STEVEN... careful now mate.. suggesting that CJ and me are just equal but opposite poles could be so traumatic for CJs health that he might sue you :)

Peas in a pod eh ? hmmm I'll have to reflect on that. But I have to ask... when was the last time I abused you, or tried to assasinate your character and integrity ? :)

JOHNNY ROTTEN.. mate.. please do some clear thinking on what 'being Christian' really is. You can sus this out in the New Testament..Gospel of Mark is an easy 'action movie' read, and Acts is good.. then...some of the letters of Paul. Romans is very systematic but edifying, and answers a LOT of questions about life and God.

Once you reach that point of understanding what a Christian "is" you can then make reasonable comparisons between that and the whacky groups out there who claim to be Christian...or.. are said to be by others.

Cheers

Boazy: "when was the last time I abused you, or tried to assasinate your character and integrity ?"

Boazy's right - he reserves that approach for refugees, Muslims, Greens and gays.

Well CJ, I didn't claim I thought it was *likely* to happen, and you know from my posts in other threads that I largely believe that Muslim immigration should have a dampening affect on fundamentalism, as more and more Muslims see first hand the benefits of living in a secular, liberal democracy. And thankfully it will inevitably have a dampening affect on fertility rates too.

CJ... you forgot 'evolutionists' :)

I have to post this little snippit in this thread.. I don't know how to otherwise bring it to Steven's attention.. as this is his namesake.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177&program=CSC%20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science

>>On August 4th, 2004 an extensive review essay by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239). The Proceedings is a peer-reviewed biology journal published at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

In the article, entitled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”, Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms. He proposes intelligent design as an alternative explanation for the origin of biological information and the higher taxa.<<

So.. perhaps we can include his work in the 'Christian Madrassah' :)

Oh.. that list of people you mentioned.

-Refugees. no.. only the ones who try to illegally enter the country and use deceit.

-Muslims. No.. only those who seek to impose Sharia law on us.

-Greens. No, only those who deliberately place animal and plant life above human, as opposed to a responsible and sustainable stewardship of the planet.

-Gays. No.. only those who seek to politicize it, and impose it on our children through education and the media.

See... you 'generalized' against me.. yet a-gain. "You disagree..thus you hate me" kind of thing.

*ouch*.. I just felt a sharp pain in my back.. must be one of those pins going into the Boaz effigy.

Johnny,

Perhaps you are right but I still believe it was sloppy because odds are Runner would allow the possibility that some identifying as Christians do not live Christian ideals yet he made the statement without considering that you would go to town on it. Assuming this is correct then he could have instead said that harming people is contrary to Christian belief. If my assumption is correct that is what he meant. That would be less sloppy in that he would simply be communicating his message without any additional but unintended meaning for you to play with. Hopefully Runner will confirm I am correct.

Further, if my assumption is correct then calling him names (or a name) would be dangerous when you claimed that all baddies in a number of categories were Christians. As with the assumption I made about Runner I assume you don’t really think that absolutely noone in the categories you listed are non-Christian. The danger would be that Runner could go to town on you as obviously some would have to be non-Christian.

Thanks for the articles. I have glanced at all of them and will hopefully get time to read them properly.

CJ,

I don’t want to strike a nerve by supporting some old arch enemy when I don’t know the history so please don’t read anything extra into this but your belief system doesn’t allow free thinking. That is dangerous although your only current victims are Christians. It would be nice if you were to take that on board and weren’t such an extremist. If you don’t believe me would you like me to play psychic and predict your answers to a range of questions?

Anger is a perfectly normal human emotion – it affects everyone at some time regardless of our ideologies.

Some are better at dealing with anger than others. When we are angry we should ask ourselves why.

I know why I am angry at people like runner and other dogmatic fundamentalists. It is because they would rather attack me personally than debate me. I have no intention of getting violent. Anger does not necessarily lead to violence, it is simply a sign we should ask ourselves why we are feeling angry.

Now I have dealt with yet another deliberate attempt to divert the debate, I will continue.

I apologise if I appear to be concentrating only on Christians, but I know more about Christianity than other religions and the relentlessly dogmatic religious on OLO claim to be Christian.

OK, I have pointed out the many acts of violence committed by Christians before and even provided links for those who seem to believe that Christians never do bad things.

Fact is everyone does bad things.

Problem is we don’t always like to admit that we do – bad things that it. Which brings me back to hypocrisy; I believe we should own what we do either as individuals or as a group.

Seems to me that not a single Christian poster here is willing to acknowledge that both now and in the past that Christians have done very bad things indeed.

The question I would like to pose is why?

If Jesus is about loving one another, what has gone so fatally wrong with his peaceful message?

Why aren’t Christians working towards peace, why do they try to blame others rather than cleaning up their own behaviour first?

After all, Jesus himself asked “who cast the first stone?”.

Well there is a lot of stone flinging here and not a lot about respect for those who are not Christian but who are their neighbours.