I see. Personally, I am huge fan of the Manichean heresy, although I have been known to get some mileage out of Gnosticism and Arianism. I don’t mean that in a necessarily heretical context for me, I just mean that from a purely literary/philosophical approach.
I’m not sure what your exact problem is, but catholic is an old term that simply means ‘universal’. So the catholic truth is a universal truth, but a [Roman] Catholic truth… I had this drilled into me.
Ah. I guess I just didn’t understand what you were getting at. I thought it was more along the lines of “they’re all catholic and they just don’t know it” in the way that fundamentalists tell me that Jesus forgives me even if I don’t want him to…my bad.
I don’t know enough, so I removed my post. I should not have posted it, really, but I did. One more for idiocy.
I’m sorry, then, for keeping it alive. I didn’t think your post was idiotic, I just thought it was interesting and worth talking about.
As in the other thread, I don’t want to start another argument. Are you prepared to shake hands?
Um, sure. I didn’t want to piss you off so much as talk about the topic at hand in the direction you took it.
I’m really, really sorry. I’m not irritated, I just wanted to avoid another pointless session of using religion as a crutch to bash heads in. I’m sick of public figures and internet forums doing so.
Again, sorry.
The word catholic is not a common one. I’m an extreme outlier in all areas of life , so my opinions might be a little esotoric. On second thoughts, yes, the Gnostic heresy is supposedly bigger. I’ve never really studied them.
I’m happy to talk, but the second someone (as you have proved, it’s not likely to be you) says something inflammatory, I admit defeat. Big man to fight, bigger to walk away and all that junk.
Nutty beliefs yes, but my unkept beard says no to the perfect grooming. Church of Jeus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) are Christian, but some groups don’t agree with the fact that Mormons believe each part of the trinity is a totally seperate being, which is different than almost everyone else. That’s the number one reason I’ve been given that Mormons aren’t true Christians. Also the point that we believe everyone were brothers and sisters before being born pisses some people off because it means Satan is the brother of Jesus.
Certain protestant sects attempt to redefine the term Christianity in order to exclude mormonism, but that’s all pretty pedantic and hinges on ancilary points. As far as I’m concerned all you need to be Christian is to believe Christ is the savior. The silly part is that a lot of the points of exclusion are things you can’t find in the Bible, but are rather the result of monks thinking too hard about the same stuff for too long and making silly extrapolations.
Brad, I think if you dig deep into what Mormon’s teach, you’ll find some very significant differences between the Mormon definition of “savior” and the rest of Christianity, as well as other very fundamental differences (e.g. millions of gods, you will become an equivilent god.) On the surface it looks the same, but it is far from ancilary points.
I’ll cop to atheism when pressed, but in reality I’m somewhere between disaffection and indifference. Why do I have to care about religion? It’s about as interesting to me as foreign sports.
As of December 31, 2005, there were 52,060 Mormon missionaries serving in 338 missions both in the United States and abroad. Their work, often in cooperation with local members, resulted in 241,239 convert baptisms in 2004. As a measure of missionary effectiveness, there is some concern within the LDS Church that the number of convert baptisms per missionary per year has fallen from a high of 8.03 in 1989 to just 4.67 in 2005.
I can’t find the numbers for Africa specifically, but missionaries are far more successful in third-world countries. In the US, the average missionary will convert a total of three people during his entire two-year mission.
The LDS church hasn’t officially repudiated the doctrine of black = cursed descendant of Cain though. They allow “those people” to be members of congregations and lower level functionaries but it’s still a white man’s world AFAIK.
In my experience, the only people that really care about Mormons being Christian or not are the fundamentalist Baptists (or whatever) that love to stand outside the Temple picketing, handing out hate propaganda, and taunting temple security (whom are mostly hothead males in their early 20’s) with garments. I found my appropriate poll response, but you’re missing “Mormons are not Christians. Coulter in '08!”
That’s pretty close. They believe that there was a “lost tribe of Israel”, and that Jesus came to the Americas to preach to them. From the wiki entry on Mormonism:
“One historical belief about the Book of Mormon is the simplistic view that it is the history of all native Americans, i.e. that all native Americans are descendants of the prophet Lehi and those who came with him to the Americas. Current scholarship suggests that the Book of Mormon is the lineage history of only a small group of meso-Americans which were the descendants of Lehi. The Book of Mormon suggests that there were other inhabitants in the Americas at the time of Lehi’s arrival and that his descendants may have integrated into existing populations, perhaps providing leadership and influencing culture and religion. The debate around DNA evidence and the Book of Mormon illustrates the differences between traditional LDS beliefs and new scholarly thought. No DNA studies have yet suggested any semitic origins for meso-American people; however investigations continue.”
BONUS: Early Mormon leaders disagreed over how and why black people came to be cursed. Because, the reasoning goes, if they were descendants of Cain how could they possibly have survived the flood? Therefore, an alternate theory was developed that black people instead carried the Curse of Ham.
This is the Curse of Ham:
Noah, having saved humanity from God’s little bitch-fit, decides to throw himself a little party (“Why are you drinking Martini & Rossi?” “Cuz it’s Tuesday!”) and ends up passed out, naked and drunk. The next morning, Noah’s son Ham stumbles across his naked ass, and, no doubt embarrassed by the fact that the family patriarch and God’s chosen servant is a fucking wino, gets Noah’s other sons to cover him with some clothing. Noah’s other sons are careful to avoid looking at Noah’s nakedness, because, seriously, who the hell wants to see that?
Later, Noah wakes up, with a hangover of Biblical proportions (GET IT?!?). Enraged by the fact that Ham saw his dangle when he was passed out on the coffee table, Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan (who was probably off somewhere playing whiffleball the whole time), to be a servant to Noah’s other sons. AND THIS IS THE WORD OF GOD.
Good summary, Glenn. Although Ham “uncovering Noah’s nakedness” probably doesn’t mean just catching a glance of Noah’s pee-pee. It is used in the Mosaic Law as a euphemism for having illicit sex (for example: don’t bang your mom because you are uncovering your father’s nakedness, etc). So Ham may have been getting TEH BUTTSEX from dad.
Of course, the curse of Ham being dark skin is totally ignorant but has been used to justify horrible things like slavery over the years. There’s no precedent for it of course, but hey. I don’t imagine Skeeter and Billy down in Mississip care to learn that Moses was married to a black woman either. Keep the Bible stuff we like and toss out the rest. That’s good, God-fearing stuff.
