Eric Harrison - Latest Comments

Re: How I Build PHP Applications

Arvel Wilson — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:37:45 -0000

Php has various features but directory structure explained by you is really fine.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:24:36 -0000

Yes it's right that we don't judge the gays we should love them. But it
doesn't mean that they will continue to be that way, they have to
overcome it with the help of their love ones, friends, church and GOD.

It's
so sad that many Christian Churches don't have a good approach towards
this issue, some are so judgmental and discriminating.

JESUS said
to the prostitute "Go and sin no more." We are all sinners, we battle
each day to overcome sin. It is the same thing with the gays, lesbians,
etc. they have to overcome it.

In the Lords Prayer, it was stated
their "NOT MY WILL BE DONE, BUT YOUR WILL BE DONE.". To be a Christian
is to do the will of the Father (GOD) and to obey HIS commandments. It's
not the will of the father for a man to marry a man, it was never
designed that way.

We have our sinful nature, our own will but if
we live each day doing our own will, our own decision, the way we want
it without God's direction and guidance, it would all be vanity.

God
is Love and full of grace but it doesn't mean we will stay as we are
(sinners). We shall workout our salvation, fight a good fight ("Resist
the devil and he will flew away from you"), follow JESUS no matter how
many times we will fall.

Re: Don't Call Me "Christian" | Eric Harrison

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:08:26 -0000

Yes it's right that we don't judge the gays we should love them. But it doesn't mean that they will continue to be that way, they have to overcome it with the help of their love ones, friends, church and GOD.

It's so sad that many Christian Churches don't have a good approach towards this issue, some are so judgmental and discriminating.

JESUS said to the prostitute "Go and sin no more." We are all sinners, we battle each day to overcome sin. It is the same thing with the gays, lesbians, etc. they have to overcome it.

In the Lords Prayer, it was stated their "NOT MY WILL BE DONE, BUT YOUR WILL BE DONE.". To be a Christian is to do the will of the Father (GOD) and to obey HIS commandments. It's not the will of the father for a man to marry a man, it was never designed that way.

We have our sinful nature, our own will but if we live each day doing our own will, our own decision, the way we want it without God's direction and guidance, it would all be vanity.

God is Love and full of grace but it doesn't mean we will stay as we are (sinners). We shall workout our salvation, fight a good fight ("Resist the devil and he will flew away from you"), follow JESUS no matter how many times we will fall.

Re: How I Build PHP Applications

Batman — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 06:57:43 -0000

i agree robin

Re: How I Build PHP Applications

Hire PHP Developer — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:27:37 -0000

Yeahh I am also a PHP Developer and earning enough by writing PHP code. But you provide an excellent tutorial on how to build PHP application. I like your directory structure most. This is how a PHP developer should create and maintain directory structure while creating php application. This will give himself, other programmer and user an easy explanation of directory and files hosted on server or on local machine.
Thanks again.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Carol Roach — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 02:13:57 -0000

I struggled like you with Christianity from an early age. That prayer they start you on about 6 years old, "now we lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take".

From that date forward I suffered from insomnia and a fear of death for myself and others every night. When my stepfather molested me, I was quite convinced that the Lord was going to take my soul as soon as fell asleep and sent it straight to hell where I would burn in fire the rest of my life.

I decided that I was not going to lie to my child about myths that have no scientific evidence to support them. He did not attend church, Sunday School or a private church school though he did attend a private secular school. As his ability to read, think, assess, debate, philosophize about these things developed in his mid to late teens, we had discussions about the role of the Christian God in this world. We compared that to the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim reverence for God and the supreme power to their religion of the Prophet Mohammed, Eastern multigod religions. At the age of 40 my son can absolutely see no reason why he would believe in God anymore than Santa Claus, which we had also never told him was true.

