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Last I checked Christianity is far from dead. Christianity's mission statement was never being the means of explaining natural phenomena. It's telling that peo
by nsxwolf 11y ago
Last I checked Christianity is far from dead.
Christianity's mission statement was never being the means of explaining natural phenomena. It's telling that people who make that claim usually will defend it by mentioning Galileo or modern American creationists. They just don't have a lot of other support for their belief.
- nitrogen 11y agoLast I checked Christianity is far from dead. In the US, nearly all Christian sects are declining in membership, while the "None" category grows faster than any other. That's not dead, but it's certainly dying. It's telling that people who make that claim usually will defend it by mentioning Galileo or modern American creationists. You know, it doesn't matter what theologists say "Christianity" is if tens of millions of believers all say something different. Even the ancient scholars disagreed on the amount of literalism in the Bible. An aside: isn't it blatantly hypocritical for believers to stomp all over preaching their mutually conflicting beliefs and expect total acceptance, while they throw a fit if anyone mentions the possibility of nonbelief?
- dang 11y agoPlease do not conduct religious flamewars on Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472208 and marked it off topic.
- nitrogen 11y agoI apologize for my previously elevated tone, but isn't https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472208 and the comments that follow already pretty far off topic? Replace "amusing" with "interesting" in my original comment and I don't see how my first comment would be any different in subject matter or tone.
- dang 11y agoIt's sometimes a little arbitrary where we cut the branch, but I would say no: although that comment does contain religious flamebait (like capitalizing 'lord'), it's saved by substantive historical information. If we can't talk about religion historically without getting sucked into the black hole of religious dispute, then we can hardly talk about history at all. That would not be ok, because history is interesting. So everyone has to exercise some discipline here.
- nitrogen 11y agoThanks for the clarification, and I agree. If I feel the need to comment on this topic in the future, I'll work on engaging with the history in a more constructive way.
- splawn 11y agoChristianity's mission statement was never being the means of explaining natural phenomena. There were points in time where you would have been labeled a heretic for believing that and maybe even tortured and executed if you were deemed to be influential enough. Lucky for you (and me) that brand of Christianity is in fact dead.