Basically, you're saying, "if you fit this definition, you can't not fit this definition". But I think many people who think of themselves as highly religious also don't take the Bible as literal fact. Your definition of 'highly religious' is ... well, awfully specific.

I'm not religious myself, but I see no problem with being very spiritual and very oriented toward understanding the nature of God, while simultaneously accepting evidence as it surfaces. God may very well be imaginary, but even if it's just a metaphor, it's still of use to many people.

Things don't have to be true to be useful; most things that are useful, in fact, are false to one degree to another.

Another thought: the way my father saw it, Christianity is about following what Christ himself said, as well as you can piece it together from the source available to us. He believed you should ignore all other teachings if they contradict that; he believed that all Christian religions were, essentially, parasites, sucking money out of the masses by redefining the original teachings to suit themselves.

From the outside, it sure looks like ignoring the vast majority of what many churches teach would make you a far better Christian. Many are tangentially related, at best, to the core values he taught.

You seem to have a very narrow definition of religion. There are more religions in this world than just Christianity. And more Christian sects than just New Earth Christianity.

1) Not all religions include Creationism as part of their principal beliefs (by which I mean the belief that God's creation of the Universe is a scientific fact, and all that entails).

2) Since there are many types of religion, if someone defines himself as "highly religious", he is telling you only about his attitude and behavior toward his faith - not what those beliefs actually are.

3) Not everyone takes the Bible as literal fact. Indeed, sometimes more truth is found in metaphor and myth than in literal fact. Example: music, poetry, fairy tales, ceremonies, etc.

The Catholic position is that the Bible is the inspired word of God. That does not mean that everything in it is the literal truth. Catholicism doesn't reject evolution. The issue of how we got here is probably one of the least important questions the Catholic church has to worry about answering anymore.

You're basically calling out a non-problem. If these people apply a label to themselves, who is going to stop them if they're wrong? What harm is it going to do in general if they choose that label but have different beliefs? Aside from potentially changing the meaning of the label in general, which doesn't really matter because of the tens of thousands of Christian sects out there. Christianity is already pretty diluted.

I guess the better question would be, you're just realizing this now?

Anyone of a thoroughly scientific mindset has to be an agnostic (in the Thomas Henry Huxley sense, ie unknowable) about metaphysical claims, and this doesn't sit well with my understanding of "highly religious".

That's an interesting constraint. How did you come to that conclusion?

Well, as far as politicians go, anyone claiming to be Christian with the ambition to office already has a distinct misunderstanding of Christianity, especially when you look at the defining characteristics of office in this nation. It's not, however, likely that they have a misunderstanding of Christianity, more likely, an intense understanding of what that label can do for them. As for the fools who choose to vote on that issue, I can't explain or excuse them.

It's socially unacceptable to tell someone that they don't fit their claim to membership of a religion because NO ONE, not even the most devout Christian, the most enlightened Buddhist, the most traditional Jew, the most loyal Muslim, fits their religion. It would take a lot of observation to discover someone's position, if you're not willing to trust their word. And even observation is imperfect. If you got married and claimed to be atheist, and in your ceremony used wedding rings, I could call out your claim to be atheist because of the Druidic origins of that particular tradition. It doesn't mean that you believe in everything that a wedding ring symbolized for Druids simply because you used them, but that's all an observation can tell me. Or if not that, it could be traced to the more contemporary uses of them in Christian ceremonies. Observations when dealing with trying to decry something like a religious belief are not always reliable.

Aside from that, I don't know too many claimants to Christian belief that rejected redemption and resurrection.

And your claims as to percentages of what Christians in America believe are pretty astounding, and lacking sources.

What is your position on parables, then?

Hand to hand combat, naturally.

You both missed and demonstrated my point. It doesn't matter if you choose to partake in it while still rejecting its origins (something I would consider a little disrespectful, to be honest) someone can see it and interpret it as a belief in some form of theism or another.

Well, according to Morrolan's requirements, you'd only be able to find that out if they don't believe in the resurrection and redemption. Ultimately, though, it's pretty obvious when you take it to that kind of extreme.

And excluding hypocrisies , because that's hardly a new problem, with no real resolution but pretty wide recognition, you could get into a battle over the many different possible interpretations of all of the details surrounding Christ's teachings. Whether or not one makes someone more Christian then becomes subjective.

Which are A and B? Sorry if I'm missing the obvious.

This becomes difficult when sects disagree. For instance, some fundamental protestants do not consider Catholics or Orthodox Christians Christans at all. Obviously, Catholics do consider themselves Christian. How do we know who is right? Are the Catholics right, because they self-identify? The protestants would claim that the Catholics are not Christian, because they do not take the bible as literal fact.

It should be readily obviously that the issue is one of pure semantics - what the word Christian means varies from person to person. In fact, your average pair of typical Christians would have a different set of criterion on the requirements of belonging, and I doubt you'll find agreement among sects.

Christianity as a whole is ill-defined - membership to specific sects less so. It makes more sense, in my opinion, to use the term Christian to describe the broad category of religions that ascribe meaning to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and use denominations to narrow belief sets down. The problem then becomes one of taxonomy.

Morrolan, if you have questions about what Catholics believe, check out http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/ccc_toc.htm or walk into a parish and ask a Priest. They would love to have this conversation with you.

I don't believe that is Paul's contention, no. There are other translations that use, for example, that use "being in the form of God" instead of "being in very nature God", and I believe the former fits better with Paul's other statements. I read Paul's attitude as being much more in tune with the ending of your quote, where again (as usual) Paul has God separate from Jesus.

Remember that "Our Lord" is intended to indicate teaching mastery or leadership, not divinity, when applied to individual humans.

My point being that the kind of logic that you used initially is not really applicable to Christian beliefs; it's going to trip you up, when just going along with the *intent* - that Jesus' relation with God was special - is much more clear to people. The idea that the Bible is literal truth is really at odds with much of it. I take that to be a corruption of the original intent, for the New Testament at a minimum, since that's much more a set of books to teach about life than to render the facts of the world onto the page in the way of a peer-reviewed paper.

No offense intended. You don't witness by winning arguments, but rather by explaining your position well.

But it's the Bible. It's absolute truth. Surely you can't misunderstand it. I mean, if there was more than one way to read it, and different sects could insist that their differing interpretations of particular passages were the truth, how could it be absolute?

Thank goodness that never happens.

Atheists always try to say this but most believers would agree that there is more than one way to read it.