# Tsunami victims deserved it, you say? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 29, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145 "2004-12-29T20:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/101 "2004-12-30T18:26:42Z")
So do your fundamentalist aquaintances think Mel Gibson is not a Christian ? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/102 "2004-12-30T18:34:03Z")
Boy, I sure touched off some nerves. Let me be more frank; the next fundamentalist Christian I meet, who is a member of a fundamentalist or evangelical church, who admits that Roman Catholics are Christian, will be the first one. I’ve known plenty of them, including the parents of my best friend of 15 years, and absolutely without a single exception every one of them (with whom the subject came up, anyway) believed Catholics were not Christians. Some were perfectly nice folks, but that’s what they believed. In at least four cases they quite frankly and openly stated that all Catholics are going to hell no matter what. Entering “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” into Google comes up with hundreds of hits. Every article I can find that appears to be written by a fundamentalist Christian answers in the negative, though I’m still getting through them. ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/103 "2004-12-30T18:46:19Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > Part of **Sample the Dog** ’s post comes from Mt. 7:21, “Mat 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” The parable he cites is found later in Matthew, ch. 21, v. 28-31: Thank you, **gobear**. When I wrote the post, it was late, and I was too tired to go look it up. I find it very telling that someone could have “13 years of religious schooling” and not recall either of these passages. Many people I know who call themselves fundamentalist Christians are really steroetypical Pharisees, still wedded to the Covenant of Law, obsessed with literal interpretations of snippets of scripture, and not truly open to the Covenant of the Heart which was Jesus’s gift. Yes, the Biblical Jesus does say that none comes to the Father but by Him. However, I don’t recall that He claims that this happens only by believing in him as the Messiah during this lifetime. The modern “cult of belief”, as I call it, is a cop-out. First, believe in Jesus, and you are saved. Then, whatever you can do on top of that is gravy. Jesus did not preach this. As has been cited above, Jesus taught love for one’s fellow human beings and for God. And not some vague intangible love, either, but love in action – feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted. ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/104 "2004-12-30T20:32:20Z")
I have a good friend who is Catholic and who grew up in a certain town in Illinois which is home to a very conservative Christian college and she and her family were constantly targeted by them for prosletyzation because they weren’t “real Christians.” On account of the Mary worship according to what she managed to glean from multiple attempts over many, many years. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/105 "2004-12-30T20:47:00Z")
> [@spectrum](#): > > Really? So all those fundamentalists who’ve tried to “save” me and my family over the years, what were they? > > The person I was chatting at at a Christian board one time (a fucking fundamentalist Baptist, of course) was kidding when, not knowing my church, she said “Isn’t it sad the way Catholics think they’re Christians?” > > Fundamentalists don’t include folks like Jimmy Swaggart? Jack T. Chick? Bob Jones? > > Tell me another one. Really. Fundists also include Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham & (in some areas) myself (moreso in my youth). We all hold Catholics to be Christians. And there are quite a few Catholic Fundists. Turn on EWTN sometime. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/106 "2004-12-30T20:56:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > the next fundamentalist Christian I meet, who is a member of a fundamentalist or evangelical church, who admits that Roman Catholics are Christian, will be the first one. Interestingly, I’ve heard more-than-several Catholics in Ireland differetiating between “Christian” (i.e. Catholic) and “Protestant”. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/107 "2004-12-30T21:36:10Z")
My evangelical neighbors (the wife was raised Catholic) state firmly that Catholics are not Christians. I can’t for the life of me figure that one out. And to the OP-people like her give all Christians a bad name. blech. ---
