I just popped into this thread, and I am a bit curious about David’s comment about Catholics not being Christian. Now, my comments may be a day late and a dollar short… if so, please forgive me.

I’m Catholic, and that makes me “patently not” Christian? Why?

As for myself, my views on Catholism, Mormonism, Islam or Atheism ( or ANY faith) fall under the idea that as long as a person’s faith or belief does not harm me or others, where is the harm?

I personally don’t think I have the right to “decide” what faith is right, or to “decide” the only true faith… OR if faith in God is a requirement for a person to be good or God like.

I personally know folks who are atheists that have a healthier set of morals and ideals than some Christians I know.

Just my two cents worth.

Now Stan, it is exactly that kind of radical immoral openmindedness that causes David to classify you Catholics as non-christian. Where is the mindless hatred of atheism? Where is your sense of superiority over all other religions?

I don’t know...you sure don’t seem christian to me

Oh and Les, the three hour time difference can be explained with a combination of different time zones and/or daylight savings time. Come on...it’s so SIMPLE!

:giggle:

Greetings.

I haven’t read this post yet in its entirety, but the time differences are fairly easy to explain.

The key is what hour you start counting your day.  Midnight? Sun-up? There were different traditions then.  You are perhaps imposing your modern view of time on the past, when time-keeping was considerably less accurate.  Some Gospels wrote according to one tradition; others wrote according to another.

The Jews back then, I believe, started counting at sun-up.  That’s why some say Jesus was on the cross starting at noon, others say around 9 a.m. 

Now if you want a more difficult question, the Last Supper in the Gospels are actually on different nights, three say the crucifixion happened on Friday, one on Thursday. Now that’s a bigger question to answer.

BTW, the largest majority of Christians don’t hold to the literal inerrancy of the Bible, a position that I believe, even as a Christian, is simply untenable.  There are mistakes.  And there is truth.  You need a hermeneutical community known as a “church” infused by a hermeneutical spirit known as God to know the difference. 

That’s also why I don’t get into arguments about the Bible with atheists.  It is impossible for an atheist to understand the Bible.  You can’t pick up and find the sense you’d expect.  In fact, it will probably piss you off.  It is only when one is baptized in the Holy Spirit that one has any chance of understanding the Bible.

OK, Les, now I’ve read the entire piece.  First of all, let me say I’m very impressed by your thoughtful responses and cogent arguments.  Your description of how God works out of time is illuminating.  You’re obviously intelligent and can render your arguments in a clear and concise manner. 

This is, btw, one reason why I like to occasionally discuss these things with smart atheists—often they can cut through the clutter and show, unvarnished, what we Christians are really saying.  Free of the superstition or wishful thinking that sometimes creeps in.  So your description of God seeing the whole time line, and then reaching in, was very helpful to me. Thanks. I’ve never quite understood it that well until your description.

In my own case, I used to be an atheist, so I understand many of the objections you’ve mentioned.  The answers of the church, often, are simply “it’s a mystery.” The mystery of faith.  The mystery of evil. In the Orthodox tradition, they rely a lot on the idea on the argument that “it’s a mystery.”

The Orthodox in fact criticize the Roman Catholic Church (and by extension, the Protestants) for dragging all sorts of Greek philosophy into Christianity and pretending to know a lot more than we really do about the Christian faith.

As a friend of mine, a lapsed Catholic, once said, “When the Church says, ‘it’s a mystery,’ they mean, ‘We’re going to skip over this apparent contradiction, and move on.’”

All this is a way of saying I don’t have answers for many of the questions you’ve asked.  Love to be able to answer your objections, but I can’t.  (Some I could take a crack at, but I’d be making all sorts of assumptions about God.)

So how is it I became a Christian? I tried it.  I figured, if this is false, then I should lose nothing by investigating and attempting faith.  And praying to God in Jesus’ name.  But, nothing did NOT happen. Something happened. 

And to me, that is the mystery, or if you will, the paradox of faith.  It is to hold a very similar viewpoint as you hold (many of us Christians do), but still recognize that my experience of Christ conflicts with my own mental arguments. 

