response 25 of 121:

Feb 14 20:55 UTC 2006

/sings "the lord is in his holy temple" like that mike
 chertoff lookin preacher from poltergeist II

response 27 of 121:

Feb 14 20:58 UTC 2006

Re #17: Um, OK.  I'm not sure how exactly you set the standards for each
religion, since some religions have many duties while others have none.
But "Catholic" has a precise definition, meaning someone who has been
baptized Catholic.  If he doesn't tithe or attend church or receive
communion then he might not be a very good Catholic but the only way for
him to become a non-Catholic (in the eyes of the church) is by being
excommunicated.

response 29 of 121:

Feb 14 21:00 UTC 2006

Church attendance does not cause anything, or conclusively signify anything.
However, *lack* of church attendance in a "Christian" (or especially someone
who claims to be Catholic) a very strong sign that he or she is that in name
only.

There's a name for the argument made in the past few responses: converse error.

response 31 of 121:

Feb 14 21:07 UTC 2006

27 and 28 slipped. 

Re #27: I'm not Catholic with the capital letter myself, but I was under the
impression that such things as attending Mass and confession and doing penance
were also required. Excommunication is the most extreme punishment, used after
every effort has been made to bring the person back into the faith.

If someone hasn't been to church in five years (barring such things as extreme
illness) that's evidence that they would be lying to call themselves (whatever
religion/denomination they call themselves).

response 33 of 121:

Feb 14 21:50 UTC 2006

Catholics are indeed expected to do some things like attend some
services, but the penalty for not doing so is not explusion.  Same thing
with any other duty; an American citizen who refuses to vote, pay his
taxes and perform jury duty isn't a very good citizen but he's still a
citizen.

Not all religions require church attendance.  Deism (the religion upon
which America was founded) has no duty to ever attend church, for
example.  Yours seems a rather Christian-centric way of measuring
things.  It also leaves one with the uncomfortable question of how
exactly you label, say, non-churchgoing Catholics.  Atheists?  Pagans?
Secular humanists?  Satanists?  What?

response 35 of 121:

Feb 14 23:00 UTC 2006

I'm glad to see that you brought the word "saved" into it.  This is, in
my experience, a common problem among evangelical Protestants -- they
want "Christian" and "saved" to be synonyms, and they don't like the
idea that there are some Christians who are not saved (nor the
contrapositive.)  This is at odds with the way that religious population
statistics are normally collected, which is by self-identification. 
It's also at odds with the way most non-evangelicals look at it.  So,
when evangelicals choose to use their own private language, it's no
surprise they have difficulty communicating with the rest of us.

But church attendance is a weird one to pick, given that attendance
church is a work.  Evangelical Protestants believe that salvation is
through faith alone, not works (don't they?)

response 37 of 121:

Feb 14 23:32 UTC 2006

I once had a wonderful conversation with the pastor of the church I attended
all through childhood about church attendance and belief.  I told him that
I often felt closer to the maker outside in nature than I ever did inside a
church building with a lot of other people.  He agreed that just having that
feeling and belief was more important than attending church every Sunday. 
I recently had the same conversation with the current pastor of the church
when we were talking about my grandmother so that he had a deeper feeling of
her as a person just before his eulogy at her funeral.  He re-affirmed my
feeling that it is the belief and the closeness that is more important then
attending church service.

In the years since my childhood and church attending days, I have come further
and further away from true Christian practices and closer to Native American
type beliefs.  Christianity as believing in a diety and in turning the other
cheek and in peace to all I can agree with.  Christianity the way it is
practiced by most today, I cannot.  I cannot go along with preaching love and
peace while shooting at those of another religion at the same time.  It is
sheer hypocrisy, and I don't trust hypocrits.

response 39 of 121:

Feb 15 00:15 UTC 2006

Re #35:
"Christian" in origin means "follower of Christ"; "saved" is a synonym (except
for the possible, but unlikely, case of someone deciding to follow Christ but
to decline his offer).

Salvation is by grace through faith, yes, but true salvation will *necessarily*
produce "works"; the book of James went as far as to say that "faith without
works is dead." One demonstrates one's faith by one's works.

