And yet your post is positively littered with "truisms" you've not questioned and show no inclination to question, the supposition of bigotry and conservatism on the part of Christianity, your self-righteousness when asked to remove your hat, infact I put it to you that your criticisms of christianity, or religion more generally, betray a really, really superficial and simplified acquaintence with doctrines or thinking associated with either.
Absolutely! I hold many truisms, some of them nonsensical. It's much worse than you think. I have feelings, then look for reasons and rationalizations of them.
In the church environment, raised Methodist, and converted to various other forms such as Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic. I felt acceptance or ostracism or had encounters with narrow minded-superficial idiots and bigots in the church.
The church offered both a community and a relationship. The results of which were supposedly effective and powerful, but I encountered in myself and other people the ineffectiveness of this, leading to disillusionment.
Either God can remove things or he cannot; he is simply devoid of power or completely disinterested. Either there is effective scriptural action, or it is false. So my reasons are deep and personal.
However, I'm not sure what I should read in order to get in touch with this depth you speak of. I mean, wow, who do you hold as deep? Aquinas? St. John of the Cross? C.S. Lewis? Pascal? Francis Schaeffer? Kierkegaard? Ignatius?
Do you have any idea of the rites, relics, scriptures and traditions and why they should be important? Is it just an unthinking devotion do you suppose? If it is patently, obviously absurd or wrong how has it endured while more supposedly enlightened or enlightenment traditions or ideologies have not?
Yes. I was watch a program on Mexico, and they have such devotion to the virgin of Guadalupe (sp?). They interviewed a female cliff diver, and she explained that she prayed so "Nothing bad would happen." So then she dove, and she was injured, flailing around in the water. After she was treated by her coach, she could move her arm, and they took this as sign of faith that she'd been spared worse harm. Well why not spare her altogether?
I'm not sure what you mean by me having a shallow appreciation of Christian tradition, as if I dipped just my toe into the Baptismal or never read a single book on European history. You shall have to prove that point. Why do you think they survive? Of course, we know it is only because of God's love, and not because Muslims or Christians ever touched anyone with the sword.
If you want me to theorize, then I suggest the the genetic propensity to be religious is a significant amount of the genome. Yet even if it does carry a larger amount of people, tradition, or genetic material, majority opinion or longevity of opinion do not preclude truth.
Further science is advancing greater at this point. We've left the crystalline spheres, and can see beyond them.
I can understand how someone can feel offended when they are challenged and dont understand why and then attribute ill motives or beliefs to those who have challenged them. I was a teenager once and did it a lot, especially when I was seventeen and saw much of my daily life as a struggle against illegitimate authority but I grew older, realised that my melodramatic self-narrated heroic tale wasnt exactly a true reflection of reality.
That's exactly true. I completely agree. I would certainly react differently at 41 than I did at 22
In fact I have a story of my own in which I wore a peaked baseball cap all the time and was asked to remove it by a criminology lecturer and felt offended by the request, he explained that there was no risk of rain indoors and no need to wear it. Not right away but after speaking with him a number of times I became more persuaded of what he said.
It doesn't matter.
Christianity is not in error for failing to conform to contemporary trends or fashions in thought, feelings or values, most of which have come to resemble those of ancient greece and rome once again and which Christianity did not embrace when they were predominant last.
So what your say is that this is just a phase, whereupon we will be more Christian again...like in the dark ages when the church was in charge?
Sounds lovely. Let's hold science back for another 1000 years. Indeed, let's go back to surgery without anesthesia and bubonic plague.