Christianity

[Nec Spe Nec Metu]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

Definition of Christianity: the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies

[Mithrae]

Hopefully your "more true definition" of Christianity has more substance to it than your quaint interpretation of Matthew 5 which has been refuted several times in the past

What specifically are you claiming as been "refuted"?

I'm not aware of any of my interpretations having been refuted. So if you would be kind enough to share what you believe has been refuted that could be enlightening.

Thank you.

Looking 'em up I'm actually surprised how often you've brought that chapter up (16 hits from a fairly constrictive search in the C&A sub-forum) and how often, snuggled in the midst of your lengthy posts, it's gone unnoticed by apologists. Ironically three of the four folk I've found to contradict you are not even Christian (and Kayky is hardly conservative):

• Justin108 in October 2012:
  You use the example of "I and the Father are one" to justify your Buddha-Jesus but you reject
  You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment." as simply hear-say nonsense? I'm sorry but you are cherry-picking. You're choosing what parts Jesus said and what parts he didn't say based solely on what you want him to have said.
  He rejected the Torah you say? Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law" - or was this part also conveniently nothing but hear-say?
  Stop trying to high-jack Jesus from the Christians. He's not a damn Buddhist.
  
  
  Most comprehensively by Cnorman18 and Mithrae in November 2012:
  You can simply hand-wave it off as a glaring contradiction which Matthew somehow didn't notice while writing it, but that's as absurd as Christians who wave off actual contradictions like angels at the tomb.
  
  Have you noticed how in Matthew's gospel Jesus (like Moses) has his life endangered in infancy by royal decree? Matthew's Jesus (like Moses) lacks a human father; Matthew's Jesus (like Moses) is associated with Egypt; Matthew's Jesus (like Moses) faces three trials in the wilderness (cf Exodus 16&17); after which Matthew's Jesus (like Moses) delivers his great address from a mountain. Moses began with a list of commandments (Ex 20), whereas Jesus begins with a list of blessings; and he goes on to first re-emphasise the importance of the torah, and then to reinterpret in a manner similar to what Cnorman has described of rabbinic tradition . . . .
  

  According to the Gospels Jesus also taught:
  Matthew 5:
  [38] Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
  [39] But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
  We have heard it said? Excuse me? Those are "jots and tittles" directly from the Torah! And here Jesus is renouncing those jots and tittles and replacing them with something totally the opposite.

  You'd have to look up a good Jewish source regarding stoning and an eye for an eye; though Cnorman has already commented that stoning for one was supposed to be quite rare because of all the requirements and safeguards to protect the innocent. A common view is that the 'eye for an eye' type rules were not there to inflict punishment, but to limit it - to ensure that in justice (or in revenge) a wrongdoing would not be met with excessive response. If that were so then Jesus here would actually be strengthening the restrictions of the torah; saying that not only should we avoid excessive retaliation, but we should try to avoid retaliation entirely! That's the pattern of the whole chapter:
  - it's said don't murder, but I say don't even indulge in anger or insults
  - it's said don't commit adultery, but I say don't even indulge in lustful thoughts
  - it's said don't break your oaths, but I say don't let any yes or no be false
  - it's said don't retaliate beyond measure, but I say don't retaliate at all
  - it's said love your neighbour, but I say to love your enemies also
  
  According to Matthew at least, Jesus didn't contradict or even replace the law of Moses; he reinforced and strengthened all the most important principles behind the law. As Cnorman has already commented, that sounds a lot like someone (Matthew, or Jesus himself?) influenced by the Hillel school of the Pharisees.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_the ... nd_Shammai
  
  
  You did not answer those points, but amongst the many times you continued to post your claims you were again politely contradicted by kayky in June 2013:
  I think you are overstating the situation. Jesus wanted to reform Judaism to reflect the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. But this was not an outright rejection of the Torah. Jesus makes it very clear that his message is for Jews. He had very little time for Gentiles. I often accuse people of reading Paul through the lens of the Gospels. I think you might be doing the opposite: reading the Gospels with Pauline eyes. . . .
  
  I think you go too far in interpreting the desire on the part of Jesus to reform Judaism as a rejection of the Old Testament.

Your evidence for this? The Tanakh itself states that the covenant of Moses would one day be replaced in some manner (eg. Jeremiah 31:31-34) and, rightly or wrongly, that seems to be an element of how the gospels portray Jesus, each in their own way. They all also very clearly portray him as a Jew, quoting Jewish Scriptures, observing Jewish festivals and debating application of Jewish religious ethics.

