@Caleb So?

@Malachi No.

To All: People die because of religion. And the answer is this. concerning Jews, Christianity, and Islam. If the Jews did what the Torah said the world would be in severe danger. If Islam does what they believe they are to do the world is in danger of severe danger. Christianity Is the religion that can save the world from both the Jew and Islam.

@Onlyheisgood. Is there a particular reason you said "the Jew and Islam" rather than "the Jew and the Muslim" or "Judaism and Islam"?

So whether you believe in Christianity or not, unless you learn how Christianity can protect the world from these other two religions and help us teach them. The danger still rests upon you.

@Mr.Bultitude No.

Statement of Weakness: I do not know the difference between Islam and a Muslim.

@Onlyheisgood. Muslim : Islam :: Christian : Christianity :: Jew : Judaism

Thank you Lord.

Christianity is the true answer to terrorism. The war on terror ends when Christianity wins. This may not be the purpose of this site either. But if what is learned here can stop some Islamic Jihadist from blowing up your city. Then it is our duty to try. And It is hard to communicate Christianity to Islam, but it CAN happen on this site.

Yet how can Christians teach Islam the way, if they do not know it? Well the answer is in Galatians 5, Act 5, and John 8:7

At least the believe in Jesus. They just do not understand what he was teaching. And it can be said to them like this.

Vengeance belongs to Allah, and to those that act in vengeance with the body. steals glory from Allah, so he kills those that steal his glory.

@Caleb I think Christians still believe they are sinners, even after they've repented. So, the one-time shot at saying the Sinner's Prayer and the one-time-only baptism cannot guarantee that Christians will not be sinners. Maybe they will strive to sin less often.

@Caleb It's funny how only a few years ago I had no idea what the "Repent and be saved" thing meant. Some preachers were holding up signs at the college campus and cried out, "Repent and be saved!" People just completely ignored and walked around the preachers, though. I detoured to another sidewalk.

Had I been raised in a Christian household, I would have probably known about the fears that strike young Christians and traumatize them for life. Dr. Winell called this experience "Religious Trauma Syndrome". Sad and serious topic.

I'd make a note that Dr. Winell does not believe all religions are harmful, but if a religion causes psychological distress, then it's harmful.

@DoubleU What you said is true, but Caleb is a Christian and undoubtedly understands all that. "Sinners to repentance" is a Biblical phrase (Luke 5:32, Mark 2:17, Matthew 9:13). The purpose of the site is not for sinners to "sin less often" either.

@Mr.Bultitude Right. But I wasn't talking about the website.

@Mr.Bultitude I see that you are Presbyterian.

@Mr.Bultitude Your personality, as posted on your profile, and your dream job complement each other nicely.

@Mr.Bultitude You may find this interesting.

It's The Individual and His Religion, written by one of the forerunners in the psychology of religion.

waxeagle, the moderator of the C.SE, views the folks in his denomination as quiet and intellectual.

Sort of like Lutherans.

It's funny how some church adherents look like their founders. :P

@DoubleU I just assumed, since you were replying to a post that was about the website.

@DoubleU That's what I'm told. :)

The book does look interesting. Might have to add it to my mile-long list of books to read.

@DoubleU I think that's a fair description of both denominations. For some reason, they attract even-tempered methodical thinkers, where Pentecostals tend to be extroverted feelers, and Catholics and Baptists tend to attract a wider variety of personalities.

Those are my own deductions.

@DoubleU I'm trying to look more like Jesus every day.

@Mr.Bultitude Is the Bible included?

@Mr.Bultitude Does that include becoming Middle Eastern? :P

@Mr.Bultitude What about the deuterocanonical books or the non-canonical gospels?

@Mr.Bultitude I thought you would look like John Calvin or Zwingli.

@DoubleU I've read all the Bible, minus some Psalms and some chapters of Ezekiel and Proverbs. I hope to remedy that someday. Currently I'm rereading Luke, utilizing N.T. Wright's Luke for Everyone. I've read most the deuterocanonicals but I'm not very interested in the non-canonical gospels.

@Mr.Bultitude Why not?

@El'endiaStarman By all accounts Jesus was white, so I'm trying to become more pasty by never going outside.

That's a joke, son.

@Mr.Bultitude There are different racial depictions of Jesus. The historical Jesus probably looked Middle Eastern.

@DoubleU I've read a little of the Gospel of Thomas and tiny excerpts of a bunch of others, and they just some like a bunch of nonsense. At least books that have some level of historical acceptance by the church had a reason for that acceptance; the non-canonical gospels I've had experience with seem to have every reason not to be accepted. Read Thomas' account of Jesus saying that if women want to be saved they need to become male, for example.

