This comes up from time to time, but Erick Erickson has some really weird religious beliefs. I guess they are kind of consistent with the cosmology and theology of Christianity, but they’re basically unreconstructed from the 16th Century. I don’t really care what people choose to believe about heaven and hell and the last judgment, but it’s a liability in politics to be going around telling everyone who has unapproved sex that they’re going to suffer everlasting torments as punishment from God.
If pols want to cuddle up to Erickson, there is going to be a price associated with that.
Yeah, it’s not settled whether you’re born gay or not; it is settled that you don’t get to choose, however. I prefer not to take that route in the first place because if some day in the future we learn that no one is indeed born gay, a lot of arguments fall apart. “Born this way” isn’t a bandwagon I’d like to jump on.
More like “Who gives a shit?” or “Human sexuality is fluid” or “GTFO my lawn with your God-botherer nonsense because it’s irrelevant.”
Exactly.
Attaching yourself to the “born gay” thing is irrelevant, although salient.
Look, a human being with a conscious and free will can and should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt another human being. Period.
It doesn’t fucking matter if you’re born gay or just prefer the same sex.
It doesn’t affect anyone else, so they should shut up and fuck off, regardless of the “cause”.
Sorry, but most of us don’t belong to the High Church of Applied Dumbassery. Anyone dumb enough to listen to Erick Erickson for theological advice is probably not with it enough to manage their own affairs.
I have no problem with his religious views. I have problems with him or anyone else trying to thrust religious views on others.
Am I advocating tolerance for extremism? In a sense, sure. I’m Jewish and if someone thinks all Jews are going to rot eternally in hell, I’m fine with that so long as they don’t try to impose that view on others or enshrine it in law or in any way discriminate against me or others. Same for views of blacks, gays, whatever. If someone worships ducks, and that’s his religion, great; whatever floats your boat.
I find it odd that these same “Christian” people who use the bible to constantly rail about all the sexy time stuff spend zero time talking about the concept in their religion that “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven”. Or maybe, “Whatever you to the least of my brothers you do unto me”. But hey, it’s only something that Jesus preached. What could anything he said possibly have to do with their Christianity?
the christian religion isn’t based on what Jesus said. It’s based on what Paul said about Jesus, and Paul had a whole bunch of hangups (as well as putting “slaves obey your masters” into the bible)
Yes, what you say is very true. And a lot of what Paul had to say really conflicted with, if not the actual context, certainly the tone of much of the purported message of Jesus. And the fact that in Paul’s letters, he seems to have almost no information, either direct or indirect, regarding any of the actual message of Jesus attributed in the four gospels, one could be forgiven for believing that there really wasn’t very much of “Christ”, if there was any at all, in the early and formative years of “Christianity”.
It’s akin to Republicans trying to co-opt MLK as a conservative Republican after the fact.
Well that’s another extensive topic that I can distill as follows: Paul was not interested in the “historical Jesus” – at least he writes nothing about the “historical Jesus” Paul is concerned with post-resurrection Chrisitianity, the church, Christ, as it were, etc. This is not to say he knew nothing about Jesus’ actions since he was colleague with Peter and other disciples he no doubt had the information. It’s an issue of what was important to him theologically. (other reasons too, in that his letters in most instances originated in theological disputes with others, as I said an extensive topic)
Paul didn’t write that, a later writer[s] trying to co-opt Paul wrote [it’s what Paul “really meant to say” or “would have written if he had more respect for the rights of the wealthy”]
I just read “Zealot” have you read that? Awesome book on the historical Jesus. Whose epitaph was written by a man who never met Jesus a opportunist named Paul. James brother of Jesus gets crucified and is lost to history after leading the church in the first century. James this pure man did not like the rich. I feel he felt it was an abomination for someone to have 10 million and 1000 others have nothing.
