angelfromanotherpin wrote:In related news, Bill-O declares Christianity to not be a religion.
What the fucking fuck?
He might have a point, depending on what his point is. There are a great many people who identify as Christian who don't actually go to church or believe in the supernatural or think that Jesus was an actual person.
There are three possible ways to defend "Christianity is not a religion"
The reasonable way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is a collection of many religions.
The extremist way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is the truth. This is unsurprisingly the position taken by Pope Benedict.
The morally bankrupt shill way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is the belief of my audience and I will say whatever they want to hear rather than making them question any part of their belief system. There is a slim chance that this is what O'Reilly was after, but the context of the rest of the piece making it seem unlikely.
But I'm pretty sure that O'Reilly went for option 4: The Republican Party Platform: "I'm a dangerous lunatic and nothing I say is true. Here, have another helping of Big Lie."
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Bill' explanation: "Christianity is very splintered, and people interpret Jesus' teachings in all sorts of ways. Religion is structured, has a hierarchy, and is an official organization. You don't need to be part of an official Church to be a Christian. Therefore Christianity is not a religion!"
By Bill's logic, only a very few small, close-knit groups qualify as religions. Additionally, they cannot be splinters from an already existing faith, otherwise they invalidate both belief systems and become "not religions." There are enough variant teachings within Buddhism, Islam, and other major belief systems to be splintered and buck the traditional party line.
Wait, why the fuck am I analyzing this?
Last edited by Libertad on Tue Dec 04, 2012 6:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Josh_Kablack wrote:There are three possible ways to defend "Christianity is not a religion"
The reasonable way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is a collection of many religions.
The extremist way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is the truth. This is unsurprisingly the position taken by Pope Benedict.
The morally bankrupt shill way: Christianity is not a religion, Christianity is the belief of my audience and I will say whatever they want to hear rather than making them question any part of their belief system. There is a slim chance that this is what O'Reilly was after, but the context of the rest of the piece makes it seem unlikely.
But I'm pretty sure that O'Reilly went for option 4: The Republican Party Platform: "I'm a dangerous lunatic and nothing I say is true. Here, have another helping of Big Lie."
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
