Posted: Apr 21, 2017 5:58 pm
PensivePenny wrote:theropod wrote:You didn't answer the question. Was Jim Jones teaching Christianity or not? I didn't compare him to your church, that is your evasive misrepresentation of my query. It seems rather clear you avoided a response because if YOU deny his way was Christianity then your accusation of strawmanning on my part becomes a reflection of your own. If you claim he was teaching Christianity then the baggage of his murderous shit becomes the baggage of all Christianty, and from that point on anything and everything can be called Christianity. Which do you choose? Your thread title asks opinion of bible experts. I studied Bible in Religious Education in college as my major. If you don't actually want the input of a Bible scholar why start a thread asking for such?
RS
I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question(s). There was no "evasiveness" on my part intended. I thought all your questions were rhetorical. Whether Jones taught Christianity or not I wouldn't know or care. Nor do I see the question or my answer to it as pertinent to the op. It's so rare to find any two people who agree on what the bible means, let alone what defines a "christian," I would have thought that obvious... especially for a bible scholar. I'm inclined to let people self-describe themselves as christian and leave it at that. Whether or not they are is of no interest to me. I'm guessing, by the sound of your posts here, that you don't consider Mormons, JWs, 7th day Adventists, etc etc to be christian either. That's fine and again, not the topic of the thread.
I'm also sorry if my playing devil's advocate to your remarks is offending you. I assure you, I intended you no offense.
What I find offensive is the continued evasion even as you deny being evasive. You accused me of errecting a no-true-Scotsman fallacy, and my question highlights how it is you doing so. If you can't see the point of the question, and want anything and everything to be classified as Christian, the word no longer has any meaning. Without that meaning your whole line of questioning, and the purpose of this thread, is no more than an exercise in eliciting emotional responses. What is obvious is that Jesus supposedly died as an atonement for sin that entered the world when Adam partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as is related in Genesis and throughout the New Testament. This is not open to whimsical interpretations of fringe religions, for the reasons I have already repeatedly given. Whether you were taught this or not is not germane to the issue. If Jim Jones was a Christian then the teachings of Christ allow any insanity to be called Christianity. If this be the case then the whole issue is one of stacking BB's, or counting angels dancing on pinheads.
I strongly suggest you stop guessing my intentions, and making personalizations of an irrelevant nature altogether. It seems you don't like the answers given in response to your questions so you choose to define Christianity to suit your whims. Go for it.
RS