The Sockmonster

I read a review today of Bill Maher’s new film Religulous. The film is a documentary about Bill’s (and many other peoples) concerns that religion threatens humanity. The review was pretty scathing and in places got quite personal, it seems that the reviewer has a real problem with Bill Maher, probably because Bill is about as Democratic as you can get and the reviewer is a raving Republican, a bad mix at anytime, without a presidential election around the corner! Anyways, personal insults aside, the criticism of Religulous was a pretty bog standard one. However, I’ve heard this criticism made against so much secular media that I thought I would write something about it. Basically the criticism is this; the media in question distorts the “REAL” religion, basically the people in the film and the views they express aren’t really Christian, so of course its easy to poke fun at. Every Christian I have ever spoken to has told me my perception of Christianity is wrong or that the other Christians I have spoken to aren’t “REAL” Christians because they said such and such, or behaved this way or that. My guess as to why so many Christians do this is to give an air of credibility about their own beliefs. The problem I find, is that no matter how much Christians dispute each other over certain things, the core of their beliefs are the same. They can attempt to add as much credibility to their beliefs as they like, but at the end of the day they can’t hide from the fact that if you take Christianity seriously you have to believe that Jesus really was born to a virgin, really did turn water into wine, really did make a loaf of bread feed more people than is reasonably expected of a single loaf, really did resurrect etc. But more than this, you have to believe in an uncreated creator of the universe who, for reasons only he knows, decided to create us and make us suffer so that we might choose to love him one day! But as soon as anyone says this, most Christians real back in horror and say “Your misrepresenting my beliefs”. Is what I’ve just written really that far off the mark or is it more or less correct? I’m sure I’ve missed out a lot of Christian beliefs but all I’m really asking is this; “is it possible to be a Christian and NOT believe in everything I just wrote”?

What this criticism highlights is that there are many versions of Christian belief going around. Christians simply don’t agree, as evidenced by their readiness to wash there hands of other Christian interpretations of their beloved faith. Either one of these versions of Christianity is correct and the others false, or none of them are correct and they’re all false. But given that Christianity is based on faith and NOT reason, how exactly does one know which version of it is correct? Christians are so ready to brush aside other Christians and other faiths, but they’re not prepared to provide a reasoned argument based on evidence for doing so! Why should we believe that fundamentalist Christians have misunderstood Christianity and liberal Christians haven’t? Clearly both schools of thought THINK they understand Christianity better than the other, but why? What scale of Christianess are they using? Evidence is all you need to settle this, the one thing that Christianity is so reluctant to produce.