catholic iphone app.

That's your opinion of the quote provided. I have a different take on the quote than you do.

Paying taxes is not a Christian, Jew, atheist, agnostic, etc. thing. It is an American thing.

I don't think most people actually like paying taxes, most people don't like parting with money...and I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who agreed with all the ways in which our tax money is spent.

It all depends on how someone defines charity. If someone willingly and voluntarily pays their taxes, and sees that some of the money goes to what they consider a charitable cause, and if they in their hearts are happy that their tax dollars went to that cause, then I can make an argument that their tax payments were an act of charity if they knew where the money was going, and the use of the tax dollars were also an act of charity as they were going to a charitable cause.



Quote from jem:

1. your quote is not inconconsistent with the defintition I presented.

2. I noticed you made your annswer about being a christian and paying taxes was a jumbled joke.

taxes are not charity.
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Quote from OPTIONAL777:

That's your opinion of the quote provided. I have a different take on the quote than you do.

Paying taxes is not a Christian, Jew, atheist, agnostic, etc. thing. It is an American thing.

I don't think most people actually like paying taxes, most people don't like parting with money...and I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who agreed with all the ways in which our tax money is spent.

It all depends on how someone defines charity. If someone willingly and voluntarily pays their taxes, and sees that some of the money goes to what they consider a charitable cause, and if they in their hearts are happy that their tax dollars went to that cause, then I can make an argument that their tax payments were an act of charity if they knew where the money was going, and the use of the tax dollars were also an act of charity as they were going to a charitable cause.
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yeah but you were the one who was implicitly equating paying taxes with being a christian. Now you have seen the Light.

"good work".
 
I think you would have a hard time with proving that "you were the one who was implicitly equating paying taxes with being a christian."

Again, you have your opinions, I have mine.

You might be a Christian who has an opinion on your own Christianity, but you are not the voice of "Christian opinion."

There are a very large number of and diverse voices of "Christian opinion" though each voice might thing their voice is the only true Christian voice.

As far as seeing "the Light" that again is your own opinion...

Close the refrigerator door and the "Light" will go out.

Quote from jem:

yeah but you were the one who was implicitly equating paying taxes with being a christian. Now you have seen the Light.

"good work".
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Quote from Free Thinker:

And that's the problem: almost all traditional approaches to Christianity try to explain atonement, forgiveness and redemption in legalistic terms, seeking to define it in terms of conditions and technicalities. But it's like a blanket that's just too small, and no matter which way you pull it, you'll always expose another problematic part:

If salvation was based on "good works", then it would be possible to "work one's way into heaven", so to speak. (At least if you perceive it in legalistic terms.)

If salvation was based on faith, the result is even more fatal, as the minimum requirement wouldn't even involve being loving, but rely solely upon professing the right beliefs - which makes it even more problematic than the "good works"-approach, ethically speaking.

Calvinism eliminates this by stating that it's God's choice, not Man's, thus making salvation unattainable by any effort of our own. All nice and well, until you acknowledge that there are people who are not saved, in spite of being just as deserving as the ones who receive the Spirit. At that point, this theology starts to go down the drain, as it effectively turns God into a demonic entity, a fickle monster who delights in hearing the screams of the tormented - for he would be capable of saving all and yet chooses not to.



"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.: Thomas Jefferson
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Yes... we agree. Very much so. The typical approach incorrectly focuses on man and his works or his faith.

I do not give crap about mans works or mans faith.
I care about Gods faithfulness to his word and his promises.

If I want to access Gods grace, I have turn towards God act on his word and repent of my sins.

Hopefully, repenting of my sins and having Gods presence in my life will turn me into a good person.

If I do good works, I am told I will be saving up treasures in heaven. But, I should not be motivated to do those works by the reward, but by the spirit of God inside me.

The above is simple and clear. Most do not ever get to hear it.
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

I think you would have a hard time with proving that "you were the one who was implicitly equating paying taxes with being a christian."

Again, you have your opinions, I have mine.

You might be a Christian who has an opinion on your own Christianity, but you are not the voice of "Christian opinion."

There are a very large number of and diverse voices of "Christian opinion" though each voice might thing their voice is the only true Christian voice.

As far as seeing "the Light" that again is your own opinion...

Close the refrigerator door and the "Light" will go out.
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as much as you wish to obfuscate... it was you who misrepresented the Christian message when you said Christians teach they can sin repent, sin repent sin repent and sin repent over and over.


I never said Christianity is monolitic... i was just correcting your misrepresentation.
 
When I have a different opinion than you, you accuse me of obfuscation?

Just another of your unprovable opinions is all...

Now you are saying:

"you who misrepresented the Christian message."

There is no such thing as "the Christian message" as they are so many different messengers and so many different Christian messages out there...and somehow you don't seem to grasp that yet?

Could that be because you think that you alone (or those who agree with you) are the only ones who are actually representing "the Christian message."

Do you at least see the logically fallacy in your position?

