{"id":5402,"date":"2017-01-19T07:39:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T12:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2017-01-19T21:26:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T02:26:35","slug":"theology-related-quote-for-the-day-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5402","title":{"rendered":"Theology-related quote for the day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I started out in life being told that I was a vile worm of a boy, who if left to his own devices, would turn out to be a sin-filled, lustful, degenerate man; that the only hope for me was to repent of my sins and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior; that if I would do so Jesus would miraculously change me from a hell bound sinner to a heaven bound saint. Like most saved, sanctified, bought-by-the-blood, filled-with-the-Holy-Ghost Christians, I spent most of my life trying to live according to the impossible teachings of the Bible and the church.<\/p>\n

Bruce Gerencser<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was born skeptical, and was bored as a kid when I got the rote religious instruction. What is more, my professional life has been spent amongst, mostly, other well-educated people. Thus, it was a shock to me when I moved to a seminary town in North Carolina and discovered that there are people who take seriously the Genesis<\/i> Creation tale, The Flood, Original Sin, on and on. And, because I didn’t grow-up inside Christianity’s sick cult of self-abasement, it was easy to see how damaging it is and how much human waste it entails.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race.”<\/b><\/p>\n

Gore Vidal<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

No matter how big a smiley-face the pastor puts on it, there is no escaping the degradation at the bottom of Christian thought: “You’re no damn good, and the only way to escape the eternity of torture you were born deserving is to join my club.”<\/p>\n

Nor is there any avoiding it, even if you reject it. That teaching seeps into the culture; even if you avoid church, you cannot<\/i> avoid the screwed-up human beings it creates. There is a reason the so-called Bible Belt is a target of scorn and ridicule, and that’s because Christianity can sustain itself only by degrading and eating people.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b>   Don’t miss the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started out in life being told that I was a vile worm of a boy, who if left to his own devices, would turn out to be a sin-filled, lustful, degenerate man; that the only hope for me was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5402"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}