For those who don’t find “far-right” to be an applicable descriptor with what is known currently, I acknowledge that the meme creator could have been more precise with their word choice. However, I feel the difference is academic:
We can replace “far right” with the easily verified “not leftist” without changing the meme whatsoever, primarily because the meme is about Nancy Mace and her mercurial, disingenuous opinion, not (directly) about the shooter.
Edit - I modified it, though I still find it to be a distinction without a difference - alt version for those who prefer (whoops missed one first time)
There is no authority, no person or group of people, authorized to decide who is a Christian and who is not. That’s just not how such identity markers work.
There’s encyclopedias worth of schism and heresy, all just more reasons to hate one another, like true Christians.
Yes there absolutely are. If you don’t believe that Christ’s death on the cross redeemed the world of sin you are not Christian as that is the defining belief. There’s literally no point in the faith if you don’t accept this. By this standard LDS are Christians.
I gave a post earlier describing why you can assert that LDS is a different branch of Abrahamic faiths which I will repost below. This is of course ignoring that it is entirely acceptable to view LDS as a fraudulent creation by Joseph Smith.
"Ypu are mistaken as to how that argument goes.
The idea is that Christianity is a separate faith from Judaism because they have an entirely different set of texts and a different view of the relationship with God and what is expected of the faithful.
Islam is a separate faith of Christianity and Judaism as it too has additional texts and a different perspective on God than what Judaism and Christianity has (which again differ themselves).
Thus LDS is a different faith because it has a wholly new set of texts, it has a radically different view of the relationship with God than every other Abrahamic faith, and we have a lot of evidence that suggests Joseph Smith was outright fabricating everything. That’s a critical difference and suggests it should be seen as something else following the same standards applied to all otherAbrahamic faiths."
To summarize, the person you responded to stated
To which you responded,
Followed by a wall of text that presented absolutely zero authority figures authorized to decide who is, and isn’t, christian.
All you gave is YOUR criteria, but there’s no reason anybody needs to follow your criteria. You’re also not authorized to decide. That’s the point.
No True Scotsman
I never really thought about it but unlike Catholics who have the pope. Christians don’t have a lead authority. So yeah there is arguably an authority to say what is and is not Catholic but not an authority to say what is or isn’t Christianity
First I reject the assertion that no one can make that determination so your “No True Scotsman” is not applicable
To be clearer there is one standard that all Christians agree to which is the redemption of Christ. If you don’t think Christ died to redeem sin there’s literally no point in the religion.
The rest of my post explains why those that think LDS aren’t Christian and what their claims are.
Except those that don’t. You’re committing the fallacy right there. If those people over there that call themselves Christians don’t agree with your arbitrary criteria, then they’re not true Christians. Except your only evidence to back up your claim is, “trust me bro.” There’s no license or certificate from any kind of authority. It’s just you making shit up.
Allow me to demonstrate.
All Christians have a tattoo on their forehead of Jesus on the cross with a pool of blood at the base of the cross. Every year they go through a secretive cleansing and atonement ritual that culminates in an update to the tattoo that makes the pool of blood bigger. You can identify the most pious Christians by how big their pool of blood is.
If you don’t have this tattoo, then you’re not a Christian and your erroneous opinion of what criteria makes someone christian is irrelevant.
You need to have an actual example to present a counterfactual. You cannot presume one might exist and then argue as if your claims have validity.
If you can find an actual example of a Christian denomination that does not see Christ’s death on the cross as an act that redeems the world of sin you can press the No True Scotsman claim but it needs to be real and it isn’t.
You absolutely do not understand No True Scotsman, then.
This whole thing started with you arguing against someone that stated that there is no central authoritative body that decides who is and isn’t christian. You have yet to present one. Instead, you just present YOUR criteria, as if you’re the authoritative body, but your not, because there isn’t one.
I could call myself a Christian and make up whatever criteria I want that makes me qualified, and there’s nobody to stop me.
And even if I did, you would reject it because they don’t meet your definition of a Christian denomination, so I still failed to “find an actual example of a Christian denomination that…”
There is an understanding if what “Christian” means. Your argument, if valid, would mean there is no definition for the majority of concepts.
But I’ll tell you that you are correct if it makes you fell better.
If you could find an actual denomination that didn’t accept the redemption of Jesus and accepted his religious message and called you would have a group of Jews from the first two centuries CE. They did not see themselves as a new faith separate of Judaism.
There never was an example of No True Scotsman you just have a flawed understanding of Christianity and this logical flaw you improperly cited.
So you just massively showed you have almost no actual knowledge of historical Christian sects.
Plenty of non-trinitarians sects don’t believe Jesus died for our sins. Some don’t believe Jesus was real at all. Others believe that God and Jesus is the same thing while others believe Jesus was God taking mortal form.
And plenty of them don’t agree that Jesus even died for our sins.
Christadelphaisn, Jehovah witnesses, oneness Pentecostals, universalists, to just name a few example of how varied things can be.
That’s not even getting into old old stuff back around like 300-400CE.
If there is literally any defining aspect of Christianity is that it never agrees with any other aspect of Christianity. It’s one of the single most fractured religions in our history.
Also your a God damn moron you ARE using a no true scottsman fallacy. Go read the god damn wiki page on the fallacy. Holy fuck man.
Wasn’t Paul the only one that said that? Plus, it wasn’t a new religion at the time. They all considered themselves Jewish at least until 70 ad.
None of the apostles said this directly. It’s literally the central dogmatic point everyone shares post schism. If Christ’s death isn’t redemptive there’s no point to the faith at all.
well actually, the death on the cross is not that important to mormons.
I think most of the early christian churches agreed on which books and gospels are part the Bible and in which order. The interpretations and translations of them often differ though.
Some groups like the Mormons decided to add additional books nobody else thinks is “inspired by God”.
In my personal view a better comparison than Scientology would be Islam. They also added stuff with the difference that they “degraded” Jesus to a prophet and made Mohammed the central figure.
The catholic church uses thousands of pages of additional made-up stuff that other sects don’t believe in, from ex-cathedra edicts to the canonisation of saints, and the other Christian faiths don’t hold those as “inspired by god”. If that’s the primary difference, then the LDS faith is at the same level as Catholicism, not Islam.
I think the part with the saints is a fair point. Things like the catechism I see more as formalization of how to interpret the Bible. However, I agree with you it’s probably closer to that than Islam but my primary point was that it’s not much like Scientology.
Except we don’t have the outright evidence of fraud for Islam like we do for LDS
Other than the general acceptance that all religions are unsubstantiated fraud.
That’s only because Islam is older than 200 years and from a time before the printing press. If Joseph Smith had lived, say, 500 years earlier, Mormonism would be shrouded in the same “unprovability” that most other religions enjoy.