What has caused you to consider that the liberal bias of accumulate knowledge is correct? This indicates that you have censored some important areas for consideration. Why have you done that? Have you ever considered how your 'liberal bias' lines up with reality - the truth? Why liberal and not conservative? What attracts you to liberal religion?
I walked away from Christianity as a child because of evolution. I'm not sure if dropping literalism means dropping conservativism, because there
have been people who've read Genesis as allegory since the religion first started up. That seems to be even more common in Judaism. I didn't know that this stuff could be read in layers when I was seven, but I certainly know it now. I'm not ready to say it's divinely inspired because I'm not actually a believer--if I decide the Resurrection happened, I can then start working on the question of how much of the rest is true, but that seems a bit backwards as a starting point.
Can you be conservative and read the Garden of Eden metaphorically? I find it a very powerful statement when viewed symbolically, but when taken literally, I think it's blatantly misogynistic. My liberal bias very clearly lines up to the reality that Eve has been used as an excuse to justify the oppression of women throughout all of Judeo-Christian history. This is a tragedy in Christianity's case because the Gospel is the
opposite of misogynistic, but there's other stuff in there that people have used to defend whatever terrible point of view they've had for centuries. I could very easily look at the Garden of Eden metaphorically and say that man's estrangement from God has had many results, including a tendency towards gender oppression, but a literal reading of it is beyond me. I
am sympathetic to evangelical feminist thought (i.e., that female subordination was a result of the curse and Christ's blood washed it away as well), but I lean towards the liberal view that the Word of God was filtered through a patriarchal culture and picked up some of its bias. Could God have intended the systemic oppression of women throughout almost all of known history? I don't know one way or the other, but I'd rather not blame Him for it when I know enough about mankind to realize that we absolutely would have edited stories to fit our own agenda. We do it all the time, so my liberal bias is matching up perfectly with reality. This doesn't mean the Bible
isn't divinely inspired, but it does mean infallibility is a hard sell for me.
I also strongly disapprove of the suppression of free thought. The answer to someone having problems with certain issues isn't, "Your view is wrong and needs to be corrected." It's open dialogue. "Correction" throughout Christian history has tended to involve inquisitions and crusades, dissent led to massacres between Catholics and Protestants. Are all views equally valid? No. That doesn't make coercion a legitimate way of enforcing agreement. This is by definition a liberal view, though not necessarily inconsistent with conservative theology.
And my final major issue is that I have linguistic concerns. This again isn't at odds with conservative theology, but it does mean I would need to master Hebrew and Koine Greek to be able to trust Scripture entirely. I've seen translation controversies pop up in debates as serious as eternal damnation vs. universal reconciliation, and that is kind of a major issue. I'm multilingual and have some interest in translation, so I'm very aware of how complicated it is and how much room for error actually exists. If I do ever come to believe that the Bible actually is the Word of God, I'll go learn the languages, but that seems like overkill right now.
I hope you realise the self-defeating nature of your view with a ‘liberal bias’. You don’t like one-way religion but you have chosen that view yourself with your present worldview, i.e. religion with a liberal bias. That’s every bit as one-way as biblical Christianity. Do you realise how self-defeating your argument is?
May I suggest a better approach: Pursue the evidence, wherever it leads.
Did you write this up before my last post? I would think it obvious that pursuing the evidence is specifically what I want to do. I have every intention of taking a look at conservative scholarship.
But could you please stop berating me for the way my mind works? This isn't a debate, and you're really not winning me over to your side of the argument by attacking where I am right now. My 'liberal bias' mostly consists of the types of questions and concerns that come up for me. If they can be answered in a way I find convincing, I'm not at all opposed to adopting different views. I've done it plenty of times in the past.
I'm concerned with your statement, 'Geisler, on the other hand, appears to be a bit too politicized'. What do you mean by that? How much of Geisler have you read to arrive at that conclusion? Could you be jumping to conclusions before you pursue the evidence, wherever it leads?
His endorsement of Donald Trump.
In all seriousness, I disapprove immensely of the politicization of religion. He seems to mix the two a fair amount, and that makes me believe that I'm not his intended audience. N.T. Wright seems the perfect first stop, and I can only read so much at once anyway. I'll probably need to grab his behemoth Resurrection work eventually, but I'll stick to the basic apologetics for now.
There is an Elephant in the Church that I pray you get past. Liberal Christian is an Oxymoron. You see, repent means to turn from or to go the or another way. When I was a Lost Sinner I was a very Liberal Man. I did what made me feel good and better than half of those first forty-five years, I was a Diest because God had spoken to me in Vietnam.
There are politically progressive, theologically conservative Christians out there. I've even seen a couple here. ;)
I'm not sure why liberalism is always conflated with hedonism--you can be against shaming women for sexual behavior that would be excused in a man without being a proponent of (and much less a participant in) modern hook-up culture. I assume it involves a lot of careful introspection, but politically conservative Christianity should too--when you've got a history of using the Bible to justify slavery, segregation, and denying people suffrage, you've tossed out the Synoptics and turned yourself into an oxymoron too.