@Mr.Bultitude LOL.

From what I understand it's not supposed to be taken literally, but for something so absurd on its face, I'm not very interested in looking deeper at it to find what it's "supposed to" mean, when I have the real Jesus staring me in the face in the actual gospels.

@Mr.Bultitude Are you going to or in graduate school?

@DoubleU Yes. In reality if I want to look more like Jesus it means looking more merciful and just. I don't need to actually be those things, just look like it. That's what I'm hoping anyway. Do you think he'll be fooled when I meet him on Judgment Day?

@Mr.Bultitude Be those things. Don't put on a false facade.

@Mr.Bultitude I am not an eschatological expert.

@DoubleU Yeah, I know. Just kidding again. But I do take comfort in the fact that God identifies me with his son. If it was all up to me to be those things, my only hope would be tricking Jesus, and we all know how that'd turn out.

@DoubleU I just finished my undergrad and I hope never to go back to school again. For the actuarial profession I need to take a series of exams in order for employers to take me seriously. I've heard people say that each is the equivalent of a master's degree. I think that's an exaggeration, but not as much of one as you probably think. They're really hard. I took one last year and failed. I hope to take one or two this year.

For now I'm working for peanuts as a data analyst for a k-12 textbook wholesaler.

@Mr.Bultitude I'm glad that I understand a little bit of TULIP. Otherwise, I'd just say that you can do those things as long as you want to do them.

Understanding TULIP makes me understand your language.

@Mr.Bultitude I considered going into actuarial science for a brief time. Wasn't my passion though.

@Mr.Bultitude What is failure? Below the average or an absolute boundary point?

@DoubleU I don't think Calvinism is unique in its understanding of man's inability to be perfectly righteous on his own, however. I think the understanding that even our good deeds are insufficient due to our mixed motives and short-sightedness is common to most or all Christianity.

@El'endiaStarman What do you do?

@Mr.Bultitude Cool. What do you do exactly as a data analyst? I graduated recently too, but different program.

@Mr.Bultitude My major is Applied Mathematics, but my programming skill is more marketable and in particular, I recently became much more skilled at web development, primarily with Django, in an effort to find and land a job.

@El'endiaStarman Lol. Your profile needs to be updated then.

WHOOHOO 500 consecutive days on the main site! :D

@Mr.Bultitude If I had to give a descriptor for myself, then I think my parents raised me Confucian, which is a humanistic philosophy.

@DoubleU They score it on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being best). I believe a 6 is passing. The scale is not linear. I believe a 4 or 5 is average.

@Mr.Bultitude But I never read any of the Confucian texts. My family just holds values common in most East Asian households.

@DoubleU I do a mix of things. My niche in the company is to try and aid efficiency by automating tasks. Hopefully soon I'll help migrate us to a database so that we won't have a million Excel files that all need to be updated at once whenever anyone makes any change. But in my capacity as a data analyst, I track down data on individual textbooks to help my boss determine if they would be good for us to have in stock.

@DoubleU What did you graduate in?

@Mr.Bultitude Neuroscience.

@DoubleU People have told me I look like Topher Grace and Jimmy Fallon. If either of them has founded a church, let me know. I might belong there.

@DoubleU That's pretty neat. What's your next step?

@El'endiaStarman That's cool. I'm trying to hone my IT skills too in the hopes of getting a job in-between the pay level of my current one and an actuarial one.

@Mr.Bultitude You have a sense of humor.

@Mr.Bultitude Graduate school.

@DoubleU Without it I'd be dead.

@DoubleU And after that?

@Mr.Bultitude Work.

@DoubleU Research?

@Mr.Bultitude Research laboratory or perhaps dietitian.

I find understanding Christianity very helpful, because only a few years ago, I was completely oblivious to the beliefs and practices.

I found them strange and crazy.

The gospel tracts don't work, because they are merely expressions of faith. They don't explain a person's worldview or presuppositions.

@DoubleU Do you identify as a Christian now?

@Mr.Bultitude No.

@DoubleU Very true! But few people know to examine their presuppositions.

@DoubleU Do you still believe more or less what your family does?

@Mr.Bultitude As far as I know, my family has been atheist for three generations. I am the third atheist generation.

@DoubleU Would you say you're firmly atheist, more of an agnostic, or a faith-seeker?

@Mr.Bultitude Humanist.

@DoubleU Respect.

@Mr.Bultitude Eh?

@DoubleU Saying "respect" as a reply can be understood to mean, "I respect that."

You can see such a use at 5:29 of this video: youtube.com/watch?v=UST26RjBXvo

I think when someone is affiliated with an identity for themselves, the word becomes more personal, and they are quick to defend it. Meanwhile, when someone is affiliated with an identity that is shared by their family, then their identity may be less strong.

