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28th June 2012, 09:50 AM | #1 |
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How many Christians would die for their faith?
Any guesses?
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28th June 2012, 10:43 AM | #2 |
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I'd say roughly the same percentage as is average in the human race for people to want to die for their beliefs. One in a million? Less? Of course this percentage varies with local circumstances, the worse your life the more likely you are willing to go to extremes.
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28th June 2012, 10:52 AM | #3 |
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28th June 2012, 01:03 PM | #4 |
a carbon based life-form
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28th June 2012, 01:12 PM | #5 |
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28th June 2012, 01:27 PM | #6 |
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All of the religiously inclined should die for their religions and let the rest of us get on with enjoying life.
And it would solve the population problem at the same time |
28th June 2012, 02:05 PM | #7 |
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Nope. Won't work. It follows the same argument regarding criminals, where they should be shipped off to an island and sort it out for themselves.
In one sense - Earth is the island, and that is precisely what we are involved with, like it or not. Wishing the problem away wont solve it. I call it Hitler Syndrome. Solve a presumed problem based on the inferior belief that he was not part of the problem and the problem existed in other people, and his solution to the perceived problem was a problem in itself...the same problem in fact. Gross result. Problem not solved. |
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28th June 2012, 02:12 PM | #8 |
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This is probably the next-to-last place you'd find a useful answer to your question.
What's the point of this, anyway? |
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28th June 2012, 02:27 PM | #9 |
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seeing as hospitals are full of people trying to avoid going to heaven....
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28th June 2012, 03:11 PM | #10 |
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28th June 2012, 03:36 PM | #11 |
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Back in my believer days, I saw many a fellow church member get a diagnosis of cancer. Instead of cheering and being happy that they were going to 'go home' and be with Christ, every single one of them asked for prayers and availed themselves of the latest medical science in an attempt live a bit longer.
Dunno, they sure didn't seem too excited about dying for their faith. Or with their faith. |
28th June 2012, 06:53 PM | #12 |
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Applying the Inverse No True Scotsman Principle, I have to say that it would be all of them.
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28th June 2012, 07:32 PM | #13 |
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28th June 2012, 08:19 PM | #14 |
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This.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine a religious group more into faith-based killing these days than Christians. And staying on topic: Let's not overlook all those Christians around the world who are more than happy to die for their faith if it means taking a few unbelievers with them. ... what? |
29th June 2012, 03:46 AM | #15 |
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Th story of Kane and Abel springs to mind with Penn Jillette's commentary. something like: 'If you're willing to kill your son for your faith you're a deluded !@#% and stay away from me'
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29th June 2012, 04:25 AM | #16 |
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29th June 2012, 04:33 AM | #17 |
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29th June 2012, 04:33 AM | #18 |
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"Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die." <some country singer, and many others I'm sure>
Come to think of it, maybe that's why the fundies like the concept of the rapture so much. They don't have to die, just get sucked up to Heaven. No fuss, no muss. |
29th June 2012, 05:43 AM | #19 |
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Erm...I realise it's more important to criticise christianity than to know anything about it, and I assure I'm no christian nor any kind of preacher, but I think what sphensic might have meant was not the sacrifice of jewish sons for a jewish god, but the core of christianity itself...
As for the OP, I'm told that heaven will hold 144,000 (and the rest will live on earth). I understand there's a biblical reference for that. I met one of them, once, many years ago, when invited to a Jehovah's Witness meeting (I thought I ought to at least look, rather than simply dismiss it as madness...although I did ultimately dismiss it as madness). They have a 'christmas' ritual which involves the passing round of a plate of biscuits or such, but you only take one if you're destined for heaven rather than eternal life on earth. The one congregant who took one could have been predicted if I'd thought to, and that wouldn't have been a million dollar skill - it was simply the holiest of the holier-than-thous. |
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29th June 2012, 06:08 AM | #20 |
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29th June 2012, 06:25 AM | #21 |
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The typical conditions for traditional martyrdom are unusual these days. How many princes and governors are hauling people before the court and demanding, "renounce Christ or die!"? This can happen in times and places where Christians are a persecuted minority and considered a threat to the state, and in such times and places, by all accounts, numerous Christians were indeed willing to choose the latter option.
In the present day, there are relatively few such places, but there are some where Christians are persecuted, and persecution frequently includes at least the threat of murder. But that's more like taking a deadly risk implicit in acting in accordance with one's faith, and losing, than a direct choice to die by affirming Christianity. Does taking such a risk and being unlucky qualify as dying for your faith? If so, then Christians dying for their faith isn't unusual at all, from a missionary knowingly going to some part of the world hostile to Christian missionaries and being murdered, to a Christian social services volunteer who gets killed by a schizophrenic client, to any random traffic death of a Christian on her way to church. Is there a point to the question? Or is it just a set-up to bash Christianity either way? (If many Christians are willing to die for their faith, it shows how dangerously fanatical they are; if few are, then it shows how insincere they all are.) Respectfully, Myriad |
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29th June 2012, 06:35 AM | #22 |
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29th June 2012, 06:56 AM | #23 |
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29th June 2012, 07:05 AM | #24 |
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Dying for one's faith is an interesting sub-meme. It seeme evolutionarily counterproductive, but it is rarely effected and, meannwhile is looked on positvely and thus spread, it becomes akin to genetically identical ants that sacrifice themselves when called on. The gene perserveres even as it sacrifices copies of itself by design.
Or the meme, in this case. Note also the primacy of the mental information block over the genetic one. DNA is only one of several evolving information blocks working together, or competing, as the case may be. |
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29th June 2012, 07:20 AM | #25 |
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Well, it is a mortal sin... now.
AFAIK, Christianity originally did not have a prohibition on suicides. The church added this prohibition to its doctrine some time after Rome Christianized -- precisely because people were offing themselves in droves, as a short cut to salvation. |
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29th June 2012, 10:19 AM | #26 |
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Fair enough. But what about a Christian who volunteers as a missionary to a part of the world that's known to be unstable and dangerous, and gets killed in a guerilla brushfire attack? Many would call that martyrdom. But neither the missionary nor the unlucky church-goer expected to die, and both died as a specific result of performing what they saw as a religious duty or calling. So where do you drawn the line between them? Is 1-in-10,000 odds of dying enough to call it martyrdom if you get unlucky? How about 1-in-100? Or does death have to be a certainty (which would rule out my hypothetical missionary, as well as numerous official martyr saints who were not offered a chance to disavow Christianity and live, but were simply murdered, or captured and executed, in the course of dangerous religious activity)? Respectfully, Myriad |
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29th June 2012, 10:54 PM | #27 |
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30th June 2012, 12:22 PM | #28 |
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30th June 2012, 12:26 PM | #29 |
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