Or a muslim, or a jew, whatever. I'm asking YOU specifically.

Every intelligent religious person i've ever had a discussion with always concedes the embarrassing scientific lectures of their holy book. For example, most Christians I debate with fully acknowledge that the story of Noah's ark is ridiculous, accept evolution in some general sense, accept that the Earth is older than 6,000 years, and often forfeit the notion that Jesus was even born of a virgin.

Most religious people I argue with, instead, make claims about genuinely puzzling philosophical problems like our existence, why is there something rather than nothing, the very first origins of life, etc etc. They claim, it is in these questions where they find a personal God. Utterly perplexed, I still question why these people associate with Christianity. What is it, specifically, that makes YOU a Christian? All of the questions I have just presented have absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity, instead, deals with the ANSWERS to these questions, all of which are rejected by any capable reasoner. Perhaps I should inspect that previous sentence carefully. Maybe, most of these answers are rejected, but some are accepted. If this is the case, please enlighten me as to which biblical claims hold true when answering the above problems, or problems like those. Could one be, for example, the belief in the 10 commandments? Clearly not because any reasonable/intelligent person would agree that working on a Sunday should not be made punishable by eternal anguish and torture.

I simply cannot see how someone can reject nearly every biblical claim yet still recognize his/her self as a Christian. My perception is not meant as ridicule, but moreso complete confusion. I want to know what makes you recognize yourself as a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc, instead of calling yourself Religious or spiritual or whatever.

Fire away

its like being in a social club...im not religious by the way...the intelligent religious people i've talked with (including my father) see it as a cultural/social thing

This does appear to be the only logical answer, but i'm allowing myself to be persuaded (by a reasonable reply)

Because men are sinful and falible, even those who wrote the bible.

The 10 commandments were and are still a great tool to keep humanity in check.

It says not in the bible you will burn in hell for working on Sunday. It says to help the ox out of the ditch on Sunday. That the doctor can still help his fellow man on Sunday. But that all working humans should take at least 1 day in the week off and relax and ponder or revere what makes them tick and spend the day with friends and family.

Do you not understand why this is important for a human being. To not work, work, work all week and not take a single moment to pause, stop and think what put him there and spend time with his family?

You simply cannot see how someone can reject nearly every biblical claim yet still recognize his/her self as a Christian. Because you let them or reject those claims yourselves on your own terms.

Does every Christian believe Jonah was in the belly of the whale for a couple of days? Ofcourse not.

Christian faith is above all accepting the God of Abram, and that a person named Jesus died on the cross with the intention of washing away your sins.

What makes you think you can not take most of the bible figuratively and transposed to modern times without denouncing the Christian title?

I dont on SMP any more, but I do in real life. It's a convenient shorthand that I hope conveys a general impression without actually providing any specifics (since there are so many different interpretations of christianity). Pretty much any adjective suffers from the same flaws. I describe myself as a "mathsy" person too - equally broad, yet people find it a useful way to characterise me.

These are very good questions. For most of my life I was a Christian who rejected the more ridiculous aspects of the Bible and justified my Christianity to atheists on those same philosophical grounds you mentioned, as well as the existence of consciousness. It's just been in the last year that I've really realized that none of that has anything to do with Christianity specifically.

As for why I stuck with it for so long, I can identify two major reasons.

One is just the influence of growing up with Christian friends and family and school. I'd like to think I'm smart enough to form my most important beliefs based on more than simply "what I've been told" but I guess it's not unusual to hugely influenced by this.

The second is reason is fear. While I always rejected the notion of hell or the notion that heaven was only for believers, Pascal's Wager type thinking was always in the back of my mind. And even if I could get around that, I really want to believe that an afterlife exists. I still think there's a reasonable chance of that, but its not exactly the same as the "certainty" that came with Christianity.

My guess is that 80% of Christians with IQs above 120 basically agree with you deep down.

This is more of a reply to Neonclaws and DS than the Op:

It is more a matter of hope than fear (for me at least). If I do fear death at all, it is not because of no after life or “hell”. It is because of the end of an often time good thing and things I want to do or get done. Perhaps this perspective will change the older I get.

