Christianity and Alcohol
Offline A good number of Christians believe that drinking alcohol is wrong (by no means all - it's definitely a minority of them.) Often these are fundies too. However - it's right in the Bible that Jesus turned water into wine - and it wasn't to impress people or because they really needed wine - it was basically so the guests at a wedding could have a good time. So if you really believe the Bible to be accurate you have very few choices:
1. Jesus was acting in an immoral manner
2. It isn't wrong to drink alcohol
3. The Bible isn't 100% accurate
Of course athiests would all agree with 3 and mostly with 2. Many of us also would agree with "1" in other biblical stories. But at least one of these 3 must be true from that story.
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Why can't it be that they simply believe that the blood of god is the only form of alcohol that they should consume?
Your list is not complete, I am quite sure there are many other possible alternatives.
I'm a Christian, and I've been known to tie one on from time to time.
The Marriage at Cana passage is indeed fascinating, as well as extremely problematic for fundamentalists--Jesus turned water into wine for people who were already drunk. Jesus was clearly not only unopposed to drinking, but getting wasted (at least in celebration).
I don't think this passage particularly addresses any of your three points, but rather Jesus' attitude towards alcohol as a first-century Jew.
Baptists rarely drink or dance, but I don't think that's an official church position. In all my days wasted in church, I never got an explanation for that.
"I've yet to witness circumstance successfully manipulated through the babbling of ritualistic nonsense to an imaginary deity." -- me (josh)
If god can do anything, can he make a hot dog so big even he can't eat all of it?
But it wasn't his blood - it was water that he magically turned to wine - and for people who were already drunk as jmm pointed out. He never mentioned anything about wine being his blood until later in the Bible (and the whole idea of that is taken from earlier pagan myths but that's another story.) It clearly was not a religious event in any way - it was like a modern wedding reception where a lot of people were drunk - and Jesus saved them from the disaster of not being able to get even more drunk. I wonder if the Jesus wine would have prevented hangovers?
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
They let you get wasted in church? Where were you going? Why did you leave?
Jesus did say "But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26:29). I've never heard them use this as an argument, but it seems that if you wanted to, you could say, "if Jesus quit, then I should quit, too."
The fact is that clean water was basically unavailable in the ancient world, and that was especially the case in a Taliban-style barbarian backwater like Judaea. Alcohol helps keep microorganisms in check (it's bacteriostatic, not bacteriocidal, I should mention), so odds are that no one except the poor drank water on a regular interval without mixing it with some kind of fermented spirit. If Jesus wanted to do an impressive miracle, he should have desalinated the Dead Sea or taught people not to dump their shit upstream of their neighbors.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell