I wouldn’t be a Christian

[Belacqua]

Your putting forward that Catholicism as an example of good religion/christianity?

I would never try to excuse the bad things that the Catholic Church has done.

I brought up the changes that Thomas Aquinas made to Catholic theology in order to say that there is not only one Christian way of thinking over the centuries. Theology evolves, and when we speak of "Christian thought" we have to specify more clearly what we're talking about.

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That thing that determine a ' real christian?'

It called agape'

I agree with you that, if we want to point to a single defining characteristic of what Christians are called upon to do, agape would be a good choice. 

I'm interested in the different ways Christians have chosen to express this over the centuries. There are a lot of variations. I also think that a more loving (in the agape sense of love) world would be a very good thing. I hope to get better at it myself.

[brewer]

Your putting forward that Catholicism as an example of good religion/christianity?

I would never try to excuse the bad things that the Catholic Church has done.

I brought up the changes that Thomas Aquinas made to Catholic theology in order to say that there is not only one Christian way of thinking over the centuries. Theology evolves, and when we speak of "Christian thought" we have to specify more clearly what we're talking about.

If you want to put the idealist christian thinkers throughout time on a pedestal I'm OK with that (for you). I think that you'd have a difficult time giving examples where the totality of these thoughts were taken up and practiced by the church or the masses. Philosophical academia rarely survives outside of academia except as ideals. 

And I'd still like to see examples of "only with/by/thru god" can these ideals exist. Any god is a mental concept/construct created by man. Claiming a god exists, other than as a concept, is a psychological tool for human manipulation.

[Belacqua]

[brewer]

[Belacqua]

[brewer]

My mistake about Eco, apologies. But being or not being an atheist is not really part of the discussion. My knee jerk reaction to christians referencing "ex-atheists" or stating that atheists support blah blah blah.

Are you going to address anything more than my Eco mistake?

[Belacqua]

[The Grand Nudger]

Thomas Aquinas made his nut by proposing an even greater syncretism between pagan philosophical traditions and catholicism.   

Aquinas didn't come up with anything, he took the (then)newly rediscovered stores of classical philosophy and sought to make them concordant with his beliefs.  We can refer to those positions of others which aquinas assumed if we wished to understand "western thought" - aquinas is only required to understand christian thought, and..specifically, how christians sought to make their silly religion less silly by affirming pre-christian pagan traditions , lol.

Christian thinkers are emphatically -not- the only thinkers we have (nor are christian luminaries particularly relevant to our current academic traditions), and those thinkers cribbed their shit verbatim from the people they exterminated. There's some history for ya, to examine.



(just because it;s fresh on my mind from other threads)
The idea that there is good and there is bad predate christianity, christian thought, and christian thinkers. Christian thinkers and christian thought referred to their predecessors in justifying this position for themselves, and the current incarnation of this idea is the majority position of academia..but is entirely stripped of any theological underpinning..because we recognize that those underpinnings were garbage.... even on their own terms.

I don't actually have to know anything about christianity, christian thought, or christian thinkers to understand this subject. Christianity added nothing to this subject, and christinaity is absent from this subject in the present. Europe went full retard for a thousand years......that's the long and short of christian thought. Thankfully, we came to our goddamned senses (I mean that literally, god damns your senses, lol )

This is just a microcosm that follows the same pattern as the religious macrocosm, and yet another part of the reason why I wouldn't be a christian.

[Mister Agenda]

It's possible to be a theist and anti-theist simultaneously. You believe in God but don't think anyone should and wish you didn't.

[brewer]