Neon Genesis

The problem is that people don't really understand what the separation of church and state means. The separation of church and state doesn't mean that you can't turn to religion for guidance when voting. It is perfectly acceptable to vote for a candidate who's values match up with your own but you can't pass a law that requires the president of the United States to be a Christian and I would argue it's unconstitutional to force a president to swear on a bible in order to become president. I'm not saying this is what you're doing GeorgeW but when most Christians say you can't separate your religious values from their politics, what they really mean most of the time is that they want to use the government to discriminate against non-Christians and ban non-Christians from being able to run from office or to justify forcing their religious beliefs on non-Christians.

I think the real question at hand is why did the early followers of Jesus felt like they needed to label themselves to begin with.

I still consider myself to be a Christian atheist because I believe that being a Christian is about following the Way of Jesus rather than the beliefs of Jesus.

It should also be noted that in the authentic writings of Paul there are many women leaders in the early church which Paul praises such as Priscilla and Phoebe, who was a deacon in Paul's church, and the controversy over the gender of Junia.

In Romans chapter 16, Saint Paul lists Junia as being a prominent leader among the apostles.

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

Most bible scholars today believe Junias was a female name which was later censored by NT manuscript copyists who didn't like the idea of a prominent female leader being apart of the early church, so they made up a non-existent male version of her name to cover up her gender. But if Junias was so prominent a leader among the apostles, why don't we have any gospels about her? We have non-canonical gospels about other women leaders in early Christianity like the Gospel of Mary and the Acts of Paul and Thelca yet there is no Gospel of Junias to the best of my knowledge.

I would say that following the teachings of Jesus is what being a Christian is about. I don't know why so many Christians think Christianity should be defined by beliefs instead of actions.

Welcome to the forums, Vridar! The word atheism literally means without beliefs in god; -a means without and theism means beliefs in god. An atheist is merely someone who doesn't believe in God and says nothing about what they think about theism. An anti-theist is someone who is opposed to religion. Not every atheist is opposed to religion and there are even many religious atheists though they may not be as popular as the anti-religious variety of atheists. If we're defining Christianity by popular opinion, then you couldn't be a liberal Christian who doesn't believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ because most Christian denominations require a belief in the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead but I don't think Jesus was about following what the popular crowd thought.

Yes, when one cheek is slapped. He didn't say if someone breaks into your house to rape your spouse, give them your child also. NOT having a weapon in such a case would permit violence to occur, whereas merely brandishing the weapon would likely prevent violence. Which do you think Jesus prefers?

And when the apostle Peter tried to fight back against the Roman soldiers who were going to unjustly arrest Jesus, Jesus stopped the attack because his kingdom was not of this world.

I'm also curious why it's a specific demographic of Americans who seem particularly obsessed with guns, namely very conservative evangelical Christian Republicans. Wasn't there a Jewish dude in the bible that said something about loving your enemies and turning the other cheek and stuff?

Yep, more dead in an attack on a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.

I should think that the the Sikh Temple attack disproves the notion that knives are just as dangerous and violent as guns are.

Again, I point to this Harvard study that shows a clear connection between the number of guns people own in a state and the amount of homicide rates in that state: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2007-releases/press01112007.html Is Harvard using "oversimplified" arguments?

 

 

Consequently, I've witnessed nearly all of my Christian friends post photos of greasy chicken buckets and waffle fries on their Facebook pages, and Dan Cathy has been suddenly thrust into the Conservative Hall of Fame as a defender of freedom of speech!

 

What?

 

Freedom of speech?

 

I thought this was all about traditional family values?

 

I'm confused.

 

I am also curious. How do my PC friends respond to this issue? Did you go to Chick-Fil-A on August 1st? Did you kiss a member of your own sex on August 2nd?

 

Or, did you, like me, enjoy a garden-crisp salad of field greens, romaine lettuce and grilled, free-range, non-antibiotic-laced chicken breast instead?

 

NORM

The free speech protest is in response to a mayor that threatened to ban Chickfila from their city because the CEO was opposed to gay marriage. The mayor later apologized for saying that but that doesn't seem to stop the Religious Right from dragging this out forever. I sincerely doubt that most of the Christians in the protesting actually know what the situation is about. They just know it has something to do with evil gays, Huckabee, and freedomz.

Who are the gun control extremists in the United States?

Likewise the majority of gun control proponents do not want to ban guns yet there was evidence that sales of guns increased significantly after Obama became the president because of right wing paranoia that the scary black man was going to take away everyone's guns. Only about a year or two ago the Tea Party organized a gun march towards Washington to protest Obama even though Obama had actually expanded gun rights and the Republicans keep trying to paint Obama as a radical anti gun nut and insist that having background checks at gun shows is somehow an infringement on our freedoms.

 

 

I think sometimes the LGBT community gets just a bit touchy, like some women's groups, or any "minority" group. I understand that the fight for acceptance and equality can cause people to be sensitive to perceived threats. But really, who cares if the owners are still married to their first wives and love their famillies? It would be different if they had offensive names for specials or refused service or whatever. I think this whole thing is rather silly.

From my reading of various gay blogs, the LGBT community doesn't seem to care one way or the other about the issue. This is more of something that's been blown up by the media, a couple of overzealous heterosexual male mayors, and paranoid right wing Christians getting their panties in a knot.

What doesn't seem to be addressed in this thread so far is why are Americans so obsessed with owning guns anyway to the point where they seem to think if they can't carry them everywhere at all times then it's an assault on "freedomz!"? Are other countries just as obsessed with guns as America is or this just an American thing?

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

--Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment (1764).

