You really aren't very smart, are you? Believe me, I'm refraining from deeper personal attacks only out of courtesy. A tip for the future: reading is a good skill. It's fun to see a few words and spout nonsense, but generally trying to understand complete sentences before you start a three year academic program is probably wise.
Let's deal with your points in turn.
1. 'Jesus was not responsible for civil rights.*Sigh*. Firstly, that's not what I said. What I said was that it was a powerful social force in African American history. Which it was, this is historical fact. The black church has been a substantial part of black culture and civil rights movement for generations. This is not to say that 'Jesus helped people' or whatever wider claims you are attributing to me, only that the black church has status in the African American community for socio-political reasons. It is not 'in vogue' any more than race is 'in vogue'.
Your point about a 'yearning to be free' powering civil rights is just further evidence of your stupidity. The yearning for freedom and equality is probably innate and universal to all human beings. Of course it is at the heart of any movement for equality or freedom. No one is saying that chrstianity created it or even owns it, what I am saying is that the African American church had a crucial role is
organizing for civil rights in American history. This is fact. After people want freedom, they generally have to do things like march, fight even, and get bills passed and the church played a huge role in this. This is why a lot of African American people have a connection to and respect for the church. Again, this is fact. You pretending that people like christianity just because it is in 'vogue' is insulting to the history of the oppression of African Americans and the struggle to overcome it. People gave their entire lives to the cause of freedom and these are people who would be in their 70s and 80s, and the children they raised would have watched their parents be beat down, abused, despised and seen the black church as one of few institutions which supported the community through these times. And you dare insult or look down on them because you don't think they are sufficiently 'detached' or as 'enlightened' as you. Maybe the women in your church are being preyed on but that doesn't mean you're not a self righteous fool. You would think that you would want to help them and help the church be better but you have no empathy or understanding of their feelings and frankly are not mature enough to own it.
2. Interacting with the black church means being a Christian I never said that. You just hear what you want to hear. I said that you needed to bring a different attitude to your dealings with it. I am telling you (though I'm sure you won't hear it) how many strong factors contribute to people's commitment to the church. If you try to interact with the church without taking the strength of those feelings and their origin into account, you are gonna look like a fool, though I doubt you will ever end up doing anything useful with your life anyway.
3. You're Christian because you were brought up in it. Good God, it's like talking to someone who's slow. Gonna take this point really slowly for you: my parents raised me in a Christian home. I was raised to believe in God and to be a Christian and so that obviously was my default position. Then as I got older I came to question my belief system and look deeper into it, and after weighing it up... I decided that I believed in God and wanted to be a Christian. Now, wait a second, isn't this the same thing that happened to you
except you decided to be an agnostic?Wow - give me a call when you mature into adulthood. People made different choice to you so they must not have thought about it! Many many people get to an age where they question and reassess their beliefs, prejudices, biases and choose different paths, and they choose many different things. And what do you say to people who aren't raised as christians but choose it anyway? Do you understand how unbelievably arrogant it is to assume that only people with your exact viewpoints have ever had any independent thought? I have friends of all religions and atheists and agnostics too, I have my beliefs and they have theirs and I respect them even when I disagree with them. But to imagine that I am the only one of us who has ever been able to look back critically or rationally at my own life or upbringing, to imagine that I am the only one to ever make a 'real choice', everyone else just being a slave to the masses or their parents, is so far beyond arrogance, it's unreal. This is what I mean that you think you are smarter than everyone else. I bet you hold onto your agnosticism as a way to try to differentiate yourself as smarter than people because it is the only thing you can cling to. Your arguments are vague and moronic - I'd worry about worry about the basic stuff like stringing coherent thoughts together before I go after the big fish like disproving God.
Here's another crazy idea - you are yet to show that just because something is believed from childhood, that makes it untrue. In other words, you are yet to show that christianity is false just because my parents taught it to me. Guess what else my parents taught to me - equality, justice, love - are all these things invalidated because I didn't independently discover them in my twenties?
And by the way, just because something is believed by the masses doesn't make it wrong either. If I was brought up locked in a cellar by a child molester I would have a set of beliefs and values which would differ from most children. I think we would all agree that 'most children''s beliefs would be right in that case.
We teach our children many beliefs becasue we think they are right and this is the main issue -
whether or not something is right or wrong doesn't turn on whether it is taught to you as a child, it turns on whether it is right or wrong. I don't tell my children to grow up and make up their own mind about whether 'child molestation is wrong' or 'murder is wrong', I teach them as children and I'm sure you'd agree with that.
If you were born in the 1850s into a rich white family in Alabama I bet you'd be racist and ignorant. Does that mean that that racial equality and economic justice are not universal concepts that are always right? Just because you'd be a racist in that family doesn't mean that racist and not racist are morally equal standards. So you're probably saying - so how do we know which religion/viewpoint is right? We each make a judgement call and what people chose can be different. It's not clearcut and believe me, you have nothing to teach anyone. So whether or not God exists or Christianity is right is nothing to do with how I was raised or you were raised.
My upbringing doesn't prove or disprove God, arguments about God's existence do. Thus your main point 'you're only a Christian because you were raised one' is useless'. Being raised a christian doesn't mean you can't choose it, and just because it is being socially communicated doesn't make it false.
Look, I get it. You are basically approaching this as a child trapped in an argument with mommy. You think you are free and detached, you are just as reactive and blind as all the people you look down on. Grow up and see the world as it actually is - social institutions and people are complex and the world is full of shades of grey. Try to approach it with a bit of compassion and one mindedness instead of throwing the equivalent of a ten year intellectual tantrum when you are hit with the disappointment of adolescence.
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