You seem to think that if he’s a scumball going against what he says he believes, he must be an atheist. Not a member of another religion, not someone following a version of Christianity shaped to serve his desires ( the likeliest possibility IMHO ), not someone who just ignores the inconvienient parts of his religion ( another likely possibility, and common ), not even an agnostic, but an atheist.
Except that people do that sort of thing all the time. The believers believe what they want to believe; they ignore words in a holy book as easily as they ignore scientific facts or the consequences of their actions. He might not believe, or he might, but his actions won’t tell you which.
Sorry if I’m sullying the word “atheist” for you, but my definition is more expansive than yours. I’m identifying as a category beyond the avowed atheists (you, for example) those whom I’m calling, as per the OP, practical atheists. These are the people whose behavior says (to me, at least) that they don’t really believe, though they profess to.
I think I’ll define the category of persons who are dumber than dirt as “practical Christians” on the tenuous ground that sometimes some Christians do some apparently stupid things, and because I don’t think that the word “Christian” has any meaning whatsoever about whether the person actually believes in Christ or not.
Do Mormons even believe in hell? (I’m not sure, actually.) No matter, one of the points of Christianity is that we are all sinners, and we get forgiveness only through Christ, not through actions. (In certain interpretations.) I don’t see how you get from someone being weak and doing wrong to atheism. There are plenty of theists who don’t believe in the Bible. When I was a believer,
not keeping Kosher didn’t mean I didn’t believe in God. In fact I didn’t change my habits much at all when I became an atheist - I just became less guilty about them.
I got the subtext DerTrihs picked up also. I’m sure it is not intentional, but it is there. It is perfectly possible that people lie about their atheism, due to social pressure, but on the whole I’m willing to believe people’s reports about their faith, unless there is strong evidence against.
Mormons don’t believe in hell in that sense of the word. The closest analogues you get are something that is definitively temporary, and something that even Hitler has a reasonable chance of not qualifying for.
Also there is nothing about Mormon theology that demonizes getting rich, as long as you can stay moderately humble and worshipful while doing it.
Jesus also said to “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Your judgement of Romney is not exactly following the teachings of Jesus. Now does that make you a practical atheist? But, then maybe you are already an atheist. Who knows, and who cares. “Take care of the beam in your own eye before you try to remove the mote in your brother’s.”
I’ve availing myself of one of the privileges of atheism, which is to judge freely without fear of being judged. But as I’ve said before, if you’re a politician who makes religion part of your pitch, then we have every obligation to judge how sincere you are in your professions.
It is certainly the case that you can believe in Christ and not believe in the literal text of the bible. Heck, I know Christians who have never read the bible. And most christians I know are so willing to “interpret” that it really doesn’t matter what the original text meant at all.
But this is basically to say that the word “Christian” is completely meaningless. I mean, if you feel you can be a Christian while discarding basic teachings of Christ, what’s the point?
It’s a brand name; it has whatever meaning it’s followers/creators assign to it. If Coke sticks crude oil in cans and calls it Coke, then that’s what Coke is. If Christians call greed and hatred Christianity, then that’s what Christianity is. If they call kindness and wearing a stuffed puppy on your head Christianity, then that’s what Christianity is.
They’re only the basic teachings of Christ if you think they are. Others would say the basic teaching of Christ is “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” You’ve set up a no true Scotsman argument.
They don’t think they’re discarding the teachings of Christ; they think everyone else is mistaken about the teachings of Christ. There’s a difference.
And the point is, if you deify Christ, or something that you believe is Christ, then you’re a Christian. Also if you don’t deify him, but base your religion on what you believe are his teachings, you’re still Christian.
Following the rules of the Bible is a hard thing to do- it is suppoesdly what separates the good Christians from evil hellbound heathens. It is “work” to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, thus the rules that you need to follow, that you really really want to break. It does not follow that you can break these rules and still get your reward in the afterlife. So if you flout the rules you don’t like, you may still be a Christian, technically, in your mind, but why bother?
Well, to begin with, you could say that the “do unto others” formula gives the rationale for Jesus’ condemnation of the rich. If one of the two imperatives from the Sermon on the Mount is “love your neighbor as yourself,” being rich is *prima facie *evidence that you have loved yourself more than you have loved your neighbor.
The fact is, when you’re talking about basic teachings of Jesus, there just aren’t that many of them. If you were to assemble all of Jesus’ words from the New Testament, it would make a very small pamphlet indeed. And in terms of teachings about conduct, there are even fewer, which is why his repeated condemnations of the wealthy are so striking.
What people are proposing in this thread is that it’s somehow possible to believe in Jesus without believing in one critical teaching, one that’s intimately connected to what he said in the Sermon on the Mount – or to put it more succinctly, that it’s possible to believe without believing.
That’s a good point, and in fact one I recall bringing up myself in a past debate thread about a self-professed Christian who admitted he or she had not read the full Bible.
But the problem is you are assuming that the Christians in question are applying logic to the situation. I agree that logically, a person who believes the Bible is the word of God and will burn in everlasting torment if they don’t follow it precisely should study the thing a little more carefully than when one skims the manual that comes with a new can opener.
But the simple fact is, a lot of folks do genuinely believe in God, do genuinely believe the Bible is the word of God, do genuinely believe they burn in everlasting torment if they don’t follow it exactly, but have not read the whole thing or ignore big parts of it. I agree it’s illogical, but I see it first hand. They are not atheists.