How can you not define a creature that lives forever,has minions who are invisible and powerful and exists beyond our ability to perceive him as anything but a god. He may not be a nice god ,but a god he is.
Good point. My father used to say, “There is no exception to the rule that everyone wants to be an exception to the rule.” Sort of along the same lines I guess.
No, I am not mainstream, thanks.
So, examples of good done because of faith in God prove only that people are good.
Examples of evil done because of faith in God proves that God is evil.
I just have so much trouble with this whole logic and rational thinking thing.
I will stick to faith. I shall try to do good, because, fool that I am, I believe the Lord is good, and wants me to be good as well.
Tris
I would say that people doing good or bad because of faith in god only suggests that faith may be good or bad - unless it’s believed that faith accurately reflects the god in question, but then it’s a matter of particular faith and not of good vs. evil.
Well, thanks for positioning it as faith - full of goodness and light - on one side, and illogical faux-rationality on the other. There’s a breakdown in proclaimed virtues on all sides of the debate, and while I wouldn’t personally climb upon my pedestal to look down on the foolishness on one side as if it represented all those on it, I find I still have respect for your particular choice to do good. I plan to do good too, and I can only hope that I never lose the perspective of others on different paths too badly.
Christianity can be claimed by anyone for any reason. There is no test to take, no license to apply for, no bond to put up, nor even a particular creed to believe in. So claiming Christianity is really meaningless. Everyone should know this and not get excited by the huge variety of disconglomerated ideas as to what being a Christian means. So the only thing one can do is look at the acts or works done. Good works are generally said to be done by real Christians and bad works by hypocrites.
No one will claim being the Devil. Not good PR.
I don’t recall anyone using such examples. What I’m considering is evil done directly by God (the Flood) or at the express command of God, (the massacre of the tribes.) Things done because of what someone thinks god wants (by faith) don’t count.
How many true Christians are there in the world, would you estimate,** lekatt**?
I believe there are a lot of them, some in every church, at least there were in every church I have attended. They are the quite ones, the ones helping others.
I only ask because you mentioned there were over 2 billion just earlier. I think you may want to lower that estimate in that case, although really if you needed to it would imply you hadn’t really thought it through until now.
I would tend to disagree that every church has a good amount of total pacifists, anyway. I would imagine in fact that total pacifism as a requirement for Christianity would give us a pretty low number.
I wasn’t talking about total pacifists. No one IMHO has reached perfection in the churches. I am talking about those who know what the core teachings are and try to follow them on a daily basis. If you are looking for perfection you won’t find it. I found by attending many different churches that the general congregation is made up of average people who do not always agree with the doctrine of their church. Who even dislike the Bible thumpers who try to push the doctrine upon them. Like the daily news we hear only about those who do bad.
Not so much an outbreak as it is an inbreak. Love is a heart dweller.
Meaningless, and rather gruesome sounding, actually. Love as a parasitic infestation.
Staff Report: Was Hitler a Christian?
(This is separate from the more general discussion regarding whether the German people were Christians. I would have to say that by any objective standard, the German people between 1933 and 1945 tended to be Christians. That they may have failed miserably at living up to the standards set by the faith they professed can be argued, but a claim that they were not Christian makes little sense.)
You were talking about people who want to be total pacifists; who think that total pacifism is the ideal, though they may slip up now and then. I think that most people (at least in the UK and US) who would self-identify as Christian are actually, if not happy, but accepting of killing as necessary. If you include incarceration as a something true Christians should disagree with, the amount would be even smaller.
Pacifism is not the goal or the ideal of Christianity, love is. I am not sure why you think Christians are accepting of killings, I am not accepting of killings or incarceration, but I realize some Christians are OK with it. It comes back to how perfect does one need to be, to be a Christian. I heard one preacher sum it up by saying he wanted his church full of sinners, not saints, because sinners could learn there and the saints already knew. One does not have to be perfect to be a politician, or a scientist, or any other thing people can hope to be.
Below is the goal of Christianity according to me, very few including me can say they have achieved it.
Only some? I wonder what the results would be on a survey of those Christians who would be happy to let those in prison wander free?
I think you’re misunderstanding.
What you’re saying is that there are many Christians who would very much like to be people who are against killing, for love, and all that jazz. They fall short of it, but that’s their goal. That makes sense to me. But what i’m saying is not that lots of Christian fall short of that goal, but that lots of Christians don’d have that as a goal in the first place. That many if not most don’t just accept killing in war and the like as mistakes they should not support, but as necessary if nasty things that need to happen. That killing is an unfortunate result, not on their part, but on the part of the world and in practical terms with non-Christians.
IOW, not all Christians think that martyrdom on behalf of each and every member is the way to go. I could be wrong, but that’s generally how I understand it.
Hey, if Christians weren’t accepting of killing, I imagine the U.S. as a majority Christian nation would have no death penalty or armed forces. And yet…
Buh-wha? You haven’t achieved it. You’re being boastful* right there*. Rudeness, irritability and touchiness are more matters of opinion. You certainly point out when you think others have done you wrong. You do not believe all things.
I’ve started a pit thread to express myself in a more gratifying fashion:
For some time now I have mentally translated “Christian” as “Satanist”, when thinking about how I’d describe them in terms they understand.
On another note, amusingly, the mormon religion posits a “war in heaven” where everyone got together for a committee meeting to decide how this whole salvation thing is going to be run. God proposed that somebody be sacrificed and some fraction of the people be saved as a result - Jesus volunteered to be the sacrifice. Satan proposed a similar plan, except that he would be the sacrifice, and everyone would be saved. The war then occured (I always envision a show of hands), and Satan was lost. He and all his followers (1/3 of the voters) were then immidiately punished, eternal-style.
One supposes God was a very popular guy.
The amusing part of this is that Satan is presented as being the bad guy for proposing his plan, due to 1) Satan wanted credit and praise for being the one sacrificed, and 2) Jesus elected to defer all credit and praise to God. Ergo, the plan that damns lots of people is better, due to the fact that Jesus gets no credit or praise. None. Presumably no one will ever even hear about the guy. At least according to The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, anyway.