Starboy

Carrie, the only people who have deceived, cheated, and constantly derided me were Christians. I see Christians behaving atrociously all the time. They appear to be in a Christian daze oblivious to their intolerance, bigotry and manipulations. One moment it is let us pray and the next moment it is kill the evildoers! If it were the opposite your claims might be worthy of consideration, but from my viewpoint Christianity is no more than a very destructive state of self-delusion. I see the legacy of Jesus and it disgusts me.

Starboy

Silent Dave

For those of us who are not yet dead, then, your beliefs remain unfalsifiable and hence unverifiable.


Dave

Silent Dave

Liv already touched on this, but just so you know:

A: No Scotsman eats porridge.

B: I was born and raised in Edinburgh, have lived in Scotland my entire life, and I eat porridge.

A: No TRUE Scotsman eats porridge.


Dave

Christian

Clutch,

That I would have had no problem (as in objection concerning logical fallacies) with. He also speculates on what my response will "of course" be, my motives for this imagined response, and what I do and don't bother to think about. Those are the things I object to.

I remained confused on this point. Why it is considered a logical fallacy to draw a distinction between a "true xyz" and a "false xyz." The logic article on this web site seems vague and unhelpful in explaining that.

I realize that arguing from personal experience will surely result in an impasse at some point. What I am suprised by is how eager everyone is to assume all the points and counterpoints I will of course make and how I think about this question and what all my motives are. Would it be such a boring option for everyone to suspend whatever assumptions they have about me for the moment and allow the conversation to actually take place?

I think you misunderstand what specifically I was objecting to (see my first paragraph in reply to you above) and how I would respond.

My response is that Carrie never knew Christ in the first place, because the elements of "knowing Christ" are completely missing from her lengthy description of her experiences. What she describes seems to be "acting as if you know Christ when you really don't."

It is as if Carrie were describing toast, and her encounters with and opinions about toast. But reading through her lengthy description it becomes apparant that the one thing she never describes about what she finds is bread. She goes into great and lengthy detail about what she finds, and she calls it toast, but all of the toast she has encountered is completely devoid of the ingredient "bread." And reading back through and looking closer I realize that at a couple of points she is adamant about the fact that this toast thing doesn't have any bread about it.

If it violates logic to suggest that toast without the ingredient bread is not "real toast," then so be it. But it certainly doesn't violate common sense.

In fact I avoided using the word "Christian" and tried to explain what I was talking about. "You never knew Christ in the first place." Having read Carrie's post I would be amazed if she contradicted my conclusion by saying "Yes, I really did know Christ." The fact that she never did have an actual relationship with the living God is something that Carrie and I are probably in agreement on.

You say: But the whole point of Carrie's lengthy entry post seemed to be that she never had any of the sort of experiences I refer to as "knowing Christ."

There are true disciples of Christ and there are false disciples of Christ. If simply making that observation really does violate some logical principle then that principle is arcane and frivilous.

If I had set out to describe what it must be like to be a false disciple of Christ, I could not have done a more eloquent job than Carries lengthy opening post. The thing which she never found is precisely the only ingredient that truly matters. The required component was missing. Without that, everything else is meaningless. I have this opinion not only from my personal experiences, but also from what scripture says on the issue. Carrie's post basically confirmed for me that Paul got it right in 2 Cor 13:5-7.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Livius,

By “attack” I merely meant “arguing against.” I was not trying to imply fierceness. I’ll adjust my terminology to avoid future misunderstandings. I agree that Gregg was very polite.

The definition of straw man does not have anything to do with making character judgments. You don’t seem to have addressed the issue of whether a straw man argument was made in your response to me.

It still seems to me that Gregg is engaging in the second type of ad hominem attack described in the article you linked to. There are two types:

Maybe “poisoning the well” is the technical type of ad hominem. I stated my conclusion up front. And Gregg basically alleged that I was rationalizing my conclusion for selfish reasons.
His comments: “What it seems you don't want to think too long, hard, or deeply about, though” and “you find it easier to think this than you do to consider the alternatives” are suggesting that I rationalized my conclusion for selfish reasons.

The wrong conclusion or “idea” that Gregg drew was that I was rationalizing for selfish reasons. This meets the definition of ad hominem given at the link you provided.

The difference I see is that I was drawing conclusions about Carrie from a very lengthy post she made describing her experiences. I had lots of raw data to work with and assumed very little external to what she actually stated.

Gregg was stating his opinions on all sorts of matters that I did not address here.

Gregg’s approach was much more speculative than mine.

Again, that is only one type of ad hominem according to the link you provided. I agree Gregg did not do that. However he did characterize my position negatively by speculating on what my motives (i.e. character) must be. He committed the “poisoning the well” type of ad hominem assuming that the description in the logic article is accurate. There may be some nuance not in that short summary of ad hominem that I’m not getting. If so, please do point it out.

No meaning of that word was ever agreed to here. How could the meaning have been shifted?
If I shifted from the “standard” meaning of that word, then please tell me what that standard meaning is. I’m happy to define my terms if there is any question about them. I’m not trying to trick anyone here by using a term in one sense, and then turning around and using it in a different sense. This seems to be what the “no true Scotsman” fallacy is talking about, and it is not what I am doing here.

