How are you able to tell from a person’s posts whether or not they are Christian? I know that most folks don’t label their posts with their religious orientation.
As for me, although I’m active in my church I have been told that I am not a “good” or a “real” Christian. I have always felt that I have a very good relationship with the Almighty, and if He has a problem with my thoughts and opinions He can say something to me about it. If my personal heresies are such that I am a “bad Christian,” so be it. I will continue to try to be a good Man and take it up with the Judge when my time comes.
Temujin, you called me to account on a blatantly false statement, and I am grateful. Apologies to all non-Christians that I may have slandered with that remark.
As for me, my reaction to the last few posts would be that I am very proud to acknowledge Jesus as my savior and lord, but I don’t feel jealous about his caring about others as well, and I get very highly offended by those who allege themselves as Christian and start drawing lines in the sand with demands that you have to believe seven impossible things before breakfast in order to be saved.
I don’t recall whether you were posting regularly about a month ago, Surgoshan, but those of us who regularly read and posted this particular board dealt with an argumentative fundamentalist Christian who considered that we were all on the fast track for Hell (I speak figuratively) for not adhering to his particular beliefs. If I have in any way misrepresented his views, I ask any other regular poster to correct me.
Poly: I don’t think that you necessarily misrepresented his views, but I imagine that in Adam’s head we were all rushing headlong toward damnation literally.
How can I tell from a post whether someone is Christian? Given statements such as “…if I believed in God…” and “Some God you got there, lady,” it’s fairly easy to tell. Wouldn’t you say so? Or maybe I’m genuinely misconstruing the beliefs behind those comments. After all, it’s theoretically possible that one branch of christianity teaches that all others worship false gods.
As to everything else, I’m just never going to look at anything remotely resembling religion on this board again.
Surgoshan, the problem we are having with your original post is that you seemed to be responding to specific comments, but you claimed that you saw no Christians on the thread. At least four Christians (“high church” at that–3 RC and 1 Episcopelian) have posted on this thread.
Of course, if you had similar beliefs to the aforementioned Adam/ARG220, you might deny that any of those four are Christian. (He had decided that only his version of Christianity was real–prompting some of the comments you have seen.) :::shrug:::
Religious threads on this message board take several different paths: serious discussion among people of different faiths clarifying the similarities and differences between their beliefs; attempts to castigate or ridicule people of other faiths; attempts to castigate or ridicule people of any faith; serious attempts by believers and non-believers to reconcile differences in their various apprehensions of the world.
You may find all such discussions distateful, but if you look around (or wait a day or so) you will find many different types of discussions. You can try to avoid them, but you will miss many fun (and some nasty) exchanges.
And Surgoshan, don’t get too bent out of shape because of comments like “That’s some God you’ve got there, lady.” Even among non-believers, the derision directed at people like those discussed in the Original Post does not necessarily extend to all people of faith. I have many friends of faith to whom I could say, nicely and sincerely, “Hey, that’s some God you have there!” (meaning that they have chosen to worship a good one)
But yes, when someone claims that God as she understands him altered things here on Earth to drown others for her personal benefit, I’m probably gonna throw some fruit at her.
So put me squarely in Temujin’s camp as regards my ability not to see all believers as being out on the fringes.
Well, I’m a Christian, and I don’t post as much as I used to, and this is a prime example of why. Here we have someone who is (so far as we know and his posts indicate) a fairly intelligent and usually tolerant guy, and he posts an article quoting someone most people (Christian or not) would consider pretty far out on the fringe, and then says something like “See! this is what all Christians are like!” This makes me really tired. I mean, several of us who consider ourselves moderate Chistians post here consistently, and yet people who ought to know better continue to represent Christianity as if it were limited to fundamentalism. I am a Christian. I am not a fundamentalist. I have enough trouble wrestling with and (when necessary) defending what I do believe to waste my time defending what I do not. But if someone decides to extrapolate this man’s – or any man’s beliefs to be the beliefs of all Christians, then that person is being willfully ignorant – an interesting position to take on this site in particular.