I've met two atheists at the school I attended. They were doing a Secular Student Alliance Ask-An-Atheist stand. They both came from Christian families, and I could feel in our brief discussion and their reactions to the Christian preacher nearby that they were very strong in their atheism and antagonistic towards Christianity and other religions, but mostly Christianity.

On the same topic, I once read a peer-reviewed academic journal article, in which it talked about how Chinese international students in America were become Christians, and the social factors that pushed them to "convert". One social factor was that the students really wanted to search for Chinese Christians, and the Christian groups just happened to be there on campus.

The journal article also discussed the nature of Buddhism, which many East and Southeast Asian families share.

And it also discussed the weakening of Chinese culture.

And it addressed that some Asian parents wanted their kids to attend church, because Christianity is perceived to be a "Western religion". Possibly as a way to normalize them in Western society.

Let me see if I can find the article.

On a personal note, my mom has a lot of friends and colleagues who are affiliated with Chinese Christian churches in their personal lives; my mom, on the other hand, probably finds church boring, so she only attended church when her friends intentionally invited her.

Good news! I found the article! Hall, B. (2006). Social and Cultural Contexts in Conversion to Christianity Among Chinese American College Students. Sociology Of Religion, 67(2), 131-147.

@DoubleU Nice. Good night.

I can totally identify with the article. There was one time when my cousin came to the United States to visit us before moving to Canada to study as an international student. My mom told him that he could join a Christian group, because Christians were very cordial, enthusiastic, and passionate people.

I think that's based on my mom's experience with Mormons. She invited Mormon missionaries to come into our home, because she thought that joining a church would increase social interaction. Well, let's just say she got bored in the process. :P

Now, everything religious bores her. Funny, but my interest in Christianity actually increased since then while hers significantly decreased. However, my interest is largely academic, focusing on the sociological, anthropological, and theological.

I must admit that I had the same thoughts as described in the article, even before I was aware of the article.

I thought I could convert to Christianity formally and raise my children Catholic or Lutheran, so they could conform to what I saw was an American lifestyle, not really because I seriously believed in the doctrines.

^ I really don't have any kids; that's just hypothetical.

@Mr.Bultitude How have you not read all of the Proverbs? There's 31 chapters. One a day and you're done in a month.

Actually, I know some people that read Proverbs every month, as part of their regular devotionals.

@fredsbend I'm actually not positive that I haven't read them all. But their seemingly haphazard arrangement makes it difficult to focus on them sufficiently. I tried doing the one-a-day thing a while back but it didn't work for me. Since then, when I've studied Proverbs, I've done topical studies.

@Mr.Bultitude To each his own.

@fredsbend Or as it says in Proverbs, "Listen, my son, and do what keeps your own boat steady."

@Dan I've recently come across the concept of "post-christianity". I could not read the wikipedia article and not think "meta-secular". What are you thoughts?

Does post-christianity fall somewhere in there or is it a different thing?

Wow! 7 months later and I still occasionally think about what you wrote in that post. You apparently did something right.

You said "meta-secular" is an abstract concept you're searching for in that blog. Have you broken any ground?

@DoubleU Thank you for sharing that with me. I've looked into the term a bit. There's a little ambiguity about its use. Barna, for example, seems to be using it as a description for people who were once evangelical, protestant, but now find themselves at odds with traditional evangelical, protestant teachings. If asked, I suspect that Barna might suggest that a legitimate "post-christian" denomination might crop up as an offshoot of one of the many evangelical denominations.

Others, however, seem to be using it to describe a situation that much of the western world is in, where it was once dominated heavily by Christianity, but now finds itself only culturally relating to Christianity, but not religiously.

Barna's description is very American in perspective, I think, while the other is very European.

They are oddly similar, but come from different places. The environment of today's global world is perhaps bringing about this social co-evolution.

Either way, no, I do not identify with the descriptions.

The topic is immensely interesting, but I do not feel to be a part of the movement.

Interesting to see the responses to this question. Seems like pretty much anything goes at philosophy.se. If the question was more clear I'd consider responding.

@curiousdannii I've been meaning to check that site out, as if I need another thing to soak up my time.

Wow, asked yesterday! I expected it to be old and now off-topic or something.

Just like we have a bunch of those.

Maybe it was in the hot list.

It still might be closed. Sometimes our bad questions take a few days.

Actually, I think I could make up a decent answer too, but I don't want to waste time since I'm unfamiliar with the site. I'd be superbly frustrated to spend an hour on an answer and receive downvotes because the community doesn't like it. (I'm thinking of the highly reactionary approach Skeptics has for some topics)