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.

[John V]

Bare minimum:

Romans 10
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Or go with the apostles creed if you want a little more than that.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic** church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

[ignoramus]

So help you Zyprexa

[vorlon13]

Matthew 7 (KJV)
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

[Edwardo Piet]

I think all that is necessary to be a christian is to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected 3 days later as testament that he had conquered death. But even that is subjective because Jordan Peterson considers himself a christian and he is agnostic towards the resurrection and I assume his tie to christianity is more in line with the symbolic meaning of Christ's death and resurrection rather than a belief that Jesus literally was raised from the dead.

Meh. He calls himself a Christian but he doesn't actually meet the definition:

[Drich]

Guys, THAT other ID thread got me thinking.

Let's say you don't want to deny any scientific facts. About anything. (Why would you anyway?)
But you still need that extra life that baby Jesus has on offer?

Is that possible? Call it "caffeine free diet Christianity" or whatever...
In reality, almost all Christians use modern technology, believe in medical cures, disregard everything in the bible that conflicts with their modern "good person" lifestyle etc,
so their beliefs are strictly of a philosophical nature anyway.

Can these people still be called Christians? If THEY call themselves Christians, then they ARE Christians. Who are we or other Christians to judge them?
Every Christian cherry picks, so there must be lots of pots and kettles about. Especially between competing schisms.

EG, belief in heaven might sound silly but is it technically breaking any rules of the cosmos?
Maybe shoving your beliefs in the gaps of science technically does not need or involve any mental gymnastics ...because ...well, we just never know, do we?

I think the god of the gaps WAS invented for theists to sleep easy at night. Just like in a court of law, YOU CAN'T PROVE ME WRONG, THEREFORE NOT GUILTY of believing anything false.

It's all based on what you can comprehend, and your exposure to the gospel. (meaning if you only get 1/2 the gospel and only understand 1/2 of what you got then your little mess may not yield a direct relationship with God, but you will be saved.)

If you can bring your self to simple say you know you've sinned, and you know Jesus died for you, then you get your 'extra life.'

Now understand there are varying degree of 'extra life.' meaning different levels of heaven. Most of us will not live in heaven but a 'new earth' and on this new earth we will all be tasked with different jobs.

Your life here and how you live it will determine whether you are a street sweeper or star ship captain, or maybe even Jesus' number one goto guy.

You don't want to enter heaven singed smelling of smoke with nothing 'saved up.' That is where works and deeds come in. You bank heavenly wealth through your works.

That said none of this matters if you think Christianity is incompatible with science.

I have a 'science' based business (one of them) I am a refrigeration engineer. I design and build systems to custom fit trucks and cargo vans and trailers. I have to source refrigeration equipment build it and sort through all sorts of polymer and insulating material to cover my r-values and k-factors otherwise the product will get too hot if the door is open too many times, get too cold or be too expensive for a given application. 

People who work and live by what 'science' provides knows there are two distinct fields of science. One is the practical field where technology lives and life is based off of working principles daily. I work in a practical scientific field. I have two patents in this field. The other is theoretical or speculative science. As late as the 80's this branch has been often times referred to a being one step out of science fiction. Yet today speculative scientists are trying to pair themselves with proved or practical science. In truth to believe all of theoretical science having the same effect on reality as practical science takes more faith than what is required to believe in God. Even so.. if you just absolutely need to be apart of the crowd that believes in evolution and the big bang... Then God has provided a very simply understanding of genesis  that will allow all the time needed for evolution to happen and at the same time allow for a seven day creation.

The ony thing that must change is the religious interpertation or how the church reads genesis 1 2 and 3

We can see whom ever assign the chapter dentation only put 6 days in th chapter 1 when in fact genesis 2:3 should be part of chapter 1 as it tells the story of how the earth was made and how man/evolved man was made.. The reason they did this was because it allows for the narrative that chapter two is a retelling of chapter 1, but the problem there is that man is made like day 5 in chapter 1 and much sooner in chapter two...

The problem? chapter two is not a retelling of chapter 1 it is the account of the garden. Chapter two begin with "these things happen after the earth and sky but before the plants were made. So everything in chapter two was post earth and sky and pre trees and plants in the chapter one narritive which put us about 3rd day..

Still with me? basically chapter two is saying sometime on the third day all of what happened in chapter two was put into place or ran along side creation. So what is chapter 2 about? it is about the garden of eden and how it was built apart from the rest of creation. Infact according to how chapter two describes eden and man/woman we know eden was built to resemble the world outside the garden at the time of the fall of man (about 6000 years ago according to the genealogies) (We can count back all the names in the bible and it puts us about 6000 years outside the garden. 

Now that said from the end of chapter two to the beginning of chapter three (The fall of man 6000 years ago) one day could have past, one year could have past or billions if not trillions of years could have past where adam and eve lived in the garden with God as immortals (tree of live granted them this gift and they were at that time allowed to eat from it) Once they ate from the tree of knowledge their immortal selves died and they were kicked out of the garden which is chapter three. All the while everything outside the garden was left alone to mutate or evolve into whatever. 1 year of a billion it makes no difference because there is no time line between the end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three.

[Minimalist]

I wonder if any of them have the intellectual honesty to try the Outsider Test of Faith?

The outsider test is simply a challenge to test one’s own religious faith with the presumption of skepticism, as an outsider. It calls upon believers to “Test or examine your religious beliefs as if you were outsiders with the same presumption of skepticism you use to test or examine other religious beliefs.”
Its presumption is that when examining any set of religious beliefs skepticism is warranted, since the odds are good that the particular set of religious beliefs you have adopted is wrong.

This is how religious people evaluate other religions. It’s why they think they are all absurd — well, all except for their own.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonabl...for-faith/


What does it mean?  Simply this:

To the Christian theist the challenge of the outsider test means there would be no more quoting the Bible to defend the claim that Jesus’ death on the cross saves us from sins. The Christian theist must now try to rationally explain it. No more quoting the Bible to show how it’s possible for Jesus to be 100% God and 100% man with nothing left over. The Christian theist must now try to make sense of this claim, coming as it does from an ancient superstitious people who didn’t have trouble believing Paul and Barnabas were “gods in human form” (Acts 14:11; 28:6).

The Christian theist must not assume prior to examining the evidence that there is an answer to the problem of horrendous suffering in our world either. And she’d be initially skeptical of believing in any of the miracles in the Bible, just as she would be skeptical of any claims of the miraculous in today’s world supporting other religious faiths.

Substitute muslim for xtian and koran for bible and it applies equally to them.

[Minimalist]

Apparently not.

No shock there.