I have a healthy respect for the opinions of others, also, and have become familiar with many members here by reading through the SDMB fairly regularly. But I must say this is not my impression of the OP. Here is (I think) the actual quote in question:
My impression of this is a head-shaking generalization of the fringe as it applies to most people’s perception of the whole. It sounds like, “Gee, there they go again. I know some intelligent Christians who must be embarrassed to have this guy on their ‘side.’”
I may be wrong, but I don’t think it was intended as a slam. Putting aside religion, have you ever been involved in a group where some members of the group were acting idiotically? Did you feel embarrassed to be associated with them? It’s the same thing here.
To put it another way, I know some atheists who go out of their way to deride the beliefs of others - the blatant disrespect bugs the hell out of me - but I’m still an atheist. There’s always going to be extremists on either side. It’s up to the level-headed amongst us to communicate, respect each other’s views, and commiserate about the crazies.
I know you understand what you heard me say, but what you don’t understand is what I said is not necessarily what I meant.
Those happy evolutionists! Oh, wait, that’s not the meaning of “gay” you were using, was it?
Anyway, don’t forget that one Senator (anybody recall which one?) recently got up and essentially blamed school shootings on the teaching of evolution. Whoa.
Jodih said:
Maybe you ought to reread Satan’s original post, because that certainly wasn’t there. In fact, if anything he was saying the opposite. Perhaps you were seeing what you thought you were going to see instead of seeing what was actually there.
Two people above this post came to the defense of my OP, so I hope it’s obvious to you that what I said was NOT what you said I said. (Say THAT ten times fast!)
I just have a problem when ANYONE says, “Do this or burn,” because that is the ultimate hypocrisy since one big rule in that Book of yours is to not judge, that only He can judge, right?
DavidB: Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, made the comment you are referring to. He placed the blame on the Columbine shootings to teaching children “that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.”
His understanding of science is only exceeded by his grasp of the language.
Quote:
“Or when athletes pray for victory before a game. What, God doesn’t have anything better to do than to rig the outcome of a football game?!”
I usually didn’t pray for victory when I was in sports. I prayed that no-one would get hurt and that my conduct on the field of play would be representative of being a Christian.
Ask Reggie White what he prayed on the field after games (with members of the opposing team). I bet it had nothing to do with the score of the game and everything to do with thanking and praising God, and praying for each other.
As with sports, so with war. Everybody thinks God is on their side. The belt buckles worn by members of the Wehrmacht (German Army) in World War II had a logo written right above the eagle-and-swastika insignia: “Gott Mit Uns”, or “God With Us”. I’d sure hate to think that was true. Somehow I sorta doubt that it was.
Post in haste, repent in leisure, I guess. I didn’t really convey what I meant to convey, which is this: Why does it “make ALL of it’s followers look like mind-melded zealots”? YOU KNOW a lot of its followers, aren’t, right? If you recognize that these are the words of an extremist, why are you assigning his attitudes – or the appearance of his attitutes – to Christianity as a whole? Granted, that is something that someone who doesn’t know any better might do, but you do know better.
I guess I’m just not getting the point of the post. That there are Christian extremists and Christian idiots? Granted. There are also Jewish extremists and idiots, and Moslem extremists and idiots. Would you attribute the beliefs of the most extreme adherents of these religions to all adherents, even when you know not all adherents hold the beliefs in question? I would hope not. So why do it where Christianity is concerned?
Because it does. Obviously I don’t buy into that all of it’s followers ARE like mind-melded zealots, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Get to a power of position and say you’re a Christian nice and loud but you disagree with the more fundamentalist-types on a lot of issues and you will make a difference - but they will also get ink saying YOU are wrong and NOT a Christian (a la ARG).
It’s a fact, whether you like it or not.
