Re By Friends Of Liberty, February 13 at 4:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Re: Who is a good Christian?
A Christian is someone who, first of all, believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and second, follows the teachings of Christ through his good works and his faith in all that Christ said.  Atheists who care about the poor are good people, but they are not Christians.  There are non-Christians who are good people, and that goes without saying.
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Isn’t following the Golden Rule all you need to be a Christian? Doesn’t Jesus say somewhere that this is the whole of the law? I don’t know what the words “Jesus Christ is the son of God” means. Apparently you do. They just never made any sense to me. It is not part of my native language. Nobody ever read me the Bible when I was growing up. My father was a rationalist who equated religion with superstition. So I guess according to your definition I’m not a Christian. I very much doubt that there was any such person as “Jesus” who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and I regard the whole thing as a myth. I furthermore believe that Paul of Tarsus, who brought the Gospel to the gentiles, is the real originator of “Christianity”. Before that I think it was a Jewish sect that had existed for hundreds of years, and that continued to exist for hundreds of years more. I suspect that most of the Gospels are the product of his fertile imagination.

That said, there is something special for me about the book of Matthew. I get a very different feeling from it than the other Gospels. The teachings presented there have great meaning and tremendous spiritual power for me. I do not know where these words came from, but there is great wisdom in them and in I try to live by them as best I can.

So, for me the teachings of Jesus are important, but not whether “Jesus Christ is the son of God”, whatever that means. That part, for me, is Pauline dogma. That’s the part of Christianity I can do without.

Cyrena:

“Religious extremism in the form of violence is relatively new to Islam. It’s formed the foundation of Christianity, and those are just the facts.”

No, that is not the fact.  The “foundation” of Christianity existed peacefully for almost 300 years before it was co-opted by Constantine at the Council of Nicea.  It was only AFTER that that Christianity was “spread by the sword” and came to be “used” for violent purposes via the Crusades, etc.

What I believe Friends of Liberty (with whom I agree whole-heartedly) was referring to when he spoke of “true” Christians is what some call “primitive Christianity”: living Christianity as it was understood by the earliest (pre-Nicea) Christians; i.e., practicing one’s faith quietly and privately, sharing it with others but forebearing if they expressed non-interest (i.e., not ramming it down their throats), and trying as best as possible in the temporal world to live the main precepts of Jesus’ ministry: love, peace, forgiveness, compassion, humility, patience, charity, selflessness, service, justice, truth.

If all self-proclaimed Christians practiced this type of Christianity, they would remove Christianity from many of the accusations (some legitimate, some not) that are made against faith and religion in general.

Peace.

Jackpine:

“If the definition of a true Christian is taken as that suggested by Friends of Liberty, then it is possible to be a true Christian without believing or going to church.  Moreover, if i read Christ correctly, a non believer who acts well will be as welcome into heaven as the regular church goer.”

Please tell me where in the NT or Jesus’ ministry He suggests that “a non-believer who acts well will be as welcome into heaven as the regular church goer.”

In fact, I find this statement prima facie strange.

First, Jesus actually said that there were self-proclaimed believers who would NOT get into heaven: “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. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Second, the concept of “church-goer” was not yet known, since there were no churches in Jesus’ time.

Third, Jesus made it quite clear who He was and what it took to be “saved”:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” A few scholars interpret “but by me” broadly to mean “by living as I have lived, and following the precepts I have given you.” However, most scholars interpret it more narrowly to mean literally “through” Jesus; i.e., only by believing that Jesus was Himself the “image” of God: “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” Meaning, if you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father as well.  Thus, to NOT worship Jesus is to NOT worship the Father.

And Paul adds to this when he notes that, “[I]f thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

That is where “salvation” comes from: “confessing” Jesus and believing in His resurrection.

Note that I am simply providing the Scriptural underpinnings for “salvation” and “getting into heaven” from the Christian viewpoint.

Peace.

ITW:

“The very concept of faith is to deny your fundamental human qualities: Observation, Connection, Logic, Premise-Forming, Hypothesis, Repeatability, Conclusions, Concept-Building and, finally, Transference to Others.”

I quibble with this in two regards.

First, while it is true that far too many people follow faith and religion “blindly” - and do “deny” some or all of those qualities - it is not NECESSARY to deny those qualities in order to be a person of faith.  I could put you in a room with ten of my colleagues, and if you didn’t know that they were all believers (and ministers), you would not be able to tell which were which in discussions from astronomy to zoology, from philosophy to psychology, from history to politics.  It is a canard that the “tension” between faith and science (or faith and “rationality” or “empiricism") is inherently NECESSARY.  It is not.

Second, I’m not sure I agree that the qualities you mention are THE “fundamental” human qualities.  They may well be AMONG them, but they are not the sum total.  And many “fundamental” human qualities have nothing to do with rationality or empiricism; in fact, ALL of the qualities you mention are “intellectual” (i.e., “brain") qualities.  You have forgotten that we also have hearts.  Indeed, among the qualities almost unique to humans is altruism.  I would also include among “essential” human qualities some level of goodness, compassion and, of course, love.

Peace.

I just love shocking their sanctimony. It’s so ridiculously easy.

A man amongst men. Will be missed.

But look on the bright side: Tom Lantos is dead.

By definition, religion is the province of “faith.” That is: belief in something which is not objectively demonstrable. That is: it is the province of arbitrary assertions, requiring no proof. All that is required of religion is faith and feelings.

Having said this, I have no problem with people having a faith, so long as they accept it as a personal choice, and not something to be shoved down the throats of everyone who chooses not to believe their arbitrary assertions.

Despite the arbitrariness inherent in religion, many religions have a long and proud history of tolerance and intellectual accomplishments. Interestingly, Islam is one of them [though, to be intellectually precise, Islamic Civilizations have often endorsed cruel and barbaric practices, just as have Christians and Jews]. When most Europeans were living in hovels kept warm by farm animals, Muslim civilization was translating Aristotle and studying higher mathematics.

Thus, I am immediately skeptical of anyone who wants to bash a particular religion in favor of another. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all have practiced violence, and continue to do so, based on religious bigotry. The fact that Christian nations practice their bigotry by dropping bombs from a safe distance of fifty thousand feet, does not make them morally superior. Ditto for the one Jewish nation. No, I don’t exempt Muslims, either--their persecution of other religions, in theocratic countries, is truly execrable.

Religion, to be tolerable, must be personal, not political. A believer needs to be able to understand that his/her beliefs are, at a fundamental level, arbitrary assertions based on feelings. Thus, you cannot punish someone who does not buy into your arbitrary assertions.

that equate Christianity with Islam don’t have a clue
what Christianity is. I suggest you read the Bible and learn. To say Christianity is beheading people Like Islam is just ridiculus. Don’t put religion in the same class as Christianity. Islam and religion is nothing but a cult. I will pray for you all.
May you all be blessed by God.

beerdoctor, just to clarify: I have no “desert god” or gods of any kind. Call me a freethinker, naturalist, skeptic, atheist, godless heathen, or whatever you prefer. Though I was raised in a protestant home, my childhood indoctrination just didn’t ‘take’ as it did with my siblings and childhood peers. I consider all deity-based religions to be fictions. I consider religion itself to be akin to a virus of the mind that exploits certain neurological and psychological characteristics of humans, which evolution has left us with. I am glad to have apparently been born with a natural resistance to this ‘virus’.  This is by no means an original concept of mine, and before you attribute it to my being “quite confused”, you may want to consider the roster of scientists and psychologists who have said the same thing. I first heard it from Richard Dawkins. Try Googling “religion virus of the mind” for a primer.