I stand by my suggestion, and I'm sure that most people would agree with me and not you. Beyond that, it's not worthwhile continuing the discussion. Your mind is set. And it's set because you want to disassociate WBC from your group. No amount of reasoning is going to make you change your mind.
Did you read the rest of my post? Because if we use your definition of "subjective", then even your definition of "Christian" is subjective.
For a start, Christians tend to act contrary to Christ's teachings everyday. That's why praying for forgiveness or going to confession is a regular occurrence. Even you accept that isn't only a criteria rather than a definition, which suggests even you accept it's weak.
Sorry, meant to respond to this. Yes, you're right; that's why I said "accept", not "obey". It's possible to accept that something is good or true without always doing it 100%. If a person asks for forgiveness or goes to confession, or even just feels guilty and tries to behave differently, it proves that they do accept that the teaching is valid.
But if a person consistently behaves as though X is not true, never shows any sign of attempting to behave as though X is true, never asks forgiveness for behaving as if X is not true, then isn't it reasonable to conclude that deep down, they really don't think X is true?
Because it's your opinion on what Christ's teachings are, and your opinion on how they match up to that. Doubly subjective.
I don't think you're using "subjective" or "opinion" properly. If I think chocolate tastes better than vanilla, that's my opinion. But if I think that an interview candidate will not perform very well, that is my *judgement*: either he will or he won't, and based on the evidence I have, I think he won't. Very little in this life is ever 100% clear; in the end, we have to look at the available evidence and make a judgement call. This is true of whether we believe what someone tells us, or evolution or global warming, or economics or politics or anything. Sometimes reasonable people can look at the same facts and come to opposite conclusions. But that doesn't mean that any conclusion is the same as any other one. Some conclusions are much more sound than others.
So the above definition is not subjective. What Christ's teachings were is a matter of fact. Whether someone's actions match up to it is also a matter of fact. Sometimes facts are not clear, and sometimes people can be mistaken due to poor judgement or poor information. If you think I'm mistaken about Jesus' teachings, or mistaken about whether someone's actions match up to that, you can try to persuade me to change my mind by evidence and argument.
It may be reasonable for people to come to opposite conclusions about whether Jesus would support abortion, or gay marriage, or divorce. But it is absolutely not reasonable for any person to read his teachings, or those of his disciples, and think that writing "God hates fags" on a sign is something he would approve of.
I propose that a reasonable, objective and widely-agreed definition is: A person who believes that Jesus Christ existed and was the son of God.
That's subjective too (by your definition of "subjective", which seems to be "requires a judgement call"). To "believe that Jesus Christ existed" includes at least some parameters for what this "Jesus Christ" was like -- and if "what Christ's teachings are" is in part a matter of judgement, then "what Jesus Christ was like" is also a matter of judgement. Furthermore, do they actually believe that Jesus Christ existed and was the Son of God? We can't see or measure the internal states of their minds; we can only tell what they believe by how they act. And in my judgement, they certainly don't act like they believe that a man like the Jesus Christ described in the Gospels was the Son of God.
Unless, of course, you mean "A person who has the phonemes J-E-Z-Uh-S attached to some idea, no matter what that idea is." In which case, your definition of Christian is not very reasonable nor very widely accepted.
No it's not, it's entirely subjective. You're comparing the person with your idea of how a christian behaves, rather than coming up with a reasonable, objective and widely agreed definition of what a christian is, and then testing the person against that.
Um, how is "A true Christian accepts Christ's teachings" an unreasonable, subjective criteria that is not widely agreed? (Criteria because it's not a full definition, but it's one aspect of a definition.) What would you propose as a reasonable, objective, widely-agreed definition?
As they don't, or indeed have anything at all that says they are atheist, all that's left is your misunderstanding of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Wait, are you saying that NO TRUE ATHEIST would not call themselves an atheist? That NO TRUE ATHEIST would call themselves a Baptist Church? Why is "what they call themselves" a criteria that can be excluded from the argument, when "what they teach" or "how they act" doesn't?
There's certainly a point to the "No True Scotsman" argument. However, the problem is that the way it's used sometimes doesn't leave us with any criteria for defining what *is* a True Scotsman. By taking away all definitions and boundaries, it completely removes our ability to use language to communicate ideas. The result is using language only for propaganda -- which is what people who point to the Phelps Family and say, "Christianity is a religion of hate" are doing.
