Reply to Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists

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Reply to "Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am aware of the term and do not label myself so. I only enjoy helping people learn about Christianity, and more specifically, the love of Jesus Christ. I truly believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, and I truly love other people and wish for people to be brought salvation. It was a long road for me to accept Christ completely.[b] I apologize for nothing,[/b] I love Christ only. It’s simple. I know who Sproul is; but I don’t see myself as such a person. I have basic Bible knowledge and learn and grow in the Word through study and prayer and fellowship with others, believers and non-believers.[/quote]

Ok, So now it's obvious that you are never going to get it, but hopefully others -- non-apologists-- will understand after receiving so much information and seeing your numerous responses.

You seem like a good person, though misguided regarding religion. and, as you seem to know, children will go their own way when they are adults.
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People can make their own decisions about religion and take or leave anything people type online, including about what I type online. I have zero need to label myself according to the opinions of other people. I honestly represent my beliefs and have no worries about that issue. I am certainly not misguided about what I believe.

People who represent themselves as atheist but are actually anti-theist are deliberately trying to confuse others, and people who do so are disingenuous.

Atheists don’t believe in gods or God. Anti-theists believe religion is harmful. They may even believe God or gods exist, but think religion and Gods or gods have no redeeming qualities or no positive impact at all on people or the world in general.

Christian apologists are a thing, but those people usually attend a dedicated program of education devoted to the subject and feel it is their mission in life is to mount a vigorous defense of Christianity. That’s not me. I did attend a religious college and have studied the Bible, but have never attended any courses that instruct believers to be apologists. I don’t have a degree in theology. I have done mission work abroad and it has been in the field of medicine. Any mission work I have done has been first and foremost, medical care to other people. Incorporation of the love I feel from God and the love Jesus Christ exhorts us to feel for our fellow man is inseparable from any care I provide to any person I treat, though.

You are too much into defining others by your definitions and don’t have the personal knowledge and information you need to do so. [/quote]

And you have shown, via your writing, that you're a Christian apologist who does not understand the terminology or who doesn't want to.  It doesn't matter, really.  You are happy and seem harmless and perhaps feel that your religious beliefs inspire you to help others in need.

Atheists and anti-theists and "nones" can help people in need without being religious, which I assume you are aware of.[/quote]

You are correct; it doesn’t matter what term you’d like to define me by. I know my religious beliefs inspire me to help others. It makes me neither better than others nor superior, people do what they feel is necessary to live as they wish.

Mark 12:41-44
New International Version
The Widow’s Offering(A)
41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put(B) and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”(C)

This is what I believe, and I didn’t need to attend a course to teach me to believe this or defend or apologize or promote this in my life or the world.

I know atheists and anti- theists have the ability to help others, and many do. However, a basic lack
of respect for others and the thoughts of others seems intrinsic within their communities. I see it displayed here daily. Also, people who excuse the murder of hundreds of millions of people through communism, which mandates atheism to those who live often against their will under such regimes aren’t societies that allow for the freedom of the human spirit, to put it mildly, or the pattern of helping those in need. They actively torture and kill their own helpless population and as in the case of Pol Pot, went to great lengths of keep such actions from being known to others.  The acts of extreme violence in the Bible are from antiquity. They are documented for all to read and learn from. The acts of genocide, mass murder, the bashing of children against trees, the famines and government engineered starvations  (all occurring in the modern era and under atheistic-communist governments) are completely ignored by atheist apologists. They won’t even consider those well documented events that occurred under the hand of people who share their atheism. It’s a trip.

I can say Christianity began at a time when societies and cultures and religions were very primal, and religion even harmful to its adherents, as human and child sacrifice and ritualistic sex cults were prominent. God took decades and centuries to teach humans that that kind of worship was no longer required of humanity. It was a painful and bloody and imperfect process, yet necessary, to get from there to here.

Communism and atheism, as they co-exist and are mandated to exist together by atheistic communist governments and regimes, do not exist in antiquity, they exist and have existed in modernity. They have no belief in the value of the individual or the life of the individual. They have no hesitation to starve or execute their own people through extreme acts of violence. They create mass graves of their innocent people and huge prison camps of families who will exist in agony and die before they should and not a single atheist confronts that reality, that they share a thought process with such monsters.

If Christianity existed today as it existed in the Old Testament and in antiquity, it would not be the most populous religion in the world. And it doesn’t have to exist as it did in antiquity, because God was moving toward a better way of life for those who He created. The countries and societies that exist under the dual 
yoke of communism and atheism in the modern world are societies we fear and we abhor. They are brutal and bloody. The nations that embrace the principles of Christian thought are places people are glad and happy to live and fight to get into and make a life for their children under the protection of.

I challenge all those who embrace atheism and anti- theism to live in a country controlled by atheists. Then tell me the Bible and God are harmful to society and humanity. [/quote]

I live in the USA, founded as a secular country, with freedom of religion.  In my view and in the view of the founders, no one religion - or non-religion -- should rule a country.

This is not a Christian nation and was not founded as one.  No religion, no matter how "good" should rule a country.  Christians -- and people of other religions -- have been extraordinarily cruel to their citizens, and to any who disagree with them.
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