Comment on Jesus hates American "Christians"

• glorkon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “No atheist believes in God” is a factually correct statement. It’s like saying “One does not equal two” - a verifiable, objective truth that does not rely on anyone’s opinion.

  Therefore, person B make a contradictory statement, and person A would be correct in responding “Then you aren’t an atheist”, because person B stated a verifiable falsehood. Same as saying “One equals two”. We all know it’s wrong.

  Christianity has a much looser definition. You quoted it yourself:

  A Christian (/ˈkrɪstʃən, -tiən/ ⓘ) is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

  So anyone who follows this religion and calls himself a Christian is a Christian. Nothing in the definition says “You must follow the Bible to the exact letter” in order to be one. There wouldn’t be ANY Christians if that were true.

  So that leaves us with a whole bunch of people who all claim to be Christian, but have different opinions on…

  • how strictly do you have to follow the Bible,
  • racism are condoned or forbidden by the Bible,
  • if slavery is forbidden by the Bible,
  • who you can fuck,
  • what kind of funny hat you have to wear,
  • what food you can or can’t eat,
  • if you have to kill any non-believers,

  … et cetera, et cetera.

  And all of these people claim the others aren’t the true believers.

  Now here’s a very simple question: What gives you the confidence, why should we believe you that it’s YOU, out of all these people, who follows the correct interpretation of the Bible?

  That’s why the No True Scotsman fallacy applies to the whole bunch, including you, when you claim the others are no true Christians. Not a single Christian can objectively, verifiably prove that their individual view of Christianity is the correct one.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    According to Christ himself, this one is pretty central:

    One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

    “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

    If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there’s not much left to a claim of following Christ.

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    • glorkon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there’s not much left to a claim of following Christ.

      And that is not an objective statement that’s verifiably and objectively true. It DOES depend on personal opinion and interpretation. Other Christians might say other stuff in the Bible is more important. Like killing homosexuals. Or burning witches.

      There is no clear definition of an ideal Christian. Never was. Never will be. Every century has its own view on what Christianity has to be like, we just happen to live in one which tends to agree with your views.

      In other words, according to your statement, there were almost no Christians a few centuries ago, which is verifiably untrue.

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• snooggums@piefed.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Person B is an idiot who doesn't understand words because atheist is

  To be a Christian someone just needs to identify as a Christian. They don't actually have to do anything specific with that self identification that aligns with the Bible or any particular denomination's practices. That is because belief and faith and religion have a massive spectrum of beliefs and practices wrapped up into one. A large number of people who attend religious ceremonies don't even believe in the deities or take things literally, they are there for the community.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    According to Christ himself, this one is pretty central:

    One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

    “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

    If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there’s not much left to a claim of following Christ.

    A large number of people who attend religious ceremonies don’t even believe in the deities or take things literally, they are there for the community.

    And these people are people who attend religious ceremonies, not Christians.

    Same as someone attending a meeting about Atheism doesn’t become an Atheist by attending the meeting but by being convinced that God doesn’t exist.

    Person B is an idiot who doesn’t understand words because atheist is a simple label with a singular meaning.

    Is that so? A lot of agnostics call themselves atheists. In general, if you ask atheists specifically about what they believe, quite a few of them actually describe agnosticism, as in they do not firmly believe that god doesn’t exist, but rather believe that there’s no basis in believing that god exists.

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    • glorkon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The difference between atheism and agnosticism has no practical meaning to the vast majority of unbelievers.

      You can’t positively state that something does not exist. You can’t logically be 100% certain there is no God. We know that. So if you love going by definitions, yes, most unbelievers are agnostics, not atheists.

      So why do we keep calling ourselves atheists? Because we view the likelihood of God’s existence as so infinitesimally small, the difference between agnosticism and atheism becomes negligible. If we rate the odds of God’s existence at 0,000000001% we can as well just call it zero.

      In other words, stop whining about atheists not using the term you’d prefer. We don’t tell you what you should call yourself either.

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      • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        In other words, stop whining about atheists not using the term you’d prefer. We don’t tell you what you should call yourself either.

        Yes, you do, that’s what the whole thread here was about.

        And you mistake my position on belief as well. I am mostly agnostic.

        And yes, the difference between agnosticism and atheism is huge, except if you are too uneducated to understand the difference, which makes it weird that you have such a strong opinion on the matter.

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