In turn, that conflict serves as a metaphor for Christ himself, who is both God and man—representing flesh and spirit, if you will.  The struggle between body and mind find union in Christ.  Oh never mind....this is hard to explain.  I’m trying to get at: I think very much along the same lines as you do, but my experience of Christ has forced me to alter my arguments.  Because I can’t ignore my experiences—that would be illogical.  The things I have seen in my spiritual practices—I can’t explain them, but I can’t pretend they didn’t happen, either.

I don’t want to go more into it than that, because I doubt you would believe my experience or my testimony.  (And I wouldn’t blame you.) It has to be your experience that you believe. Perhaps one day you will experience Christ. Perhaps not.  My hope is you will, if Christ be the truth, and if not, not.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed this thread.  Regards.

Actually I probably understand what you’re trying to say better than you might think and I have no problems with it. I can respect any believer who says, in essence, “Yes, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I feel I’m on the right path.” That’s a statement that A) I can’t really argue with and B) actually makes me feel better because it shows you at least acknowledge some of the issues that others insist don’t actually exist.

You’ve probably not looked around SEB much yet, but this is a discussion I’ve had with numerous people in various threads and I’ve explained elsewhere on the site that at one time I was once a devout Baptist. In other words, I took the opposite path that you took. I went from being a believer to being an atheist in a process that took several years and broadened my understanding of a lot of different religions in the process.

Unlike David, you come across as someone who is actually looking at your faith with an attempt at rationality and are willing to own up to and deal with its rough edges. You’re also willing to accept the idea that you could be wrong about various aspects of it and are up to the challenge of wrestling with them. That’s all any non-believer, or believer in any other faith, could ask of you. I don’t want to take anyone’s faith away from them if it makes them feel better and gives them a sense of purpose in their lives as that doesn’t do me or them any good in the long run. I do want people to think more about what the believe and why and realize that although it may be the perfect belief system for themselves, it may not be so for a lot of other people. I think I’m right that there is no God or Gods and that existence ends at death, but I could be completely wrong about it. I distrust anyone who claims to have the only “right” answer. I’m glad there’s more Christians such as yourself out there in the world than there are folks like David. The latter group tends to be a bit more vocal though.

Thanks for contributing, it’s always good to hear from the saner people in your religious group.

Which is to say: I prefer Christians who don’t point out the silliness of my view point.

There seems to be a trend of late in the posts, that I am shoving my viewpoint on you and being arrogant. Nobody is making anyone read anything I write, and I’ll be glad to stop anytime Les asks me to. Indeed, I have stopped on certain points at exactly such a simple request. I’ve admitted openly, multiple times that I could be wrong, that not all Christians agree with certain points I’m making, that I’m far less than perfect, etc. Yes, I think I’m right, yes there are some aspects of my faith I do not fully understand. And Les, not everything I write is aimed at you. Many of the points I made were clearly meant as direct responses at others that you took personally.

Or to quote one of the many times I’ve made similar points:

Also, I take exception to being portrayed as self-righteous. I am often wrong. In fact, one of the primary reasons I post and read this board is to learn more about what others believe and try to better understand what I believe. When I hear about my beliefs through your most critical eyes, it makes me consider carefully why I believe what I believe and what faults I need to address in my system of belief. I do enjoy how in one sentence you call me arrogant and in the next you say I’m spineless. If submission to a clearly superior being is spineless, then such am I. Does that make me a weakling or coward? I don’t think so. I seem to stand up to you and Les on you’re own turf OK.

And lastly, sorry to offend you, IB Bill, but I think Martin Luther covered the problem with the Catholic Church calling itself Christian sometime ago, about 400 years. I’d be happy to go over some of the salient points with you though. To be sure, I’ve met Catholics that are Christian, but the religion as practiced by the Catholic Church has some rather serious issues. Since I would define Christian religions as those that follow the Bible accurately, then the idea that most Christian religions don’t believe in the inerrancy of scripture creates a problem. Is it the Holy Scripture or not? BTW, this is rather the root of the problem ol’ Martin had with Catholicism, it didn’t follow the book it purported to be most Holy.

I’d surely like to see the source of your statistic. My personal experience is that almost every evangelical church I’ve ever been to, and I’ve checked out a few, has it right in their constitution that they believe the Scriptures are inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed (or verbally and plenarily inspired of God, if you prefer). And even I take askance at that.

I’m going to do a full response to later Les, but I’m not sure whether to post it here or in the other thread. Got a preference?

