They're probably Koreans. For odd historical reasons, Korea is the second most Christian country in Asia with only the Philippines ahead of them.
Re: Talk is cheap Point taken and for the most part, I'd agree with you. Now, reverse the position and have someone judge you based on what they find wanting in you & tell me how you'd react to that.
Re: Talk is cheap No. As I've said, I wouldn't label someone as stupid or 'good' or 'bad' based upon what side of a "value" issue they come down on. We can argue what are value issues or not too. Some people do examine issues carefully and think from themselves and disagree with my opinions. Yourself and jsimm generally fall into the category I would say. Others certainly do not. What I am saying is that if I am judging someone on their opinions on 'value issues' then I'm more likely to judge them on their reasoning than their conclusion. Please read my posts properly before responding. I'm not sure how I can make it clearer that this is not what I've said that I would do. Sometimes, yes. In some cases, it's the best description to use for a person. Well, it's to prevent the birth of a human. The same as using birth control. And it's not the same as the Bill Clinton example. Oral sex is still sex, by some definition. A fertilised egg is not a human being.
Re: Talk is cheap Depends on who they are. One of my friends? My parents? An SI swimsuit model? I'd probably care. Someone who claims to be religious but never actually do anything meaningful about it? Some random guy on a soccer chat board who doesn't know me from Arthur Bottom? Not so much. Also, what is the criticism? I'm pretty ruthless with myself so I'm more aware then most people of my own faults and I'm old enough to have made my peace with them. But if someone can show me something accurate and new, I'd likely pay attention to it. If people who claim to be religious don't want to hear my observations, that's fine - and utterly expected.
Re: Talk is cheap there are different methods of birth control. some prevent conception, like condom usage. others do not prevent conception but prevent the fertilized egg from having a sound environment in which to develop. Catholics see both of those methods as immoral, but for different reasons. preventing conception is playing God. the latter method is also playing God, but in a different way: ending the life of an embryo. your point that an fertilized isn't a human is based entirely on the idea that a fertilized egg becomes a human at some point in its development. there is little agreement on when that happens. so rather than say that a fertilized egg becomes a human as soon as it has the potential to be a human, the arguments center around technical questions. i understand that having a universal standard may be hard to come by, but why the standard doesn't fall closer to the "Life is sacred" argument shows me that many people don't want the answer to fall under the umbrella of moral certainty. ultimately, that leads to the sort of situational ethics that make me cringe. most people have their "cringe points". that's one of mine.
i would add the qualifier that the Philippines may have more "nominal" Christians than Korea, just as the USA probably has more "nominal" Christians than people who are identifiable as Christians by how they live rather than what box they check.
Just wondering... If there is such thing as a nominal Christian is there such thing as a nominal atheist? In orther words, it's possible to be a phoney Christian so it must be possible to be a phoney atheist.
Re: Talk is cheap I have a question for Royalstilton (mmmmm cheese) How do activist churches reconcile their reliance on biblical proscriptions to denounce much of the above, and to call for regulation so based, with the lack of concern for other things equally, or more, proscribed? Why are gays to be subjugated but compound revolving interest (usury) ignored as a political and social issue? Id be alongside clergy condemning, and organizing opposition, to usurus consumer credit corporations. How are some proscriptions declared absolutes and others ignored?
Only if the atheist has a declared set of beliefs and ethical norms that he/she violates or at least ignores. As long as atheism is simply the individually held belief that there is no "god", then I'd say it's pretty difficult to be a nominal atheist.
Re: Talk is cheap But surely you'd have to admit that there's a difference between 'potential to be human' and 'human' and that this difference is crucial? Closer to the "Life is sacred" argument than what? Surely you'd move the 'standard' closer to your own view until abortion was illegal (unless under exceptional circumstances), if it was up to you? I'm just as uncomfortable with the thought of 'babies' being aborted in the womb as anyone. Ideally, I'd like us to be able to define, acurately, when life begins and to legislate accordingly. But, in reality, it's a difficult situation.