I had been meaning to read this. And related to this book, who can ever forget one of the most ridiculous and cringeworthy interviews ever done on Fox, when they “interviewed” Reza Aslan. He certainly was puzzled and confused by some of the premises the interviewer came out with.
yes, that interview was just awful. had no concept of what it is to be a scholar of anything.
It is obvious she didn’t read the book. That was sad.
Have not read it yet, looking forward to reading it. Does he write about Paul also?
Yes about Paul’s influence a lot. He made Christianity a completely separate religion. James and the apostles looked at it as a part of Judaism. Paul’s version of Christianity eventually was adopted by Rome. Its very good. He may not interview well but a very unbiased history in “Zealot”. Really neat to get a feel for the time also.
Sounds good, I should have a chance to read it soon. re: the interview, the scholar sounded very interesting and very thorough in his research, it was the interviewer ruined the interview because he couldn’t accept that the scholar could study something besides his own religion, which shows the interviewer doesn’t understand scholarship
As esquimax says below.
A lot of “Christians” are Paulists.
The funny thing about moving from Ohio to Georgia is that it is basically 90% southern baptist down here (whereas I am used to catholic Cincinnati).
Southern Baptists seem to only give a shit about John and Paul. Most likely because Jesus was a massive socialist as clearly shown in the first three gospels, and stressed action over faith alone.
Love thy neighbor as thyself: don’t be a tribal douche
Render unto Caesar: pay your taxes
Store your treasure in heaven, not earth: greed sucks
Camel through eye of needle: rich people suck
Sell your possessions give to poor: rich people suck
Give the homeless shelter, food, comfort: don’t hate
Cleansing the temple: bankers suck
ad nauseum
John and Paul seem to be favorites because it allows people to ignore the whole “love thy neighbor as thyself” socialist claptrap and instead focus on being hypocrites who say they love Jesus while treating the least of Jesus’ brothers as garbage. Especially the browns and the poors.
I come from a Southern Baptist background. One of their big mantras is “Love the sinner, hate the sin”.
And that is complete and utter bullshit. In the real world of human beings, that is an impossibility. It’s similar to the whole business idea of “multi-tasking”. It seems, in theory and on paper, an ingenious and workable idea. And when you try to actually implement it in the real world, failure is assured. It’s like when a sales guy in our company comes to me and starts a question with, “Is it possible to…..”. And as an engineer I will say, “Anything is possible,given enough time and money”. In reality, what’s hypothetically possible is irrelevant.
I’m an agnostic/pantheist (if I’m going to name my own personal belief, pantheist comes closest. Science owns).
I’m not going to say that all southern Baptists are terrible people who judge everyone, but they focus on crap some Christian persecutor who never even met Jesus made up. When I speak about the gospels and the things that uh…their personal f-ing God actually said, they just default to John 3:16 and Romans.
I feel bad, in a way, because they’ve been so indoctrinated their whole lives that they cannot even take time to objectively look at their own holy book. Which is, of course, pretty normal for people who want you to do as they say and not as they do.
Well, as for me, I guess all I can say is that I know a lot of really good people, many of whom would do anything for you, who believe a lot of fantastical, irrational and down-right crazy shit. But that doesn’t necessarily take away from the fact that they are good people. I try and always keep that in mind. We can still get along and find a lot of common cause that will help all our other fellow humans.
Same here. I’m not trying to paint southern Baptists as inherently bad people. I’m just amazed that they are quick to discount Jesus’ teachings from the Gospels while focusing on stuff written by someone who never met him.
All you see is Jesus this and Jesus that, and a lot of the time they totally ignore what he said and taught and go straight to the “have faith or you burn in hell”, while ignoring the “love everyone and help people” aspect.
If a Christian takes the Bible as the literal, inerrant and inspired word sent directly from God, (the default evangelical view), then the only way they can argue for it is by using selective editing of texts, cherry picking of sections, falling back on “faith” and completely ignoring the actual recorded history of the biblical period. If they do not do that, then the whole house of cards just comes tumbling down. To use the biblical metaphor, it is “likened unto a foolish man who has built his house on sand”.
