One of the problems of Christian dogma is that it isn't always biblical. In fact, some people make up rules that are opposite of what the Bible teaches. That is aggravating even to a Christian! (and I can only imagine that it is even more so to another religion or to a nonbeliever).
It's one of my pet peeves. I can't stand it when somebody says, "The Bible says ... " and then tells you something that isn't in the Bible at all.
However, my problem with Christian dogma isn't that it's not biblical; I can't think of any particular reason it should be, or why the Bible makes a better arbitrary authority than the Ecumenical Councils or the Pope or Calvin's
Institutes. My problem with dogma is that it
is dogma, that people -- any people, including the authors of the Bible -- should presume to tell you what you must believe, and that people should assume that it somehow pleases god to accept that kind of pronouncement. I think this emphasis on accepting beliefs -- and unlikely ones, at that -- is one of the most unsavory things about both Christianity and Islam. And as Jane Wagner says, "If something's true, you don't need to believe in it."
Compare all this dogmatic posturing to Sakyamuni's approach:
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans serif]"Malunkyaputta, anyone who should say, 'I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One shall explain to me either that the world is eternal, or that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, or that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, or that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, or that the saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and does not exist after death, or that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death'; -- that person would die, Malunkyaputta, before the Tathagata had ever explained this to him. ... And why, Malunkyaputta, have I not explained this? Because, Malunkyaputta, this profits not, nor has to do with the fundamentals of religion, nor tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore have I not explained it."[/FONT]
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