I'll start off! When I took this quiz, I scored almost as high as possible, because the questions really did feel like they were describing what we were supposed to believe growing up. The question regarding Satan is up for debate - is it Satan, or is it the inherent sin nature where even newborn babies are born sinful (because that was most definitely the doctrine I was taught to believe, BLECHHH!!)?
I'll go more into depth in a future post about why I consider my faith growing up to be fundamentalist (including the fact that the faith leaders said that: "getting back to the FUNDAMENTALS of faith!" And I grew up in a suburban, well-educated environment. We weren't Quiverfull homesteaders or anything - just pretty average folks. But our belief system allowed no room for error - you had to believe, you had to believe all of it, and you couldn't believe anything else, or your soul would be in mortal peril.
Here's a quote from Richard Rohr. "'Only we have the Spirit.' I was taught this in my church growing up; and then I found out that every religion says the same thing. Isn't that interesting? There's a phrase for this; it's called group narcissism. It has nothing to do with love for God; it isn't a search for truth or love. It's a grasping for control and every group at its less mature stages of development will try to put God in the pocket of its own members-only jacket."
Sep 10, 2022·edited Sep 11, 2022Liked by Christine Greenwald
Christine! Yay! I flunked! 24 = 13%!! The only reason I scored that high is that I don’t have perfect trust in science. There was a time when I might have scored 108. :-( I was not raised in the church but was duped as a 30-year old adult. Thankfully, over the years, I felt the fundamentalist straitjacket tightening until I couldn’t stand it any more and had to escape the repression and infantile logic that made religion a house of cards. It took me many years, but I eventually deconstructed my fundamentalism.
In a movie last night, I heard the best debunking conundrum yet: The Bible says God is everywhere and there is nowhere where God is not present (omnipotent and omnipresent). So then God must be in hell!
Problems:
- If God isn’t in hell, God is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent.
- If God is there, it’s not hell (a place wo God).
- If God is there, a God who is love is overseeing eternal torment. Certainly torment is not love.
- If God cannot tolerate sinners, how can God be in hell with sinners?
- If God logically can be neither in hell nor not in hell, then perhaps hell doesn’t Exist.
- If any of the above is true, the Bible cannot be literally true. Said another way, the Bible is false.
Hope you enjoy that bit of “tortured” logic, Christine—pun intended! LOL
I'll start off! When I took this quiz, I scored almost as high as possible, because the questions really did feel like they were describing what we were supposed to believe growing up. The question regarding Satan is up for debate - is it Satan, or is it the inherent sin nature where even newborn babies are born sinful (because that was most definitely the doctrine I was taught to believe, BLECHHH!!)?
I'll go more into depth in a future post about why I consider my faith growing up to be fundamentalist (including the fact that the faith leaders said that: "getting back to the FUNDAMENTALS of faith!" And I grew up in a suburban, well-educated environment. We weren't Quiverfull homesteaders or anything - just pretty average folks. But our belief system allowed no room for error - you had to believe, you had to believe all of it, and you couldn't believe anything else, or your soul would be in mortal peril.
Here's a quote from Richard Rohr. "'Only we have the Spirit.' I was taught this in my church growing up; and then I found out that every religion says the same thing. Isn't that interesting? There's a phrase for this; it's called group narcissism. It has nothing to do with love for God; it isn't a search for truth or love. It's a grasping for control and every group at its less mature stages of development will try to put God in the pocket of its own members-only jacket."
Christine! Yay! I flunked! 24 = 13%!! The only reason I scored that high is that I don’t have perfect trust in science. There was a time when I might have scored 108. :-( I was not raised in the church but was duped as a 30-year old adult. Thankfully, over the years, I felt the fundamentalist straitjacket tightening until I couldn’t stand it any more and had to escape the repression and infantile logic that made religion a house of cards. It took me many years, but I eventually deconstructed my fundamentalism.
In a movie last night, I heard the best debunking conundrum yet: The Bible says God is everywhere and there is nowhere where God is not present (omnipotent and omnipresent). So then God must be in hell!
Problems:
- If God isn’t in hell, God is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent.
- If God is there, it’s not hell (a place wo God).
- If God is there, a God who is love is overseeing eternal torment. Certainly torment is not love.
- If God cannot tolerate sinners, how can God be in hell with sinners?
- If God logically can be neither in hell nor not in hell, then perhaps hell doesn’t Exist.
- If any of the above is true, the Bible cannot be literally true. Said another way, the Bible is false.
Hope you enjoy that bit of “tortured” logic, Christine—pun intended! LOL