Indocatrination of children should not be allowed. The behaviour of American fundamentalist citizens and preachers strike me as completely unChristian and are preventing Americans from remaining a respected power in the rest of the world.Your system of government and the symbiosis between the media and the government will lead to the final decline of the US and suddenly the US will be the next Argentina or Venezuela with all the revolution and rebellion at extreme philosophies ripping the country apart.

Watching you and your intrusive patdown at airports makes my laugh out loud when you are supposed to be the country of freedom. It is your phones being wiretapped without a court order, not ours - another freedom you have lost. And the men on this issue think patdowns are intrusive byt necessary while women, the normal victims of unwanted patdown from the time they are very young are horrified by the vile intrusive of being groped- because that is what you are doing, YOU ARE GROPING PEOPLE, What a wonderful job for a pedophile. Is that the reason we saw a tiny child being stripped and groped?

Everyday I am grateful we have a more balanced, less frightened, more educated populace who have taken media spin classes for both commercials and programs. By high school they are pretty savvy.

Afghanistan. You asked for NATO assistance and got it. Within a year and a half you abandoned in for Iraq, walked away from your allies in Afghanistan. You were just so convinced that once you one the Iraq was every one was going to jump on board and help. Well we didn't, it was in illegal war and we did not need our leaders charged with war crimes. Plus, we had huge antiwar demonstrations which Prime Minister Chretien listened to and followed his on heart because he agree with his constituents.

As long as you can be frightehed by simplistic people like Palin, Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh trying to scare you into believeing one lie after another (Remember the Swift Boat Veterans, Remember the 2000 election called by Fox Newa and the sheep like following of others? Remember the irrationality of the Supreme Court. If you no longer thing the validity of your democratic process above a date or a procedure that was not followed properly, than what hope is there for the great United States of America. Corporations cannot run countries in a manner that balances the corporate good and good of the citizenry. That will never be possible with the level of greed in this world.

It is so sad. I was so proud of your country, the houses of Congress and your Supreme Court in the period from the second world war to sometime towards the end of the 1970's. We modelled our values very much on your articulated and legislated policies, your civil rights movement, etc. Then Pierre Trudeau came along and presented a vvision for Canada that expanded on civil rights, visiting Russia and Child long before a US President did.

Unfortunatly we know have a fundamentalist Baptist trying to change our country. To date, he has never been given a majoirty government in three tries. I don't think we ever will. I certainly hope not because then he will take us backward just as your government has pulled you back to an ideal time that never existed. What did exist was concern for other citizens, for foreign aid, a belief that government medicine which is largely subsidized through universities and instutions should be free to all taxpayers since everyone pays taxes.

Canada leads you in financial stability, home foreclosures, jobs and bank stability. However, if you go down we will probably follow unless we get a very bright leader who drives us in a better direction. We do have an advantage in that we don't think anyone should police the world and we don't admire empires.

God is the answer to keeping Americans ignorant what is going on in their country and the rest of the world. As you said on TV tonight, Americans can only cope with a couple of things at a time. If one is God, that means they can only concentrate on one other thing. Please do something to save your country before idieologues destroy it.

Re: SiteSprint Development Goals

jmhobbs — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:11:38 -0000

One big thing I used when I switched to it was the Amazon wishlist import. Awesome feature.

Re: SiteSprint Development Goals

Eric Ryan Harrison — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:47:09 -0000

No, I hadn't. This is actually rather perfect. The ONLY drawback is that I won't be able to use my Amazon affiliate for all the links, but to be honest with you, I don't really care about that.

Great find John. I'd used a few of those type of services before, but they all lacked something crucial that I really needed. I'll have to add all my books from 2010 to the page, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Thanks again.

Re: SiteSprint Development Goals

jmhobbs — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:08:33 -0000

Dunno if you've ever considered it, but I use GoodReads to track my reading and I love it.

http://www.goodreads.com/us...

Decent API stuff too so you can just drag the data in for your own pages and widgets.

Re: I’m SiteSprinting!

Eric Ryan Harrison — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:07:13 -0000

Yeah. He was being mean... :D

Yeah, I've basically decided to go dark for the background, and use those light colors as "pop" elements. I also have some funny ideas that I'm going to try (though I don't want to spoil the surprise by telling you about it now).

Re: I’m SiteSprinting!

Michael Wales — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:22:54 -0000

Wow... he really tried to get you with that selection. Pro-tip: dark backgrounds, there's a Wordpress theme that jumps right to mind that uses very similar colors and pulls it off pretty well. Maybe you can get some inspiration from there.

Re: I’m SiteSprinting!

Eric Ryan Harrison — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:55:47 -0000

Don't know what was causing the Malware warning. Weird.

But yeah, SiteSprint is basically a "redesign your website in one month" type of deal that goes on every so often. It seems to be more geared towards designers (which I'm certainly not), but all my local dev/designer buddies are doing it so I figured that it might be fun to tag along.

Having Chris pick out four really horrible colors is my way of forcing myself to be creative in a narrow avenue. Part of my problem with design is that I never know where to start and end up throwing any crap I think of into a design. I'm hoping that the forced limitations I'm imposing on myself will help keep me focused. We'll see by December 1st... :D

Re: I’m SiteSprinting!

jmhobbs — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:11:29 -0000

Never mind, false alarm it seems.

Re: I’m SiteSprinting!

jmhobbs — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:10:42 -0000

Chrome is telling me that http://sitesprint.info/ is infected with malware. Care to explain what a site sprint is? Is it like Startup Month?

Re: Announcing UserPing.com

Hellobrk — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:41:24 -0000

I liked your comments and your idea to start userping for small startups, you will be the right choice for the people who cannot pay $10 a month. You may gradually improve your site and may beat chart beat too... who knows!

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Eric Ryan Harrison — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:11:22 -0000

Thanks for commenting! I appreciate hearing from people (like you) to let me know that I'm not alone in feeling that things aren't quite right in the world of "Christianity." There's so many wonderful things in the Christian message that I love and wish were taught and applied by the majority of people calling themselves Christians, yet all I ever see are teachings based on fear, hatred, or from plain-old misunderstandings.

I'm not a Biblical scholar. I've never attended seminary. And, to be brutally honest, until recently I wasn't very faithful in reading the Bible, praying, or making any sort of effort to be a good "follower of Jesus." But when I did start reading the Bible in earnest and searching desperately for answers to my deep theological questions, I was amazed at how plainly apparent it was that the text of the Bible is so often used in Christian churches out of context to the point of almost being intentionally misleading.

When I, as a layman, can sit down to read the Bible and instantly see how a simple interpretation of the Bible can contradict the message of a lifetime of Bible studies, sermons, and lessons, I am left with no other conclusion than that there aren't very many people who actually READ the Bible.

It's common to hear about how a lot of Christians are only Christian on Sunday and that during the rest of the week they do whatever they want. The fact that there are only a handful of people (that I know of at least) who are just now starting to say "Hey, wait a minute, this doesn't seem right..." seems to paint a very scary picture that might possibly indicate that the overwhelming majority of Americans who call themselves "Christian" never read the Bible. Ever.

That is a very scary thought.

The other thing that I find very troubling is that I know a lot of people who are extremely religious and read their Bible with great regularity. But it's often those same "devout" Christians who are frequently the most vocal about how much everyone is sinning or how the Bible explicitly says X, Y, or Z. The only thing I can imagine that makes this scenario make sense is if these devout Christians spend all their Bible-study time reading the same few sections of the Bible over and over again and ignore everything else.

I honestly have no other idea how this extreme misapplication of the Bible is so widespread and rampant in our society.

