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Status: Misconception
Posts: 96
Joined: Jun 2005
Currently: Offline
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Atheism Presupposeds Theism
I am all in favor of issues, evidence and logic. I don't know what kind of "Christians" you have been debating with, but my faith appeals to reason and common sense. I would be more than happy to explain how Catholic faith is not based on sappy sentiments and emotionalism.
Yes, it most certainly is a lie. See?? We can agree on something, and we haven't even started yet. As for "better person than the non-believer", its not the Christianity I know. To be truly great, a Christian will seek to receive and esteem those of less status than himself. A little child for example. The lower in status the person we receive, love, and care for, the greater we are IN THE HERE AND NOW. A real Christian will see the value and dignity of others and see them to be more important than himself, especially non-believers. The mission of the Church is to identify with the poor. It's all right here:
Mattew 18:[1] At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"
[2] And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them,
[3] and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
[5] "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; So there it is. Many don't get it. Christians are to receive EVERYONE as if they were Christ Himself. How well we do that determines how great we are. If you want to focus on our failures, you need not look far, but I respect your disdain for hypocracy.
Empty cliches, perhaps. I make no excuses for the shallowness you may have encountered. But if you are going to judge the depth of a persons intent with generalizations, what does that make you?
I don't get it. Are you an atheist?
You have no strong logical arguments above. Just emotional irony. And I have met many atheists and none of them are filthy. Please explain how morality is measured.
But you like being accused!!! Why else would you be here?
What is truth? I don't claim to own the truth, and neither should you or anybody else. Truth is not a possession, and it has to come from somewhere outside a person. Truth is not of our own making. Even Christ proclaimed that the truth He illuminated did not spring from Him alone. “My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me” (John 17:6). Truth is not subjective. It represents the objective order of things. The person who comes to know something of the truth, then should experience humility, not vanity, for he discovers something that is not his.
Christ was emphatic in his denunciation of the Pharisees who claimed to know something of the truth but behaved with a pretentious snobbery. Truth is not he cause of Pharisaism, vanity is.
And both Christ and his Church are unrelenting in their advocacy of humility and in their condemnation of vanity. In fact, it may be far less tolerant of Pharisaism than the secular world. Consider, for example, the comment, “I hate anything fake,” made by Britney Spears, a veritable icon of artificiality and pretense. The secular world awards this kind of duplicity with celebrity. You hate anything fake, right Jester?
I agree. These are not arguments.
I agree its a poor strategy. If a person is indisposed or unwilling to receive the truth, arguments are a waste of time, and no one converts because they lost an argument. But sometimes they convert when their belief system comes crashing down.
Jester, you can accuse others for their methods, but you cannot accuse them for their intentions. So you manipulate people to misfire which proves your position. I say to you and I say to anti-Catholics: if you must disprove something to support your truth, it isn't really truth at all, because truth will stand on its own merits, or its not truth. The fact that one must disprove shows they have little or no truth. That is why Catholicism is not anti-anybody.
Some people have grown up in healthy Christian families and don't need to come to Jesus because they have always been with Him. Some people come to Jesus in drug or alcohol recovery programs. You will be judged by the way you lived your life on this earth, and God doesn't need you to believe in Him for that, He is much bigger than our opinions.
You have been turned off by the fatalistic condemning god of Calvinism and so am I. I think such theology has done alot of damage to Christianity. But it aids the non-god of your invention. The one you designed from the mirror. I am willing to bet that if you made a list of all the things about God that you don't believe in, chances are I don't believe much of it either.
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“There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing.”
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Last edited by no_fixd_address : 06-04-2005 at 02:58 AM.
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