Saturday

Why don't I allow comments on this blog?

Why don't I allow comments on this blog?

Easy. The reason is the hate-filled bile one has to put up with from rabid Christians who think that you cannot express any opinion different to theirs.  They want to have all opposing opinions banned or censored.  I'm not willing to play their silly games.

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from James Barr "Fundamentalism" (SCM Press:1977)

The real and fatal cost of fundamentalist doctrine and ideology, as a system of life, is not its inner logical inconsistency, but rather its personal cost: it can be sustained as a viable way of life only at the cost of unchurching and rejecting, as persons, a thinkers or scholars, as Christians, all those who question the validity of the conservative option. The presence of the questioner breaks down the unnatural symbiosis of conflicting elements which makes up the total ideology of fundamentalists. We can thus understand why 'liberals' and other non-conservative persons have not only to be disbelieved, discredited and overcome in argument; they have, still more, to be eliminated from the scene altogether. The fundamentalist policy is to not listen to the non-conservative arguments and then reject them: it is that the non-conservative argument should not be heard at all. Fundamentalism as an ideological option is profoundly threatened by the presence of people who do not believe in it, who do not share it, who question it. pp. 314-315

Accordingly, where it comes about that fundamentalists have the power, it must be expected that they will use that power to silence those of contrary opinion.  They will seek to eliminate from structures of church and education persons who are not sufficiently conservative.  The history of fundamentalism shows this clearly. Like other conservative movements, it has sought not merely the means to witness, to state its own position, but control, the power to silence or to remove from positions of responsibility any persons who did not conform. p. 316