Anyway, thanks for reading and leaving a comment. It helps me not feel so alone when I hear about other people out there who are looking for answers and finding that the things we've been taught might not be correct. Most of the time I just wish there was someone I could talk to to help me work these things out, but all of the learned Christians that I know have thus far been incapable of temporarily separating their faith in God from their faith in the system they've been taught to have an honest, open discussion on the issue. Oh well. :/

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Julien Desrosiers — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:23:25 -0000

I must say that i love your point of view about the Bible. I love the new testament but there is a lot of contradictions in the old testament.
I consider myself a christian even though i don't tell it to a lot of people, by fear of being judged as an anti-gay extremist. I just try to concentrate my thoughts on being a good person.

Thanks for this post.

Re: AMA: How do I get started as a freelance web developer?

Freelance Jobs — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:36:49 -0000

I love the bonus tip#2 well adding such projects on your portfolio would help you a lot to find potential clients.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Eric Ryan Harrison — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:46:50 -0000

Didn't do a very good job of proof-reading my second-half comment before I pasted it in to the comment.

The first paragraph should read:

"A lot of the problems I see with the modern interpretations of the Bible is that most people overlook the historical context of the various books. This, combined with a 2000 year-old religious theology cobbled together by men who tried to continually fit the Biblical texts into a theology that allowed both to coexist with a rapidly changing world-view being stirred up by scientific progress, has basically stripped away the original meaning and intent of the Biblical authors."

The bold bits is the part of the paragraph that I thought was most important, but I spent so much time trying to figure out the right wording to describe the mash-up of Biblical texts and theology and somehow filled in the important part... ;)

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Eric Ryan Harrison — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:41:23 -0000

Wow, great comment. I'm at home now and I'm watching my kids while my wife is out grocery shopping, so if I'm not clear enough in my response, just let me know and I promise I'll give you a better response when I have some time to think things out a little bit better.

I'm also going to paste in the second half of my comment to "You know who I am" that I didn't post because I felt like I was getting too far away from what I was trying to say to him. But this part that I'm pasting was the continuation of my big comment above and I think it's a pretty accurate representation of some of the things I feel I've been learning about the Bible.

Now, please bear in mind that all of these theories are just my own feeble attempt at making sense of this confusing faith that I struggle with. God made me with a very skeptical, analytic brain that leaves me constantly struggling to make sense of things that most people are able to take on faith alone. I recognize the power and importance of faith, but through my studies I've been able to reconcile my own personal faith failures by searching for solutions to the huge, glaring holes that I just can't overlook in the conventional Protestant theology that I was raised to believe.

I'm also more than willing to accept the possibility that I'm way off base with some of this stuff. My own theology is cobbled together with the best little bits of books, sermons, the Bible, which I've then mushed together into a theological worldview that leaves me with an absolute, unbreakable faith that God exists and that He loves me. I'm always trying to improve my own understanding as best as I can and I really work hard at living a life that God would want me to live. My biggest fear is that I'm making the same mistake that I feel a lot of ministers are making in how their message leads people away from God. Since this is my biggest fear, I have been trying really hard to be a good representative of the Lord in my actions and to restrict my crazy theological points of view with people I know and trust (like all 4 of my blog readers) so that I don't inadvertantly say something that messes things up for someone else.

The one thing that gives me hope for my crazy views is that it looks like there are more and more like-minded people expressing similar views all the time. A lot of this theological model that I've built for myself is heavily inspired by the book "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian D. McClaren. Reading that book completely changed my relationship with God. I went from being a guy who believed in God and Jesus, but couldn't see a way to live as He wanted me to live due to my problems with the theology I inherited from my parents. A New Kind of Christian introduced me to the possibility of a different era of faith based on slightly different pricincples.

So, long story short: I'm still trying to figure things out. And I'm almost certain that I'll never REALLY know for sure if I'm right or wrong. A lot of these ideas are wild speculation combined with hair-brained guesses in an attempt to make a new theological model more in line with what I feel is the real desire of God for me (and everyone else).

Anyway, regardless of any disagreements we may have on various topics like this, I always try to live my life by one of my favorite Bible verses that I always felt was written specifically for me. I know it's out of context as it's talking about prophecy, but taken by itself, it's something that always makes me feel better:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. - 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (ESV)

So, on to the paste of the second half of the comment that I omitted earlier.

