You Guys Need to Communicate! (thoughts from an ex evangelical Christian)

I'll echo Percy when I say that I think your skepticism is rooted in an ignorance of the entirety of Harris' position.I tried to explain this to breannaki in the Harris/Sullivan thread: Message 93Now there are some problems that I see now in my treatement after reading this thread and that is the issue of what is a moderate. I don't think Harris' would consider jar or myself grouped into that category because we do not let our dogma override our skepticism of the base traditions.There are plenty of people though who hold what most people would subjectivly consider moderate views of Christianty who fall directly into what Harris is talking about.I don't think it is black and white though and I agreed with breannaki in that post that it IS valid to criticise Harris on the over generalization. I don't think that takes away from the basic truth of what he is saying though which is that a non-insignificant number of people can be described exactly as he does.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I don't know. It is a valid question that can probably be asked to myself, jar, arach, etc. You are picking up on the exact theme that I was trying to convey to Archer. My definition of moderate does not include myself, jar, arch, and other examples of people on this board. I am with buzsaw on this one in saying that we are probably better catagorized as extreme liberal Christians or not even Christians at all. In fact, I explicitly do not meet the conditions that Harris iterates as defining a Christian in Letter to a Christian Nation let alone a moderate variety of that.I'll post that later when I get home.IIRC there was the following minimum condition:1. Belief in the divinity of Christ.
2. Belief that the Bible is the inspired work of God.
3. Belief in the virgin birth of Christ.
4. Belief that only faith in Christ's divinity will buy you a ticket to heaven.I fail on at least 2 of those 4. I can concieve that jar fails on at least one of them.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

A little further down he says... So I suppose by that statement that Harris would group jar, myself, trixie, arach, etc into moderate/liberal Christians.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Yea, I do disagree with the over generalization that Harris conveys.(the spelling errors were mine by the way. I was typing in the quote from the book)I do think though that Harris has a point when you consider public discourse over certain key issues where mainstream Christianity has asserted itself. Now it may just be a result of my ignorance, but I rarely see a moderate or liberal Christian when arguing, criticize the taboo of homosexuality as a dogma itself. They may argue that we need to be tolerant or such but only in the VERY liberal case do they ever seem to denounce the dogma on its merits alone.IMO this is a big reason why even in this more accepting day and age we are actually seeing MORE done to prohibit homosexual rights than guarantee them.Like I said, as a generalization, Harris is wrong. In the specific cases he brings up, I think he has valid concern that moderates are sheltering extremist views by not denouncing the basic traditions from which the extremists stem.The problem with people who believe we live in an apocalypic society is not that they are misinterpreting Revelations. The problem is that Revelations is completely and utterly invalid as prophecy. Yet most of my very liberal Christian family would never dare to question that one day Armageddon will actually occur or be critical of any fundamentalist who not just believes the same but shapes policy around it.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)