I am? Heck everyone of us Christians is a sinner and deserves to go to hell. Since this is a central Christian doctrine, why would I wish to dismiss evidence for it?
I think Christianity is full of sinners doing sin. I do reject the notion that the Christian faith is responsible. People sin with and without this faith.
Certainly people know about the crucification of Christ primarily from the New Testament, this is a premise that you should feel free to claim without acting like you need me to sign off on it.
My objection is not to such a premise, but that you seem to be assuming the implied cause effect relationship establishes moral culpability. Do you really think this? It seems to be a ridiculous standard of ethics when you think of all the different implications.
As to your repeated accusations that I am focusing on only selected parts of the New Testemant in establishing the ethical position of Christianity, this is true. I am only concerned with relevant details. And all of the relevant details I find support me. Not just the ones I mentioned before. For example, Jesus commands us to love everyone. Very relevant. Jesus commands us to turn the other cheek. Very relevant. Jesus asks his Father in heaven to forgive the one's who were responsible for crucifying him...Did you forget this one? Jesus is very harsh on religious hypocrites, and lambastes the religious leaders who are only in it for fun and profit as broods of vipers. I shudder to think of what he would call the various medevil church leaders (actually He does seem to address them in Revelation according to some scholars).
Also there was the parable of the man forgiven huge debt by a King who turned around and demanded payment from a fellow servant for a minor debt. Remember how that one ended? Did you get the moral of it?
You have no where to turn for moral teachings in the New Testament, so now you turn to biases that certain events in the New Testament might cause in the hearts of fallible man.
Well, of coarse humans are all fallible...as Christ taught we are (please tell me you get that).
Rather you would rather focus away from what Jesus taught we ought do, and focus on the failings of Christians in history to do so.
This all proves my point, and demolishes yours.
I am focusing on the moral teachings of Jesus Christ rather than the latter moral teachings of Martin Luther after he started hating the Jews as a basis for the moral position of the Christian faith.
Martin Luther's opinions on morality mean nothing to any true form of Christianity, excepting that they coincide with the opinions of Christ. His earlier positions concerning the Jews were kindly and seemed in step with Jesus. However you chose to focus on the opinions he held in the latter part of his life as being the epitome of Christian ethics. Well apparently something had happened to change his opinion of Jews profoundly and I'm not a historian and not sure what turned his heart to such an evil position, but I'm very dubious that it was because he finally got around to reading the gospel of John.
Yes Martin Luther used information gleaned in the New Testament to justify his latter evil opinion. But his opinions directly contradicted the ethical standard set up by Jesus. His opinion therefore became less like those of Jesus, meaning less Christ-like, meaning less Christian.
The conclusion of all our examples is that the problem is not listening and obeying the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. Whether we claim to be Christians or not.
It seemed to be a specific issue that you insisting on addressing. And now you say it doesn't matter? Kind of like publicly suggesting somebody is child molester, and then expressing uncertainty and dismissing it as irrelevant. While I know this is a semi-anonymous philosophy discussion, and I freely admit to having some moral flaws. Something like that I take very personally. I am perhaps not as good at turning the other cheek as I should be.
But I do appreciate that you have given up leveling the charge against me at the least.
And perhaps I was guilty of something like this to in my attitude towards you in various posts. I did accuse you of anti-Christian bigotry, and that was not a necessary thing for me to bring up or speculate on either.