This is basically just the tip of the iceberg regarding why I no longer believe that the Bible was intended to be the inerrant Word of God. I start with some contradictions and crazy ideas from Genesis and branch out from there. The Cain+Abel idea was directly taken from McClaren's "A New Kind of Christian", but it was also a personal turning point for me. Once I read his hypothesis on Cain and Abel being a metaphor for the societal shift of early humans, I felt like my heart had been unlocked and a lot of things started feeling like they were clicking in place for me.

But, the drawback to this personal revelation is that it leaves me with no choice but to accept that the Bible is less about "God's Inerrant Rule and Answer Book" and transformed it into what I see as a really awesome story about the all-inclusive family of God and how much He loves us. It's one part history, one part advice, one part love letter, and one part "For-Dummies" in-your-face example on the life that God really wants us to live.

Oh well, I've now written for a long time and haven't even pasted the huge text from the first comment yet. So here you go:

---------------- SECOND HALF OF FIRST COMMENT ----------------
A lot of the problems I see with the modern interpretations of the Bible is that most people overlook the historical context of the various books. This, combined with a 2000 year-old religious theology cobbled together by men who tried to continually fit the Biblical texts into a theology that allowed both to coexist, has basically stripped away the original meaning and intent of the Biblical authors.

One example of this is that the books of the Bible were given to the authors through a direct revelation by God. These theories were crafted to correct very obvious discrepancies in the authority of the message. If we take a look at Genesis, for example, we see a book that (for a long time) was believed to have been written by Moses. The problem with this is obvious: the book of Genesis covers events long before Moses was alive.

It's my belief, based on what studying I've done on the history of the Bible, that the Bible as we know it has several very important sections that need to be interpretted differently. The first five books of the Bible represent the Torah, which is basically a big jumble of historical documents describing the world as it was interpreted by a tribal race known as the Hebrews. Some of the things I've studied have made a very convincing argument that Genesis is merely a written compilation of oral histories told by the ancient Hebrew tribes.

By oral history, I'm specifically referring to a tradition of storytelling used by early tribal peoples prior to the widespread acceptance of a unified writing system. Imagine, in your head, a small group of tribal humans huddled around a fire at night after a long day of trying to survive and telling each other elaborate stories of how a powerful god created the earth in 7 days and passing around stories about a world-wide flood that killed everyone except for their righteous ancestor. Some of the reasons why this theory is so believable (to me) is in the various stories of Genesis itself. The story of Noah and the flood make a great story and do a wonderful job cementing the Hebrew God as "The One and Only God" with the power to do anything to mess with his wayward creation. The only problem here is that the story of Noah has been discovered to be a "Flood Myth," which turns out is a very, very common mythical story among various cultures. The problem then arises when you discover that a Sumerian flood myth was recorded almost a full 10,000 years prior to the Noah story.

Another interesting metaphorical story from Genesis seems to point a clue towards why ancient cultures all seemed to have a collective fear of flooding. The story of Cain and Abel is the first major attrocity described in the Bible that I think is one very clear example of the origins of the stories in Genesis.

So, Adam and Eve had two sons. Cain was born first, with Abel following sometime after that. Abel chose to become a shepherd, and Cain is the first professional farmer. They both made an offering to God, with Cain presenting some of his produce and Abel made an offering of some firstborn sheep and some fatty bits of their meat. Now, most people have heard of this story, and know that God found Abel's offering of sheep to be pleasing and Cain's offering of produce to be unacceptable.

Cain gets angry, and the Lord asks him why he is upset and then tells him that if he does what is right, he will be accepted. But that if he does not do what is right, sin will be crouching at the door. Then Cain goes and kills Abel.

A literal interpretation of this story says that the first two people had two sons and one of the sons killed his brother and was punished for it. I believe this interpretation is incorrect, and I've found an interpretation that is too interesting to pass up.

