[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

John, what the heck. Once again, you pretend to have some cosmic insight on things that ends up giving you a chance to spew some absurdity.

Umm... Hi? Please, instead of coming on the CGR four times a year to write an angry post at me give me a call, we'll have lunch or whatever, I'd love to hear how you are doing! I still pray for you all the time Jeffrey, and I sincerely hope you are well.

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

Please, give me one shred of evidence that Dawkins would be pro-eugenics and anti-homosexual if mainline Christianity wasn't anti-homosexual?

If you want a shred, then -- the "pure bloodline" stuff has always been popular among evolution-as-ethics folks, and Dawkins et al are pretty big fans of the "realist" live-and-let-die stuff. (You might find interesting Ullica Segerstrale's Defenders Of The Truth: The Sociobiology Debate.) The stuff these guys write makes a HuffPo caricature of some fat cat capitalist look like de las Casas. If you want more than a shred, strike it from the record if you like, because it really doesn't much matter in the end.

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

Can't you accept people's views as they are, and not seek some underlying viewpoint inaccessible to all but you that ultimately validates The Way John R. Sees the World?

"Ultimately validates" is a terrible stretch. The judgment about Dawkins is really insignificant here.

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

p.s. Our problems go a lot further back than the early 20th century Western Church's shift in views on divorce. I'll play Cosmic John and assert that John likes to have this fiction that up until the past 200 years, the post-Constantine church was very good at being a model of civility, tolerance, and love. If only we could go back to the good ol' days of the 1200's!

Obviously our problems go back earlier than the early 20th century. I'm not pointing back to some "golden age" in the 1200s. Our problems go back just about forever. Why not "accept my views as they are," and as they are stated they don't include any of this pre-20th century, 1200s, or post-Constantine stuff? If anything I would point us not to the past but to the future, the future that is in Christ, the future that comes to us today in him.