It's pot calling the kettle situation here though:
"It's not a case of isolated instances. A peace-loving,
tolerance Christianity in any era is not an argument you can
make. And cherry-picking flower-child and perennial cults is not
going to cut it."
Peace-loving, tolerance Christianity *has* been a reality within
Christiandom since day 1.
This is not to say there wasn't bad things done "in the name of"
that are vile.
This is not to say there wasn't good things done "in the name
of" that are pleasant.
If you're going to take an exclusionary stance for a destructive
Christianity, shall THEN take an exclusionary stance for a
constructive Christianity? Can you see how absurd that is?
Logician, Apply Thy Logic to Thyself.
You have a strong bias here. Acknowledge your bias but do not
pretend it is Logic. You're making Logic look bad again to the
neighbors.
Yes, I understand the Judaic commentary. I'm not disputing its
source intention. I am not disputing its reinterpretation
through the centuries that also correlates to the source
definition.
However, there have also been reinterpretations that correlate
to a more metaphorical meaning through the very same centuries.
Now, if you wish, you may consider Time as Irrelevant and Change
as an Illusion and if that's the case, I can't help that.
But the question of "Which historical threads to follow?" "What
is valid history?" "What is invalid history" "What are biased
accounts?" "What is balanced accounts?" are not easy things and
subject to various interpretations.
There *is* no singular interpretation of historical accounts.
So to say, "And cherry-picking flower-child and perennial cults
is not going to cut it" is nonsense.
Cut what? Analogy: There are 17 entirely distinct accounts of
the first US Thanksgiving, ranging from construction paper
Pilgrim hat cutout forth grade school play all the way to blood
thirsty Michael Bay explosion, THIS IS SPARTA!, wicked
Illuminati small-pox infecting wickedness.
There's 15 other interpretations somewhere inbetween.
Who do you pick? What do you choose?
Such is the issue of historical accounts.
Just as you do not consider every person who calls themselves a
Logician a Logician, I do not consider everybody who calls
themselves a Christian, a Christian. I don't even CONSIDER
myself a Christian, but oversimplified *bad* accounts of history
are annoying as hell, especially when the stories told all tie
neatly together with a bow to prove some kind of modern point.
Naming it doesn't claim it.
But there *is* historical record, there is source material...
...and THEN.. there are commentaries.
The commentaries are fully colored by bias as of course are the
source material.
A true historical account is multi-faceted and includes a
variety of opinion and it must, for there are multiple stories,
often telling mutually exclusive tales.
"doesn't cut it". Please. You can't cut history up like that.
Actions turned into words written by a human makes a nice story.
People LOVE a story about "this wicked group" who is the source
of all badness.* But truth? is messy, especially truth of
history.
