Dr. Forbush Thinks

I have gotten a few bizarre comments on my blog from conservative readers or trollers and I thought that I should sum up some of the answers to their “questions” in an entry.

There are dichotomies and inconsistencies in every religion. Christians have these same divisions and inconsistencies. If there were no divisions among the different Christian traditions then there would be only one Christian religion. There is a strange phenomenon among Christians in that they believe that they have all the answers because they found them in the Bible. However, every Christian religion has found different answers in the same Bible. This means that there are different interpretations of the Bible even among the different so-called fundamentalist Christian faiths. If there were no divisions, then Paul’s command for unity among Christians would be obeyed and the once separate religions would be compelled to unify under the teachings of Paul. This is not so, so the logical conclusion is that most of the Christian religions must be wrong on at least one point of their faith. With so many different faiths it is quite unlikely that what ever faith you believe in could possibly be completely correct in all its teachings.

So, when self-proclaimed Christians attack Muslims based on a very weak understanding of the Bible I find it quite distasteful. They sight the extremist fundamentalist Muslim groups and they condemn all Muslims. Saying that the beliefs of some fundamentalist Muslims extrapolates to all Muslims in akin to saying that the teachings of David Koresh, Jim Jones, or Jerry Falwell extrapolate to all Christians. All of these men were or are self-proclaimed Christians and preach views that the majority of Christians would disagree with if they thought them through. The teachings of these men are not in the tradition of Jesus, but somehow these men believe that they are. Similarly, the teachings of the fundamentalist Muslims are not in the spirit of the Koran, even though the fundamentalist Mullahs believe that they are. Not all Muslims agree with these Mullahs, however, some of the less educated people are afraid to argue with these teachers because they don’t really understand the Muslim faith as well as they should. Similarly many Christians who are uneducated would find it difficult to oppose Jerry Falwell and would be tempted to except what he preached based on the fact that he is a well-known personality and therefore must know what he is talking about.

Saying that all Christians believe in these unchristian teachings of Jerry Falwell, David Koresh, or Jim Jones would be considered spreading the hatred of Christians. This is because it is quite clear that it is untrue. Painting an imagine of thousands of Jerry Falwell type “Christians” spreading the Gospel of hate to the world would be enough motivation to rise up against Christians in general and spread hate even further.