Thanks, Les.

David: There are about a billion Roman Catholics and 400 million Eastern Orthodox in the world, and about another 400-500 million Protestants.  As an Anglican, I consider them all Christians.  But the Orthodox and Catholics together do not believe in the inerrancy of scripture.  And they make a majority. 

The Catholic-Protestant argument boils down to this: Jesus founded a church, he didn’t write a book. As a RC bishop once said to a Protestant clergymen: “Yes, we know what’s in the Bible.  We wrote it.”

Sola scriptura, yes, but within the context of an interpretive community and with the interpretive spirit of God.

Which is to say: I prefer Christians who don’t point out the silliness of my view point.

No, it’s to say that I prefer Christians who don’t claim they’re not perfect, but then try to act like they are anyway. You know, in the way that you tend to do?

There seems to be a trend of late in the posts, that I am shoving my viewpoint on you and being arrogant. Nobody is making anyone read anything I write, and I’ll be glad to stop anytime Les asks me to. Indeed, I have stopped on certain points at exactly such a simple request. I’ve admitted openly, multiple times that I could be wrong, that not all Christians agree with certain points I’m making, that I’m far less than perfect, etc. Yes, I think I’m right, yes there are some aspects of my faith I do not fully understand. And Les, not everything I write is aimed at you. Many of the points I made were clearly meant as direct responses at others that you took personally.

I’m aware that not everything you write is aimed at me, though you could do a better job of making it clear just whom you are addressing. You keep protesting that people are misreading your intent, that you’re not really being arrogant. Perhaps you should re-read some of your replies and see if you can’t figure out why some of us are viewing those responses as being arrogant. I suggest concentrating on your tendency to assume to know how people will react in given situations and then drawing your conclusions about our intentions based on your assumptions. That’s arrogant.

If you take exception to being portrayed as self-righteous then try not acting as such. Again, you admit to trying to “bait” us with your comments, I’m sure that’s a tactic Jesus would approve of. You like to try to tell others whether or not they are a “true” Christian, nothing self-righteous in that. You also tend to dip into the old hypocrisy pool on a regular basis by doing things such as name-calling and then getting all upset when you perceive others are name-calling. Been taking lessons from Billy Grahm have we?

And lastly, sorry to offend you, IB Bill, but I think Martin Luther covered the problem with the Catholic Church calling itself Christian sometime ago, about 400 years. I’d be happy to go over some of the salient points with you though. To be sure, I’ve met Catholics that are Christian, but the religion as practiced by the Catholic Church has some rather serious issues. Since I would define Christian religions as those that follow the Bible accurately, then the idea that most Christian religions don’t believe in the inerrancy of scripture creates a problem. Is it the Holy Scripture or not? BTW, this is rather the root of the problem ol’ Martin had with Catholicism, it didn’t follow the book it purported to be most Holy.

So tell me David, you follow every rule in the Bible without question then? Or are you like any of the rest of the Christians I know who tend to be selective over which aspects you pay attention to. Surely if you feel the Catholics, who wrote the Bible in it’s current form after all, aren’t “true” Christians then you’re following all of the rules the Catholics aren’t, right? Keeping the Sabbath holy are we? Not doing any kind of work at all such as carrying anything around in your hands and such, right?

Somehow I’m willing to bet you’re as selective as most folks in that regard. Hardly puts you in a position to declare who is and isn’t a Christian.

I’d surely like to see the source of your statistic. My personal experience is that almost every evangelical church I’ve ever been to, and I’ve checked out a few, has it right in their constitution that they believe the Scriptures are inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed (or verbally and plenarily inspired of God, if you prefer). And even I take askance at that.

Why am I not surprised that you’re an Evangelist? Nothing quite like the Christian version of the Taliban to liven up a party. This explains soooo much.

I’m going to do a full response to later Les, but I’m not sure whether to post it here or in the other thread. Got a preference?

Considering I started this thread because the other one was getting so long I would’ve thought it obvious that I’d expect it to continue here. Then again, I am supposedly inexplicably stupid so I guess I wouldn’t see the infallible logic of responding to it in the other thread thus forcing people to jump back and forth to keep up with the conversation…

IB Bill, are you really saying that one-fifth of the world’s population is Roman Catholic and another nearly one-fifth are Eastern Orthodox or Protestant? Sorry, but I think you are fudging the numbers a bit (actually a great bit). This means well over one-third of the worlds population agrees with one general definition of Christianity. Where did you get your figures? No wonder their political machinations bear so much fruit and their priests get away with so much wickedness, even if the true numbers were only half that. (I seem to be constantly talking to guys named “Bill") (grin).