Exactly.
They tell you to read it, as if there is some magical power inherent in the book that makes it true.
When I tell them, I’ve read a lot of it, and then cite pretty horrible things, they have to squirm and start creating their own religion on the spot. When I cite socialist-esqe things that Jesus…you know, God…said, they have to again create their own religion to explain it away (at least the conservative ones).
I consider Christ as a literary figure to be a pretty good philosopher and role model. But God – capital G? That is where only an actual personal experience (as Jesus is a personal God) could truly convert me. And when I say that, they look at me as if I’m crazy. Most likely because they’ve never had a personal experience as much as they’ve just been trained in the choreography very well.
well once you remove the “deutero-Pauline” and the “trito-Pauline” i.e. the texts claiming to be “Pauline” but not written by Paul, you get some radical guy. that’s why they were so bent on co-opting him. How about Galatians 3:28?
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
http://bible.oremus.org/
Sounds like something a pantheist would say. I’ll have to add that to my lexicon to piss off pseudo-Christians.
it evidently pissed off a lot of people in Paul’s own time as well, – evidently it wasn’t his own words, he was quoting a baptismal formula,
Look, take a look at the many-chinned Erick Erickson – the son of countless other generations of many-chinned sons of many-chinned sons of Erick Erickson’s, going back to the original one, Erick “The Many-Chinned” Erickson.
He’s lucky he finally found some poor gullible woman to marry his sociopathic Christian-loon fat-ass.
Before her, he couldn’t get laid with a fist-full of pardon’s in a women’s prison.
Or, a men’s one either, come to think about it…
Can we keep the comments about his body to a minimum?
Saved from what? Reality, perhaps.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate all of Erickson’s beliefs about sexuality and sin.
Then what?
What do we do with this information? How does the Bible say we should act toward anyone who doesn’t live up to Erickson’s standards? What examples can we find in the acts of Jesus?
I’m pretty sure the answers are: Be forgiving, act nice, and love your neighbor.
The acts of Jesus, yes.
But, being good Christians who need to judge people, let’s ignore those pesky gospels where God directly tells us how to act.
Instead, let’s look to the Old Testament to see how Yhwh would treat those people, and then let’s imitate Yhwh, since fuck it, religion is just an excuse to judge people anyway.
I’ll say one thing. When you look at the Old Testament, that Yahweh was one nasty,angry,jealous and intemperate son of a bitch.
The science is settled on the relative immutability of sexual orientation. But that’s about as relevant in Wingnuttistan as the settled science on climate change, evolution, or whether natural body defenses prevent female rape victims from getting pregnant. Science – and reality in general – are as nothing next to dogma.
Does Erickson believe in that giant turtle with the universe on its back?
Of course not. He knows it is really a whole lot of turtles all the way down.
Nice to laugh at Son-Of-Himself; however, this is what progressives should be taking very seriously even though the entertainment is Amity Schlaes and Charles Murray.
Koch Brothers Billionaire Summit
This happened last week. So maybe some reporting might have content sometime. Otherwise, it is a secret conclave of Republican Billionaires mapping out strategy for shock-and-awe spending in the 2014 election.
There is no indication that establishment Democrats have a way to respond. By the way, it looks like they are out to bury Wendy Davis in Texas–the only state named. Think about Greg Abbott as a national figure–as the governorship of the second most populous state automatically makes him.
Anyone got any ideas of how to get these privileged nitwits to waste their significant gobs of money?
The Nation’s coverage:
Lauren Windsor, The Nation: Exclusive: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Secret Billionaire Summit
The Kovert Koch Klatch.
They love that free speech thing so much that they plot in private to get more of it for themselves. Through bought shills because they’re too cowardly to speak in public and tell us what they really think of USian peons.
Harry Reid could do with a lot of assistance in exposing the Koch fascists from other Democratic politicians.
“Wendy Davis for Governor because this is Texas and not a subsidiary of Koch’s Kansas.”