RE: Over the top
August 22, 2019 at 6:18 am
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2019 at 6:31 am by Belacqua.)
(August 22, 2019 at 1:11 am)Grandizer Wrote: @Belaqua:
The quote is about Christianity, and implicitly about how it started out. You could have a "clean" version of Christianity without the whole human nature is bad thing, but it would still be based on a Christianity that was about that thing.
Furthermore, there's context. The guy who said that quote was responding to a Catholic person who was going on about how sinful we are, how there's no such thing as a good Christian. And this is a Catholic saying this, not a Calvinist or a Protestant of some other type.
First you'd have to prove that this is actually how Christianity started out. I'm not sure it is. For example, the idea of an eternal hell became dogma some centuries after the Gospels were written. Some important church fathers didn't believe in an eternal hell. So your assumption that "Christianity was about that thing" may not be as certain as you think.
In fact it may well be that what you consider to be "essential" to Christianity came in later, including some of the worst, most misanthropic parts. As I said, eternal hell was not dogma for a long time, and though Original Sin is rooted in something Paul wrote, it took a lot of time and interpretation to get to what we think of it today. And there have always been Christians who rejected these ideas, to some degree.
Second, the context of the quote doesn't determine whether it's crazy or not, since the crazy part is included in the quote, not contingent on the thing it's answering. Again, the quote says this:
Quote:Exhibit one of the sickening misanthropy without which there can be no Christianity.
He asserts that there is no Christianity without sickening misanthropy. He's referring to an example, but no matter what the example is, he still asserts that misanthropy.
We could make a similar statement like this: "Star Wars is exhibit one of the fact that Hollywood is totally incapable of making a good movie." You can change out "Star Wars" with any other example there, and the statement is equally over the top. (I'm assuming people think that there is nothing essentially bad about Hollywood, now and forever, which prevents good movies.
So you could make excuses for the statement, by claiming that he's only talking about another time, or that he's only talking about some specific type, but that's not what he said.
And if we can point to one Christian who was not misanthropic, we have disproved the claim.
(August 22, 2019 at 1:36 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed?
This is not what I have claimed.
(August 22, 2019 at 1:46 am)Grandizer Wrote: Forgot to add that misanthropy isn't just about disliking human beings.
That's what the word means.
If you'd like to change the quote I'm sure you can make it better.
(August 22, 2019 at 2:33 am)Athene Wrote: Well, it doesn't really matter if a 4 out of 5 hippy, cafeteria Christians don't agree.
It does matter if 4 out of 5 people who say they are Christians aren't misanthropic. Because that would prove the falsity of the quote. Because the quote says that Christianity is impossible without misanthropy.
If 4 out of 5 people who say they are Christians aren't misanthropic, it means that Christianity is possible without misanthropy. And that means the quote is false.
It is not for you or me to declare what True Christianity is, and then do the No True Scotsman thing when we are presented with 4 out of 5 Christians who don't match that.
So we've got a lot of different ideas about what True Christianity is here among us atheists, but that doesn't change the fact that the quote is clearly over the top.
