Well, just read my article:
http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/scirel.html
and I've got a thread about it in the "Science and Scepticism" Forum. The main point: all theism, whether mono like J/C/I (the Abrahamic lunacies) or poly like Hindu or old paganisms, expounds a purposive worldview: everything that transpires does so by the will of God or the gods. Divine Providence is a founding tenet of all theism (God without providence would be Deism). Science has shown that the course of biological development and, may I extrapolate, history in general, is not the result of any divine purposive decree, but the result of a blind, indifferent flow. Things happen because they happen, not because God willed so.

Science has not strictly disproved the existence of God, but it has offered us overwhelming evidence thereagainst.

http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/home.html

Well, just read my article:
http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/scirel.html
and I've got a thread about it in the "Science and Scepticism" Forum. The main point: all theism, whether mono like J/C/I (the Abrahamic lunacies) or poly like Hindu or old paganisms, expounds a purposive worldview: everything that transpires does so by the will of God or the gods. Divine Providence is a founding tenet of all theism (God without providence would be Deism). Science has shown that the course of biological development and, may I extrapolate, history in general, is not the result of any divine purposive decree, but the result of a blind, indifferent flow. Things happen because they happen, not because God willed so.

Science has not strictly disproved the existence of God, but it has offered us overwhelming evidence thereagainst.

http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/home.html

Okay, I'll read those when I get a chance. However evolution is just a natural process. I don't see why it necessarily is unreconcilable with theism. Perhaps it would come down to definitions for "theism" and "unreconcilable". Deism is a form of theism and it wouldn't seem that it conflicts with evolution in any way. Even many Christian theists have no problem "reconciling" the two. (Again it depends on what is meant by "reconcile".)


[This message has been edited by madmax2976 (edited April 20, 2001).]

Posted by Nomad:

The standard working definition of a Christian is that he or she can confess the Nicene Creed and mean it. That makes Mormons non-Christians since they reject that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of one Being and substance.


-Is this really what it takes to be a Christian? I find this amusing, because during the five years that I attended a fundamentalist, Pentecostal church in New York during my high school years and early college, not once did we recite the Nicene Creed, nor anything close to it. And then even when I got to college and was a member of an interdominational Christian Fellowship, many of the members never recited the Nicene Creed in their respective church, nor would they agree with all of it. Even currently, my Methodist roommate wouldn't agree or believe everything in the Nicene Creed. However, I wouldn't think that she would call herself any less of a Christian than the next person.

But this really isn't the focus of this thread. Perhaps, we need to start one on what does it take to be a Christian. We could keep it here within Biblical Criticism by asking for the Bible's qualifications. We could also see if there are any contradictory qualifications. Or compare what Jesus said it took to follow him to what Paul said.
I had started a thread that went nowhere on the Existence of God forum where I asked if one needed to be a theist to be a Christian. Interesting question.

Anyway, I have rambled for too long.

-Spider

Bede,

Hilter WAS a Christian. There is no getting around it. The only reason anyone argues otherwise is that they don't like the idea that the arguably most destructive person in world history was a Christain. Hitler WAS a Christain. That is a FACT! Disagreeing with that doesn't make you a neo-nazi, and I don't think Tollhouse was suggesting you were, but it does make you 100% dead WRONG!

That's not nice.

Hilarius has also offered that definition of Christianity; however, if Spider's experience is representative, then most fundamentalists and many non-fundamentalists do not care about the Nicene Creed.

Interesting thread. Thanks, Nomad, I am enjoying it...

However, anyone interested in reading what happened with the Hitler
discussion should check it out themselves. I would not take Nomad's word for it. No offence meant, Nomad, but posting only your first, highly debated post (without alteration) is misleading)

oh, and I think the numbers for the witch hunts are currently less than 100,000--- but that is from a neo-pagan <A HREF="http://www.cog.org/witch_hunt.html" TARGET=_blank>
site</A>--- what would they know? They are all biased, right, not like any other religion.

(not said in moderator capability)

And as to Hitler's Christianity, his published statements appear contradictory; he may either have changed his opinions over time or have taken different politically expedient positions.

In _Mein Kampf_, he certainly took a Christian position; fighting the Jews was doing the work of "the Almighty Creator" and doing what "the Lord" had done to the moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple.

Nazi policy on religion was support of either pro-Nazi varieties of Christianity (Jesus Christ as a great Nordic persecuted by the Jews) or pro-Nazi neo-paganism such as the would-be "National Reich Church".

Also, Galileo's position on religion was something like Stephen Jay Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria, in which the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.

However, the Church had taken what is now a fundamentalist sort of position, that the Bible would not be completely true if it was incorrect about how the heavens go.

I'll come around to your house and act very non Christian. (Note to modertors: this threat should be taken figuratively).

That's a threat????

Amen-Moses