The Problem of Evil (XXVII)

[Mister Agenda]

I want to mention that I admire SteveII's manner with us, even though I have trouble understanding his points. I appreciate him being respectful. We need more discourse like this, instead of it degenerating into arrogant dismissal, insults or threats.

Fuck you. ;-). Seriously though. I was insulted and treated like shit from day one. Maybe I've become a bit jaded. And I really did make every effort to debate with gentleness and respect. Many atheists it seems know the literal meanings of the bible but I must say their grasp of theology is pretty simplistic. Maybe their objections stump your average evangelical but those objections don't really pose serious theological problems. It saddens me to think that people settle for the arguments that satisfy their own preconceptions rather than explore the limits of their philosophy.

I may have mentioned to you before, that's it's the fundamentalists whose actions we're most concerned about and therefore whose reasoning we're concerned about. You have a tendency to jump in and tell us that what we're saying doesn't apply to your more sophisticated theology. That is usually correct, because usually we weren't talking about your theology. Swedenborgianism isn't high on our list of things to talk about, because we never hear the Swedenborgians have engineered laws that prevent women from getting an abortion after 20 weeks or requires people to prove their biological sex before using a bathroom. It's the literalists who want to violate other people's rights at every turn.

So what your comments usually wind up being, is changes to the subject. This thread, however, is appropriate for your view of a general theological question. Since about 1/3 of the world's evangelicals live in the USA (though they're still a minority) and have significant influence over a major political party in a two-party system, it rings hollow when you intimate that we should be ignoring their theology because yours is 'more mainstream'.

If the 'mainstream Christians' had done more to prevent the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in America, maybe Christianity wouldn't be undergoing such a rapid decline in the USA today. Fundamentalists have done horrible damage to the 'Christian brand'. But I get why atheists might be more fun to argue with.