I heard that

Yes, one-third of the world is Christian ... you didn’t know that? Another 1.2 billion are Muslim; nearly another billion are either Hindus or Buddhists.  About two billion are everything else.

It’s a fact; you can look it up. Here’s a link to information please almanac listing 1.9 billion adherents.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904108.html

Amazing, huh?

Well,IB Bill, with your earlier numbers considered, that leaves only about a dozen Christians left as Baptist, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Unitarian Universalist and all the rest of the {are-they-really} Christian religions. Their meager numbers don’t seem so threatening to me now. Thanks for cluing me in on the most popular and therefore most likely to be correct religion. Excuse me now, I’ve got to go see how many Hail Marys I’m responsible for.*

*Post edited to contain nothing but sarcasm, though not to be taken as a personal affront.

Baptists are Protestants, and so are included in the above figures.  The other you mentioned aren’t really Christians; they’re their own religions, like Islam.  The Unitarians are a club of very nice people. No real threat from any of the above groups.

You said most likely to be true, not me.  But no less likely to be true, either.

No affront taken; sarcasm noted.  Have a good night.

Hmm I have to say I would imagine that those figures would plummet rather drastically if you used actual regular church attenders and not just people baptised or christened.

I know that’s most certainly the case here in the UK, we say we are a country with a christian majority, but to tell the truth there are more full mosques than churches here these days.

Hehe there’s still hope for us pagans as yet!

Les, please take things in context. Are you trying to get my goat? You know the quotes you’re taking from me about baiting you are in the context of my writing about my less than perfect behavior. Sheesh, a guy can’t even be self-effacing without getting beat-up for it! Surely you’re not writing that if someone has ever been guilty, then they can never point out the faults in others? How could any society hope to hold the individual members accountable? We are all fallible. I expect you to keep me accountable for my faults, and I expect to be able to hold you likewise accountable. I think I’ve been pretty fair about that to date: owning up to when I’ve mis-spoken or been wrong. I’ve given this a great deal of thought, and I realize that you may decide this is the height of arrogance, but I’m just not going to respond to this type of stuff anymore. It’s primarily baseless, and responding to it detracts from the real point of the conversation, which I may have been the intention all along. I will continue to use metaphors to explain complex ideas. It generally works better than the rigorous approach. You’re the only one I know who takes them so literally, maybe it’s you that should loosen up a little.

I don’t keep every rule in the Bible. No-one could. This is why Jesus came. Do I think the Law of the old testament is a good idea? Yes. Do I hold myself accountable to it? No, It doesn’t apply to you and I. Do I try my best to follow the teachings of Christ and concepts of Bible? Yes, absolutely. Do I fail at that? Yes, all the time.

As you’ve pointed out repeatedly, I don’t understand the way you think. So no, it’s not obvious what your intentions were as far as posting. I’ve seen you take a number of things deliberately out of context to make a point, why wouldn’t you post a response in one place and expect the reply in another? Tell you what, you stop taking things wildly out of context and I will preface my remarks more carefully so it is clearer who they are intended for.

Evangelical is a type of church, as well as a denomination (kind of like Protestants and protestants). The type of church I go to of the evangelical type, not denomination. As in: an evangelical, Bible based church. I’ve yet to see any Christian Church of any denomination that I’d compare to the Taliban. Next you’ll be calling me a Nazi, or some such other rubbish. But if by all that you mean that I am a fundamentalist, well then, in the strictest sense of the word, yes I am. I’d love to start a whole new conversation on this topic, because I’m pretty sure most folks have no idea what that all means, but probably think they do. I don’t think it’s any accident that the connotation of that word has been maligned.

Serai: I think you are correct. I heard a stat recently that there are more Muslims in the UK than any other faith.

IB Bill: I think our real problem is one of semantics. I say “this is Christian” you say “that is Christian”, but neither of us has defined what we mean be the word Christian. My simple definition: Anyone who believes that Jesus the Christ died as the perfect and only possible eternal atonement for our fallen nature. My main difficulty is that Catholicism believes that is not enough.

