Who Is God? Why Does He Allow Suffering? Will It Ever End?

Superman I is way better than Superman III, Superman III is unforgivable. I love Richard Donner, without him we wouldn't have Lethal Weapon and all the unnecessary sequels.

In a sense, that's exactly what happened! (Looking at the life & legacy of Constantine lends to the conversation).

I can expect some flack on my summary, but I condensed two thousand years down into a paragraph.

P.S. Scientology is not a religion in any sense of the word. Scientologist believe (or actually publicly deny believing) in really bad sci-fi stories written by L. Ron Hubbard in the fifties. Heck, they could've gained a bit more credibility if they based their "religion" on Starship Troopers!

Well, on these points we can agree. Thus ends our religious argument!

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

It won't be our last

That is up to you.
But I can't disagree with anyone who feels Superman III was awful. It was even more awful than IV (which was pretty awful).

Now this all begs the question - why did God allow Superman III? I know humanity committed many heinous acts & genocides over the eons, but did innocent comic book fans in 1983, among them children, deserve to have Superman III inflicted upon them?

Or did God simply implant the idea of Superman into the minds of Siegel & Shuster, and what evolved (through decades of the work of man, through sin, through the greed & avarice of comic book companies and movie producers) was the atrocity of Superman III - not the work of a loving God, but a corruption of one of God's creations by the imperfect soul of man?

I still don't get it.
And as a jokester, I feel ashamed when I need the joke explained to me.

But as it says in the book of Luke: "Jokester, punchline thyself."

This is misleading. JW's are typically considered a christian religion. Whether or not you agree with this assessment is a separate issue. I'm also curious which definition of "The Messiah" you are using that would exclude JWs. I can see an argument for Mormons, but that debate is far from settled.

Scientology, obviously, isn't considered christian, and it's grey whether or not it's a religion at all.

Christian = recognizes the Divinity of Christ.

A competing definition among many. I respect your ability to decide for yourself what being Christian means, but I'm uncomfortable with making that decision for other people.

Premarital Repping.

JW don't believe in the trinty so my argument would be they don't believe in the divinity of Christ. They also have a extremely limited scope of the afterlife which all but excludes everyone. These type of arguments are picking at gnats anyway because non-believers somply lump us all together and believers have no problem distinguishing the major differences.

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Well, let's flip the situation: when someone calls themselves a Christian using some other definition, are they making that same decision for me? If so, then it's obviously fine for me to advance my competing definition. If not, then I'm not making one for them. Nothing objectionable either way.

And if there were anything objectionable, wouldn't it apply to the mere act of having definitions at all? Anyone can consider themselves to be X (Christian, tall, clever), and the mere act of giving X a definition means it will necessarily describe some people and not others.

Now the jokes are becoming increasingly cryptic (to me anyway).

Premarital Repping:
I just gave away my first time to someone named "Steel" in a religious thread.


It's a sex joke.

I have to lean toward Yoda's definition.

I consider myself a "philosophical Christian" in that I believe the teachings of Christ are good & are effective toward living in harmony with others and finding inner peace for yourself.

But when it comes to his divinity (his immaculate conception, his being the only begotten son of God, him being the perfect, miracle-working, sin-less man-God, him rising from the dead after being executed, him being the ONLY way to forgiveness of sin, salvation & eternal life, etc.), I simply don't know.
So I stopped referring to myself as "Christian" a long time ago, because the reference suggests that I believe fully in the divinity of Jesus and look to him as my personal savior (i.e. my insurance for a reservation in Heaven in the afterlife).

Now I refer to myself as Agnostic as a more accurate representation of my belief system (or lack thereof).

Re: Seanc & Yoda

You are getting into areas I don't care to debate (because I don't have skin in the game. I don't consider myself Christian, and I'm not a JW or Mormon, perhaps they would go down those lines). My issue was with the cleanliness with which you try to wipe away JW's and Mormons ability to self identify. There are many, many people who agree with you. But there are more that don't. It's at the very least a controversy. That doesn't make you wrong, but I also felt that the disagreement wasn't being shown.

You are likely correct about those details (I'm not an expert on JW's, but I believe you wouldn't say that without knowing it). But I don't think those parts are necessary to being a "Christian", which in my mind is a very broad term of identity that has a cluster-style definition at best.

I absolutely agree with what I generally consider to be the underlying premise (definitions are more useful when they exclude more), however I don't agree that your definition has a natural right to the term "Christian". Perhaps "Christ Divinists".

Also I agree with the first part, you can advance your definition, and that's fine. My concern was with the idea that something as complicated as an identity was being given an apparently necessary and sufficient clause.

I obviously can't prove this, but I'm guessing that poll probably reflects ignorance about what Mormons believe a lot more than disagreement about what makes someone a Christian.

I think this may ultimately be a self-refuting position: if no one's definition has a natural right to a term, that includes other people who call themselves Christian. So if my definition of Christianity is defining away their identity, then their definition must be doing the same thing to me in reverse. So we're left with two options: either the mere act of having words mean things is inherently oppressive, or the mere act of stating a definition is not inherently a provocation/erasure/whatever.

I dig. If you're just trying to let others reading know that my definition is not a hard fact, that's fine. Though in that case, I obviously have to ask: what group self-identifies as Christian without believing in the Divinity of Christ?

That's what I was basically asking. I asked that because I know very little about Mormons, Jehovah Witness and other groups.

I don't think it's slander or negative to say that some of these groups aren't Christians....just like it's not slander to say Jews are not Christians.

Honestly I don't know if they call themselves Christians? I don't even think I've heard a Catholic call themselves a Christian, they refer to themselves as being Catholic.

To be fair, Slappy's talking about a general philosophical principle, so his contentions are well worth engaging with even if we can't find a single person who would disagree with the definition in question.

But yeah, once you leave the realm of the abstract and/or issues of identity, it's almost a syllogism: to be a Christian is to follow Christ, Christ says he was the Son of God, and you can't philosophically "follow" someone while simultaneously disagreeing with the core of their philosophy.