(August 30, 2019 at 4:55 am)Belaqua Wrote:(August 30, 2019 at 4:41 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: This whole topic is nothing more than Belaqua's No True Scotsman fallacy.
No it isn't.
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In fact I've been clear that in my opinion we can't give a definition of what a True Christian is. There are many types, and it's not for me to say which kind is true.
Except you do say from the 1st post that Bible literalists are not true Christians like A purely literal reading of the Bible is the compliment that poorly-educated believers pay to science. They think that the only way to get important meaning from a book is to read it like a science text, so they read it that way. In this they ignore the history of their own religion and unknowingly agree that scientific statements -- ideally unambiguous, requiring no interpretation, and either true or false -- are the only good kind of statements. , and not just that but you said "modern dumb Americans" so cut the crap already.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"