Jim Miles

jimmiles

In Which I Explain Myself.

“It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” – Exterminate All The Brutes, by Raoul Peck.

  • Deluded Does Not Equal Dummy

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    [The following is my answer to an accusation that I was calling Adventists “a bunch of dummies” in my essay found here.]  

    “Delusion” doesn’t mean “dummy.”  

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  • We Must Just Trust

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    There’s a certain frustration I have with apologists. They retreat to the following defense at times.

    • When the critic of Scripture says, “If this is accurate, such and such part of the Bible says something unacceptable;” the apologist cries, “Vague! Ancient! this all occurred so long ago, and was written so long ago, that we just can’t know everything about it! We must just trust!” 
    • And when the critic of Scripture says, “the Bible was written so long ago, and its events so long ago, we cannot trust its claims about anything and everything, especially not for modern people,” the apologist switches to the opposite side, and cries, “Inspired! Infallible! God knows all and guided his word to be the perfect view-port into God’s will for humanity! We must just trust!“
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  • Post-Christian

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    I was asked, “Why do you call yourself Post-Christian?” I’m sure that I didn’t create this term, but I don’t know if it has different meanings from my own. So, I’m glad you asked, so I can be clear.

    What I mean by calling myself “post-Christian” includes:

    I am not an active member of any church.

    I am not a follower of or a believer in any non-denominational group or individual.

    I have not become an atheist or agnostic.

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  • Violence As Atonement

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    This is an extended comment I made in a Facebook discussion in June and July of 2013. The people whose names are occasionally mentioned were the other participants in the discussion. It appears here for future reference since I deleted my Facebook account in April of 2018.

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  • Apologies for Jesus

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    The following is a contribution I made to a discussion in the comments section of spectrummagazine.org

    Apologists for Jesus abound today. It’s fashionable now to re-imagine the Jesus of the Bible into a more familiar kind of progressive, humanistic, socially responsible guy. Not that he wasn’t already a kinder, gentler deity than the disciplinarian OT Almighty, but now he needs to be somehow more like us. And by us, I mean us LIBERALS.

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  • Immoral God

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    If God has revealed himself in the entire Protestant Christian Bible (as I used to believe, and spent a teaching career convincing teens to believe), then He must answer for his horrible behavior. Otherwise, reasonable people cannot be expected to respect him as a moral leader. Regardless of whether or not he is truly a savior of sinners, the fact remains that after being saved, a person would then be expected to live in close proximity to God and be eternally known as officially endorsing everything ever done by this person who claims to be a legitimate king.

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  • Amok Capitalism Time

    jimmiles
    Monopoly in the real world means "Eat what you kill."
    Not a game.
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