A good friend of mine died last year. He was in his 80s. He was terminal and need to go to the hospital for a procedure that would ease his last few weeks or months (can’t remember what it was – something about his kidney or urinary track, had cancer in that area, colon or something). He refused to go until he received all his 1099’s from his bank and investments so he could have his taxes filed properly. I thought that was, well I don’t what I thought it was, but I found it a bit humorous for sure. I guess he lived (and died) by the adage that nothing is certain except death and taxes.

Who knows what perspective one will hold at different stages of one’s life?

This is probably for another thread, but about half of the ten commandments are pointless for non-believers.

If they are pointless for you scratch them. What about the remaining commandments. Were they and are they still a great tool to keep humanity in its place? If you had asked that question for yourself you could see how my statement was ment and how it has merit.

"Look, look!" The atheists say "That Christian there is weeping and mourning for the death of a loved one", our logic dictates us they should really be happy that their loved one went to heaven ergo they must have their doubts and know in their hearts what we know. There is no God nor afterlife.

Come on. Even children get this right. They are not crying for them, because they know they went to a happier place, they are crying for themselves. Because they will miss that person immensly.

They can't. Or at least shouldn't.

Brad, what should I be calling myself? I'll let you be the judge of that, nice hammer yoh, I will not tell me what it reminds me of, because, heh you probably can't do much with personal information anyway, right. I hope you have enough evidence to make your case. I trust you on that...

I have faith in you Brad!

Recognize me oh great one!

I'm not sure how I am supposed to interpret your smart aleck & antagonizing post.....whatever.

Anyway.......any person who doesn't believe that the Bible is the infallible & inerrant Word of God and that Jesus is the only begotten son of God who died a horrid death on the cross for the sins of the world is not a born again Christian. Pretty straight forward actually.

The modern christian view is the result of a nearly two thousand years of shifting intepretations, many of those who are 'mainstream' today very different from original views (some of those old sects still remain in various forms in the middle east).

'Christian' then, is and always has been a fairly fluid term in respect to what dogma it stands for.

(1) A Christian is characterized by TOTAL SUBMISSION to Christ...
Often described using the term "faith".
People who view Christianity as a "social club" or "philosophy" or "ethics"...
Are not Christians. They are Pretenders.

(2) Relative to God... man is utterly powerless.
The Bible is clear that people are CHOSEN BY GOD to be Christians (1 Pet 2:4).
Paul was Pharisee #1 and practicing genocide against the early Christians...
When he was blinded on the road to Damascus...
And CHOSEN by God to preach the Word primarily to the Gentiles.

Once chosen and ** accepting **...
The Holy Spirit will work through a Christian...
Taking that believer on a long, fascinating journey of Spiritual Growth.

(3) DS, applying "scientific logic" to spiritual matters is pointless...
Because one basically presupposes the Spiritual Realm does not exist...
And that God can be understood with man's very limited resources.

Even a rudimentary understanding of Biblical principles...
REQUIRES real faith and experience living a committed Christian lifestyle.
In that context...
The Bible does not have nearly as many "contradictions" as would appear to a secular observer.

(4) And the point of it all is not an endless BATTLE over SEMANTICS...
Which is the root cause of interdenominational conflict...
But simply to love God by loving the LEAST of your brothers...
As shown in The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt 25:31-46).

No. They were nothing remarkable. The Code of Hammurabi does much better. So I guess we should worship Babylonian deities?

The commandments have pretty much never been useful. Human law flourished without them for millenia, and even after the rise of Christianity it was the Greco-Roman approach to law that mattered, nobody held to the vicious standard of the Old Testament. It might have been some help keeping the Israelites under the thumb of their rulers in between the genocides.

Also, the question is why Christianity - the Ten Commandments have absolutely nothing to do with this question. The question is why do you think Christianity is correct while Judaism and Islam are incorrect?

QFT with extreme emphasis.

It annoys me when religion wants to take credit for law. Its one the few things that makes me want to slap someone with a wet newspaper. Religion can maybe take credit for a few rules.

Law on the other hand as approached by the Romans is far more than merely rules, its the principles of the law and its application that are important.