And BTW, Baptist ARE NOT protestants (please note small p, cap P is a denomintation). They claim to be from the Anabaptists which existed BEFORE the Roman Catholic Church. Another fly in the ointment, since they had the Bible before the RC church. Hey, maybe they think they wrote it…

Both you and Les now write that the Catholics “wrote the Bible”. This is nonsense! If any group could claim authorship, it would be the Jews. I personally believe it was all God inspired, since that is what Jesus taught (so who put the pen to paper doesn’t matter much). Again, it’s either the Holy Scripture, or it is not. It’s not a contextual issue, Christ taught that the Bible was The Word of God. You can decide not to believe him, but then that puts you in quite the spot calling yourself a Christian.

Since they deliberately didn’t translate the RC Bible into common languages until the 1960’s, I’d have a tough time saying that RCs know what’s in it. Most Bibles don’t have the apocrypha, which is only in the RC Bible, so it’s not even it’s not even “the current form”. Maybe you could claim authorship in one sense, I may have my history a bit messed up, but didn’t King James re-write, errr… translate, the Bible when he split from the Roman Catholics, creating the Anglican Church? And since then, haven’t most churches dumped he KJV in favor of other translations (once they were available) because of the skew James made his scholars put on certain passages that are not there in the original texts?

And of course: I believe there are that many Catholics like I believe the US is 90 something percent Christian. I know very few practicing Catholics (in fact, other than my best friend, none). I know hundreds of people who call themselves Catholic. As in: my parents are Catholic, but I haven’t been to church other than a wedding since my first communion. Or as Les so aptly put it:

The reality is that most “believers” are practicing the same faith their parents practiced. In other words, the decision to believe isn’t based on any time spent reasoning out why they believe or developing a logical thought process as to why their religion is the right one, but because they “inherited” their religion from their parents and were raised in it. My observation isn’t an insult, it’s a statement based on reality.

Enough appetizers: Let’s get to the main course:

My first two arguments are weak? Perhaps, but I note you haven’t bothered to address them.

Interesting, then the following part where you rebut those arguments is a figment of my imagination? I should have known something was amiss when you started making sense. And really, that’s not just a backhanded compliment, you were eloquent.

Your argument hinges on foreknowledge being the same as predestination. However: Foreknowledge is not the same as predestination. This is the best part of this to me: the main failure of your argument is the same failure I find with most predestinationist. In fact, you sound just like one of them. In essence then, you’re saying, “I don’t believe in God, because he must fit this narrow view of who I think he should be, which is impossible.” I agree: He does not fit that form, expand your view.

When I release a fork, I know it’s going to fall. I don’t cause it to fall: gravity does. I could make a random number generator, and although I designed it, and know everything about how it works, I still couldn’t tell you what number it’s going to generate next. Now the reality of our limitation is that that generator would require a seed, an outside random influence really, that would make the future outcomes apparently random. But God is more clever than I am, and he created this thing we call free will. And then He imbued us all with it. Now, He knows the future, so he knows the outcome, but He didn’t predetermine the outcome. Without free will we would be the automons that you describe. And I agree that the universe would be completely pointless.

I do like the comment about leaving drawings of his Mom, though.

Because I am limited to experiencing my life on a moment to moment basis, in the “here and now” as it were, I cannot know what the future will bring and thus I have the illusion of free will, but the reality is that those decisions are the only choices I can possibly make because the end result is already a known conclusion.

No, it’s not an illusion, from our perspective, the outcome really is in the future. It would only seem like an illusion if you were witnessing your own life from God’s perspective. And it would still only be an illusion in appearance, as you actually have free will. I suppose if you could do that, then there would be a paradox, but you can’t, at least as far as I know.

Again, an all-knowing and all-powerful God who’s responsible for everything that exists is also responsible for all that is wrong with everything that exists.

No doubt, and since he took the sin of the world with him to the cross, then one might say he paid that price. However, I say that with free will comes responsibility. Part of this issue is that if you start with the assumption of free will, your arguments don’t work well. But if you begin with the assumption of predestination, we suddenly have this problem. I say, since I believe in free will, then the responsibility for my choice lies with me.

