> The "truth" is the only reason you are even possibly maybe sort of not-really-but-well-kind-of supporting what might possibly kind of sort of in some places be considered "censorship" is because you believe you know what's right for me. And I will not stand down in the face of a conceit like that.
>

It is very ironic that I should find myself answering the charge of wishing to order around other people because I know better than they do what is right. My wife gives me the opposite complaint: that I never give her any indication of what I think she should do, that I don't give her any help or direction in becoming a better person, that in dealing with people I too often expect them to be capable of figuring out for themselves what they ought to be doing, and to do it. And she's right: I intensely dislike being put in the position of issuing directives; I'm more comfortable as a helper than as a leader. In short, if this were an ad hominem attack, I wouldn't feel especially stung by it.

Of course, it isn't ad hominem, and it isn't misplaced, either. The fact is that Christians (to pick one of the groups referred to) *do* make truth-claims with far-reaching implications for the way people conduct their lives. If a person believes that Christian truth-claims are bogus, then naturally she will feel free to ignore the moral demands which follow from those claims. I really don't have a problem with that; it's honest disagreement.

There's another approach that *does* aggravate me, however. It is the approach of the person who rejects moral demands not because they come from an apparently non-authoritative source, but because the person recognizes no authoritative source at all outside himself. When I get a hint of that sort of colossal arrogance, it disgusts me nearly to the point of rage, because *there is no talking to someone who does not acknowledge any authority other than himself.*

Important Note: I don't want to accuse anyone who has contributed to this thread of being that sort of fool. I don't think that anyone merits it, and in any case I would not be in a good position to make the diagnosis. In attacking a particular attitude, I don't want to go so far as to add, "....and so-and-so is a perfect example of that."

>> You, and an easy >majority of the rest of Americans out there, >want God the Boot-Licker, or God the Glad Hand. >Or, possibly, God the Salad Bar Item.
>
> No. I want a God who makes sense. I want a God who isn't arbitrary. I want a God who inspires a book that isn't self-contradictory, or at least doesn't require great mental gyrations and questionable logic to make not self-contradictory. I want a God who makes himself known to *everyone*, not just a select few.
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It looks as though I have ended up attacking a straw Dave after all, for which I owe an apology. You don't want to make up your own personal deity; you only want a religious claim to make sense and be consistent before you'll consider believing it. That sounds good to me; I repent of misrepresenting your position.

> Do you know what I would do if I were God? Nothing. Because I'd realize that I was nothing more than a crutch for weak minded people who can't accept that they're not special, that they're nothing more than an especially intelligent primate, and I'd have the decency to dry up and blow away like so many other unecessary items of our ancestral past.
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If that's all that God is, then believe me, I want to be rid of God too. I'm not interested in religion as a psychological comfort, or a foundational force to cement societies together, or a muse for poets and philosophers. What I'm interested in is this:

A claim has been made that a particular being, God, created us all, used a particular people-group (Israel) as the vehicle to reveal himself in mighty acts, entered the world in human form (Jesus), died and was resurrected from death, and continues to make himself known today, sometimes in ways that would be described as "supernatural".

Did these things really happen? If they didn't, if no one really brought the Israelites up out of Egypt into Canaan through a series of miraculous events, if Jesus didn't really say and do the things that are attributed to him, if he is really only a dead historical figure, then I'm not interested in having anything to do with Christianity, and probably not with religion in general.

In sum: if I make so bold as to say what moral behavior a person should or should not practice, it certainly is not because I want to be in charge, or because I have some kind of special knowledge. What I know (summarized above) is pretty much freely available for anyone else to know as well, and if those premises about God are true, then anyone can come to the same moral conclusions for themselves without my help. That, indeed, is what I would *like* to happen -- that people exercise their own discernment to decide what they should and should not do.

The real struggle is over the premise on which those decisions hang.

Iss