I think according to this definition ‘norminal’ Christians as a whole are people who forgot God. Therefore those who don’t forget God aren’t ‘norminal’ Christians. As all ‘norminal’ Christians forgot God, that should also be true for those ‘norminal’ Christians that do violent things are also “forgetting God”.
Does that help you? I don’t think so.
In case you care, I’m no Christian even when my surname is Christian. When forced to label I choose ignostic.
A lot of self proclaimed atheists who get blinded by their faith. They think that the meme they identify with God is the thing that most people mean when they say God.
Very often that leads to misunderstanding of arguments such as the argument made by Solzhenitsyn. It gets reduced to the question “did God intervene to punish people who forget him” and “will Christian’s always act moral?”.
You lose a lot of details. What changes in a society if people socialize in workers unions instead of going to church?
Re: nominal. Could be a True Scotsman fallacy. Discuss.
I think you are trying to set up a true scotsman as a strawman.
People generally do neither where I come from. So what?
You live in the 21st century. It doesn’t make much sense to analyse events from the early 20st century by imposing your 21st century perspective.
In our times the average person didn’t replace the social enviroment that churchs provide and is more lonely than his ancestors were. He’s postmodern in the sense that he doesn’t have a strong loyality to a single framework. A lot of atheists do have some loyality to academic science and spokespeople like Richard Dawkins but that loyality isn’t strong enough to die for.
In Willpower Roy Baumeister (who’s no theist) argues that partly as a result of not believing in God willpower is now lower than it was in the past.
Debating Church v. nothing to replace it is different than debating Church v. early 20st century Marxism (and the institutions that got created after the revolution was “successful”).
Answering a question about the effects of believing in God is depends a lot on the zeitgeist of the time you are speaking about.
But to get back to the issue of “true Christian’s”, the people who go to church because their parents went to church are different than the people who have spiritual experiences and believe in God because of those experiences.
A few days ago I was debating a Christian theology student. He follows in the foodsteps of his father who’s a priest. He had to admit to me that he has no good argument for why he prefers Christianity is more true than Islam. He believed that everybody get’s to heaven regardless of how he lives his life. According to him there are a lot of people in his faculty who see things similarly. On the other hand those fellow students with spiritual experiences have racidally different views than him.
If you want to speak about the effect of being Christian, self labeling as Christian isn’t necessarily the best criteria. Spirtiual religious experiences or spending a lot of time in Christian rituals are likely to be more important than self labling.
A few days ago I was debating a Christian theology student. He follows in the foodsteps of his father who’s a priest.
It gets him his daily bread, then? :-)
He had to admit to me that he has no good argument for why he prefers Christianity is more true than Islam. He believed that everybody get’s to heaven regardless of how he lives his life.
To some Christians, that is outright heresy. Does he have any arguments for why he prefers his Christianity to any other Christianities?
According to him there are a lot of people in his faculty who see things similarly. On the other hand those fellow students with spiritual experiences have racidally different views than him.
Did the (nominal) Christians who did violent and terrible things forget God too?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn doesn’t speak about “why people do violent things?” in the quote but about why the Russian revolution happened.
I wasn’t asking Solzhenitsyn, I was asking you.
I think that question is illformed.
If I look into (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nominal)[webster] the definition of ‘norminal’ that applies here seems to be: “3a : existing or being something in name or form only ”
I think according to this definition ‘norminal’ Christians as a whole are people who forgot God. Therefore those who don’t forget God aren’t ‘norminal’ Christians. As all ‘norminal’ Christians forgot God, that should also be true for those ‘norminal’ Christians that do violent things are also “forgetting God”.
Does that help you? I don’t think so.
In case you care, I’m no Christian even when my surname is Christian. When forced to label I choose ignostic.
A lot of self proclaimed atheists who get blinded by their faith. They think that the meme they identify with God is the thing that most people mean when they say God. Very often that leads to misunderstanding of arguments such as the argument made by Solzhenitsyn. It gets reduced to the question “did God intervene to punish people who forget him” and “will Christian’s always act moral?”.
You lose a lot of details. What changes in a society if people socialize in workers unions instead of going to church?
Re: nominal. Could be a True Scotsman fallacy. Discuss.
People generally do neither where I come from. So what?
I think you are trying to set up a true scotsman as a strawman.
You live in the 21st century. It doesn’t make much sense to analyse events from the early 20st century by imposing your 21st century perspective.
In our times the average person didn’t replace the social enviroment that churchs provide and is more lonely than his ancestors were. He’s postmodern in the sense that he doesn’t have a strong loyality to a single framework. A lot of atheists do have some loyality to academic science and spokespeople like Richard Dawkins but that loyality isn’t strong enough to die for. In Willpower Roy Baumeister (who’s no theist) argues that partly as a result of not believing in God willpower is now lower than it was in the past.
Debating Church v. nothing to replace it is different than debating Church v. early 20st century Marxism (and the institutions that got created after the revolution was “successful”). Answering a question about the effects of believing in God is depends a lot on the zeitgeist of the time you are speaking about.
But to get back to the issue of “true Christian’s”, the people who go to church because their parents went to church are different than the people who have spiritual experiences and believe in God because of those experiences.
A few days ago I was debating a Christian theology student. He follows in the foodsteps of his father who’s a priest. He had to admit to me that he has no good argument for why he prefers Christianity is more true than Islam. He believed that everybody get’s to heaven regardless of how he lives his life. According to him there are a lot of people in his faculty who see things similarly. On the other hand those fellow students with spiritual experiences have racidally different views than him.
If you want to speak about the effect of being Christian, self labeling as Christian isn’t necessarily the best criteria. Spirtiual religious experiences or spending a lot of time in Christian rituals are likely to be more important than self labling.
It gets him his daily bread, then? :-)
To some Christians, that is outright heresy. Does he have any arguments for why he prefers his Christianity to any other Christianities?
Do they all differ from him in the same way?
I thought you might go down that route, and you did.
Maybe it isn’t strong enougnh to start a war for either. Are we so much worse off without that kind of Willpower?
No, I didn’t argue that true Christian’s don’t commit violent acts. I made a bunch of claims but that isn’t one of them.