I wouldn’t be a Christian

[vulcanlogician]

It occurs to me now that there are two ways we could approach the fact that there are both dumb and smart Christians.

Leo Tolstoy is one of my favorite authors, and he is thoroughly Christian. Anyone who makes the claim "All Christians are dumb" is wrong on that account. Intelligent Christians exist today and have existed since antiquity. And throughout history, remarkably bright people (like Dante or Augustine) plumbed the depths of the Christian ethos and returned with incredible insights and moral gems. But perhaps that reflects more on those people than it does on Christianity in general.

"If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

This comes out of the Bible, a book regarded by most Christians as having authority over their own lives, and (depending on who you ask) the lives of others. Sure, very few Christians call for executing gays in modern times, but feel free to ask some of the Christians on this forum what they think of homosexuality. Most of them will tell you they think it's immoral. Bullshit. In no way is homosexuality (in itself) demonstrably immoral. But where do you think they get the idea that it is? From their religion! The problem is: they aren't the only ones. Millions and millions of people are convinced that homosexuality is somehow wrong. Why? It says so in the book. I have a problem with this. So do many others here. What do we have a problem with? Christianity. (BTW, even an Augustine fan who posts here thinks homosexuality is immoral.)

Christianity as a mode of transcendence almost doesn't deserve to be called "Christianity." At a colloquial level, if you ask someone what Christianity is, they will point to a cultural phenomenon... not anything related at all to the ideas of Augustine or William James. You ought not blame anyone for assuming the colloquial definition of something. That's unfair. (And Augustine is a bit of a sore spot for some here because (regardless of what the man actually wrote) he is used to move goalposts when Christians feel the need to do greasy apologetics. I guess a good comparison would be how Hitler ruined the swastika for everybody; formerly, it was regarded as a rather innocuous symbol. Not anymore.)

For all the good that can be found in Christianity (and I agree, there is good to be found), there is also a rottenness in it whose source can be traced back to its core tenets: the belief that people are wicked and immoral deviants that deserve eternal torment, the belief that sex between consenting adults is somehow immoral, the belief in Hell... it is by propagating beliefs such as these that Christianity creates distress. And in light of all the distress it has created, it is understandable that some people have a generally negative attitude about it:

With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal....

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19...9322-h.htm

Why not attribute Simone Weil's insights to Simone Weil, and Wittgenstein's insights to Wittgenstein? If they took influence from Christianity, fine. But they undoubtedly took inspiration from other sources, too. And (in that case) Christianity is just one item on a laundry list; only a certain myopic perspective gives Christianity more credit than it is due.