What purpose, then, does giving us time to decide have if he already knows what our decision will be?

Have you never presented your child with a question, that you already knew the answer to? Do you desire love from your child? Would that love mean anything to you if you gave her no choice in the matter? And those are just reasons I can come up with. Again, I expect that God may have motivations that I can’t begin to fathom.

Yes, it does matter. By not having knowledge of what the future holds you don’t impact on the concept of free will. There is no paradox simply because you can’t know for certain what your kids will ultimately decide to do with regards to your hopes and plans. Trying to argue a point such as this by contrasting your relationship with your children to God’s relationship with his creation isn’t a very good comparison.

I have no new argument here. If you want to assume that fore-knowledge equals pre-destination, then your argument holds. I simply don’t agree with that assumption. Actually, I think it’s an excellent comparison, there is a great deal to that particular parallel. Considering I have a relationship with God and you don’t, I think it’s pretty funny that you should tell me what a good example of what that relationship is like.

Of course they have an agenda. You have an agenda or you wouldn’t be here. And, yes, I do feel the Bible has more than it’s share of contradictions. It also has some questionable precepts in my mind as well.

I have to ask this: What questionable precepts, and by what standard are they questionable?

Of course I realize quotes from the Bible can be taken out of context much the same way you took quotes from Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein out of context to support your points, something you didn’t seem to think was a bad thing to do at the time. I believe your exact response to that was along the lines of “I admit that I only used the part of the quote from Albert that supported my point. That may have been somewhat less than fully honest.” At which point you then went on to defend the practice as being acceptable for a couple of reasons. Now you seem to be suggesting that taking quotes out of context is a bad thing. Make up your fucking mind.

*Boggle* You pointed out that I was abusing the quote. I admitted that what I did was less than fair, and I stopped doing it: I agreed to play by your standard. Then you do it, so I point out that you are guilty: holding you accountable to your own idea of right/wrong. And you now have a problem with that. Who’s the one that’s confused here? I’m only holding you up to your own standard. Letsee, how’d that go? Oh yeah: Pot, Kettle… there was something else…

This is exactly my problem with this relativistic human secularism nonsense. There are no standards, you just make them up as you go along, and if one is suddenly inconvenient to have to live by, you just forget you ever had it.

Indeed, acts like that are one of the big problems I have with the God described in the Bible. If he did exist, he has condoned and authorized acts that make him unworthy of worship in my mind. No God that condones and even demands genocide is a “loving and caring” God.

Perhaps the toughest argument to answer you made in the whole response. I don’t have a great answer, even though I knew when I made the statement that generated it, it was coming. Hmmm, did my foreknowledge cause it to happen? The best I can do is this: 1) I do not comprehend all of God’s motivations. When I take in the overall picture of who He is and what else He’s done there are a few items I’m willing to let slide until I can talk it over in person with Him. I’d have a lot tougher time with something like this if this was His standard operating procedure, as it is in some faiths. 2) From the perspective that the end of life on earth is not the end of existence, death is not such a bad thing. I’m rather looking forward to Heaven. 3) If God uses one group of people to wipe out another group of people is that so very different from him limiting our life span in any other form? If he is the giver of life, then is it not up to His discretion to decide how and when He’ll take that life?

No, actually, it wouldn’t. Unlike you, I do like people in general and I don’t need an outside agent to command me to love others before being able to do so. Your comparison between Dentistry and being able to love others may be apt for you, but I don’t think it applies to most folks. It certainly doesn’t apply well to me. How then do you explain your need for a God to be able to care about others whereas I have no belief in such a being yet find it easy to care about others? Based on your explanation I should be a completely self-centered, inconsiderate, uncompassionate individual. Perhaps that’s how you view me, but there are others who would disagree.

I think it’s terrific that you find it so easy to love me, and here I thought you didn’t care. Is it possible that you’ve confused a love of some with the love of all? Certainly, we all find some people in our life that we love, at least hopefully. I’m writing there about loving people that you might find difficult to love, like me and you. And I’ve never said that no-one ever cares about anyone if they don’t believe in God. I do believe though, that God uses people who don’t believe in him all the time. And you wouldn’t see anyone caring for anyone if He didn’t. Just as He is the author of Life, He is the author of Love. If He didn’t create it, you haven’t seen it.

