Things I disagree with Christianity about:

*Disclaimer*: The below views are held by various and numerous denominations of Christianity and individual Christians, but not all. I am well aware that there are individuals and denominations who do not accept some or all of the views below, so please don’t bother to post comments on how your version of Christianity doesn’t preach XYZ. Thanks. Also, neither the Disagree or Agree lists are comprehensive.


1. Exclusivity

This is the belief that Christianity is the One True Faith, or ‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me’. This is clearly rubbish, and here’s why – it makes no sense. There are a variety of ways to do absolutely everything within human experience – eat, sleep, walk, talk, learn, have sex, give birth, smile, you name it. So why would this most important thing, the connection to the Divine only have one way to do it?

Anyone who has kids knows that each child is different, and what works with one may not work for the other. Eg some kids respond well to reasoning, some need the threat of punishment to behave. It’s so clear that everyone connects and responds in different ways, which is why we have so many different kinds of religion. All religions and faiths are paths to the Divine. They’re different because we are different. Insisting that any one of them is the only right one just reflects the insister’s own insecurity. They want to be part of a unique club, Daddy’s special kids. Well, it don’t work that way! If God(dess) is loving, s/he loves us all because s/he made us all. Parents, can you imagine leaving one of your children out in the cold because they understood the lesson differently? Bollocks. A god(dess) worth worshipping would not do this.

2. Hell

Closely linked to the above is the concept of Hell. A god(dess) worth worshipping would not sentence any of its children to eternal torment, regardless of the offence. And ESPECIALLY not if the offence is as arbitratry as understanding the god(dess) in a different way.

3. Salvation

There are two main views on salvation that I am aware of and disagree with within Protestantism – Calvinism and Arminianism. Calvinism says that God predestined his elect, chose who he would save before the world began. Arminianism says that it is our choice to accept Jesus, and whoever accepts him is saved.

Here is the problem with Calvinism: If God chose some people and not others to be saved before he created them, that means that he created a bunch of people whose inescapable destination is death and hell. Not loving.

Here is the problem with Arminianism: If God requires us to accept Jesus Christ in order to be saved, that damns all the people who never heard about Jesus before they died. So your average Hindu or Buddhist is just shit out of luck. Not loving.

There is a third view, which is dealt with in the Agree post.

4. Patriarchy/suppression of the female

Where are the women?? Where is the female aspect of God? We have the Son, but where is the Daughter? We have the Father, but where is the Mother?

Here are some nice Biblical quotes on this subject:

“Let the women keep silence in the church”

“I suffer no woman to teach, or to have authority over a man”

“Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning:” (Judges 19: 22-25)

“Let it be done unto me according to your will”

Yes, that last one is attributed to Mary, mother of Jesus, the only residual trace of the goddesses we once had. What is womanhood demoted to? A mortal, subservient to an immortal. A female whose flawed perfection is in her utter submission and the use of her body as a vessel from which comes the real perfection – a man.

The power of goddesses like Taweret, Mut and Freya is lost within a patriarchal religion. The importance of the motherline is also lost, and we focus only on the father-son relationship. Half the population is disenfranchised by this elimination of the Divine Feminine.

I have a ton more to say about this, but this is already a long post so I will just point you to a truly amazing book on this topic, by a fantastic writer:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/006064589X/qid=1143820717/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-0829141-7026867

5. Homosexuality

The rules against homosexuality are only still in place because of the rigidity of dogma. They were originally there, like the rules against ‘spilling your seed on the ground’ because there was this tiny tribe that needed to expand quickly or risk being completely subsumed or destroyed by the much larger neighbouring peoples. In order for the Israelites to survive, they had to breed. Which, I think is also a reason for the polygamous practices of the time – a man impregnating 4 wives can produce a lot more offspring than a man impregnating one.

Homosexuality is a natural variant of sexuality and exists in several animal species. There are even studies of male penguins pairing up and successfully raising a chick. In short, gay is natural, as is straight. Eventually humanity will realise that, the same way we realised that white wasn’t any better than black.

Either that or we will become Gilead.

6. One life

This is a much less fervent disagreement than those above, but I recently had a Twang moment about reincarnation as opposed to the single life on earth that most Christians believe we get. Did you like that expression? I invented it myself last night :o) A Twang moment is when you hear, read or think of something and it reverberates inside your soul, like the twang of a guitar string.

So anyway, I had a Twang moment about reincarnation the other day. I was musing (do that a fair bit!) and it suddenly came to me that reincarnation is an incredibly elegant and sensible solution to the fact of human frailty and error. We are going to cock things up, right? So why should we only get one shot at this? It makes so much more sense for us to be able to have a few goes in order to learn everything we need to and ‘get it right’ inasmuch as possible.

Maybe all our incarnations aren’t on this planet. As one of my favourite posters said on the Religion board ‘Maybe you flunk Earth life but ace Klingon life’. Tee hee. I love that idea :oD

So that’s all I’ve got for the Disagree post for the moment. There may be a Part Deux, but this will do for now. Agree post to follow.