**Author:** ![coleridge78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@coleridge78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coleridge78)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/108 "2004-12-30T21:39:53Z")
> [@Abbie Carmichael](#): > > Total bullshit. > > Any other doctrinal statements you’d like to make as Official Representative of the Vast Fundamentalist Conspiracy? Every fundamentalist (and there are many) in my family, and everyone at their respective churches and in their social circles in their respective small TX towns, etc, etc, believes exactly this. Catholics are very explicitly not Christians. Most of them also think Catholics are forbidden by the Pope from reading the Bible. _eyes rolling_ Where do you think the KKK started, oh One-With-All-the-Answers? It didn’t start because of race–the blacks were still “in their place”. Good upstanding fundamentalists started the KKK in order to keep Catholics from being schoolteacher, scare them out of running in elections, etc, etc. Had to keep out the pagan Papists. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/109 "2004-12-30T21:45:23Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Interestingly, I’ve heard more-than-several Catholics in Ireland differetiating between “Christian” (i.e. Catholic) and “Protestant”. Alas, no group is so right or proper that fuckheads won’t attach themselves to the group. _sigh_ ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/110 "2004-12-30T21:52:26Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Poor God. > > The rationalizations and justifications and blame that get laid at his feet. > > I wonder…all the children that died, what’s the justification for them? Aren’t children innocent in the eyes of God? > > But, of course, they’re just heathens. :rolleyes: Here’s how it may go down for all the innocent children, based on my experience at a Delphi forum. The interesting thing is that the regulars at a Protestant forum were and are generally _not_ what most would call fundy, at least not extreme fundy. No young earth and the moderator, I believe, is pro-evoultion. Recently a visitor kept insisting that “gay” was not inborn and the moderator presented cites that it probably was. Eventually the mod asked him if he was interested in discussing this one topic only, and what that implied. Finally the visitor “shaked the dust” at the mod, perhaps never realizing that the mod actually had no problem in saying that God forbade homosexual acts. In fact, the mod once said that an intersexed individual should make the best stab at figuring out gender and then marry only the opposite sex. When a very different new poster a year earlier though kept insisting that the Deluge was contradictory to any kind of benign deity, a different picture emerged. The mod was very emotional in reaction to the sustained argument and I could almost see smoke coming out of his ears after a while, so to speak, but he maintained a semblance of composure. When it came to the question of innocent babies the mod did what he “had to” do. He trotted out the tied old excuse that the babies would have been inevitably corrupted by their parents and society as a whole. They were not slaughtered so much as given a new address: heaven. That makes it an act of mercy. Besides, God is not subject to the same moral constraints as man. * * * True Blue Jack ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145/111 "2004-12-30T21:52:41Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Poor God. > > The rationalizations and justifications and blame that get laid at his feet. > > I wonder…all the children that died, what’s the justification for them? Aren’t children innocent in the eyes of God? > > But, of course, they’re just heathens. :rolleyes: Here’s how it may go down for all the innocent children, based on my experience at a Delphi forum. The interesting thing is that the regulars at a Protestant forum were and are generally _not_ what most would call fundy, at least not extreme fundy. No young earth and the moderator, I believe, is pro-evoultion. Recently a visitor kept insisting that “gay” was not inborn and the moderator presented cites that it probably was. Eventually the mod asked him if he was interested in discussing this one topic only, and what that implied. Finally the visitor “shaked the dust” at the mod, perhaps never realizing that the mod actually had no problem in saying that God forbade homosexual acts. In fact, the mod once said that an intersexed individual should make the best stab at figuring out gender and then marry only the opposite sex. When a very different new poster a year earlier though kept insisting that the Deluge was contradictory to any kind of benign deity, a different picture emerged. The mod was very emotional in reaction to the sustained argument and I could almost see smoke coming out of his ears after a while, so to speak, but he maintained a semblance of composure. When it came to the question of innocent babies the mod did what he “had to” do. He trotted out the tired old excuse that the babies would have been inevitably corrupted by their parents and society as a whole. They were not slaughtered so much as given a new address: heaven. That makes it an act of mercy. Besides, God is not subject to the same moral constraints as man. * * * True Blue Jack [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsunami-victims-deserved-it-you-say/282145.md?page=5)