spamandham

Roughly 2 billion people believe the earth is being visited by extraterrestrials. Roughly 4 billion people believe in cryptozoological creatures of one form or other, such as bigfoot, yeti, nesy, chupacabra, etc. Roughly 2 billion people believe in astrology. About 1.25 billion people believe in reincarnation.

Apparently, widespread acceptance is not a good indicator of veracity.

Sai

We could play duelling websites. the one i went to said 1.6 billion. And with 38,000 different demoninations, an awful lot of them wrong about some of what they believe.

You keep bringing up strawmen like that im saying you claimed other religions are false. Stick to what is said.

I could tediously cut and paste all the falsehoods and malicious sounding lies you say about atheists. Of course you think they are true, so then you didnt invent anything. Neat way to get out of it.


Facts. Anyone can google a few facts. Of course, you still managed to get it
wrong saying that the river HAS run dry. Then backtrack and say oh you were misunderstood, you meant the river is running dry.
Which is btw also a fact not in evidence. The water level is low. Doesnt mean it is running dry.

As I said, you have a tendency to state things as fact when you have no way of knowing them to be facts.

Petergdi

It doesn't change the meaning of the statement. It makes it difficult for anyone to innocently adopt the believer-baiting interpretation. Anyone reading it without the intention of trying to find something to hit believers over the head with will say to himself something like "wait a second, I'm supposed to love my enemies (6:27), love my neightbour as myself (10:27) (and my neighbour is especially my natural or cultural enemy) but hate my immediate family and my own soul (14:26) - what's this - oh, I can't love my enemy unless I (in some sense) "hate" both my own well being and those I am most natually inclined to love and protect."


If this rule were actually followed by believer-baiters, I might have some sympathy for it. But in fact the most strained allegorical, metaphorical or "spiritual" meanings are held as probable whenever they are seen as causing discomfort for beleivers. Taking something against its most obvious sense in the name of "one has to deal with the literal meaning of the text" is pure sophistry.



You miss the part about "even your own soul/life." And the word "fleshly" is not part of normal vocabulary and sounds like a technical term, it would be clearer to say that in order to live like Jesus, you must make a commitment to treating your family as less important to you than those who may wish to kill you, and you must treat your own life as less valuable to you than the lives of those who wish to kill you.



The same reason I don't think I'm required to form a close emotional attachment to everyone who hates me. I must try to put their welfare above my own and those to whom I do feel a close emotional attachment. Emotional attachment and emotional hatred is (to use your word) "fleshly."

Peter.

Dark Virtue

How do you know this isn't just a temporary climatic change?

spin

Fine.

What does this comment have to do with me?

I'm glad you're trying to piece it all together, but you seem to be working under the assumption that it all needs to adhere somehow to your notion of consistency.


You're reducing yourself to blather with this comment. You cannot confront any statement put before you until you first deal with its literal meaning. If you cannot accept that as necessary then you have no basis for communicating with anyone. Whether you like it or not it is what you will find yourself doing all the time. Once you have comprehended the literal meaning that comes from the most basic understand of the interplay of its parts, you then weigh up that literal meaning with the contextual clues, which may lead you to a different understanding. You cannot get there without dealing with the literal meaning first.

I was merely working from Lk 14:26. Perhaps you were using a different quote.

The first part is not relevant and the second is not intended.

I'm not buying into your perversion of the text.

Still necessarily trying to find consistency. It doesn't deal with the text. It is a means to avoid it. It's not consistent so it must indicate something else. Fudge. Fudge. Wink. Wink.

Biological attachment is fleshly. (And I have no problem with biological attachment.) When it comes to it, all emotion is fleshly. It's all related to body through brain. Not a single emotion is different. It's a part of the package.


spin

wordy

But very few christians really read the Bible too. When they really do some of them become atheist as a result.

funinspace

Sometimes I don't like to be affiliated with baldness either, but I don't really get the choice...if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck... I think if you are allowed to label all the various faiths as one, that are mentioned as part of "Christian" as culled from Adherents.com, it is only fair to lump the secularists, nonreligious, agnostics, atheists into one grouping; and they have hit 1.1 billion. I think a Secularism is certainly as close to whatever you think atheism is, as Mormanism is to Christianity. While I allow the world atheist to be associated with my POV, I like many others technically consider myself to be agnostic (as I don't think one can disprove the diety construct). I find the rest to be minor quibbles not much different than the theological tug of war over ideas like the Trinity or hell. As far as beliefs go, I use the words Secular Humanist.

Well, out of the gate, a minor quibble. Adherents.com states 2.1 billion vice 2.2 billion.

Statistics are a funny animal, especially when it comes to religion. The UK is a great example, with their 61 million people. So how many of the above 2.1 billion came from the UK? And if only 10% (from Wiki) of the UK attend weekly, how many of even the 53-71% (from Wiki) are really Christian? Do you think your God respects lip service? So lets just assume for a momment, that the real believers are 3X the number of weekly attenders, that would still only add up to 30% of the 61 million people. So if the statisticians are getting their numbers from the more pleasing 71%, the disparity would be 43M vs. 18M, for a divergence of 25 million, or nearly 50% less than actually claimed. So it is quite a valid question of just how much that stats are bloated by cultural affiliation and other social factors. Catholics make of about 50% of the 2.1 billion. How many do you think are really Christian, and how many are cultural Catholics? I think it would be quite safe to say that 10-30% of your number is purely cultural, vice having any real faith in your God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
There are 2 interesting things to note from Adherents.com. The first is that they tend to rely upon Governmental information and sometimes Church sect claims, for their stats
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Secondly: Now it is funny, to see them allowing Mormons (about 13 million) to be in the Christian category for statistical purposes. Now it is a rare Christian indeed who considers the Mormon faith to be part of the Christian umbrella. But hey, when playing with stats, I guess anything goes, just as long as it pads the numbers the right way...

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Now this link ( http://tangents.home.att.net/data/rl...htm#population ) followed from the above Wiki site has some numbers by continent. And shows 552 million Christians in Europe, out of 726 million people. Now that is 76% of the population. Now if you know anything about Europe, you would realize just how much poppycock that statistic is. Only parts of middle Europe and countries like Spain, Italy, and Greece are those numbers in that territory any more, as Christianity is fading rapidly in western and Northern Europe. From this table one can see that much of Europe 40-50% do not believe in God ( http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html ); never mind all those that just give your God lip service. 2.1 billion Christians, my a...

IBelieveInHymn

I don't know that for sure. I do know that Turkey is one reason why the Euphrates is running dry. They have been building on a dam since 1982 and the estimated cost is roughly 32 billion dollars. However, Turkey has agreed to release some water into the Euphrates for one month. After that, Iraq is on their own. And this will be the start of yet another major war in Iraq.

premjan

I think the "Euphrates running dry" is just a euphemism for Assyria/Babylon getting its ass kicked. Which Turkey appears to be doing. And the US for that matter.

Dark Virtue

If you don't KNOW (as in have knowledge, not belief) FOR SURE, then why do you continue spouting all this stuff about the end of days?

This sounds exactly what you described as the "lunatic fringe" you claimed your fellow Christians have been living in for the past two thousand years.

How are you any different than they did?