RE: A Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, and an atheist walk into a coffee shop...
October 27, 2016 at 5:39 am
(October 26, 2016 at 11:13 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: Basically, what I am seeing is, "They cherry-pick the good stuff, by some dishonest method, but via some fantastical mental gymnastics I have arrived at the conclusion that they're in fact no less authentic in their faith as the sincere ones who actually attempt to follow their warped logic in a consistent manner." I'm not saying that these religious people in your lives, or most religious, are by any means bad people. They're simply either ignorant about what their texts say or willfully deceptive, with themselves or others, about what their most fundamental ideals about reality entail, per the commitments to certain principles which they have embraced in such identities as Jewish/Christian/Muslim (obviously, I'm not talking about ethnic or culture, but religious faith). If you're cool with that, then great. I'm not.
All of them are forced to cherry pick, one way or another (even the Westboro Baptist Church and ISIS). That's because the books are not internally consistent all throughout. You got verses about love and peace here, and then you have verses elsewhere promoting hatred and violence. So it's either going to be you either choose this part here or that. You can't be consistent otherwise.
This also assumes religion is all about holy books, which isn't true. It's more than that to many religious people (and in some cases, holy books don't mean anything to them).