Hopefully your "more true definition" of Christianity has more substance to it than your quaint interpretation of Matthew 5 which has been refuted several times in the past

Christiandom is the evidence for this.

I agree with you that there are outliers of Christian sects and denominations that don't agree with the bulk of Christiandom.

How is that evidence supporting your claim?

• Definition of Christianity: the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies
  This is actually an untrue definition.
  
  A more true definition would be that Christianity is a religion that uses Jesus as a patsy to hold up the Old Testament as the word of God.
  
  The greatest irony in this is that even the New Testament rumors of Jesus have Jesus himself rejecting many of the core teachings of the Old Testament.
  
  I always say that the Jewish Priests may have had Jesus physically nailed to a pole, but the Christians (i.e. the authors of the New Testament), then metaphorically nailed Jesus to the Old Testament as the Son of a God that clearly even Jesus didn't believe in.

The gospel Jesus obviously did believe in the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets, held the Tanakh in some regard, debated interpretation and application of its core Jewish ethics (what are the greatest things God requires? what makes a person truly unclean? etc.), and the main Christian branches look to Jesus and his 'new covenant' or 'kingdom of God' as their founder.

So in what way have you supported your claim that the OP offered "actually an untrue definition" of Christianity? Where is your evidence that you have offered a "more true definition"?



I suspect that it's becoming increasingly more obvious to many 20th and 21st century Christians that the prophets of the Tanakh were not mired in hide-bound fundamentalism; and nor was Jesus, and Paul certainly was not; and nor were Luther or Calvin or many of the Popes. (Actually Calvin may have been tbh) As witnessed by its oldest Scriptures, Christianity in general harkens back to and maintains a tradition of religious evolution and often cultural criticism. That is its greatest strength, a significant part of the reason it's often grown even in the face of opposition and has remained a significant religion for so long in so many different cultures.

It's more than a little strange, even disturbing, when the religion's strongest critics agree with it's most ardent fundamentalists that re-evaluation or reform are synonymous with rejection

[Divine Insight]

Mithrae,

You haven't refuted anything. All you've done is demonstrate that other people have differing opinions and interpretations. But that's a given. I totally disagree with the opinions you've posted and I do not see those opinions as being a refutation of my view in the slightest. I totally disagree with your perspective.

It's more than a little strange, even disturbing, when the religion's strongest critics agree with it's most ardent fundamentalists that re-evaluation or reform are synonymous with rejection

I most certainly do agree with the most ardent fundamentalists.

I hold that the Biblical Canon must either be defended as the verbatim word of God, or it is utterly useless to hold it up as being the "Word of God" at all.

I absolutely agree with the ardent fundamentalists on this point. And since I also believe that it is absolutely impossible to hold up the entire Biblical canon without obvious self-contradictions and utter absurdities then it's also impossible to hold it up as the "Word of God".

If you can't hold the Bible up as being entire the verbatim word of God, then which parts can you point to that you know came from God and which parts can you point to that you reject as having nothing to do with God? Suddenly the canon becomes a totally undependable collection of scriptures that cannot be trusted to be the "Word of God".

This is why I agree with the ardent fundamentalists. Either the Bible is the "Word of God" or it isn't. And my conclusion is that it isn't.

Now, can you argue that maybe God had some influence on the men who wrote the Bible? Sure, but that would also be true of every other literary work in the world. Therefore all religions would hold some spiritual truth and simultaneously they would also all hold some total baloney.

Christianity depends on Jesus being "The Christ" and the Christ is being held out as the "Only Way to Salvation". So clearly Christianity is a false religion right there.

Any religion that claims to be the "Only Way" to God is necessarily false.

This wouldn't need to be true if the Bible were sane and the fundamentalists were right. In other words, if the entire Bible was flawless in terms of never containing a single contradiction, error, or utter absurdity, then perhaps it could be true. But that's clearly not the case. Not even the people who follow the Bible all agree on what it says.

You mentioned Cnorman in your previous post as part of your claim that I had been "refuted", but Cnorman himself does not believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. So clearly he's not in harmony with the Christian's need to make Jesus into "The Christ".

So your so-called "refutation" of my view has its own internal conflicts and inconsistencies.

Yes, I do agree with the ardent Christian fundamentalists. In order to hold Jesus up as the sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament God then the entire Bible must be accepted as being the infallible "Word of God". Anything short of that and it's garbage.

And this includes the New Testament. You better believe that God spoke from a cloud proclaiming Jesus to be his son. You better believe that zombie saints climbed out of their graves and went into the city to show themselves to the people there. And so on and so forth.

