[Do you approve of Sellick referring to all nonChristians as the "living dead"?]

Indeed the bible claims that nonbelievers are spiritually dead. Probably not the most diplomatic way of putting it, in the absence of a thorough and loving explanation of what is meant.

[Are you so arrogant as to support Sellick when he commands nonChristians to:

"join the community whose being is found in Christ and raise your children in that community."]

"Command" is the key word here. "Invite" would be a fairer description of Sells position (and yes, of my own).

[How would you feel if the Dalai Lama made the same claims about you? Would you not be offended?]

Not in the slightest. I'd have no issue with that.

As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is worth following and that the Dalai Lama isn’t. It's an exclusive claim I make there, so I'd be a complete hypocrite if I took offense at someone else doing the same.


[I gained from your early post a claim Hitler denounced Catholism in his youth. He was an alter boy.]

[I see little reason why Hilter would’ve been a closet atheist]

I said he denounced the Catholicism OF his youth, not IN his youth.

I'm not sure if you could definitively call him an atheist, but in light of his comments in table talk (see here: http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Table-Talk-Adolf-Hitler/dp/1929631057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243412639&sr=8-1 ) it'd also be completely unfair to call him a Christian. He was obviously a very confused and disturbed man. I might add though, given his later statements it'd have to throw some doubt over whether he was legitimate in his original claims to be a Christian anyway.

[Regarding one's memberships, all secular humanists I know do not below to Stalin's association, yet Christians, harsh Irish Priests, Ivan the Terrible, and the many, many mass murders we know throughout history do belong to The Chistrianity Association. Christians are necessarily affiliated with other Christians, who have committed horrific crimes].

So, what's good for one Christian is good for all Christians, but what's good for one atheist is NOT good for another atheist? Yep. Logical

Have a read of John Dickson's latest article:

http://www.publicchristianity.com/religious_violence.html

Some of his main points:

"The slogan ‘religion-leads-to-violence’ finds plausibility today not through logic or the facts but through simple repetition"

"First, I doubt you will find any Christian today who is not rightly and deeply ashamed of the Inquisition and the Crusades"

"That said, secondly, most retellings of these stories involve gross exaggerations"

"The elephant in the atheist’s room is that there have only been three formally atheistic regimes in world history—Stalin, Mao, Poll Pot—and they weren’t exactly improvements! Stalin’s openly and ideologically atheistic project killed more people each week than the Spanish Inquisition did in a third of a millennium"

"It is naïve or dogmatic not to admit the great good done in Christ’s name throughout history (need I list them?!). Even today most non-Government welfare in this country is delivered through faith-based agencies. Create a list of all the organizations you know and do the maths. And, according to government figures, a disproportionate amount of philanthropic giving and volunteering is offered by those who regularly attend church. This doesn’t make Christians better than secularists but it belies the claim that they are worse."

"Anyone can tell you that when Christians are violent and imperialistic they are not obeying Jesus but defying him who said “love your enemy and do good to those who hate you.” At best, the criticisms launched by Hitchens, Dawkins and Coulter only prove that Christians haven’t been Christian enough. Believers confess that daily, and look to Christ for mercy and guidance."

Those points are all points well made, but the sting in the tail of Dickson's brilliant article was how he turned the tables by switching from defending his own position to probing his targets:

“Finally, there is an awkward question that atheist critics have to face… On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker? Put another way, only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism".

Fractelle

Please do not categorise me with Peter the Believer - he is a lone ranger and an easy mark for you and Pericles / Oliver / Blue Cross etc to mock which you do with ease and relish.

You ask whether you are "living dead" via reference to Sells commentary? Sells uses the language of Scripture and its analogous imagery. And it is blunt and to the point. Just as is your secular rationalist position that places me, as a person of faith, to be an intellectually / emotionally impaired person who needs a crutch to manage my existential fears. I know you mean me no harm and you wish me strength to take control of my life and assert my autonomous self to master my own situation whatever it may be. So none of us need to be offended. Language can be strong without being offensive.

So what does such blunt Biblical language have to offer in return. Nothing other than everything. That you have life to the full. The ultimate freedom is the right to know of and accept God's love. The degree of fullness of life flows from the acceptance and then the response. There is nothing passive in this. And fortunately we live in a secular world that defends the freedom of religion for all so there is no restraint on the ability to coming to know of God's love. There is a rich, rich heritage in this running stream of great resource under our western civilisation. And it keeps surfacing.

And this where the Post Secular age is beginning to dawn. Renown German rationalist philosopher Jurgen Habermas talks of it as a declaration of the failing of the secularisation thesis whereby religion will die out thanks to scientific and technological progress, reduced fear from ignorance and control of our existential circumstances. He notes that "the awareness of living in a secular society is no longer bound up with the certainty that cultural and that social modernization can advance only at the cost of the public influence and personal relevance of religion."

Peter the Believer,

The Magna Charta was signed by King John in 1215 but it wasn't enacted, because the Pope quashed it. It was the nobels, not the King with the NT in hand, who wanted change. Before the KJV, an attempt to translate the Bible into English was met with the Christian's burning the author at the stake.

The current Coronation Oath requires the English Monarch to declare he/she does not believe in transubstantiation. Certainly, pre-Tutor monarchs would have believed in what the mother church taught.

Had the Spanish Armada succeeded in 1588, there would have been no 1688 Coronation Oath. Catholism would have ruled and Sells would have believed that the Eucharist is the literal body and blood of Christ. Something the Romans thought was representative of cannibalism.

You are likely correct about the Romans killing a lesser number pf Christians than Hitler. Pursecution in Rome didn't occur under all the emperors.

The Crusaders killed other Christians not only Muslims. The Knights Templar faithful to Church, had their loyalty repaid by being slaudered under the twin edict by the Pope and the French King. The reason there was the same reason the Christians enacted ethnic cleansing agaist the Jews: i.e., to steal property and extinguish debt.

"Sells uses the language of Scripture and its analogous imagery. And it is blunt and to the point."

it's not easy to be both blunt and pointed.

Bushbasher

"Blunt and to the point as usual." ROFL

Box-Gum

While you may not wish to be included with certain other Chrisitians, you have given tacit approval to Sells categorisation of nonChristians. Not very charitable, I posit.

Trav

You should know by now that cherry picking from the bible to prove a point is wasted on people who do not hold the bible to be the font of all truth. Therefore, you also approve of Sells labeling of nonChristians. Nasty pasty.

To all, therefore, please consider the following observation:

"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry."

-- Philip Stater, Huffington Post

We need a new name; one for real Christians and one for those like Sellick.