Cherry picking

[TySixtus]

I've seen this phrase about 100 times in the last 2 hours.

What do people think it means, wrt to, say... Christianity.

[His Noodly Appendage]

P1: The bible says god hates fags.
P2: I don't like fags.
C: Fags = bad, because god hates them.

P1: The bible says god hates shrimp.
P2: I like shrimp.
C: Shrimp aren't really bad, despite that pesky bible verse.

[Brother Daniel]

Christianity, traditionally at least, has a big body of stuff that its adherents are supposed to take seriously.

The term "cherry-picking" typically refers to the habit of following some traditional or biblical teachings while disregarding others.

There is a rather disparaging connotation in the term: The person using the term generally sees no coherent underlying system governing which traditional/biblical teachings are accepted and which are rejected (by the accused).

(Hence I claim that all Christians cherry-pick, even those who insist that they don't. I like to point this out when conservative Christians accuse liberal Christians of cherry-picking.)

[reddhedd]

Cherry picking is the act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.
(wikipedia)

[Free in Freeport]

I can't believe she meant she wanted harm to come to him when she said she was going to kill him

[Amber Robot]

I was reading through the other thread, the one from which this was spawned, and I agree a little bit with SallyAnne that atheists are cherry picking the Bible. However, it is not a balanced situation. I see it like this:

There's a cherry tree with both good cherries and rotten cherries on its branches. The Christians are picking only the good cherries and the atheists are picking only the rotten cherries. The difference is that the Christians, upon picking only good cherries, claim that the whole tree is good. The atheists need only pick one rotten cherry to show that the whole tree is not good.

I don't think that TySixtus was trying to say that the tree was all bad, just that it was not all good.

[David B]

I was reading through the other thread, the one from which this was spawned, and I agree a little bit with SallyAnne that atheists are cherry picking the Bible. However, it is not a balanced situation. I see it like this:

There's a cherry tree with both good cherries and rotten cherries on its branches. The Christians are picking only the good cherries and the atheists are picking only the rotten cherries. The difference is that the Christians, upon picking only good cherries, claim that the whole tree is good. The atheists need only pick one rotten cherry to show that the whole tree is not good.

I don't think that TySixtus was trying to say that the tree was all bad, just that it was not all good.

Hi Amber. Nice post.

Particularly good point that the atheists just have to show one rotten cherry in order to show that the Bible is not perfect - which it is often claimed to be.

My view is that unless one quotes the Bible as a whole, one has to be selective, and there are plenty of rotten cherries to pick, like my oft quoted Matt 10 34-37 to contrast with the pretty sounding, if unworkable, Sermon on the Mount, and other stuff that looks at first sight to be cool (but actually, IMV, isn't)

David

[Sabine Grant]

Maybe, just maybe, the "cherry picking" is a reflection of this very wise quote :

"tell me what you see in your Bible and I will tell you what kind of man you are".

When I was a Christian, I sought selectively verses and beliefs which reflected my emotional needs. No doubt I was a Liberal Christian most of the time, trying to make specific passages compatible with my aspirations and ideals. So, I was a NT Christian while wiping out the OT from my reflections. I swept it under the carpet (mentally), hoping it would just disappear.

Then, the "good" cherries became more and more rare and more and more sour. The sweetness I was longing for was only in my mind. I had to ask myself and quite introspectively : do I even need to eat those cherries? Obviously, the conclusion was : non.