You better believe ever single solitary claim made in the canon. To reject any of it whilst still claiming that you can hold it up as the "Word of God" is nonsense.

I am absolutely certain that the Biblical canon cannot be held up as the verbatim "Word of God" in any rational or reasonable way. So I accept the ardent fundamentalist's claim that the Bible has to be the infallible "Word of God", and reject it as such.

Now, if you can take these undependable ancient rumors and pretend to make something spiritual out them by picking and choosing what you think God might be like, by all means be my guest.

But don't then hold it over my head (like the authors of the Bible themselves attempt to do) proclaiming that if I don't believe that Jesus is "The Christ" I'm rejecting God.

Here's what some of the authors have to said:

Mark 16:16: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.[/quote]

I say baloney. This cannot possibly be truth.

John 3:18: He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

I say baloney. This cannot possibly be truth.

From the Old Testament:



Psalms.14

[1] The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
[3] They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.



I say baloney. This cannot possibly be truth. I know atheists who do good words and are not corrupt as this ancient author claims. This claim is an outright lie. I cannot be the word of any God.

And there are tons of other verses as well that I will never believe came from any God.

So the Bible cannot be held up as the absolute word of God. It's never going to happen.

Yet, this is what Christianity truly depends upon. The very idea that Jesus was a sacrificial lamb sent to die to pay for the sins of man that every man must recognize and accept, makes absolutely no sense when this claim is being made based upon a canon of fables that clearly contain lies and falsehoods.

So I agree with the ardent Christian Fundamentalists. With Christianity it truly is "all or nothing", and since I can clearly see that it's not all true, then obviously none of it is true.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 1 by Nec Spe Nec Metu]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

Two billion extremely well programmed-since-birth believers.

What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Virtually no Christian claims hold up when subjected to actual scrutinity. Upon investigation virtually every claim Christianity makes turns out to be founded upon baseless assumptions, insubstantiatable assertions, empty claims, unverifiable traditions, and just plain old make believe. The entire foundation of Christianity rests on smoke and mirrors.

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

The sheer power of the numbers have held sway for 2,000 years now. But then along came the game changer known as the internet. Now that people have begun the process of reasoning it out for themselves in large numbers, smoke and mirrors are no longer going to be sufficient.

[Mithrae]

Mithrae,
You haven't refuted anything. All you've done is demonstrate that other people have differing opinions and interpretations. But that's a given. I totally disagree with the opinions you've posted and I do not see those opinions as being a refutation of my view in the slightest. I totally disagree with your perspective.

Well I guessed as much. Presumably if you agreed with me you wouldn't have kept posting that 'turn the other cheek' bit over the past nine months But you disagree only by ignoring the whole book of Matthew's themes and agenda, portraying Jesus as the new Moses and fulfillment of the Law and Prophets;
and by ignoring that the 'eye for an eye' command is as validly viewed in terms of limiting retribution as imposing it;
and by ignoring the chapter's context in which Matthew's Jesus consistently reinforces the purpose or 'spirit' of the Law;
and by mocking the silly old author for writing a glaring contradiction between verse 19 and verse 39, rather than acknowledging a fault in your own understanding.

It's a minor point however. I mentioned it only because Matthew 5 seems to be your most common go-to source for declaring that Jesus rejected the Jewish God.

The gospel Jesus obviously did believe in the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets, held the Tanakh in some regard, debated interpretation and application of its core Jewish ethics (what are the greatest things God requires? what makes a person truly unclean? etc.), and the main Christian branches look to Jesus and his 'new covenant' or 'kingdom of God' as their founder.

So in what way have you supported your claim that the OP offered "actually an untrue definition" of Christianity? Where is your evidence that you have offered a "more true definition"?


I suspect that it's becoming increasingly more obvious to many 20th and 21st century Christians that the prophets of the Tanakh were not mired in hide-bound fundamentalism; and nor was Jesus, and Paul certainly was not; and nor were Luther or Calvin or many of the Popes. (Actually Calvin may have been tbh) As witnessed by its oldest Scriptures, Christianity in general harkens back to and maintains a tradition of religious evolution and often cultural criticism. That is its greatest strength, a significant part of the reason it's often grown even in the face of opposition and has remained a significant religion for so long in so many different cultures.

It's more than a little strange, even disturbing, when the religion's strongest critics agree with it's most ardent fundamentalists that re-evaluation or reform are synonymous with rejection

I most certainly do agree with the most ardent fundamentalists.

I hold that the Biblical Canon must either be defended as the verbatim word of God, or it is utterly useless to hold it up as being the "Word of God" at all.

