Bare minimum for belief in Christianity.

[robvalue]

Our self descriptions aren;t always accurate - that holds across the board....but I do think that if we're going to intelligibly discuss some specific x then a minimum standard of description in language applies.

We refer to people like that as "culturally christian" or "culturally muslim" to distinguish between that known and observed state of being and the other.  I;m as much of a christian as that muslim is a muslim....and that observation right there is instructive.

A person can call themselves anything they want, but if they want to label themselves christians in a discusion about christianity...they;re going to need to believe in christ.  The same goes for whatever irreplaceable character exists in any other magic book.

I agree, if you're going to have a sensible discussion, you need some meaningful definitions.

It makes no sense to me that someone could call themselves a Muslim yet reject everything in the book. But nothing about religion makes any sense to me. It's all absolute complete nonsense. So all I can do is allow people to label themselves how they want.

But if we're discussing them outside of their presence, then it's quite reasonable for us to have some sort of working definition for what a Muslim is, and to say that this guy doesn't qualify. That doesn't mean we're trying to strip him of his own connection to the religion, it's just so we can have words that actually mean something.