If it is simply a matter of terms, by all means let’s agree to what the terms mean. I’ll even state my opinion using your definitions. But it’s silly to claim logical error because I see a scriptural and experiential difference between a “true Christian” and a “false Christian.”

A true Christian is someone who passes the test in 2 Cor 13:5-7.
A false Christian is someone who fails to pass the test in 2 Cor 13:5-7.

If you can see God at work in your life and in your heart, then you have reason to believe that you are a true Christian.

If you cannot see any trace of God at work in your life and in your heart, then you have reason to believe that you are not a true Christian.

If you object to my defining the term “Christian” in this way, then suggest another term. We can call it “gobledegloop” and “gobledeglap” for all I care, but asserting that such a distinction exists is not a logical error.

If Carrie claims that she really was able to identify an external agent supernaturally at work in her life, then I will be forced to reconsider my response.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

JTVrocher

And your baseless speculation that I am so motivated is not insulting?

So convince me. Have you ever passed the test in 2 Cor 13:5-7, for example. If so, please describe why you believe that you did. I'm not irrational, and I do consider these questions or I would not be here in this conversation.

That has zero to do with whether or not you have actually been in a relationship with the risen Christ. Many of the faculty at Bible colleges don't actually know Christ. Seminaries are even worse ... it seems to be very rare that a seminary professor is a true Christian from the evidence I have seen. (Admitedly this is second and third hand observations on my part. I've never had even an hour of formal Christian education.)

Where you went to school has nothing at all to do with whether you actually know Christ.

How am I being condescending? I'm not saying "you're a liar" or "you're a really bad person because you have never known Christ." I think we are all really bad people, including me.

What I am saying is that there is a difference between a true Christian and a false Christian. The evidence you offer for being a former Christian illustrates that we have differing definitions of what an actual "Christian" is. Let's get on a common definitional framework so that we can at least communicate about the issue, unless you are happy with your incorrect assumptions about who I am and what I think.

Respectfully,

Christian

HelenM

Christian, I don't know about Carrie specifically but I'm convinced there are people here who once would have met every aspect of your definition of what a Christian is.

The thing is, if you ask them now "did you ever see God at work in your life?" they may well say "no" because they have decided what they once thought was God, is not God, since they no longer believe in God.

Do you believe that there are nontheists here who, had you been able to interact them in their 'Christian' days, you'd have been convinced they were 'True Christians'?

Or do you think that there is no-one here who doesn't believe in God now, who once was a True Christian, regardless of them thinking they once were?

By the way, with all due respect, on what basis do you hope to convince people here that your definition of 'Christian' is the correct one?

Helen

Christian

Helen,

That is possible. That sounds completely different than what Carrie was describing, though. Too bad her opening post was zapped into bit heaven. If she wants to correct my impressions, I hope she feels free to do so.

I have no doubt that is the case.

I wouldn't use an absolute term like "no one." I think that would be the very rare exception if at all, and that any such people would regain their faith at some future point before death.

Terminology is trivial. Hopefully I have expressed my concepts adequately to be understood.

Respectfully,

Christian

HelenM

Yes, I agree. I thought it was still in SL&S but I can't find it there

I expect she may well not want to argue over whether she was a True Christian or not. I doubt she will see any value in having that argument/discussion.

So, evidently you do think that the vast majority of people here who say they once were Christians, and are not now, never really were True Christian.

In one sense it is, but in another, as you yourself observed, if we are defining words differently it's very hard to have a meaningful interaction in which we understand one another.

Yes thanks

take care
Helen

Gregg

Well, all the comments about my post, both pro & con, were interesting. I had no idea it would generate so much discussion.

In retrospect I probably could have phrased some things differently. Saying, "you, of course" in regard to Christian and Magus55 probably wasn't the best thing to say--I probably should have said, "However, I have a feeling that..." or something to that effect.

Still, it seems as if in subsequent posts, Christian has confirmed that my assumption is correct. He does not seem to believe that any "former" Christians were ever "true" Christians in the first place, or that they ever had an experience of the risen Christ comparable to his, or that they ever saw God working in their lives the same way he has. If they had, he apparently feels that they would still be Christians. In his view, there has to be some difference, no matter how subtle or elusive, between their experience and his.

I must admit, it's remarkable to me that anyone can make such a claim. There must be hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if not a few million, former Christians in the U.S. alone. And not a single one of these people had a Christian experience more or less identical to Christian's?

The reasoning here seems to be--we know who the True Christians are because they are still Christians. Nobody who is a former Christian was ever a True Christian.

Unfortunately, we actually don't know exactly who the True Christians are, because many people who claim to be True Christians really aren't. Basically, we have to take their word for it. They can profess all the correct doctrines, and live a good Christian life, but we only have their say so as to whether they've passed the "test" of Corinthians 13:5-7 (having Jesus Christ in them). There's no way to actually confirm that they do. There is the "you shall know them by their fruits" test (meaning the fruits of the spirit, I assume--love, patience, self-control, etc.), but we could probably point out many non-Christians who could pass that test with flying colors--Ghandi, for example. However, the answer to that might be, "those people are really True Christians and they just don't know it!"

Gregg