227 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Peter Sawchuk's avatar

The philosophy of Christianity is beautiful. Too bad none of us follow or for that matter try to follow the life and love philosophy. If you had read the rest of the bible you would have seen the manipulation perpetrated by the writers to enforce their rule over humanity. While many tout freedom of religion there is no freedom in religion. It is all about subservience. and murder.

Expand full comment
Duane McPherson's avatar

I agree very much. The teachings of Christ are beautiful; the later interpretations of those teachings are where the problems of Christianity arise. Surely Christ had no intention of founding a religion; I think he was more intent on reforming Judaism.

G.K. Chesterton had some acute observations on Christian philosophy:

"Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble."

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Expand full comment
martin's avatar

last quote seems pretty much what some libertarians say about 'real capitalism'.

Expand full comment
Karl Brainard's avatar

I did read the rest of it. Beautiful? Some parts (the Red Letter version is especially so). Did that undo the horrible parts. No.

If we ignore the wrong things written there just to say "It is good", then we have thrown objectivity out the window.

The same for the rest of the religious books. If at some point it calls for or justifies killing others, then that is just wrong.

You don't give serial killers kudos just because they also give to charity.

Expand full comment
Peter Sawchuk's avatar

I agree with you entirely. It isn't hard to pick out the parts that manipulate people into subservience. This is the part of "Faith" that requires you to forget about logic and critical thing and go forward blindly on "Faith" and unfortunately it appears many do.

Expand full comment