What if, in the manner of oral tradition that I believe Genesis is formed around, the story of Cain and Abel is a metaphor for the transition of human culture from a Hunter-Gatherer Society into a Agricultural Society. If Humans originally evolved to excel in this world for hundreds of thousands of years as primitive Hunter-Gatherers and suddenly a new system emerges in which instead of spending all day hunting and gathering, these tribes would set up shop in one spot and suddenly (and very quickly in terms of the scale of Human history) transformed into an agricultural society, the story of Cain and Abel can be a very clear warning of the dangers of this transition.

Prior to the shift to Agriculture, Humans lived off of the land. They were migratory and moved with the seasons and the availability of food. These early societies probably had a concept of a creator god and believed that he had built them to live as Hunter-Gatherers. A shift to Agriculture meant a complete shift in the way of life of those early societies. Instead of moving around with the supply of food, they would settle down in one spot and cultivate the land. The story of Cain and Abel becomes a metaphor told to explain some of the pain experienced in a sudden cultural shift.

Once subsistence farming is brought into the picture, all of the other major concepts we have been taught to be sins suddenly appear for the first time. Before, tribes would be small communities sharing all resources for the good of the community. After, there would be an "ownership" of property and material possessions and the desire to keep the surpluses for personal benefit. I can easily imagine this being the first introduction of the sin concepts of greed (the desire for more possessions), selfishness (why help out other people in your tribe when they've failed to do the hard work that you've done), envy (wishing that you owned what your neighbor owned instead of him), and you'd also see new conflicts arising over control, property, and fear of your own things being taken from you.

Another thing that seems to point to the possible validity of this theory is the Flood Myth that I mentioned above. If ancient man had gone through the change from Hunter-Gatherer to Agricultural, they would have been forced to settle down near a major source of water (lakes, rivers, seas, etc) and would all of the sudden have their entire lives hang in the balance of the patterns of weather. A season of heavy rain could flood the crops and cause the entire family line to die out. Once society had shifted to an Agricultural society, suddenly things like a high amount of rainfall had the potential to completely destroy entire tribes of people in one big swoop. As Hunter-Gatherers, life was hard, but each day was spent attaining a small amount of necessities required for survival. A massive storm would, at worst, only slow them down for a few days. But a flood a short time before the harvest near the end of the growing season would leave them without enough food to last through the winter. So, the side effect of a world-wide shift to Agriculture created a new paranoia about the dangers of the weather.

The Noah story then becomes one story of the amazing survival of a man and his family thanks to the intervention of his god.
---------------- /SECOND HALF OF FIRST COMMENT ----------------

This view ends up leaving more questions unanswered, so it's not a perfect model. Some of the things I'm still puzzling over is how everything fits in if I accept that Genesis is a series of stories with no basis in any real events. It makes the rest of the Bible wobble around a little bit once you get ride of the Garden of Eden and the concept of original sin. I'm still trying to figure all that out, but I'll let you know if I think of anything that makes sense (or heck, if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears).

Sorry for another REALLY long post. I need to get better at omitting needless words. :(

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Eric Ryan Harrison — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:58:56 -0000

Wow John. Thanks for sharing that movie. I hadn't heard about this before, but the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watc... looks amazing. I just added it to the top of my Netflix queue, so hopefully I'll get to see it sometime in the next 7 days or so.

One of my favorite things to do is to debate about religion. I always leave a good discussion feeling like I've gained a years worth of insight in a short amount of time. I love having my assumptions challenged and any time good counter-points are brought up, my beliefs are either strengthened or improved.