No, that’s not what I would do. Even if my daughter were to decide she doesn’t love me and decades were to pass, I would never sever all ties with her. She would always be my daughter and I would always be there if she wanted me to. Perhaps that’s what you would do, but don’t assume everyone else would as well.

I am happy for you, and pray that you never will have to eat those words. Lots of folks have to do this everyday. It’s called tough love, but I suppose you’d just call it heartless. As I said, hope it never happens to you and yours. No, I don’t know what everyone would do, I don’t even know for sure what I’d do. But I know that the survivors do it all the time.

# Mark 15:25 “And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.”
vs.
# John 19:14-15 “And about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out . . . crucify him.”

Surely you can explain the three hour difference?

I think IB Bill did a fine job on this already. But I want to add here that if all of the Gospels described each of the events in the exact same fashion, you’d likely accuse them of collusion. It’s the minor differences that in fact make them more reliable. If you’ve ever performed any kind of investigation with eyewitnesses, you’ll know what I mean. Or as I like to say: You’re not really a parent until you have your second kid. Until then, you KNOW who did it.

Believing you are right and stating unequivocally that you are right are two different things. You have made statements that seem to indicate that you believe that anyone who disagrees with you is either stupid or dishonest (read: avoiding the truth).

Wow, you really beat this to death. This must be the 5th or so time you repeat that phrase. It must have really struck a nerve. Guilty conscience?

There are 33,800 Christian denominations around the world according to the year 2000 World Christian Encyclopedia. What makes you the final authority on which ones are and which ones aren’t “truly” Christian? Why should I accept your claim of being the one-true version over the claims of the Catholics or the Jehovah Witnesses claim of being the one-true version? I’m sure I could find more than a few Catholics and JW’s, along with many other denominations, who’d tell me you’re full of shit.

If you read the definition I have for being a Christian above, I think you’ll see that my “one-true version” takes in a pretty broad sweep. I’ll take my stand with it, but it’s simply my opinion. Having debated JWs and Catholics in the past, I find they often have a very tough time even defining their own religions. Most of them when presented with the facts of what their denomination preaches, change their minds about how solid they are in their denomination. There are simply some really bad inconsistencies in them, and I point out that I am not with them because I don’t want to have to defend that stuff. For instance: I don’t think God left images of His Mom scattered throughout the universe, and I’m not going to waste my time defending such nonsense.

Seems to me you’re doing just that by categorically stating that Catholics and JW’s are not “true” Christians. So tell me again how you are not being prideful?

Point of fact: I do not claim to be the final arbiter. I claim God is, and He provided us with His Word to help settle exactly this kind of misunderstanding. Otherwise, anyone could just say “God told me to murder my friends as an act of worship” and we’d just have to take him at his word. So I am not judging these faiths by some standard I just made up, but by the standard God gave us. Since these religions claim to have this same book as their Holy Scripture, I think that’s a fair deal.

Obviously you’ve never studied up on Secular Humanism. Belief in a God or any kind of “higher authority” is not necessary for morality or for a functioning society. Many of the Founding Fathers valued reason over faith when establishing a new country:
(John Adams quote)

Sounds like John Adams felt there was no need to go higher than man himself in the process of launching this great nation known as America. In many respects, the United States of America is a perfect example of a society founded in part by men with no higher authority than themselves. Do you consider the USA to be in total anarchy and therefore a “bad thing” by any standards?

I sicken at the revisionist history that has been foisted on America. Yes John Adams was one of very few of the Founding Fathers that disavowed Christianity to some extent. Of course, the document you quote is in ’87. Seems that John once claimed to be a Christian, and it so happens this document was sometime after the revolution. So it’s a least questionable that this was his frame of mind at the time of the revolution. And the fact remains that most of the other Founding Fathers were Christian and brought those beliefs to the table at the time.

Or as one Founding Father put it:
“It is to be regretted, but so I believe the fact to be, that except the Bible there is not a true history in the world. Whatever may be the virtue, discernment, and industry of the writers, I am persuaded that truth and error (though in different degrees) will imperceptibly become and remain mixed and blended until they shall be separated forever by the great and last refining fire.”
- John Jay to Jedidiah Morse, 28 Feb 1797

I think you quoted me accurately: Anarchy is a bad thing by any standard. Last I checked, we still vaguely resemble a Republic. I happen to think that’s the next best thing a benevolent dictatorship.

