{"id":8423,"date":"2018-07-07T17:20:56","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T21:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=8423"},"modified":"2018-07-07T17:20:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T21:20:56","slug":"quote-for-the-day-120","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=8423","title":{"rendered":"Quote for the day"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>You were not involved but now you\u2019re stained with an original sin. What kind of a religion is that? That\u2019s what I can\u2019t accept, very stupid proposition.<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/international\/395930-philippine-president-says-he-will-resign-if-someone-can-prove-that-god\" target=\"_blank\">Rodrigo Duterte<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wish it had not been said by a notorious dictator &#8212; because careless thinkers will link his skepticism to his bad character &#8212; but Duterte is correct: Original Sin is a stupid idea.<\/p>\n<p>It is not merely stupid, of course, but harmful, too, and in ways both obvious and obscure.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for instance, the case of the pastor of an evangelical church.  His livelihood depends upon convincing people that &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>You are no damn good, and &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>You were born no damn good, and &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>You will never be any damn good, and &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>The only way to escape the eternity of punishment you deserve is to join my club.<\/ul>\n<p>A happy, healthy, well-adjusted and forward-looking person is a threat to his well-being.  Healthy marriages are a threat to his total control and ownership of his congregation.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity can flourish only where men are unhappy and frustrated, and that&#8217;s why there are so many &#8216;recovering fundamentalist&#8217; groups and such a high divorce rate amongst evangelicals.<\/p>\n<p>Though many preachers are overtly predatory, I doubt that most are even conscious of the harm they do.  I suspect, rather, that most are unreflective and are unable to recognize that the Christian concept of the good  &#8212; slavish submission to the point of self-abnegation &#8212; is itself corrupt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You were not involved but now you\u2019re stained with an original sin. What kind of a religion is that? That\u2019s what I can\u2019t accept, very stupid proposition. Rodrigo Duterte I wish it had not been said by a notorious dictator &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=8423\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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\/8423"}],"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=8423"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8426,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8423\/revisions\/8426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}