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     Well, I am back on the wagon again. I am not watching anymore streaming Christian internet, for fear that every feedback page will wind up being about the Christian Internet. Last time I felt that I had to respond because of that rising tide of criticism against my site because of 'Satanism'. This is a particularly effective way to criticize and attack someone like me, because it skillfully avoids the issue of Biblical analysis and Biblical critique, and goes straight for the jugular. It is targeted directly at the deeply rooted suspicion of difference and the deeply ingrained prejudices for things that sound unfimiliar and it will be effective with a lot of people. And there is nothing I can do about that, either, but the thought alarmed me sufficiently that I felt that I had to respond, and my response took two forms. First a justification of my methodology and my motives and second a counter critique of my attackers. In the future I want to go back to a policy of ignoring them, since there is no way to resist an appeal to superstition or bigotry. It cannot be reasoned away.

     One reason why this appeal to superstition and prejudicial attitudes towards religious variance is such an effective strategy for my opponents to be employing against me is because it is targeted directly at certain powerful taboos that exist in the hearts of so many in the churches. The first and the greatest taboo of all is against the critique of 'God's Word'. This mythological belief can be easily proved to be a false belief. Has anyone visited the Free thinkers site, infidels.org lately? They seem to specialize in (among other things) disproving that the Bible is 'infallibly inerrant' and really, you could say it is overkill, because even one single example is enough to disprove the hypothesis, but at this site you will find example after example after example. Like I said, this is their focus. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the source of scripture is personal experience, and it is the variant traditions that then resulted that account for the fact that the Bible is 'contradictory'. Now this dispels a strict belief that the Bible is 'God's inerrant Word,' so the free thinkers are correct, but it does not mean that the Bible is without value, for as I testify myself when I deliver my personal experience, these writings has as their source some type of communion with the divine. So proving that the Bible resulted from human experience is not to render the Bible without value. It does bring into question the doctrine of 'Divine authority' which is a doctrine created in the service of human authorities, but it does not denigrate or degrade the individual human experiences that we find recorded on the pages of the Bible, and it also explains the common ground and similarities that can be found when we compare the scriptures of different traditions. (Most notable among these are certain commonalities of thought between Buddhist writers and writers in the Church Testament. Because these writings were the products of human experience, you would expect to find such similarities, and at the same time, even the Bible preserves variant traditions, so you can expect to find differences as well)

     One of the reasons this taboo against being critical of 'God's inerrant word' is so strong in certain churches has to do with the traditions in the Bible that punish hell fire and damnation for any deviance from 'orthodox thought'. (For one such example see my page on the book of Numbers. It goes without saying that you wouldn't want to be asking that God for a quail, or you would be sorry you asked.)

     Another reason for the strict taboo against questioning the authority of the Bible has to do with the fears many people have for the 'fate of their soul after death.' Here I am not speaking only of that Judeo-Christian fear of 'going to straight to hell after you die' for questioning Biblical inerrancy, but rather fears of going nowhere at all. So the myth of Biblical inerrancy has become profoundly knotted together with the yearning for faith, and faith can be a tremendous psychological and psychic effort for people to maintain, and this belief in the 'unquestionable authority' of a certain ancient manuscript (which by the way promises life after life) can then be seen as a manifestation of a belief in the assurance of life after life. The struggle to prove 'Biblical inerrancy' can then be seen to be the struggle to prove the validity of faith in life after life, and this would also explain the powerful taboo that exists against critiquing the Bible in those churches. However I don't want to oversimplify, because I am convinced that there can be many reasons to explain this doctrine, and the taboo that drives people to try and maintain a doctrine that every avenue of objective inquiry proves to be invalid and false. Another explanation could be avoidance of humiliation. And yet another the drive for power and social control, and when you see how the high powers in the church strove for mass control and authority through the ages, you can see how a critique of Biblical authority then becomes a critique of the power base of authority figures in the church (hence the constant insistence on obeying 'God's Word' by these types of authorities, and the constant appeals to the authority of Paul or someone else. This is just a polemical device to establish and maintain the power of those who have power. Like I said, there can be many explanations of these kinds of things.

     Someone sent me what I understand to be a critique of my critique, if I interpret it correctly.

One must always bear in mind that each individual creates their own reality,.... as a result we must take care not to infringe on that area by trying to manipulate other realities. There is a time and place for sharing and exchanging alternate views but many people are not equipped to do this on a free and open basis most of the time. As they work through their own issues they will seek out help or other realities as they become relevant and usable to them.

     This the point I made in my discussion of the development of scripture, hyperlinked above. And as for your optimistic belief that people will eventually come around at the time that is right for them, I certainly hope it is true. Now as for my critique of TBN and CrossTV, I feel that if people are in a position of power and influence in the church, and are the recipients of lots of money to spread their interpretations and viewpoints, then they are subject to critique. As the saying goes, if someone finds that church kitchen to be to hot, then they should stop all the cooking. Besides there is a lot of water under the bridge here, and TBN and other channels like that have heard lots from me before over the years, and they have had years and years to gradually adjust their position, and, as Jeremiah described the response to his critique, 'they said we refuse.' And as much as I would like to be completely one hundred tolerant, I can ignore the damage such things do. This is what drove Jeremiah and the other prophets to protest, and it is also what drives me. For example I also received the following testimonial:

Many times I have withstood the wrath of a "Christian" when explaining historical falsehoods in the bible, or telling them I take Gnostic gospels to heart just as quickly as the new testament when it comes to the words of Jesus ... I've felt picked on for my beliefs and views for years, although I have continued to look to Jesus as a mentor for years, just as they do. Coming out of a Christian school, and told the music I enjoyed was "Satanic", some of the words that came out of my mouth were "of the devil"...I have been messed up for years because of this...It's been a long haul accepting myself as "Good" or even "acceptable" in the eyes of any kind of Higher Power...Today it is difficult for me to even find "evil" in the world ~ besides the dehumanizing of others from pulpits. Sure, mass murder, rape, child molestation...those are society's evils, and yet somehow I see those evils as a "product" rather than a "first cause". The best I can do, since not given to appetites of murder or mayhem, is to refrain from dehumanizing others...

     It is impossible to separate ideology from action, and as we reflect on the damage the church often did throughout history, it is no surprise that we also find a long protest tradition against the church, some examples of which I gave yesterday. Furthermore, since those in powerful positions do not spread accurate information, but instead oppress and react against the dissemination of knowledge, as far as I am concerned they open themselves up to critique. As a general rule however it is my wish to just ignore these higher powers in the church, as much as I can. The other day I was very alarmed at that strategy of focusing on 'Satanism' and it caused me to respond with a strong defence and a strong critique. But like I said, there isn't much I can do to defend myself against such profound taboos and such deeply rooted prejudices as these prove to be, so the best thing to do would be for me to dialogue with those outside the church, since they seem able to hear these things, thus opening up doors that they might once have found slammed shut in their faces.

     As evidence for what I mean you can consider the following generous link I received...(Thank you so much!)...

Thanks for the links...I have your website information linked from our UFO Files page this week, to give you a good amount of traffic Should be posted in Hot Links sometime thereafter.

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/UFORC/page7.html

All the best, send us any UFO information that you want to share.