Thomas Jefferson lived in a different time and culture where they were fighting off the British imperialists for American independence. It isn't quite the same to compare fighting for American independence to our modern democratic society where people can buy enough power to murder dozens of people just off of Ebay with zero restrictions.

We do agree that guns in the hands of incompetents can be dangerous. No disagreement there. So lets find a way not to ban phones or autos or guns or knives or alcohol but rather to reduce the accidents caused by carelessness or incompetence with their use.

Do you seriously, truly, and honestly believe that if the Colorado shooter had a knife instead of a gun, that he would have killed just as many people?

I don't know if this has been posted yet but here's an interesting study by Harvard University: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2007-releases/press01112007.html

Boston, MA -- Firearms are used to kill two out of every three homicide victims in America. In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the February 2007 issue of Social Science and Medicine. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.09.024

Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Injury Prevention at Harvard School of Public Health, and his colleagues David Hemenway and Deborah Azrael, used survey data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the world’s largest telephone survey with over 200,000 respondents nationwide. Respondents in all 50 states were asked whether any firearms were kept in or around their home. The survey found that approximately one in three American households reported firearm ownership.

Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence. Overall homicide rates were 60% higher. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.

These results suggest that it is easier for potential homicide perpetrators to obtain a gun in states where guns are more prevalent. “Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes,” said Miller.

I don't understand why this suddenly became a hot button issue in American politics. It's not like we didn't know for decades already that Chickfila thought gays were evil. You know that all of Europe is laughing at us.

Just because I don't believe in the supernatural doesn't mean I can't find value in the supernatural myths of the bible. As Marcus Borg has argued in his books, it's a matter of viewing the bible through a literal lense or a historical-metaphorical view

It seems to me that the difference between Christian atheism and a non-supernatural theism is more or less a semantics argument.

I accept your apology and I agree with you completely that people brandy about the label Christian too much as a mere marketing label and yet behave in the most atractious ways to each other and others. That is why I have said before in this thread that being a Christian should be about your actions and how you treat others than what people believe or not believe.

Again, I agree with you, NG. I don't hold to this kind of supernatural theism either. And that is, perhaps, the point. There are different kinds of theism. We don't have to pick only supernatural theism or no belief/experience of God at all. I suspect that atheists (at least the outspoken kind) reject supernatural theism, which I do also. But for whatever reason, they know of no other way to believe in or experience God than supernatural theism, so they claim that God doesn't exist. For me, Christianity comes down to loving God and loving one another. In fact, I'm reading a Methodist book right now called, "Three Simple Rules", which says, in essence, "Do no harm, do good, stay in love with God." Isn't this what Jesus did? I think our world would be a better place if we did this.

 

 

It seems to me that a non-supernatural theism would be just as incompatible with Jesus' worldview as an atheistic point of view would be incompatible. It's clear from the gospels that Jesus did believe in a supernatural theism. How exactly is a non-supernatural theism any different than atheism other than semantics? How do you love a god that's not literally there and is just a symbol?

 

Where have I said anything about Jesus and his teachings on divorce? Where have I demanded that we must follow everything about his theology?

You're missing my point. My point is if you don't believe the bible is the literal word of God and if you insist all Christians must believe in some kind of god, but it's ok to reject Jesus' teachings on divorce, by what standard are you using to decide what Christians must believe in and what's ok for Christians to reject?

 

As I've said previously, it comes down to weight. Although I haven't talked about it before, was Jesus' central message about divorce law? Was that the focus of his ministry? Was that his gospel?

A fundamentalist Christian would say that Jesus' teachings on divorce are just as important as his teachings on loving God and they would accuse you of "gutting" the gospel.

 

I'm not a fundamentalist. The only thing that I am "fundamental" about is saying that I think Jesus' teaching on loving God and loving others is central to Christianity. And for that, I get rebuked here on this "Christian" forum.

You're not being "rebuked" for saying that but for your implication that Christians who disagree with you on this point are somehow not honest. Why is it so important for Christianity to have "central" beliefs?

 

 

 

 

Would it do to say that someone who sincerely identifies themself as a Buddhist is a Buddhist, even if they rejected the Four Noble Truths or the Eight-Fold Path? When it comes to Christianity, even you think that there must be *some* content to the label and that it "would almost certainly entail a theology..." Theology is a study of or belief in deity i.e. God (gods). IMO, this certainly doesn't make Christians or Christianity any better than others, it just makes them different. Distinction, not superiority.

Jesus also taught that divorce was only acceptable if your husband was caught cheating on your wife but you weren't allowed to divorce for any other reason, even if you were being abused by your husband. And even if you got a divorce, you were required to live alone the rest of your life because remarriage in Jesus' eyes was a form of adultery. Do you accept Jesus' view that abused women should not be allowed to divorce their abusive husbands unless they're cheating on him? If you reject Jesus' views on divorce, why do you still call yourself a Christian? Why do you reject Jesus' teachings on divorce but you demand that we must follow everything about his theology?

 

All I'm asking is, if an atheist DOESN'T believe in God (which most affirmed atheists don't), why would they want to wear the label that says that they follow Jesus who DID believe in God? What would they want to gain by calling themselves Christian if they reject Jesus' central teaching, the teaching that Jesus called the Greatest?

Fundamentalist Christians say that to be a true Christian you must believe the entire bible is the word of God and you're not a real Christian if you don't believe in the entire bible. If you reject some parts of the bible as true but believe in other parts as true, why do you still call yourself a Christian if you're rejecting God's word? Don't you believe God's word? By what standard are you defining what parts of the bible must be believed to be a Christian and what parts it's ok to ignore if you don't believe in God's word?