I think the real conclusion is this: It's only a "No True Scotsman" fallacy if either 1) no criteria are suggested, or 2) the criteria suggested have nothing to do with the word itself. "No true Scotsman would watch the Twilight series" is a fallacy; but "No true Scotsman has never spent any time in Scotland" sounds perfectly reasonable. "No true Christian would support gay marriage" is a fallacy, but "No true Christian would teach something opposite to Christ's teachings" is perfectly reasonable.
What you won't hear: "What a fucking ass I was to have believed this nonsense and promoted fear and possibly a few deaths through my ignorance."
Well Harold Camping did say this in the aftermath:
We were even so bold as to insist that the Bible guaranteed that Christ would return on May 21 and that the true believers would be raptured.
...However, even so, that does not excuse us. We tremble before God as we humbly ask Him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement. We are so thankful that God is so loving that He will forgive even this sin.
but yeah, not sure how many other people who believed him have come out and said the same thing...
The 'Church' makes up to several million dollars a year on the settlements to all the nuisance suits, and have hundreds going at any one time, more than 1000 concurrent ones at some points in the past. Its strictly a business model.
I've heard this thrown around, but I have yet to see any actual references. I would dearly love to repeat this story with confidence -- can you provide any?
If you are going to conflate a small group engaging in clearly fringe behavior with a larger mainstream group, it is YOUR responsibility as the accuser to show the links. NOT the responsibility of the accused to show lack of links.
Maybe a better response would be to say, "Actually, WBC are ATHEISTS!!!! Look at how awful and hateful atheists are!" After all, there's no way you can prove they're *not* atheists... No True Scotsman!
The WBC has many many lawyers including members of the Phelps family. They, the WBC, make a living by suing. The picketing is simply to drum up additional lawsuits.
I'd absolutely love to believe that and spread the word about them, but not without a reference. Have you got one?
Well to start, you have to see that there may be a problem, so you're already a big chunk of the way there.
One thing would be to expose yourself to as much experts in non-knowledge-oriented fields as possible. I worked for a gas station in high school, and I enlisted in the military reserves. For the first two years I was in the reserves, I dreaded going for my monthly weekend training, because I knew that at least once per weekend I would do something really stupid. (Like, "Hey, I'll save weight in my pack by not bringing any extra socks." When we're going to be training outside all weekend. In February in Michigan. Socks don't really weigh that much, but having dry ones sure helps keep you from getting frostbite...) Every month it was something different; and the other guys, most of whom were attending 2-year community college or trade schools, would say, "Aren't you going to [major state university]? How can you do something so dumb?" Honestly, I don't know.
Anyway, eventually I must have run out of stupid things to do. But the whole experience -- not just me doing stupid things, but seeing the really wise things that other people did -- gave me a lot of respect for people who didn't have book-smarts.
That's what I'm constantly telling people who talk about "how when they were kids they could play in the street without worry." People tend to believe sensationalized media over sound reason and logic, even when you show them crime rate statistics for the last 50 years and show how much higher a risk they were at when THEY were a kid.
Just tossing this out there, is it possible that there are fewer strange abductions because people are more paranoid?
Italy to break off and fall into the ocean
Wow, it will not only break off, but somehow flip over France and Spain into the Atlantic? That's going to be some earthquake...
A device that 1) has a data link to the outside world, 2) has a GPS receiver, and 3) has a microphone ought to be far riskier to steal.
Unfortunately, not if you can yank the SIM card out right away. My iPhone went missing a few months back, and I noticed it for sure within 45 minutes. I had FindMyiPhone enabled and the whole bit; but even though I went on the website within an hour of the phone being missing, there was no report. It's possible that the battery had died in that time, since I disable the "auto-lock" feature; but it seems much more likely to me that the phone had simply had the SIM yanked out.
I've long thought that Facebook's only real asset is in being a fad. And fads often vanish very suddenly.
It's no more a fad than e-mail is a fad. Facebook (and Twitter) are fundamentally new ways of communicating. Whether Facebook itself will last is up for debate. But there will be something *like* Facebook with us from now on.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