Re: Talk is cheap especially crucial to the embryo, what? if abortion were illegal there would be illegal abortions. that's not more desirable than no abortions. the fewer abortions the better. that would be the case if more people viewed life as sacred. how about this: Life begins at conception. but that means a different attitude toward that life. it then becomes a matter of greater personal responsibility. that requires a big commitment to being other-centered, and we all know how much of a challenge that is.
Re: Talk is cheap I don't understand what you're trying to say. Can you not just admit that 'potential to be human/alive' is different from 'human/alive'? In an ideal owrld, yes. It doesn't though.
Re: Talk is cheap This last point is usually where reasonable people disagree. What I'd like to know is when, in your opinion, does life begin? When the fetus looks like a person? When the fetus can reasonably survive outside the womb? When the cord is cut? There is great complexity within the law. In California abortion is pretty much whenever the female wants it. The male has no say. However, you shoot a pregnant woman & kill her & the fetus, you will be charged with double murder even if you didn't know she was pregnant. So, I guess in that case, the fetus is life. I wonder why no one has run that one through the courts?
Re: Talk is cheap That should never be run through the courts--it should be statutory and based upon Exodus 21:22, then it would be something everyone with a Abrahamic-religous system of morality could agree upon.
If "nominal" means somebody who pretends to be something he's not, then I suppose a person who calls himself an atheist but when things get tough starts praying to God would be an example of a "nominal" atheist.
i don't think "nominal" means faking it or operating under false pretenses. i think "nominal" means that the person is "xyz" in name only. that may be the result of misunderstanding. here's the problem as far as Christianity is concerned. for some reason, especially in the Western World, there is a lot of stock placed in getting people to say "the prayer", asking Jesus into their hearts, as if that's what turns someone into a disciple of Jesus, which is what Jesus said the object was. but being a disciple means learning, through a fairly lengthy training process, normally, to do what your master does. it's like learning a trade. you don't become a master carpenter by strapping on a tool belt. so it's easy to think "i'm a Christian" because i repeated the words someone told me to say, regardless of what i do afterwards. that's what it would mean to be a nominal Christian, IMO.
"Christian" means to be covered in oil. So, to become a "Christian", you must be anointed with a psychoactive "chrism". The whole "get on your knees and ask Jesus to save you" thing that the evangelicals do misses the whole point.
Yeah, I gotta agree with this. My experience with Korean people that I've known is that they tend to take whatever they're into - religion (I know both Christians and Buddhists but, oddly, no Confucians), hip hop, making money, breeding dogs, whatever - more seriously than a lot of people. This is, of course, hardly a scientific sample but mere personal observation. Maybe I just happen to know particularly intense individuals. At this point, though, I suspect it may be an ethnic trait, which is not to say that 100% of all Koreans are automatically all like that. Even with the Koreans, though, while they may be more fervent believers or may go to church more often (although to what extent this is so because they may be immigrants and the church serves in part a strictly social function of gathering with others from "back home" as well as providing a religious one), once they get outside of church, they're little different from "secular" people. Examples of groups who do take their religion seriously to the point that it impacts their daily life are the old order Anabaptist groups - the Amish, the Hutterites, etc. The people in these groups are still human and therefore not not perfect. They even do things that, to me, are unbiblical. Some Amish farmers, for example, operate hideous puppy mills which is totally against what I consider the biblical call to be responsible, caring stewards of the earth and the animals in it. Also, IMO, some of their group practices are based on a flawed interpretation of the Bible. At the same time, I do have to say they come closer to what I consider to be an attempt to live according to the spirit of what Yshua taught even if they don't get it right all the time. -------------------------- If you ask the people in the megachurch if they are "christian", they'll sincerely say "Yes" - and they almost certainly believe 100% that they are. My opinion is that they are wrong because they have a flawed understanding of what it means to be christian but that doesn't mean that they're consciously lying when they claim to be christian. ------------------------ Point of order: Without going into the complicated history of various vague titles and labels that emerged from the swirling whirlwind of second temple Judahist religious thought, "Christos" (Χριστός) is a Greek translation of "משיחא" (modern Hebrew = מָשִׁיחַ) which in this context is a personal title meaning "The Annointed One", a unique figure in later second temple/early christian cosmology. So christians are not claiming to be The Annointed One, only to follow his teachings. In the early church, it was baptism in water, not annointing with oil, that was the initiation that marked a person as christian.