Re #37:
I will admit that individual closeness to God is as important as corporate
worship and fellowship, but by my reading community with other believers
(there's another synonym ...) is as important.
The core of Christian belief, as I understand it (in chronological order here),
is:
a) In the beginning, God created everything out of nothing, and therefore
everything by right is his property.
b) God created human beings to freely love him and have face-to-face fellowship
with him. However, to do this he gave them the choice to obey him or not, and
they chose to disobey.
c) By their disobedience human beings lost their ability to have a right
relationship with God, since the penalty for disobedience to God is death. This
inability is passed on [my theory is, through the male line] from parent to
child, and it caused each human being to have a tendency to disobey God.
d) God desired the lost relationship so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus
Christ, to substitute for all human beings to take their punishment. He did
this by sending his Son to earth as a human being, but one without the
inherited predisposition to disobedience. Jesus lived a perfect life and
underwent the punishment for every act of disobedience ever committed in the
history of the world and every act of disobedience to be committed in the
future before the end of time, suffering through what some have called the most
brutal form of execution ever invented (crucifixion) but also enduring
spiritual torment.
e) Three days later, Jesus rose bodily from the dead. Some time [forty days if
I recall correctly, but I'm not sure] later he ascended into heaven and sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God. 
f) Any human being may choose to acknowledge and promise to submit to God's
dominion over his or her life [which will occur whether or not he or she
submits] and accept Christ's substitution. Those who do so are thenceforward in
the eyes of God considered adopted sons and daughters of God and have within
them God's Spirit to counteract the predisposition to disobedience and cause
them to produce instead the obedience that God commands, and when God looks at
them, because of Christ's substitution, he sees Christ's perfection rather than
their disobedience.
g) Near the end of time Jesus will return in a totally obvious triumph and
judge every human being who has ever lived according to what he or she has
done. After the guilt of every human being has been established, those who
chose to accept Christ's taking of the punishment on their behalf will be
welcomed forever into the full relationship that was lost in the beginning,
which will then be even better, but those who chose to refuse Christ's offer
will go away into eternal separation from God, which is in itself an
unimaginably horrible fate (though for them to stand in God's presence would be
even worse).

Love, peace, and "turn the other cheek" isn't an accurate and complete summary.
I will admit that "convert or die" *is* hypocrisy, and "turn or burn" is
without tact.

response 41 of 121:

Feb 15 00:51 UTC 2006

There are also issues it raises about the sociology of religion that are
a bit troubling, as it suggests that when we move between a state of sin
and a state of grace we become a non-Christian and a Christian
respectively.  This means that a person may flip back and forth between
Christianity and non-Christianity often, possibly more than once a day
(particularly if you're Catholic, although I've never heard a Catholic
argue that when you're in a state of sin you stop being a Catholic, or a
Christian for that matter.)

Normally people want to talk about religious belief in relatively stable
terms, so you can ask a question like "what fraction of the US population
is Christian?" and get a meaningful answer.  If we define religous
belief in less stable terms then it becomes a question similar to "what
fraction of the US population has to go to the bathroom?"

response 43 of 121:

Feb 15 01:11 UTC 2006

Re #43: Of course I read it.  But now you're changing it, which is fine
with me.  So, let's say Bob, who believes in the divinity of Jesus
Christ and calls himself a Christian, is currently being disobedient to
God (or disobedient to what his church tell him God wants, anyway.)  Bob
is coveting his neighbor's wife.  Bob feels uncomfortable about this
situation, but he does not stop doing it; in fact he finds himself doing
it more and more.

Is Bob saved?
Is Bob a Christian?

response 45 of 121:

Feb 15 01:13 UTC 2006

did Bob ask God for forgiveness and make an effort to change?

response 47 of 121:

Feb 15 02:59 UTC 2006

Bru slipped (and then I lost my connection for an hour), and his question is a
good one, but I assumed the affirmative.

response 49 of 121:

Feb 15 03:48 UTC 2006

Re #46: I'm glad you now recognize a person can think they are Christian 
without being so. Previously, you suggested that one who mouths the words 
"I accept Christ as my savior" was automatically imbued with the spirit of 
God. Also, your summary is interesting in what it omits, such as Christ's 
rejection of the Old Testament (except for certain OT prophets). Which 
returns to the original point of this post. If there were more real 
Christians, who loved their neighbors, instead of those "Christians" who 
believe in a vengeful OT God, *perhaps* the results surveyed would be 
different.