How do I know better when all I hear about Christians is that they are against people having abortions when nobody wishes to force them to have any?
How do I know better when all I hear about Christians is that they are against teaching science correctly in schools?
How do I know better about Christians when all I hear about is them thinking the world is 6,000 years old?
How do I know better about Christians when I read Chick tracts which flat-out lie about important issues to scare people into a point they can’t make any clearer without lying about it?
How do I know better about Christians when they tell me that what a human being they will never meet will do in their own house with a consenting adult should be outlawed?
Of course I know better, but guess what - I have very little evidence, outside of the likes of Polycarp, to the contrary. And God bless Polycarp and those like him as voices of reason.
I don’t stereotype, but Lord knows I have ample reasons to be able to.
The point is simple - a fundamentalist Christian leader believes that all Christians have to say the world is 6,000 years old and God made fossils to fuck with our heads, carbon dating is wrong, blah, blah, blah.
And according to this person of influence and power within the church, if you choose to think otherwise, you are NOT a Christian.
If I were you, I’d spend the outrage on the likes of him instead of the likes of me.
In this country, we do not have a voting block of extreme Muslim groups calling itself “The Moral Majority.”
In any country, the more conservative the Jew, the more likely he or she will not WANT you to follow his path.
And yes, as a matter of fact, extremists Muslims do have stereotypes attatched to them - they’re the loonies who want to bomb your pre-school and kill Salmon Rushdie.
Don’t think Christianity is such a martyr for negative stereotypes… It’s just that you’re the easiest target because you’re the loudest and the most self-centered.
“Because it does”? Oh, excellent defense. If you “don’t buy into it,” which you say you do not, why do you assist in perpetuating a stereotype you apparently recognize is not universally valid?
Gets what grease? I mean, I understand that this gentleman wants to appropriate the term “Christianity” for his views, and only his views, but when you yourself know that Christianity is more than that, why would you assist him in doing so?
So what would you suggest moderate Christians do? You appear to be saying on the one hand that such proclamations should not go unchallenged (as I agree) while on the other hand saying that challenging them just gives the speaker another platform from which to declaim. Well, where does that leave us?
You list a bunch of fairly fundamentalist views, saying “how do you know”, but then admit that you do know better – which is it? Is your view of Christianity as limited as you know apparently represent it to be? Because your previous posts had led me to believe your view was considerably wider than that.
So you do recognize: (a) "reasonable Christians exist; and (b) their status as “reasonable” Christians is laudable. So, again, I ask you: why do you choose to perpetuate a stereotype of narrow-minded, unreasonable Christianity? Because it’s more prevalent? That doesn’t make it correct, as you apparently realize.
Don’t kid yourself. When you say that all Christians appear to be mind-melded zealots based upon the opinion of one, you are stereotyping us.
So? Fundamentalist Christians believe a lot of things many moderate Christians do not. That doesn’t mean that their beliefs should be imputed to anyone but them.
Again, so? How does his proclamation make me seem like “a mind-melded zealot”? Do I seem that way to you? If so, why? And if not, why would you say that it does? That’s the part I’m not getting.
You don’t outrage me; he does. But he apparently really believes what he says; I wouldn’t have thought you believed what you posted, as you are not generally given to such gross over-generalizations.
The point is that if you know ONE moderate Moslim, you are irresponsible in attributing the beliefs and actions of extremist Islam to all Moslims. The same goes for Christianity, and it’s relative position in this country (or lack thereof) enters into it not at all.
But would you perpetuate those stereotypes when you knew them to be untrue?
I never said Christianity is a martyr for negative stereotyping; I merely said that people who know better (as I thought you did) should not engage in the sort of stereotyping you have in fact engaged in and continue to engage in. It would be a different matter al together if I thought you really believed this man spoke for Christianity as a whole, but I didn’t think you did. Maybe my problem wasn’t that I misinterpreted your post, but that I overestimated you.