seebs

What gives this particular writer the authority to determine what the word "Christian" means?

Rational BAC

My personal opinion is that Jesus died and was resurrected simply to prove by example that there does exist an afterlife-------an afterlife for all of us.

And that was all there was to it.

Original sin is absurd. Personal sin commited in one's lifetime having some effect on an afterlife may have some validity---but I don't think that was the basic point of the resurrection.

Jesus just proved by personal example that after this vale of tears there really does exist an afterlife. A glorious afterlife.

And He also gave us some pointers on how to live a better life while we are here on earth.

That is all that Christianity is all about.

Jobar

Maybe it was by the Pope, seebs?

Classical, did you read that thread I linked to? Very thought provoking discussion, despite its length and the occasionally snappish tone. seebs is right- who gets to decide what it means to be Christian? (Or atheist, for that matter?) It's a very deep semantic question.

DBT

Maybe I'm wrong ,But I thought that the only criteria for being a christian is "believing" in Christ.
How far anyone deviates from the basic tenents of christianity only makes them bad christians.

Classical

How do you come to this kind of statement? I guess by prefacing that it is your personal opinion, which is fine with me. But surely you will agree that this is somewhat of a skimpy version of the whole religion? We don't know for sure if jesus even lived or died, so there is no possible way of verifying a fantastic resurrection claim. No eyewitnesses, nothing. Whatever happened was by word of mouth, and more said it was made up, than those who said such a thing happened. How is this proof of anything?

How in the world can anyone possibly know this?

This post supports my OP. Where would you find 10 ministers who would say this is all it means to be a christian? :huh:

Classical

I looked at part of the thread and want to read the whole thing. Looks interesting.

In general, I avoid quibbling over definitions as it usually ends up being endless rambling and the discussion goes nowhere. Musical scholars quibble over definitions of music all the time and I get bored and look for a more interesting, productive discussion. This quibbling derails a basic common understanding of the meanings of words.

In Webster's, "christian" is first defined as "one who professes belief in the teachings of jesus christ." This seems like an adequate definition to me and what most people understand as "christian." Why quibble?

Now I know christians have been at war over what jesus christ taught for 2000 years, but surely after all this time, some things are agreed upon. And if our only source of what jesus taught are from the four gospels, there are many, many things he taught that most people who call themselves christians are revolted by. Thus I defend my position from my OP.

Jobar

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

But by the definition Webster gives, anyone who professes belief in Christ is a Christian. Thus, Jerry Falwell, the Pope, Fred 'godhatesfags' Phelps, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, and Anitra all are Christians. Do you think they'd be able to agree on a single thing?

I think that no two Christians have the exact same concept of Christ, and no two theists have the same concept of God. There are as many different meanings of Christianity as there are Christians, as many different gods as there are believers. Therefore such beliefs are meaningless.

seebs

Ahh, but which things are really the teachings of Jesus Christ? How should we best interpret them, whatever they are?

My advice is not to open that can of worms, because even full-time professionals can't come up with perfectly accepted answers to these questions.

Well, I guess you'd have to give concrete examples for me to comment in any detail. I know that some teachings are more subtle than others. In particular, I think a lot of people are in the habit of trying to turn Christianity right back into exactly what it's not supposed to be; a set of exact, literal, rules you can follow precisely. The entire point of the religion is that following a set of rules does not solve the problem. Given this, no attempt to extract an exact set of required or prohibited behaviors will ever get you anywhere at all.

So... We're down to "belief", and it's hard to say what claims we are to assent to, and how to understand them. For instance, given the story of the prodigal son, are you to believe that this is a historical event? Probably not. Are you to sympathize with the characters? It turns out there's at least three characters in the story, and most of us have been in all three major roles at least once. What's the "teaching"? I can happily spend hours talking about these stories with people.

But, perhaps most importantly, and we had this discussion with Kang Louie a while back... A follower need not be following very closely to be a follower. We are allowed to be incompetent, and indeed, the religion explicitly teaches that we will fall short, so it's presumably accounted for.

Rational BAC

My core beliefs about Christianity are faith based. Don't really have to be logical and prove that Christ existed---was a deity come to earth for a short time--- and was resurrected after death. This I just believe.

And since Christianity is a personal religion, it makes no difference to me what 10 ministers think. I can think as well as they.---- Better in my opinion.

Classical

This type of statement is all I could find when I was deconverting but trying to hold on to something to be able to still say I was a christian. It was such statements of sheer blind faith that I had let go of as a fundamentalist that seemed to offer nothing more than what I had believed. Please know I am not trying to belittle you as a person - I appreciate the fact that you are a person of "faith" and not a fundie - but I feel any christian who supports christianity on any level is in some ways (notice I said in some ways) just lending credibility to a very dangerous religion and therefore helping to perpetuate its existence.

I'm sure you can think better than most ministers, but it seems to me that your "faith" in jesus has no point of contact with reality. It appears to me that you and my friend I have mentioned are uninterested in examining whether or not christianity is true at all, and avoiding a discussion of what good it is if it is not true in any sense.

I just want to emphasize that I am not saying any of the above to be personally combative. Most of my friends are christians in a liberal sense of the word and even my partner of ten years is a catholic, but has no clue as to what it really means (this he has readily confessed). I have to avoid disclosing my opinions to my friends, as they become very offended and combative so I turn to forums like this to challenge the christian religion.

Overall, I think the christian religion does much more harm than good, so I would rather see it exposed as a belief system based on false claims. Good values do not need a religion. It has been my experience that liberal christians and unbelievers often hold similar views on many subjects, i.e. politics.