[ExI] What is Christianity

[Stefano Vaj]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Dan<dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It's not really the easy road in terms of understanding reality.  There are people who call themselves Christians.  They advocate and act on specific views.  You have an idea of what Christianity means and it differs from the views they mouth.  Why is your idea better than theirs?

"Better" is too strong a word. Who says, for instance, that muslims
are wrong when they consider christians, or at least catholics, as
polytheist? Or for that matter that christians are not satanists, and
atheists are not christians?

"Linguistically more useful", perhaps? "Conventionally advisable"?
"Philologically and historically plausible"?

> And what exactly is that?  Does Monophystism or Nestorianism have less claim to the title "Christian" than, say, Catholicism?

No. But, if one accepts that not all claims should be taken at their
face value, shintoists, agnostics, or worshippers of the Flying
Spaghetti Monster may.

> But if you agree with that, which seems to be a way of sidestepping your former "essentialist" approach, then how would justify your view of Christianity (and presumably Judaism and Islam) as a religion based on certain sacred books?  Are you sure the "dominant sense" of Christianity (or of Judaism or Islam; of course, they might differ) is scriptural literalism?

As I repeatedly said: No. Simply, those who are out of the christian
tradition and/or reinterpret if in order to force it in the frame of
other beliefs are not very representative of it, whatever they may
claim.

The same goes for transhumanism, btw. As soon as transhumanism becomes
a mere pretext for the contraband of different, albeit legitimate,
agendas in the transhumanist camp nothing forbids that one defines
oneself a transhumanist, but many transhumanists would nevertheless
simply consider you an infiltrate or a rhetorician... :-)

And I am not speaking here of those who are simply ignorant, lukewarm,
weak, uncertain, etc., of whom every family is of course full,
christianism and islamism, thank the gods, included.

-- 
Stefano Vaj