I forget what piece of information led me to that suspicion, still, it's unimportant anyway.
It 'shouldn't take a genius, to realize that such an individual, who keeps on harping on you
Timid8967,with all his crazy claims, and complaints about your posts, is better off reported to the moderators or ignored.
'But, they don't bother me, because I don't interact with them.
If the individuals they 'do bother, choose not to report them, then I feel I'm butting into their business by reporting someone they themselves did not report.
What's the 'point in calling out individuals who may be one of the following?
Troll,
Mentally ill,
Ill formed in development of beliefs,
An extremist of uncommon zeal, twisted in mind and belief.
Such people quite often 'can't be reasoned with.
It's like talking to a brick wall,
Well, a brick wall that's also intelligent and verbally insults you for your trouble, and forces you to listen and critique bad arguments.
Why are you arguing with a wall that insults you and forces you to listen to bad arguments?
. . .
True. But surely you would agree that some christian somewhere is a representative of christianity? Why can't the brother be that paradigm example? -
Timid8967
Sigh, why need I waste my time on this?
Let's look at his first post in the forums,
How many people do you see taking him seriously in that thread?
Generally in it, he's mocked, derided as either a troll, or a delusional extremist who is perverting the Christian religion.
If not so, then how so? If the brother is putting himself out there as the only true christian on this site, surely he must be representative of some form of christianity. I think that if brother is a christian he is a good reason not be to be one and to think that christians are evil. -
Timid8967
We already went over this, with just because X many of a group do something, it doesn't mean the entire group does that.
But athiests are a dime a dozen. They all have different views - there one common denominator is a disbelief in god. christians purport that they all believe the same thing because they all follow the same book and same god. -
Timid8967
There are 'many atheists, 'many Christians, 'many Muslims, they're 'all a dime a dozen, by their numbers on this Earth.
Besides, not all Christians agree with one another, nor all Muslims agree with one another.
They have variance in their doctrines and policy.
. . .
Defining Christians and Christianity, I'm lazy, and I'm an atheist, I don't, this moment, want to spend my time researching, defining, and typing up an essay on a religion I don't follow.
So I'll steal someone elses words.
"Christianity was not created by setting down a list of rules one day, but emerged gradually and organically from a number of groups that, in some fashion or other, venerated Jesus as Christ (i.e. messiah, “anointed one of God”).
I think it’s fairly safe to say that Christians are theists who believe, in some fashion or other, in the existence of a god; and, moreover, a single supreme god rather than a pantheon of more-or-less equals. They also all venerate Jesus of Nazareth as “Christ”, or it’s hard to see where they’d get the label “Christian” in the first place.
Beyond that, it’s varied tremendously from time to time and place to place. The mainstream (Nicene) Christian view is that there is only one god, whom they call “God”; and that Jesus was the son of God, and also co-equal with God; and that his execution by crucifixion was a planned and important act of salvation, in some sense or other. But other Christians have disagreed: some thought that Jesus was very great indeed but inferior to God; some thought there were multiple (perhaps many) gods, though only one is supreme; some thought that Jesus was purely human, others purely divine, others (like the mainstream) fully both, others part one and part the other; some thought that the crucifixion was incidental and that Jesus’s teachings were what mattered…and so on.
Personally, I think that it is hopeless to define Christianity by any set of rules. I prefer to think of it in terms of a different epistemology, by asking: what do we mean, exactly, by definition? Does a definition have to be a set of binary criteria such that only if you meet a certain set of them do you qualify for the definition? Some would say No, and a prime example is the Family resemblance idea of definitions introduced by Wittgenstein. As Wikipedia summarises it,
It argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all. Games, which Wittgenstein used as an example to explain the notion, have become the paradigmatic example of a group that is related by family resemblances.
I propose that the best useful way to define a religious group such as Christianity is by this form of definition. Else, your quest is almost hopeless, for whatever list of rules you pick, you’re sure to find groups who call themselves Christians who think that you’ve omitted things that are absolutely essential to being Christian; or that you’ve included things that are incidental or perhaps completely wrong; or more likely both.
Thus, I would suggest that the best way to make use of the other answers to this question is to browse them all, but take none of them at face value; instead extract from them their various beliefs and construct a “family resemblance” definition from them, perhaps weighted by how often they appear."