I’d like to close with this: the biggest problem I have with atheism is the reverse of the point you made about Christianity. People that want to sound intellectual say they are atheist. But most of them really mean they don’t believe what their parents believe. They’ve never really explored what they believe at all. When I listen to their understanding of Christianity, I agree with them: I wouldn’t want to be that religion either. When I first came to this board, I thought you were like that, and you’ve proven me wrong. I don’t have time to read your whole blog, I’ve hardly time to keep up with this thread. If you’d like to suggest a thread where you’ve already stated your belief system, I’d love to read it.

IB Bill,
Just reread you latest post… So when I say Catholics aren’t Christian, I’m judging, but it’s OK for you to say JWs and Mormons aren’t really Christian?

Your comment about the Unitarians still has me laughing (it’s so true). But I know a couple of Unitarians that say they’re Christian too.

David: 

There’s a lot of text above, so I don’t see the point where I say you are judging. If I did, I didn’t mean to imply you were judgmental.

The test of Christian belief is affirmation of the Nicene Creed (ignoring the filoque controversy, which is a tempest in a tea pot, IMO.) There is also a standardized canon, though the Catholics re-order the psalms and add some wisdom books that they themselves state are non-canonical but nonetheless useful.  And finally there is the spirit of God, that is, the Holy Spirit. 

My experience is that all Christians are members of the Body of Christ are united by the same Spirit of God and the same fundamental set of beliefs. 

JW, Unitarians, Mormons, some individual parishes, Muslims (which is a Christian heresy, too) have either different spirits or no spirit at all. Mormons have a completely different set of Scriptures, and the Muslims re-wrote the Bible entirely. Unitarians hold to a non-triune God, so they’re out as Christians. 

Baptists may consider themselves the new church of the Apostolic Age, but isn’t that pretty much the definition of evangelical Protestantism.  They hold the same beliefs that are stated in the Nicene Creed.  And they have the same Spirit as other Christians, in my experience. 

I don’t know if God leaves pictures of Mary all over.  Somehow I doubt it.  YMMV.

You seem to be saying, as many Protestants do, that the RC Church is not Christian because it holds to the necessity of works, not just faith.  This is a very old controversy, very deep philosophically, and Scriptures back both points of view.  As it says in James, paraphrasing here, show me your faith without works.  The Book of Revelations specifically says Christ will judge people by their deeds on Judgment Day. Jesus says, many people will say, Lord, Lord, but only those who do the will of the Father in Heaven will be saved.  St. Paul says by faith ye are saved.  John says whosoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. 

You straighten all that out, which at a certain point converges philosophically, anyway.

Hey Les! Enjoyed the entire discussion. Now my eyes are ready to fall out.

IB Bill,

You straighten all that out, which at a certain point converges philosophically, anyway.

I agree that it does, but even the quote you are looking for in James 2:18 “But someone will say “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” indicates that it can NEVER be the other way around. Works are nothing if faith doesn’t come first. So the idea that is infant baptism confers any kind of salvation at all is pure silliness. Unless you want to say the baby is saved by the faith of it’s parents. An idea which is likewise shot down repeatedly in scripture.

And your quote from Revelation is in the context of the judgement of believers. There will be two judgments: The beama seat and the white throne. In one, the unsaved are condemed. In the other the saved are rewarded. You are quoting from the description of the later. The judgement of your deeds is not whether you’ll be saved, but what God thinks of your actions as a result of your salvation.

I’ll take my stand, therefore, with Paul only because that quote is more clear. The other quotes you have are don’t have enough of their surrounding contect to show that they are basically saying the same thing. And Paul is only repeating what Christ said many times, which when taken in their context, boil down to what I wrote originally as my definition of Christianity.

The thing is that while we might disagree on the exact terms, nowhere in there could I get that I had to be baptized, shrived, take communion, or faithful to a particular man (i.e. the pope). All of which is required according to the RC church. Not that any (except for the last) are all that bad, just that none could be construed as required.

When you say works, one might think you’re refering to good works. but the additional works we’re discussing are acts of contrition, not good deeds. The works spoken about throughout those verses refer to good deeds. The works the RC church requires for salvation are rituals. That’s quite a stretch.