I look at a good debate as being the equivalent of an A/B test in software. Even if your initial favorite concept is less successful, you still walk away a winner with a new and improved idea that has been tested under the scrutiny of an opposing point of view.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

jmhobbs — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:35:53 -0000

As an aside, this movie (http://www.collisionmovie.c... is the most respectful debate I have ever seen between an atheist and a Christian. It's phenomenal and I recommend it to everyone as a place to measure the quality of our conversations. Don't worry, they don't pick a "winner" so it's not propaganda, or at least it didn't seem so to me. As a bonus, it's extremely entertaining too.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

jmhobbs — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:17:20 -0000

Big post there, one big point I want to make. You really don't believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God? So how do you decide which parts are the Word of God and which aren't? How can you not take the whole thing or nothing?

Don't get me wrong here, I know where my Bible comes from. I know about the various canonization's, the discarded books, the apocrypha (Catholic's got their Bible from iTunes and got bonus books!) and all that jazz.

Not to mention the multiple source documents and the difficulty of translation. Exegesis is a terrifying prospect. But I have to take it on faith that the Bible I have is the Bible God want's me to have, is complete, and doesn't include anything but God's Word. That's a core tenent of my faith and if I can'e believe that, everything else will fall apart.

I think you might be (and WBC definitely is) confusing two things: the absolute Truth of Scripture and the daily application of same. Genre matters, context matters, but it's all God's Word.

Let me start by saying I believe that homosexuality was a sin in Levitical times. I also believe that eating shellfish was a sin in Levitical times (for a totally different reason though). But the people of the Old Testament operated under the Old Law, the Sacrificial Law.

The New Testament provides the New Covenant through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We have a new system, and a new Law, but that doesn't change the nature of sin. I am no longer under the federal headship of Adam, I am under th headship of Christ. But sin is sin, missing the mark, falling short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23).

I still believe that homosexuality is a sin. It's not addressed in the New Testament as suddenly being okay, so I have to assume it's still forbidden. However the old punishments aren't okay anymore. They conflict with the love nature of the New Covenant (see John 8:2-11 for an example).

So I don't hate homosexuals, I just believe they are sinning in their depraved nature (not a slight on homosexuals, but rather the reformed tenant of total depravity, google it) and I hope they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

As the for lobster, that is obliquely addressed in 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 (Wait Eric! I promise I'm not a Paul-ian :) As for why it was a sin under the Old Law, I believe that God implemented a number of laws as sin for the sake of public health and our general well being (see Deuteronomy 23:12-14 for a good example). Over time these are no longer sin because they no longer pose the same threat to us and thus God changes the rules in the New Testament.

You have to take the Bible as a whole and understand that the New Testament, and the New Covenant, trumps the Old Testament. But just because one overrides the other doesn't mean one part is wrong, or not God's Word. It's like mulitple inheritance in OOP.

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

Eric Ryan Harrison — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:36:25 -0000

I ended up writing a LOT more in this response than I originally intended, so I'm just wanted to address one thing really quick before you jump into the really long body of this reply.

Regarding what you said about studing the Bible but not being able to recite verses... don't worry bro. You're in good company here. At gunpoint, I could _maybe_ recite a handful of verses, but that's giving me too much credit. I just don't have the right mind to keep a lot of long quotes in my head. What I do is cheat. I use my programmery skills to build nice searchable Bible readers so I can quickly lookup things I remember reading but can't remember exactly where. As long as you're able to remember a few major search terms for each major section of the Bible, you too can do as I do and look super smart by always posting long comments with a lot of references to Bible verses... ;)

Ok, so, here's the really long response.

Your statement that "if more people approached the bible in the same manner..." is pretty much one of the things that upsets me the most. You are probably the 9th or 10th person who has told me (since all these things started going down) that this is EXACTLY why they don't go to church or believe in God. I've finally come to the realization that the modern American form of Christianity is hurting the cause of God.

While I've never been a Catholic, a few of the things I've learned about the Catholic church are among the most vile, disgusting, and (to use a word with Biblical connotations) downright evil.

My problem is that as someone who has read the vast majority of the Bible over the course of my lifetime and grown up in a home with a preacher for a dad, I think that the modern structure of the Christian religion is very dangerous interpretation of very old texts of various purposes. When read literally, there are so many horribly glaring contraditions in the Bible that a literally-interpreted Biblical faith would be very unpleasant and downright ridiculous.

