You only demonstrate here that you are one of the board’s true idiots and nothing that you say should be taken seriously. (I’m an atheist as well, FWIW.)
And a doodyhead. FWIW.
Purely? I thought that Protestants also dismissed some notions as heretical – such as anti-Trinitarianism, etc. C.S. Lewis, a Protestant, wrote about the early heresies in the church, and supported their suppression. Even to a Protestant, Arianism and Montanism and Manicheanism are hugely erroneous.
ETA: Well, not all, of course. Isaac Newton was an Arianist!
No one here has said that the LDS, SDA, JW, and others are “Good” Christians. We’ve only said they are “Christians.” Frankly, I think they’re really bad Christians!
I find it difficult to believe that you have friends.
You caught me! They are made up, I never leave my moms basement, etc.
Actually, I am quite extroverted and gregarious. Witty and charming too.
That too, but that’s in addition to the idiocy.
As the parallel structure should have made clear to you, I was calling you a doodyhead. But maybe doodyheads are incapable of parsing such things. HTH!
Odd. I happen to think the LDS are really good Christians.
There are four general meanings of the word cult as it is used in American English.
[ul][li]1) as a direct cognate translation of the Latin cultus, meaning any well-organized set of religious beliefs. In this sense, all the various sects and denominations of Christianity and Islam could each be called cults, as could Judaism or its individula groups, Hinduism or its individual sects, etc. (Translations of statements from the Vatican occasionally raise the ire of various people when the word cultus is rendered from the Latin as “cult” and the people in question assume that the Vatican was using the word in one of the next three meanings.)[/li]
[li]2) any religious group with a strong connection to a living or recently-deceased leader. In this case the LDS could be called a cult only up until the death of Brigham Young, at which point the direct connection to Joseph Smith was broken. On the other hand, Christianity would be a cult of Jesus, in this sense, until the death of the first generation of Apostles. After that, however, it would no longer meet this definition.[/li]
[li]3) a nominally religious-based group enforcing control over all aspects of the lives of its adherents in the manner of Jim Jones, etc. [/li]
[li]4) any religious group opposed by various fundie groups.[/li][/ul]
That’s a nice rundown. I am still not clear about what **Monty **was getting at, but if he wants to remain coy, w/e.
Your post to which he responded looked a lot as though you were a proponent of definition #4.
ORLY? Can you back up that assertion?
Sure. Monty appears to have drawn that conclusion. I made no claim to know what you meant, but you indicated confusion regarding Monty’s intention and I provided it.
Well, you were agreeing with the position “Mormons aren’t Christians”, which is a hallmark of “various fundie groups”. That did give me the impression that you’re accepting the fundie groups’ authority to determine what counts as Christian and what does not.
You didn’t say anything about Monty. You said:
The only reasonable way to read this is that *you *thought it looked a lot like that. Otherwise, you’d write “…looked to Monty a lot like…”. (In which case I’d wonder why you were speaking for Monty.)
This doesn’t have anything to do with my use of the word “cult”, which was in the parenthetical aside “(cult, sect, whatever)” after I wrote “my new religion” (this may not be exact as I’m too lazy to go look up the exact wording, but that’s very close).
Who’s being coy? You’re pretending that you are; however, your pretenses are proving to be nothing other than inanities. You certainly haven’t provided any evidence that supports your claim to knowledge here. As tomndebb mentioned, it was quite obvious that you were tossing out def. #4 as the meaning of cult.
Ehhhh…no. Better go back to mind reading school. Maybe regular reading school too, if you think my posting style is that of someone who plays it coy rather than just speaking my mind.
The only reasonable way for you to read it would have been to re-read your statement in light of my post. Reasonable is not a standard I have ever seen anyone apply to your opinions, of course. The issue has been mentioned in off board discussions with the exact conclusion I provided.
meh
Now that I don’t agree with. It is possible to argue that at least some are worshiping a fictitious god, or some other non-god entity. And that is precisely what happens, even between different Christian sects.
My argument is that all three claim to be worshiping the same God Abraham did. So, from at least Abraham back, these three gods have the same history. So it just makes more sense to say they are the same god worshiped differently.
If, on the other hand, one claimed to be worshiping, say, Zeus as the one true God, then I would say they were not worshiping the same God. There is no shared history. Each must either be fictitious or a non-god entity, as far as the non-worshipers are concerned.
And, in fact, there are Christians that believe that all false gods were demons. Which reinforces what I said above: how can a demon have the same history as the God of Abraham?