"So right now the only access I have to SDA thought is thru Spectrum. And that is all over the place. But really Adventist’s are no different than anyone else."
Yep…SDAs are only human beings mostly striving to live a spiritual life as they perceive it to be.
"So it really is hard for me to speculate and judge what’s going on in someone else’s head. I see some awful narrow and deeply entrenched views held by some here. And there seems to me some that are comfortable questioning everything."
It is easier to “speculate” when you have more interaction with the person though in the world of the internet it isn’t exactly like being in person. Some people are pretty blatant and some passive-agressive, others are totally oblivious, etc., to what their real intentions, motivations, etc. are on this site. Yes, there is a huge disparity of views and a variety of where individuals are in their development on this site. I, myself, have changed over the years from reading and participating.
"Which takes me back to the article which raised questions about individual responsibility and roots of cause. Does Judas get a bum rap because he acted on heart felt beliefs that were probably shared by the others?"
Maybe…but all we have are the biblical records and what was reported to happen in them. Most Christians would agree that Judas’s involvement resulted in Christ’s crucifixion but even that was reportedly a “prophetic” event. So, it could be say that Judas was playing out his part in this scenario and if it was not he- it would have been someone else. Interesting observation.
"And how reliable is a story written decades after the event by people who were not first hand witnesses? Were they looking at the act and speculating on the contents of his heart?"
There are those who would say that we cannot definitively state that every account in the Bible is “reliable” or “accurate” based upon the points that you have made and from the Bible being written from cultural biases, etc.
I personally fall more in the camp that says that not all in the Bible is “literal”…some is allegorical, prophetic…and some we will simply not know in our lifetime. For example, the “Creation” story, to me, is not literal but rather is teaching/telling about a Creator God.
Hope that this addresses some of what you were talking about.