swimmerdude99 wrote:So another question for you DoomYoshi... what exactly IS Christianity? do you believe the Bible?
This isn't about belief. By framing it in terms of belief, I could say anything I want. I could say: "I believe Jesus told me to go rape little boys" and go do that. Or I could say "Jesus told me to burn Jews in an Oven" and then go and do that. By making this about some vacuous concept such as "belief" all validity is destroyed. It has to be about fact.
And the fact is that the Bible is not inerrant or infaillable. It features errors, contradictions and evidence of vandalism. However, taken in context and taken non-literally, it does contain a lot of truth.
Taken out of context and literally, it is total bullshit. Interpreted by people who don't have at least a seminary education (cough... Olsteen... hack) they have no idea what the f*ck they are reading. True theologians can't rely on Coles Notes of the Bible. Yet, that is the Southern US tradition.
As an example for why taking something out of context is bad:
"Mommy, where did we come from?"
"Well son many billions and billions and billions of years ago there was a giant explosion. And then a few billion years later life spontaneously generated from a bowl of soup. I'm sorry son, I meant to say abiogenesis started from some chemical reaction that accidently formed from dead matter and eventually the many millions of species of animals, flowers, trees and everything you see around us developed randomly."
"But Mommy, how do you know this?"
"Because it is a fact and anybody who doesn't believe that is a hater."
I now define this to be the quote by which premio is known. Everyone knows that the 4th statement is what he truly believes. Now, we will have a 1700 year discussion about how premio didn't actually mean that, he was responding to a quote that got lost to the ages. He was using sarcasm, or any other literary technique, it doesn't matter. In 1700 years, somebody comes along who doesn't bother to read the previous 1700 years and says: wow, obviously premio believed that. And then a hate group, based on usurping the role of the true understanders of what premio meant would be formed. This is what happened to the Messiah.
Swimmer: Is it a deserving fate of Christ that the most vocal group of his "supporters" actually drag his name through the mud while spitting it both literally and figuratively?
*the literal part comes from Jesus bumper stickers on 4x4 trucks in the commercials