I agree with that. Stuff like there is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who created the earth and loves us. I mean come on; who in there right mind would take that literally. Or how about that one about a guy who rose from the death after 3 days, one would have to have rocks in their head to believe that one. Or that one about eternal paradise after death; that sounds like something we would only tell Children. Any grown up would have to be off their rocker, or literally brainwashed since birth to believe any of that. The power of prayer; anyone can see that doesn’t work. Skald the Rhymer, I agree with you completely.
Heck yeah, that one’s even more crazy. Heck, it’s not even in the bible, but made up by some uninspired wacko long after the fact.
I haven’t read the rest of the responses. Please note that mine refer to Catholicism, and specifically Spanish Cathholicism (which in general seems to be more liberal than the US version).
No. For starters, people must know about Christ before that is taken into account in the Judgement. People born BC, or who have never had adequate information can’t be guilty of stuff they never chose.
You don’t have to accept Jesus as your personal savior; you have to accept the infinite mercy of God… which you can do without getting into the whole Trinity detail.
I think that’s a good idea. Consequently, it seems most reasonable to scratch all miracles and appeals to the divine from the bible, as either being non-literal or non-true. Somehow I have a feeling that kunilou doesn’t do this but just scratches all the things she does not find pleasing. I await his/her elaboration.
My personal experience (as a non-Christian) is that conservative Christians tend to believe that one must “accept Christ as their savior” to get into Heaven. (And generally, the only alternative is Hell.) This isn’t quite the same as “non-Christians go to Hell”, because some would say that even those who “accept Christ” aren’t necessarily Christian if they, say, don’t believe in and abide by the teachings of the Bible. (Others say that if they truly accept Christ, they will automatically believe in the teachings of the Bible.)
Liberal Christians tend to believe that all “good people” will go to heaven, or that it’s impossible to know who will get into heaven so we shouldn’t make assumptions. At any rate, they tend to think that telling someone they’re going to Hell if they don’t accept Christ is judgemental and presumptuous. Sometimes the notion that “good people go to heaven” is justified by saying that good people will accept Christ after they die (or at the moment of death?) when their choices are made clear to them. I guess accepting Christ while you’re alive is just a way to make sure. I’ve also heard claims that all good people have Christ “working in their heart” even if they don’t know it. I have no idea whether these ideas are supported by the Bible.
I’ve also heard some Christians argue that Hell isn’t permanent, that some people just go to Purgatory for a while and then Heaven, that Hell is only “bad” in the sense that you aren’t with God, etc. I have no idea if any of this is supported by the Bible or not.
In general, Christianity (like all the major religions) has such a wide variety of interpretations that the only way to be sure of what someone believes is to ask them.
Brother Jed Smock- toured with her? He MARRIED & begot children of her!
Gotta admit- in my few encounters with Bro Jed, I didn’t dislike him the way I disliked Max.
Skald, bravo for the link for badchad’s attention!
You understand that Nava was referring to what she believes one has to do to get to heaven, right? If you don’t believe in heaven, I think you can assume that she wasn’t necessarily referring to something that you, personally must do.
According to Catholic theology, Hell and Purgatory are two different places. Hell is permanent, Purgatory is not. I don’t know if any other religious traditions believe in Purgatory or have a different concept of it (does anyone know?)
FriarTed, not to hijack this any further, but was Brother Jed the guy who wore army fatigues and carried a giant cross? When I was in school, he had his wife with him, and a whole slew of cute little kids as well. If this is the guy, the reason you didn’t dislike him was because he was sincere (although a tad bit misguided, IMHO!), and did not tend to be quite as insulting to his audience.
I think he travelled farther & wider than Jed. He would come once a semester and stay for a few days, but I think Max was on the quad pretty much every single week the entire time I went to Illinois.
What standard of authenticity do you apply to any 2,000 year old book which collected oral traditions (dating much further back) and which has gone through numerous translations? You look for messages and themes, not specific words.
Frankly, it always amazes me when non-believers challenge belief on the grounds that the Bible can’t possibly be literally true. To me it’s the mirror image of Biblical literalists mocking evolution because it doesn’t literally match the story of Genesis.
Interesting. Don’t think I ever ran into Jed, then. This guy would wear fatigue pants, combat boots, and t-shirts with God slogans on them. He had about 5 kids, a pregnant wife (this was around '87-'89). His wife wore a big homemade button that said “I (heart) being my husband’s servant,” which sent me into a white-hot rage, of course! He came to our campus for about a week, and my boyfriend who went to Western Illinois U said he was there for a week, too.
That’s exactly right. This is why the Catholic Church has spent 2000 years discussing it, and has a book that attempts to explain it all that’s almost as big as the bible itself. Sure, the catechism is based on the bible, but there is certainly no cut-and-dried answer for what it is all supposed to mean. And after Protestantism broke off, there have been thousands of denominations who all think THEY know the truth of it. Anyone who thinks they can blanket “Christianity” under one simple definition or interpretation of the Bible, doesn’t really understand how the bible is read by real people.
As another datapoint, Jed was a visitor to the University of Illinois around 1975 when I was there. Always wore a suit. No women were with him that I can recall.
Evolution has an enormous amount of evidence for it. Christianity has . . . the Bible. If the Bible isn’t true, then there’s no reason to believe Christianity at all. If Genesis doesn’t match evolution, then Genesis should be thrown out because evolution has so much more evidence.