Badfish

No, I know a little about it. I wasn't sure how deep you wanted to delve into it. Do you want me to write an essay on why the Hindu religion is false and why it has no attributable substance in which to make it's claims?

Badfish

No, because they all use the same base scriptures and themes.

Badfish

Hello? Who are you calling a liar? Oh your supposing, oh ok.

Assumptions are cool, especially when dealing with God or his people.

Sabine Grant

Salut Rhea...considering my multi cultural background and education, I had various exposures to different faiths. If I was intrigued by islam in my childhood when I lived in Morocco, the daily mandatory study of coranic verses in school ( and in an arabic I could not understand) drove me away from any further interest in the islamic faith. My interest in the judiac faith grew actualy since I became a christian ( mostly because I explored the messianic jew movement).
My mother was a catholic by tradition and I did have a period of catholic instruction being in an institution run by Carmelites in France then attended later a secular school. My father was an agnostic profoundly attached to the French masonic principles( the Great Orient of France is quite different from american franc masonery where you will find members who both attend a lodge and church... very uncommon in the GOF).
I can tell you that my conversion was not necessarly the product of a choice based on " christianity is better than hinduism or wicca etc..." It was simply a need on my part. Right place, right circumstances, right time... and they all happened to take me to that conversion some 10 years ago.
However I remain some sort of " unconventional christian" in the sense that I recognize what is positive in other faiths ( or lack of) and I do not claim to know God's Design for each human being. It is not a focus for me to evaluate His Design when it comes to " heaven or hell". If I consider Christ to be the savior of my soul and a mean for me to improve my character in this life, I have no knowledge of His actual Design for other people.
I will share if asked the reason for my faith. I am glad if it happens to be helpful to someone else but I do not feel " called" to be a teacher or preacher of the Gospel. I went thru my period of evangelism frenzy and frankly I did not make any difference in anyone else's life. Probably because the love I was talking about I was not showing....it is a long process.
I do not cherish the thought of an actual " hell" as a place where lost souls perish in torment eternaly. I consider my soul to be spared from eternal separation from God thru Christ.

Demigawd

A "little" being the operative word here, obviously. And yes I'd like you to write an essay detailing why Hinduism is bovine feces, and to make it a valid high-school composition, I want you to compare/contrast the differing sects of Hinduism with the different denominations of Christianity.

Farren

Oh, like the Book of Job in Catholic versions of the bible?

And perhaps you feel the extra "American" scripture in the Mormon bible, given to its founder by the angel Moroni (gotta love that name), is a "base scripture"?

Also, Badfish, what about interpretation? The Roman Catholics endorse both Big Bang cosmology and evolution by natural selection. The Vatican considers the Creation myth just that - an allegorical myth. How do you reconcile this with the biblical inerrancy of fundamentalist baptists?

Can you account for the Quaker belief that there should be no universally taught ideology or dogma, nor any priests, ministers, pastors et al, because God informs each person of the truth directly? This is vastly different from the majority of other Christian traditions.

In order to validate your standpoint you would certainly have to discount or omit quite a number of books in the bible, including those which are interpreted differently by the different traditions. You would also have to cast away 90% of the dogma of your particular tradition, as it could easily be demonstrated that a fair proportion of the other traditions would disagree.

Have undergone this process, you would be left with maybe 60-70% of the Old Testament, 80% of the new, and "Belief in Christ as your Personal Saviour". And the significance of those remaining scriptures would still vary from being "imperfect historical/allegorical accounts" to "inerrant fact", depending on what tradition you followed.

And this is if you look at the more established and "mainstream" Christian traditions. The personal saviour belief is also interpreted differently in some traditions, btw.

Quakers, for instance, vary widely, from a literal belief in a saviour Christ to the belief that Christ saw himself as the son of God the way every one is a son or daughter of God, and that a belief in Christ is nonessential to a relationship with God.

The consequences of non-belief are also a source of difference among Christians. While many fundamentalists earnestly believe that us infidels are off to eternal hell when we die, the official Catholic Doctrine is that non-believers simply wink out into no-existence. The Methodist church, which allows for variation in dogma among its regional structures, holds the same view in many regions. I'm sure the same is true of several other traditions.

If you include the hundreds of fringe christian groups (remember Santoria, Macun and a variety of "occult" practices are founded on Catholic and Protestant traditions), you have almost no cohesiveness whatsoever.

Admittedly there is some commonality among tha mass of christians, but they are by no means a well defined group.

In fact the Muslim faith is far more cohesive. There are only two major branches of Islam: Shia and Sunni. Both accept the other branch as fully valid forms of Islam (a large number of Christian Churches dogmatically reject other traditions of Christianity). So if a lack of division and commonality of belief is evidence of the truth of a faith, Islam would score higher than Christianity.

In fact on this last point the Hindu culture (it is more of a religious culture than a single religion) beats Christianity hands down because there is more tolerance between the Hindu traditions - I've seen no end of drivel from Baptists and Northern Irish Protestants about Papist devils.

mike_decock

Here's a table of New Testament canons through the ages. The diversity is quite stunning, really.

-Mike...

Treacle Worshipper

When I was Xn I once heard an argument that Christianity was the true religion because all other religions were "isms".

I can't imagine even the most die-hard fundie considering that to be proof

TW

DMB

This is an interesting thread. I am often struck by the fact that xians always seem to assume that it is true to an unbiased observer that monotheism must be superior to polytheism.

Although there are bigots in any religious environment, polytheism in the ancient world did seem to be more tolerant of religious difference than monotheism. In fact, what upset the polytheists was the intolerance and arrogance of the Jews and xians in claiming that their god was the only one.

Rhea

Yes, it has been interesting.

I'm not sure what I expected, exactly, but I did expect a tiny slight bit of honest inspection of other religions.

So many Christians, of both the good sort and the bad sort (as well as the neutral sort), so often say, "Lookie here. This is Good News. You should drop what you believe and believe this.

In fact, I would venture to say that a Vast Majority of Christians would say this. Drop your belief and embrace this one. It's better. They further imply that it is honest and reasonable for you to drop other religions.

But I truly never expected such a paucity of reflection on what, exactly, makes a religion honestly and reasonably droppable.


Perhaps the fear of applying the criteria honestly to Christianity is too terrifying.