I think they call it self righteous, but I'm pretty certain if pressed you would your state your position is "the Christian righteous" one.

I'm not arguing with your faith, I'm just arguing that you are practicing faith in your comments to me...which is fine, do what you want, but since I'm not going to argue with your faith, I am going to argue that your faith is but one faith amongst many other faiths by those who call themselves Christian.


Quote from jem:

as much as you wish to obfuscate... it was you who misrepresented the Christian message when you said Christians teach they can sin repent, sin repent sin repent and sin repent over and over.


I never said Christianity is monolitic... i was just correcting your misrepresentation.
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you said it yesterday now you deny you said it.
are you in clown school?
even the link you cited should have disabused of your ridiculous misrpresentation.


Quote from OPTIONAL777:

http://www.centralcal.com/christ9.htm

"The answer is, you can be guilty of all the sin in the world and still be saved."

All you have to do is sin, then repent, sin and then repent, binge and then purge...and you have the get out of jail Jesus card that is preached to this day...just as long as you feel guilty, you can sin as much as you want, and rationalize the sin because you are a sinner.

If this were not the case, then we would not see what we see in America...a "Christian country" where sin is rampant on every level.

Sinning freely, then feeling guilty, is not behavior modification...it is just like an alcoholic who drinks, then feels guilty the next day...then drinks to ease the pain of the guilt.

It is not the "way" of Jesus Christ. SIN NO MORE was/is the directive...
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It is a fact that amongst all of the people who say they are Christians, that opinions on what that actually means, and/or what they think whatever particular version of a Bible they are reading, and/or what they think the Bible means...it is not a fact in dispute that there are different ideas by the self designated Christians in the world.

I am not saying any of them are wrong or right in their views, just that it is a fact that they have different ideas about what their own Christianity means to them than say the many other Christian "brothers and sisters" out there.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100817070145AARRxT3
 
Quote from Gabfly1:

Have you actually read Orwell? You may wish to start with Orwell's 1946 essay, The Prevention of Literature:

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Prevention_of_Literature/0.html

Make no mistake. Orwell is very much not on your side of this argument. He knew what religion could do, getting his first glimpse when he attended a hermetic school run by Christian sadists in his early life. Do you actually know anything about the man that you seemingly speak so knowledgeably about?

You think that the only societal alternatives are secular totalitarianism or theocracy? How about secular pluralism, where you get to keep your religion out of my face and out of the secular laws of the land? Meanwhile, you can pray to your heart's content as long as it bears no imposition on anyone who wants no part of it. How is that not the freedom that you crave?

And don't talk to me about corruption. The church has a long history of association with corrupt and depraved governments. In addition to its initial support of the regime, the church facilitated the escape of Nazi war criminals to South America. It supported apartheid in South Africa. Only when the regime began to falter and the wheels started to come off did the Dutch Reformed Church elders have a revelation that maybe apartheid wasn't such a good idea after all. How telling that the church did not have this revelation when it had a firmer authoritative clutch, wouldn't you say? The list goes on and on.

Power corrupts? When True Believers swallow the bullshit about eternal damnation or heavenly reward, can power actually get any stronger? When they have your heart and your mind, they own you. And yes, such power does indeed corrupt as history has amply demonstrated.
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I do not know who your bogeyman is supposed to be... but I stated that Orwells book was an warning against a large govt running the state where individuals had no rights. the need for inalienable rights for individuals is the point of the warning and that power corrupts govts.

Now why do you think Jefferson and locke would state inalienable rights stem from a creator.


Learn you history and stop over reacting. I was not arguing for theocracy.

here is part of a summary from wikipedia


Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes written 1984) is a 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell about an oligarchical, collectivist society. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control. The individual is always subordinated to the state, and it is in part this philosophy which allows the Party to manipulate and control humanity. In the Ministry of Truth, protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party's propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him to the point of seeking rebellion against Big Brother, eventually leading to his arrest, torture, and reconversion....

In addition, the novel popularized the adjective Orwellian, which refers to lies, surveillance, or manipulation of the past in the service of a totalitarian agenda.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Nineteen Eighty-Four thirteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century...


George Orwell "encapsulate[d] the thesis at the heart of his unforgiving novel" in 1944, then wrote most of it on the island of Jura, Scotland, during the 1947–48 period, despite being critically tubercular.[1] On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the Secker and Warburg editorial house who published Nineteen Eighty-Four on 8 June 1949;[2][3] by 1989, it had been translated to more than 65 languages, then the greatest number for any novel.[4] The title of the novel, its terms, its Newspeak language, and the author's surname are contemporary bywords for privacy lost to the state, and the adjective Orwellian connotes totalitarian thought and action in controlling and subjugating people. Newspeak language applies different meanings to things by referencing the ends instead of their means; hence the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) deals with war, and the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) deals with torture. However the Ministries do attempt to achieve that goal; peace through war, and love of Big Brother through brainwashing and torture.
 
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