Re: Talk is cheap Reasonable people maybe. Objective people, I'm not so sure. Defining conception as the moment the sperm penetrates the egg, it seems ridiculously clear that at that instance, you do not have a human life. The fertilised egg grows becomes a foetus and then 'becomes alive' for want of a better expression. Defining life, in general is a difficult thing to do and I'm not an expert so obviously can't give you a timeframe for when I think human life begins. My feeling is that life begins when consciousness develops. That might even be a far too simplistic way to look at it. Consciousness probably develops over a period of time, working up to full 'baby consciousness' so people could even argue about at what point in the development of consciousness is acceptable. Also, obviously, we can't determine when consciousness begins at the moment anyway and may not be able to in the foreseeable future, at least.
Re: Talk is cheap Conscious of what? Rational thought? Science has proven that the fetus responds to stimuli relatively early. If we go with the ability to rationalize there are some on this board who are not yet alive.
Re: Talk is cheap A dead body will respond to stimuli and that's pretty much the definition of not being alive. As I said, though, I'm far from an expert (same as everyone here, I believe) so I can't really talk about specifics with much authority. In an ideal world, or course there would never be any abortions but we don't live in an ideal world and issues like this are rarely black and white.
Then it's not that they are not Christians, but that their understanding of Christianity is very different from yours. In Argentina when I was growing up we had some Christians who really didn't fit into the society. They dressed different, they carried a Bible under their arm, went around reciting Bible verses and criticizing the pope, they only associated with others like them, they probably kept their kids as isolated as they could from "the evil sinful world", and basically they lived for their religion. Then we had the average Catholic, who was in the majority. They went to mass, did confession and other than that they lived what one might call the typical normal life of an Argentine. Now the extreme evangelical I described would say that the catholic was not a real Christian, and based on his own understanding of Christianity, he would be right. But that doesn't mean that the faith of the typical Catholic was any less real. Likewise, the average American who attends the megachurches may not have his life impacted by his religion as much as the Amish or the Anabaptist does, but who's to say his faith is less real?
By that logic, then, any definition of "christian" is meaningless. I don't believe that, even though nobody is 100% sure exactly, to the word, what Yshua taught. I still think that we can make some damn good conclusions based on what we now know of the NT texts, their context and what the early church reports of their own practices and how those compare with what other groups were doing at the time. One thing I think we're all pretty sure of is that Yshua would not have agreed wit the idea that people should only pay attention to what he taught for one hour a week. That alone right there without positing any other criteria shows that most American aren't "really" christians rather than they just don't agree with whatever I may think about the matter. Let me put it this way: what would you think of someone who claimed to be a marxist because they attend a marxist group meeting an hour a week and then spent the rest of their week running their sweatshops, busting unions, and authoring pamphlets advocating racism and the sanctity of private property? Would you claim that they are a real marxist or argue that their understanding of marxism is merely very different from that of pretty much everyone else on the planet, including Karl Marx? The thing that allows this sorry (from Yshua's POV) state of affairs is that nobody is pointing out to these people the gap between what they should be doing and what they are doing. Any American church that dared unambiguously challenge its congregation to live like the earliest christians per the example of Acts would instantly lose all its members and its priests or pastors would be denounced and attacked in the most shrill terms possible as "communists", "hippies" and "unpatriotic". and these attacks would come from exactly the groups that today most loudly proclaim themselves "christians". And if a large enough portion of the population began living this way, the corporations would demand that the State take action against them because "they'd be bad for the economy". Also, I'm not picking on just the suburban megachurches, btw. They merely serve as the most blatant mainstream symbol of the disparity between the teachings and the practice. The same is true for all denominations of any size.