How do I avoid fundies?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2003-03-03 08:51pm

I live south of the Mason-Dixon line. You telling me that you have far less fundies than us? If so, it must the cold weather pushing them down to Florida.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-03-04 03:29pm

So do I, but there are a lot of smart people down here too with the Fundies.

Lord MJ · Post by **Lord MJ** » 2003-03-06 01:02am

I say there are plenty of places to go to avoid fundamentalism. But be careful where you end up, some churches may teach outright false doctrine, and not follow the scriptures.

Finding a perfect church that follows the scriptures, but does fall over into closed mindedness and fundamentalism, is not as easy as many would think.

But I believe I have found a decent church in Atlanta. I even spoke to a commited desciple that had a nice idea about how evolution is not anti christian.

Being a scientist, I was very pleased at that.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-03-06 11:15am

Lord MJ wrote:I say there are plenty of places to go to avoid fundamentalism. But be careful where you end up, some churches may teach outright false doctrine, and not follow the scriptures.

No, they simply interpret them differently than you do.

Finding a perfect church that follows the scriptures, but does fall over into closed mindedness and fundamentalism, is not as easy as many would think.

As far as most poeple on this board are concerned, thats a contradiction in terms. The biggest PROBLEM with fundies is that they follow the bible too much.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-06 12:17pm

Lord MJ wrote:But I believe I have found a decent church in Atlanta. I even spoke to a commited desciple that had a nice idea about how evolution is not anti christian.

I've spoken to quite a few Christians who have no problem with evolution. However, the problem with them is that:

They often subscribe to "intelligent design", which is (to use Durandal's description") creationism in a clown suit
They generally stand aside and say nothing when their fundie brethren start spouting stupidity on the subject, rather than opposing them as most scientists tend to do.

You would think that if some idiot is spouting nonsense on behalf of your belief system, you'd stand up and correct him. But I rarely see this from the moderates.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-03-06 01:10pm

After talking to some 'moderate christians' I often think that many of them are just soft-spoken fundamentalist or at the very least fundie sympathizers who are happy that the fundies are "defending the faith" so vigorously.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-03-06 03:20pm

Darth Wong wrote:You would think that if some idiot is spouting nonsense on behalf of your belief system, you'd stand up and correct him. But I rarely see this from the moderates.

Most of the moderates don't know enough to counter the fundy's bullshit. They know evolution makes more sense than creationism, but they don't have enough of the facts (at least not off the top of their heads) that prove the repetitive fundy's pseudoscience wrong.

Its usually better to not go into battle when you don't have sufficient ammunition.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-06 03:31pm

Darth Servo wrote:Most of the moderates don't know enough to counter the fundy's bullshit. They know evolution makes more sense than creationism, but they don't have enough of the facts (at least not off the top of their heads) that prove the repetitive fundy's pseudoscience wrong.

Its usually better to not go into battle when you don't have sufficient ammunition.

Either that, or the moderates are simple way more tolerant of fundie bullshit than we would hope. I saw a sermon live during Gulf War 1 in which the preacher told the flock that the US Army was the hand of God, striking down the Muslim heretics. I'm not kidding at all. He ended his sermon by saying "Maybe this is God's way of saying 'enough'. Maybe this is God's way of reminding the world who's in charge". And when I surreptitiously listened to people in the congregation talking about it afterwards, many of them thought he "went a little too far" but none of them would actually outright criticize him for being the asshole that he so obviously was.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-03-06 03:36pm

Not suprising, how many moderates do you see critizing Phelps, Falwell, Robertson or bin Laden?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-06 03:51pm

Let's put it this way. I think there are two kinds of Christian moderates:

Enlightened Christians
Closet fundies who merely lack confidence

And I think there are far more of the second type than we would like to believe.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-03-06 04:05pm

Darth Wong wrote:Let's put it this way. I think there are two kinds of Christian moderates:
Enlightened Christians

Closet fundies who merely lack confidence
And I think there are far more of the second type than we would like to believe.

I think its a bit hasty to make two distinct groups. There's probably a full spectrum of people between "closet fundies" and "border-line liberals"

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-03-06 06:21pm

It could be worse though. There could be twice as many teleavangalist out there. God I hate thhose guys. BTW, I think God worked through science and that evolution happened and is surrently happening. And yes, I think the Universe is 13 billion years old and that humans came from apes.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-03-07 12:32am

Admiral Johnason wrote:It could be worse though. There could be twice as many teleavangalist out there. God I hate thhose guys. BTW, I think God worked through science and that evolution happened and is surrently happening. And yes, I think the Universe is 13 billion years old and that humans came from apes.

Actually, even evolution doesn't hold that we came directly from apes. But that's just a nitpick.