I absolutely agree with the ardent fundamentalists on this point. And since I also believe that it is absolutely impossible to hold up the entire Biblical canon without obvious self-contradictions and utter absurdities then it's also impossible to hold it up as the "Word of God".

You and the fundamentalists are welcome to your opinions of course, but I'm not sure how well that answers my questions.

You said of the OP that "This is actually an untrue definition" of Christianity and that "A more true definition would be that Christianity is a religion that uses Jesus as a patsy to hold up the Old Testament as the word of God" because "the New Testament rumors of Jesus have Jesus himself rejecting many of the core teachings of the Old Testament" and it's "a God that clearly even Jesus didn't believe in."

So far your justification for these views has been:
> From post 7, it's clear that Jesus rejected the Old Testament and its God because "Christiandom is the evidence for this"
> From this post, it's clear that Jesus rejected the Old Testament and its God because "the Biblical Canon must either be defended as the verbatim word of God, or it is utterly useless to hold it up as being the "Word of God" at all"

Obviously I don't find either of those to be convincing evidence of what Jesus rejected or accepted of older Jewish scriptures and beliefs - and I think we can safely assume that if you did have convincing evidence, you would've answered my question by now. So I think for now we can maintain the most obvious view, that Jesus did not reject either the Jewish God or the Jewish Scriptures; he was simply a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition of re-evaluating and reforming their religion, like other rabbis and prophets before him and like various protestants and popes since.

So I agree with the ardent Christian Fundamentalists. With Christianity it truly is "all or nothing", and since I can clearly see that it's not all true, then obviously none of it is true.

Your views are every bit as valid as the fundamentalists', I'm sure

[connermt]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

Definition of Christianity: the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies

Strength:
It's malleable; it can be made to suit most any need/desire and there's no facts that point to a supernatural deity in charge.
Weakness:
It's simply illogical and based on belief, not facts.

[OnceConvinced]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

Probably that it creates a community for like-minded people where they can have fellowship and a sense of belonging.


What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Lack of unity. It seems no two Christians can agree on the bible and doctrine. This has resulted in a lot of denominations and cults which have undermined Christianity and shown it to be no better than any other religion.

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

Very hard to say. I grew up in churches and had many great experiences. Many of my fondest memories are church camps, activities, etc. It gave me a social life and many great friends. However, it left me feeling afterwards that I had wasted lots of time serving a non-existent God. I am more inclined now to believe that mankind would be a lot better off without Christianity.

[OnceConvinced]

Faith...

Faith...


They both equal nothing...

That reminds me of a quote I heard on a video game which I thought was hilarious and true. On Uncharted II when Drake says to Sully "We just need to have a little faith" and Sully replies, "That and a quarter will get you 25 cents"

[Philbert]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

In the western world, Christianity has been the most compelling salesman for the experience of love.

The fundamental human condition is that we are made of thought, an inherently divisive medium. Thus we experience reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else". This is an existentially isolating experience which leads to fear, psychological pain, and most personal and social problems.

The Christian teaching "love thy neighbor as thyself" seeks to weaken this psychological division, the source of most human problems, through a process of surrendering the "me" through love in the form of service to others.

The idea is perhaps best expressed in the phrase "die to be reborn".

What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Like most religions, Christianity attempts to address these fundamental thought generated problems with even more thought, in the form of various ideologies. This serves mostly to create even more division. As evidence, Christianity has fragmented in to an endless number of different congregations, factions within congregations etc. This is the inherently divisive nature of thought at work.

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

This question implies there is some choice in the matter, but this is largely a fantasy.

The western world has been so dominated by Christianity for so long that it's no longer really possible to separate the two. As example, even fervent atheist challenges to Christianity are based largely in Christian principles.

The Catholic Church ruled the western world in a profound way for 1,000 years. We'll all be long dead and forgotten before an influence that large leaves the stage.

[Ishq]

What is Christianity's biggest strength?

Number of Christians.

What is Christianity's biggest weakness?

Not wearing the Heart of Christ.

Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?

No. It could. But the Church would have to actually teach Love, Compassion and Service to those in need as it's highest and most important teachings "If" that could somehow happen with the shear number of Christians actually living that truth that Christ taught, I can't help but think that the world today would be a much better place than it is now. Heaven on Earth comes to mind.

.

[tariki]

[Replying to post 1 by Nec Spe Nec Metu]

For me Christianities greatest strength will always be found in the lives of many Christians.

For me its weakness is that it rests upon historical claims that appear unable to be substantiated and upon the words of a book that the last 200 years of scholarship has found to be unreliable - as far as being able to know its original content.

For me, yes.