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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: theology = head hair
Message-ID: <1605@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Jan-84 18:55:36 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1605
Posted: Mon Jan  2 18:55:36 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Jan-84 20:31:58 EST
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 62

mARK,
I don't thinkt hat this is quite fair.  if I don't like my head hair I can
get out my razor or go to the barber. Clearly there are "Churches" who
seem to be formed out of a desire to make lots of money and make lots of
followers, but this is not true of all of them. And some religions make
a point of teaching their followers what the whole thing is all about.

For instance, I have yet to meet an Orthadox Jew who doesn't have a very
good and educated idea of what Judaism is all about.  This goes for the
Jewish tailors and dry cleaners and bakers, not just for the Jews in
professional positions. Even Jews who are not as strict in their practice
of Judaism seem to know a lot more about Judaism than most Christians
know about Christianity. Now Judaism has been around for longer than
Christianity and it doesn't seem to be dying out.

Thus it is possible to have a religion which demands some level of
competance out of it members which lasts for a long time. The question is,
why are Christians so much worse off by comparison? is it that Christians
are so interested in conversion that they will take whatever they can get?
This does not explain why they do not go to the effort of educating their
members in the faith. It also doesn't explain why the Christians aren't
filling the U of T religion library in an attempt to fill in their own
ignorance. I should thinkt hat for the followers, if religion is, as
they claim, the most important thing in life, they would be making time
to understand it better. But I see no indication of this. The number of
people who seem perfectly happy singing "oh I'm and ignorant Christian
and I don't know the first thing about my faith but I'm okay" interspersed
with "you're not a Christian and your going to be damned and that is
TREMENDOUSLY WONDERFUL NEWS" is so large as to encompass well over 80%
of the Christians I know. 

What's wrong with them? And why aren't Church leaders screaming? Some
of the Church leaders are remarkably well educated men who know a lot
about their faith. Some of them are claiming that the level of
ignorance in their church is a real problem, but more of them seem
convinced that dabbling in politics (BAN THE CRUISE) and possibly
in science (though from that last proposal, I am rather convinced that
they don't really know anything about science *as it is done* either) is
what they ought to be doing. 

I wonder if Christianity has always carried this percentage of dead wood.
There were great thinkers in the past who were Christians at a time
when everyone in Europe (more or less) was a Christian, so it looks
like the problem is getting worse. Could it be that the people who 
have brains are leaving the Church on mass now that it has become
possible to do so? If so, the Churches had better get organised before
they select against intelligence so strongly that there is noone left who
can reverse the trend, given that they want to survive.

(Then again, amoebas aren't very bright and they are still around...)


Perhaps the answer is to arrange to get lots and lots of real persecution.
People have been persecuting Jews for as long as there have been Jews, which
would be enough to ensure that the people who remained Jews were sincere
about Judaism. I can't think of any group that would really want to
persecute Christians, however, so it had bettter be an internal struggle.
Do you think that another Protestant/Catholic war would have much of
a result? I don't really.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura