[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I disagree, I went to a church school (C of E) so learnt,and was interested in, the philosophy of the various christian churchs, if you approach the bible with some knowledge of the bible most of the US religeous right, the Phelps and his like, completely fall apart, from a strictly theological point of view much of US baptist theology is just plain wrong and does not stand up to its own logic. Lets be honest most small US churchs are little more than a business for some borderline huckster who got his divinity degree of the back of a match book, doesn't make for sterling philosophy.

Granted you won't likely have a Saul on the Road to Damascus like conversion but you can plant some fairly significant seeds of doubt in most of the worst of their excesses.

How do you reason with people who have put the Bible in front of their prophet Jesus and god?

Fair enough. But in defending or reclaiming the Bible from papists and then liberals, evangelical Protestants made it the very heart of the faith. Hence the ludicrous situation where many evangelical organisations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, have statements of faith where the first point is the Bible, before any mention of, for example, God. Hence the celebrated idolatrous aphorism of William Chillingworth: "The BIBLE, I say, the BIBLE only, is the religion of Protestants!".

Some of us, faced with this evidence, shape our faith in the light of it, making the Bible a far more fascinating, revealing and diverse record of human religious experience. But it's not surprising if for others the evidence comes as an attack that threatens to undermine the foundation of their faith, and has to be beaten off blindfold.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ble-christians

for the record I'm not a follower of any religion.