really that compelling.
Of course none of this even begins to look
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