[ExI] What is Christianity/was Re: If 90% of all rapists are men, are 90% of all men rapists?

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Thu Jun 11 21:24:22 UTC 2009


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Dan<dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Okay, but then there's a bigger problem here: what does it mean?  Obviously, if you're going to ask people who call themselves Christians today and throughout history, what they mean by being Christians, the answers are going to vary a lot.

Why don't we take the easy road? A triangle is a polygon with three
angles, even though in some contexts people may find it funny to call
triangles polygons with four sides, or it may also refer to one's dog
nickname.

By convention, we call christians, communists, nazis, libertarians,
transhumanists, etc. those who have a plausible claim to embody a
philologically and historically acceptable meaning of the word. And
everybody understands that if you are at odd with the legacy of the
dominant confessions, dissent  on the basis of external influences
with those who are the most motivated n your camp, and feel the need
to "reinterpret" your heritage to accomodate it better to such
infuences or to your personal taste, do not really represent what
instituted the christian (communist, transhumanist, etc.) identity, as
we know it, in the first place

Sure, the dominant sense of a given terminology can evolve, or split:
the marxist socialism of Rosa Luxembourg is not exactly the same thing
as that of the national- variety of Alfred Rosenberg. And in the
latter case we are forced to indicate specifically what we intend to
refer to.

But the endless late-XX-century dining-room games on whether the
"real" X may actually be the opposite of what has always meant X to
most people are exercises in futility, IMHO.

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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