What is important

@KellyJay said
I’m not sure what you mean by the 'Christian church' that you could meet someone high up in it. What do you think when a Christian means when we talk about getting saved, saved from what or who?

Saved from the psychotic "loving" bully God who threatens eternal damnation and torment (or just plain incineration and the destruction of our "souls" ) if we don't obey the people who made up and maintain that fiction?

@Suzianne said
"For 2,000 years, Christians have been slagging each other off as 'false Christians,' and, as far as I am concerned, that is the true face of Christianity. Why can't they just heal the sick, comfort the desperate, not cast aspersions against others, as Jesus did, and forget about what to call it?

Even Jesus condemned the hypocrites. I'm talking about those ...[text shortened]... ou, then forget it." These are the ones doing damage to the teachings of Jesus by being hypocrites.

Which talk do you talk?

@Suzianne said
One more time: "What people believe shows in their actions."

You cannot hide it.

Speech (including writing) is a form of action.

@KellyJay said
Yes, except that you insert your ideas about motivation, typically in a way that always pigeonholes someone into the worst possible reasons. Two people may do or not do the same thing, but for different reasons. Two men may not sleep with anyone other than their wives: one because he feels it’s wrong and is loyal to his wife, the other because he thinks he could get caught ...[text shortened]... tribute to them. It isn’t fair, and when it happens to you, you also claim it's wrong and not fair.

"Only Suzi can judge."

Perhaps she has never heard the phrase "Tool of the Accuser"?

@KellyJay said
An eternal God makes man in His image

Meaning what?

@moonbus said
To be fair, Christians don't have a monopoly on hypocrisy. But, on the other hand, as Ghost and others have pointed out, no atheists go around trying to convert anyone to atheism the way Christians go about trying to evangelize people. I find it rather importunate to have people come up to me on the street and try to convince me that I should become a Christian, even though t ...[text shortened]... d, which, at that time, was run by its founder, Akong Rinpoche, and he impressed the heck out of me.

I think Monty Python hit the nail on the head half a century ago with their jokes about God grovellers.

As for hypocrisy -- sure, there have also been some Buddhist scandals in the news recently.

But the "I'm so broken" pose always rubbed me the wrong way (maybe because I was raised in the original and best Christian tradition) and seems both masochistic and competitive at times, with a core of spiritual pride. (What a strange confection!)

On my side, I have felt positively influenced by some Christians and some Buddhists.

@KellyJay said
Yeah, well, if God created the heavens and the earth, a talking snake wouldn’t be such a big deal now, would it, or any other miracle? Your response about the logic of truth, where you claim religion cannot be true or false, is hardly a strong point now, is it? You are saying “A” and “Not A” are the same thing, no matter the snake that is not using your head. If that is how you treat logical consistency, small wonder you think as you do.

May I introduce you to the concept of "teaching stories"?

@Suzianne said

People know that their actions condemn them.

Indeed. My late Irish grandmother would threaten to wash your mouth out with soap.

@Suzianne said

"You shall know them by their fruits."

Although capybaras do not grow oranges themselves, they often have oranges floating in their pools and kindly offer them to others.

@Revenant-Eleven said
Saved from the psychotic "loving" bully God who threatens eternal damnation and torment (or just plain incineration and the destruction of our "souls" ) if we don't obey the people who made up and maintain that fiction?

I would say you have no idea how Good God is and how evil we are.

@KellyJay said
I would say you have no idea how Good God is and how evil we are.

I would say we seem to believe different things and have made different observations.

@Revenant-Eleven said
I would say we seem to believe different things and have made different observations.

The thing I try to keep in mind is that when both sides of an argument share the same evidence, using that evidence to promote one side over the other is meaningless. What is required is something that only one side has and the other does not; look at those keenly. Acknowledging that people have different points of view, they look at things differently, is shared by creationists and materialists, so acknowledging that only shows something everyone agrees with, so what?

Is there such a thing as truth? Yes, if you deny that, can I ask if that’s true, that there is no such thing as truth? True things will not contradict one another, so logic helps. If two people disagree on a topic with diametrically opposed reasons, the correct answer is that only one of them is right, or both are wrong; they cannot both be right if their views contradict one another.

You could say they are both right from their point of view, but that goes back to the 'so what' point I made earlier. There are fuzzy thinkers here to say that isn’t true, but do not explain why, when confronted, they disappear and stop talking.