(October 26, 2015 at 12:43 am)Esquilax Wrote:(October 26, 2015 at 12:31 am)Delicate Wrote: No, I'm asking questions.
If there are indeed so many doctrinal differences, even over core doctrines, we ought to be able to substantiate that with specifics. So I'm asking for specifics from the very people who are so confident of the claim.
I didn't just pull all of those differences out of my ass, you know. Each one of them comes from a christian I've met in discussion with in the past, sometimes here on this board, sometimes in person. My brother in law, for example, recently left a church he was attending because they wouldn't preach that even christians of other denominations will be going to hell like a Westboro Baptist or especially fundamentalist Apostolic church might. That's kind of the problem: the variation is so widespread that there's little hope even of any two churches within a denomination having precisely the same views, or of any two christians within one of those churches doing likewise.
This doesn't help you, by the way: if I can find two christians just on the street that vary in their views the way I've done, and those variations concern core tenets and not the irrelevant fripperies you claim, then the potential pool of core divisions between christians suddenly jumps into the millions, not merely the tens of thousands of denominations that exist. The possibility space is both wider and deeper than you're acknowledging here.
Okay, here's what's going on: I clear up one fallacy the atheist commits, they commit two more fallacies elsewhere in their next post. Let's start over, simpler this time:
To prove the atheist position, three criteria need to be met:
1) The differences must be core differences, not peripheral differences (this point has been repeated to death)
2) The differences must involve what Christianity teaches, NOT how individuals practice (your brother preferring a certain kind of preaching is reflective of preference, not teaching, and it's of one person).
3) The differences must be widespread (one weird bro does not widespread make)
The atheist claim must meet all three criteria in order to justifiably claim that there are widespread doctrinal differences that are serious or problematic.
So far all I've seen from atheists have been a lot of feeble arm-flailing and anger. No substance. Better posts tomorrow I hope.