response 35 of 66:

Oct 15 16:21 UTC 2003

RE#26 -- Do you have a URL for that Ron Jeremy/Jack Chick thing?

response 39 of 66:

Oct 16 16:20 UTC 2003

<giggles at #38>
I think #36 is a pretty standard approach in many churches.  They've settled
on their interpretation of the Bible; they want you to go along with them
and not rock the boat with actual thought.  Hence my general disillusionment
with organized religion.  Faith in God is one thing; faith in someone that
read the Bible x hundred years ago and declared an arbitrary and 
absolute interpretation of it is another thing entirely.  I was really
surprised to read the Bible for the first time (specifically the Old
Testament) and see how different it was from church-recommended lifestyles.
In particular, I've always been puzzled as to why the Catholic church puts
so much emphasis on Mary, who all things considered was a fairly minor
player in the New Testament.

response 41 of 66:

Oct 16 19:33 UTC 2003

I guess there's a lot of anti-religious bigotry on Grex.

response 43 of 66:

Oct 16 22:58 UTC 2003

re resp:42: Sorry, Lynne, but I think there's unusual zeal for hatred 
of religion here on Grex.  I think that attitude is unreasoning, narrow 
minded and intolerant.  

response 45 of 66:

Oct 16 23:15 UTC 2003

The difference, jep, is that while many of us on Grex who reject religion 
also support the rights of others to hold religious beliefs we think are 
idiotic, bigotry has no place in it for such tolerance of other beliefs.

That is a major difference between religious and non-religious political 
movements in this country as well:  the religious movements tend to want 
to make laws which require everyone to be subjected to their religious 
beliefs, while the non-religious tend to want to make laws which only 
prohibit the religious from subjecting the non-religious to religious 
beliefs.

response 47 of 66:

Oct 17 14:53 UTC 2003

re 45:  Exactly.  I don't subscribe to organized religion myself, and I 
enjoy discussing and/or arguing about the subject.  But I fully support
your right, and every other person's right, to worship at a Lutheran,
Methodist, or Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, at
the Church of the Big Green Potato with Little Purple Spots.  Or wherever
else you want to worship.  I also support my right to disagree with these
religions, and to talk about why.  Apparently, jep does not support my
right to hold and discuss different opinions than his--in my estimation,
this makes him something of a bigot.  

response 49 of 66:

Oct 17 16:14 UTC 2003

re #46:  I can't speak for a majority of american catholic churches/priests,
but in the church I grew up in, there was a strong message that thinking about
the bible for yourself was frowned upon.  Nobody said that you couldn't do
it, that it was a sin oranything like that, just that you were likely to come
to incorrect conclusions if you did not base your biblical studies on the
official catholic interpretation, and therefore it was better not to study
independently.  I wish I had access to some actual quotations; the best I can
do is paraphrase, like this:  "Because of Catholic doctrine, you don't have
to struggle with interpretation of scripture, because the Church provides the
correct answers for you."  It was very much a case of "you can have any color
you want, so long as it's black."  

response 51 of 66:

Oct 17 17:37 UTC 2003

Allow me to add that this was explained to me as being official catholic
doctrine.  

There, now you can accuse me of making blanket statements, we can move on to
that particular flame war.  Here, let me get you started:  

So, I'm not allowed to attempt to make generalizations *based on my own
personal experience*?  On what, pray tell, am I supposed to be base my
generalizations?  The word of some self-professed "expert" on the internet,
whose main qualifications seem to be the fact that he calls the opinions of
people who disagree with him "nonsense"?  

response 53 of 66:

Oct 17 18:50 UTC 2003

Re #51: You're supposed to only base your generalizations on what cross
says.  Duh.

response 55 of 66:

Oct 17 21:04 UTC 2003

i think people take comments made by other people about their own 
particular experiences and respond to them as if the original comment WAS 
a gross generalization about everybody, and this happens with far greater 
frequency than actual gross generalizations being made on the basis of 
personal experience, at least for most people posting on Grex.  





There ARE some who post as if their particular limited experience was 
representative.