There are a lot of Christians but within a given sect their views are largely similar. Counting the number of sects would be a more accurate way of determining how many differing views there were out there.
To be honest mate most christians just believe in jesus/God, as you probably know, they don't delve into science. i just enjoy atheists/agnostics take on some biblical stories, and obviously religious views as well Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!.
How is a set of unquestioned assumptions a problem? One that demands obedience to long outdated teachings? Maybe because the 21st century requires something more than unquestioning faith.
War = Crusades past, Israel and Palestine modern day, in fact all if not most conflict in the middle east. Unrest = Islam is causing this in my area hence a planned demonstration. Isolation = Most Muslims live in isolation in the UK, so do the practicing Jews.
You have yet to explain, why religion causes wars. Come with something that isolates ''religion'' as a cause. jan.
This is off topic, so i'll just answer this. The Jihad that is currently taking place has its basis in religion. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/war/religious/holywar.shtml
Get a ruddy education. Do you not understand that portions of the Old Testament were rich in metaphor? Those portions were not meant to be taken literally any more than the metaphors in On the Origin of Species were meant to be taken literally. Next you will be telling me that if I don't take all of Darwin's work literally I do not believe in evolution. You are being ridiculous. Since you are a moderator - what a frigging joke - I cannot put you on ignore, but frankly your stupidity on this point is offensive. Stew in your ignorance.
What topic? Everything has its basis in religion, just like everything has its basis in sex, and chemicals. The Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the OT, is but one view. jan.
You make it sound easy for most people to avoid confronting the issue. But I think you overlook the fact that all schoolchildren nowadays learn basic science at school, from the media, from books, on museum trips etc. This obviously includes such topics as evolution. Dinosaurs in particular are a perennial source of interest to children. The fact is that all children learn about the long age of the Earth and enough about evolution to understand that different animals lived at different periods within this long age, and that later forms developed from earlier ones.
This still seems to me a muddled argument that does not stand up. First you say that seeing value in confession is a sign of following Old Testament, rather than New Testament ways. Then you quote the New Testament words attributed to Christ in St John's Gospel, which say forgiveness of sins by the Apostles is required for them to be forgiven. Then you turn round and say confession is after all necessary, but produce 5 more quotations, bizarrely including one from the Old Testament, as evidence that confession is not required. (None of these contain the actual reported words of Christ of course, whereas the St John quotation, which supports the idea of confession, does.) After all this, it seems to me the most one can say is the NT is open to differing interpretations on this point - as the bible so often is, in fact. The church seems to have taken the view that Christ's words trumped, or constrained, the possible interpretations of Saints Peter and Paul, all the way up to Reformation, when a new doctrine grew up that claimed confession wasn't necessary. It is true, I grant you, that the idea of a private, anonymised confession to a priest, rather than a public confession, only came into being after one of the Lateran Councils in about 1200 or so (I think it was?). But one might think this was a more civilised way of doing it than before. But either way, you have yet to address what struck me as the most peculiar and unwarranted part of your original assertion. This was that the Catholic faith is "almost entirely" based on unworthiness of people "to bring their sins before God". What do you base this on? Do you really think the heart of Catholic Christianity is, for some reason, not belief in the redemptive power of God The Son's incarnation, teaching, death and resurrection, as it is for other forms of Christianity? Why?