[Textcritic]

I am bumping this thead because of a series of comments which appaered in another thread in the FOI forum, and it has prompted some additional thoughts that I think are worth exploring. For some context, this poster was put off by a throw-away comment made by DeluxeMoustache to the integration of Travis Hamonic's faith and his decision to opt out of the 2020 playoffs…

Originally Posted by anon

Originally Posted by deluxemustache
Haha. Whatever. I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. And projecting some things that aren’t there.

I’m not insinuating anything, much less that he should feel ashamed. I think he is a great all around guy. Didn’t even say what he should do, only that I wouldn’t have dropped a handful of references to my faith, just would have kept it on point.

I just think it is interesting when people go out of their way to volunteer arguably irrelevant info.

I do know he is not going to be spending his off time eating vegan or doing yoga though. Because people who do those things will be sure to tell you about them

Hope that helps, friend

First off, I don't believe that DeluxeMoustache meant anything even remotely disrespectful or malicious in his post, but having said that, I think it shows a demonstrable failure to grasp the significance of religious belief and practise for a lot of people. And I think that level of understanding can come only through experience. In other words, unless you have actually experienced what it means to have a belief in the presence of God and a sense of his impact on your daily life, then you cannot understand how inseparable God is from the most mundane happenings of day-to-day life.

Here is how the poster responded to DeluxeMoustache's attempted explanation:

Originally Posted by anon

Excuse me? I'm not the one who needs any clarification nor any kind of "help"
You're just not respectful of other peoples' religious beliefs.

Comparing a serious thing like religion - to yoga or veganism - when religion deals with life after death & the fact COVID can be fatal - that's pure disrespect on your part.

I certainly understand why he took offense to DeluxeMoustache's posts and his trite dismissal of religion, but the ire is probably misplaced. My guess is that it stems from the same sort of Christian persecution complex that stems from apocalypticism, which most accurately applies to modern, Western Evangelicalism. The modern iteration with which we are most familiar is a twenty-first century projection of an ancient phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of both Christianity and Judaism. Hell, there were apocalypticists in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria and Akkadia. By and large their expressions would be fairly closely aligned to the current Christrian apologetic worldview.

You comment comes across as trying to make a borderline comment against Hamonic's religion, you're dancing on both sides of the red line, but you've clearly crossed it, and then follow up with more insults and laughing!
The classy thing to do is to apologize - that's what Christian faith teaches, and I'm glad to have been taught things like apologizing and forgiveness because I'm not perfect myself.

I think this part of his response plays into this discussion, which I promoted on this board a few weeks ago. Contrition and forgiveness are both cardinal virtues, but I think they are also prone to significant abuse and manipulation through the Christian model of penal substitutionary atonement. God’s wrath is arbitrarily defined and applied to any and all instances which confront the nebulous idea of God’s "holiness," and as such, it becomes easier to vilify and condemn all objectionable behaviour as "sin," and to artificially equalise all infractions. On the other hand, the all-encompassing forgiveness that is obtainable through the sacrifice of Christ also equalises all people in the eyes of God regardless of their infractions: forgiveness is then afforded to a repentant genocidal maniac, and withheld from an unrepentent adulterer or a "blasphemer" (of which there is no such thing, but that is another topic for another post). I am particularly reminded of the incredibly offensive Jack T. Chick tract, "Lisa":

http://www.boolean-union.com/Chick/Lisa/Lisa.htm

So for me atheism is completely unattractive because too often I see someone screw up, realize they did something wrong, then other people come along and label them a "bad person" for the rest of their lives...

It is also interesting to me that the poster aligns this particular behaviour with "atheism." I would like to see this connection explored more deeply, but then I also wonder if this sort of reaction is borne more of a repugnance for hypocrisy than it is about missing the God-belief. As already discussed in this thread, I think there is something to be said about behaviours and actions which are beyond redemption; I also think that an uncritical Christian theology of forgiveness can potentially contribute to a dangerous culture of enabling serial abusers.

So, there is a mix in here of a whole bunch of things that interest me:

· the inability of the uninitiated to grapple with the deep and meaningful impact of "god" on a person's life and decisions
· the close relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity which is frequently expressed in a deep persecution complex
· the consequences of penal substitutionary atonement in Christian theology, and the direct connection made to a potentially dangerous culture of enablement through unconditional forgiveness

FYI, I will be making and publishing more content on my YouTube channel with my new-found spare time since completing my study of scripts and provenance claims for the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls. Mostly responses to bad apologetics videos—be sure to check them out if you are interested in that sort of thing...