If I like Jesus and his teachings but i don't believe he's the son of God, Am I a Christian?

Nope you can not be a Christian, or at least you should not.

And if you dare taking that false title, be sure to immedeatly find Judaism and Islam an incorrect religion. Because according to SMP it should follow from you being Christian that you therefor deny all other religions.

See if free will not exists, the cardhouse we built on it, morality and ethics are silly outdated artifacts too.

I have been shown the light now that not murdering, not coveting your neighbours wife and honoring your father and mother are useless rules for humanity.

If all is realist, no free will, the scientific God or nothing, we are just bright animals.

So who here has a nice sister I could drag back to my cave? I am feeling truelly raunchy.

I like the horror story The Mist by Stephen King. So much so I like to call myself a Mistian.

The level of fear the story incited in me was the greatest. In fact I find it hard to believe anyone can point me to another horror story that will make me shat my pants more. I won't go as far as to say all horror stories are inferior to The Mist. Maybe someone finds his biggest scare in another story. Or maybe Stephen King wrote another story that has been gathering dust in his drawers, and I have never seen the greatest fearinducing plot of all. But the Mist does it for me. I am a Mistian.

Then Frank Darabont adapted the story to the big screen. And since the Kings word is infalible, Franks must be infalible too. But I didn't like the ending of the movie at all. I found it far too contrived and unbelievable. Now a food critic agrees with me, while the film buffs remain devided.

Then the food critic says: I can not understand why u keep calling yourself a Mistian. We both agree the ending was rubbish. In fact you should not call yourself a Mistian, because Franks adaptation was infalible and even King gave it a thumbs up.

You should either call yourself a Kingian, and be associated with the Pet Sematarians.

Or call yourself a horrorist, and be associated with the Lovecraftians.

but no Mistian! Come on! Did you see the ending of the movie and the horrible CGI? It left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Don't call yourself a Mistian!

Last I checked, Stephen King doesn't advocate the murder and torture of all other authors. When he starts doing that, then I'll apply the same standards to followers of King that I do to followers of Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad.

46:1, this is like the maddest you've ever gotten. And this thread had been quite tame by SMP standards. What gives?

No, they are rules that don't come from the Ten Commandments. The rules themselves have some value. The Commandments, a crude rehashing of the rules by one of the most evil and violent men in history, have no (positive) value.

Intelligent "realist" people - Why, specifically, do you call yourself a scientist?

Or a biologist, psysicist, whatever. I'm asking YOU specifically.

Every intelligent realist person i've ever had a discussion with always concedes the embarrassing obsolete scientific facts and fringe science histories.
For example, most scientists I debate with fully acknowledge that the Phlogiston Theory is ridiculous, accept a design to the universe in some general sense, accept that the tools to carbondate are not infalible, and often forfeited the notion that our universe was even born of a Big Bang untill 1964.

Most burden-of-verifiable-proof-people I argue with, instead, make claims about genuinely puzzling philosophical problems like our existence, why is there something rather than nothing,
the very first origins of life, etc etc. They claim, it is in these questions where they find a personal god or notice his absence.
Utterly perplexed, I still question why these people associate with Science. What is it, specifically, that makes YOU a scientist?
All of the questions I have just presented have absolutely nothing to do with Science.
Science, instead, tries to find the ANSWERS to these questions, all of which could be rejected by any capable reasoner, because of the nature of the questions.
Perhaps I should inspect that previous sentence carefully. Maybe, most of these answers are rejected, but some are accepted.
If this is the case, please enlighten me as to which scientific claims hold 100% true when answering the above problems, or problems like those.

Could one be, for example, the belief in the early theories of Einstein?
Clearly not because any reasonable/intelligent person would agree that dropping the atomic bomb should not be made punishable by eternal anguish and torture.

I should not have re-enacted misery then.

You can't keep using the murder and mayhem of Christian or Muslim religion and make a point everytime. Unless you deem it so violent and inhuman any religious person loses the right to recognize himself and title himself by his own means.

U can call me a Christian or a 'supporter of murder', whatever YOU want.

Do I not even get to call myself Christian anymore by my OWN standards?