All Generalazations are false!
This’ll be short and sweet, but I think it needs to be said
I was recently in a discussion on theologyweb where we were discussing the ‘Christ myth’(for those who arent familar with this, the ‘Christ-myth’ is a belief that Jesus Christ never existed as a historical person at all). I made a comment to effect taht I didnt think there were too many believers in the christ-myth on t-web(partly because it is a fringe position, even among athiests, and partly because I havent seen too many people speak in favor of it on theology web) to which another poster responded with:
On the Contrary Sir-Think-A-Lot , there are quite a few “Christ Mythers” around here. I happen to be one of them. Apparently fundamentalists such as yourself fail to understand that it’s not “either Jesus Christ was the son of God and every single word written about him and every deed that he allegedly did according to the “approved” list of gospels was true….or Jesus never existed.
This hilarious dichotomy simply does not apply to me.
Actually I was well aware that these two extreme positions are not the only possible ones. However the ‘Christ-myth’ is a rather specific term used to refer to a rather specific belief. The thread was not directed towards people who believed Jesus was a hisotrical figure, but not the son of God, but towards people who didnt believe he existed at all.
When I made another post to this effect, our poster responded with this:
Actually, It’s me that’s sorry. I should not have labeled you a fundamentalist. My bad. I just get tired of all this focus on a very small portion of skeptics. I should have redirected my frustration elswhere.
I appreciate his apology, but I must say that I often feel the same way when people attack fringe positions within Christianity. Attacking young earth creationism(I’m a theistic evolutionist myself), that we should murder/oppress homosexuals or bomb abortion clinics(I oppose abortion, but I think there are better ways to solve the problem than crimlizing it, and bombing clinics is a definite no-no), that God talkes to me daily in an audible voice(I havent heard him yet), or the whole ‘end of times’ thing(I believe most of the so-called ‘end of times prophocies have already been fullfilled). I’v had people tell me how wrong these positions simply because I’v said I am a Christian(without even bothering to find out if I actually believe these things).
The truth is both sides generalize about the others beliefs. We need to start actually listening to each other, thats about the only way any productive conversation is going to happen.
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