[jaguar]

Gah, it comes down to interpretation of the bible. Many churches now choose to ignore much of the Old Testament. The second is contextualization of the content to understand its meaning.

For example: The verses where women must be silent, not teach men etc. These verses were written while the writer was in a city that was heavily populated by a women-only cult (Diane I think if I remember correctly - been a good 6 months since I’ve touched this stuff) which had caused allot of harm (there is allot more to it, but that is the basics) and thus those verses must be seen in that light, not from a modern perspective. This contextualization is essential to a more correct understanding of the bible and requires often extensive research.

Or maybe that Being intentionally designed us with flaws. Just because some Perfect Being could have designed us much better and didn't, has nothing to do with whether he did design us, or whether he exists in the first place. Either way, I'm sure he just loved getting a rise out of all those nutjob Christians when he suggested that God was drunk or stupid.

I thought we were created in god's image? On of the arguments thrown around by creationists for the teaching of it is the banana - designed for human consumption, easy to open, tastes nice, has a freshness meter (skin colour) built in. Of course they ignore the 1000000 examples to the opposite. Look lets ALL avoid directly attacking or defending our respective religions, that truly is pointless and stick to the more interesting abstract parts of religion.

The fact remains, though, that Christians are the cause of all of the things I listed in that first paragraph. I certainly didn't intend to imply that all of them collectively decided to screw the world up. I Just meant that the people who are screwing things up happen to be Christian.

Correlation != cause-effect relationship. Arguably many of those in power are Christian because we line in a predominately Christian society, if you lived in Pakistan you may say the same thing about Muslims. There is no proof their Christianity is the cause of their bad deeds, although arguable it is the justification or basis for at least some of them. The problem with religion as a jsutification for anything is it allows the justification of the unjustifiable becase of its abstractness the bloody (as in blood everywhere) crusades, the inquisitions, abortion clinic bombings, flying planes into the WTC, its so easy for people to use their religion to justify acts that clearly are against their own religion.

Christian means you believe in Christ as your savior. So your second definition is a little too broad. :)

I think its more about accepting Christ as your savior and attempting to live by the rules of god. It gets messy.

Evolution.........The only counterarguement i heard that i liked was "if god created the earth, then it woudl not be hard to put a few fossils around to confuse us". In fact many o the best ideas come from christians who understand that Christ/God mayjsut have had a sens of humour. There is one verse where a woman is brought to jesus, proclaimed guilty of adultery, they ask where she should be stoned to death or not. He is put in a dilemma - if he says no, he in riling against the states laws, if he says yes, it is unchristian as such. So instead he jsut ignroes them and draws in the sand with a stick, that one always made me crack up.