I continually talk about homosexuality when I'm talking about this subject because it's currently a raging debate in our society right now. And, since I'm personally a huge believer in homosexual rights, it's something I read a lot about. As I mentioned in my rant on my Tumblr page, I believe that the logical arguments that the majority of American Fundamentalist Christians are making is based on a very flimsy set of principles.

Homosexuality is only mentioned a few times in the Bible, yet those few times are constantly quoted as why homosexual relations are a "deviant lifestyle" and that they deserve to die. But the argument falls apart when those same Christians completely ignore all of the other laws and regulations put forth in Leviticus. There are some really silly laws and I would bet only the tiniest minority of really fundamentalist Jews actually observe.

Some of the more obvious examples (covered in a more humorous form in this article):

1. Leviticus 25:44 covers how you should treat the slaves that you own.
2. Leviticus 15:19-24 says that anything that a woman touches during her period is to be considered unclean and how we're supposed to avoid contact with them during that time of the month and what to do if we accidentally come in contact with them.
3. Leviticus 11:10 clearly states that we are forbidden from eating shellfish (shrimp, lobster, oysters, etc) but you don't see many Fundamentalist Christians protesting in front of Red Lobster with signs saying "I Hope That Your Lobster Still Tastes Good in Hell!"

There are so many examples like this in the Old Testament scriptures that make it very apparent (to me at least) that these Fundamentalists have decided that God only really intended for them to follow a few of the laws He gave to the Israelites. To me, this is blatent hypocrisy and it's something that Jesus (the guy these Fundamentalists all claim to be trying to live like) addressed in pretty simple terms.

An extremely simple illustration (not about homosexuality) to see the hypocrisy can be found in Exodus 35:2. It states "Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death." If you passionately believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God (which I don't) like these Fundamentalists constantly claim, then they should also be protesting in front of Wal-Mart and trying to kill the employees who are working on the Sabbath.

Since they only like to protest the places and individuals that are sinning in a way that they disapprove of, it's apparent that they aren't truly concerned about the laws of God and are generally just a bunch of homophobic, uneducated "sheep" that willingly accept the Biblical lessons that their ministers have been teaching without doing the slightest bit of introspective research on their own.

But they're mostly just ignorant idiots. The really evil ones are the ministers feeding them this nonsense. It's their job to do the research and to reflect on the true meaning of the messages contained in the Bible, yet since they lead countless millions into a lifestyle of hatred, I believe that these hateful fundamentalist ministers are the evil and misguided ones that we were warned about on several different occasions.

Jesus actually gives a valid interpretation of the law described in Exodus 35:2 in Mark 2:23-28 that I think is what we should be using as a model for how we interpret the scriptures. Jesus says "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." This short conversation Jesus has tells us that the Sabbath was intended to be a day of rest for you rather than a forced observance required by an angry God who wants to lock us down with rules and regulations for no good reason.

This tiny little 6 verse interaction between Jesus and a group of Pharisees is one of the best hints that we read the Bible incorrectly. To me, the worst part is that the Fundamentalist Christian attitude towards the Bible being the inerrant Word of God has no basis in reality and does a lot to damage what the Bible actually is—a compiled love story between God and His creation (us).

Re: Don’t Call Me “Christian”

You know who I am — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:25:01 -0000

As an atheist, I enjoy reading your posts. To be honest, if more people approached the bible in the same manner as you, it wouldn't be so easy to condemn God's followers for their misguided and hateful beliefs. I enjoy the fact that I can have my opinion on faith and not be ostracized, in addition to having a decent conversation with you on the topic of religion. I've studied the Bible myself, though I cannot recite verses, and grew up in a Catholic home. Catholicism seems to be one of the most archaic and lob-sided denominations of Christianity.

Regardless...good stuff.