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Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

bigstrat2003

Not just the Catholic church, but Christianity in general. It is very much standard Christian doctrine that everyone is flawed, nobody has earned salvation, and that it is a freely given gift from God out of love. To criticize Christianity as being mainly about "if you don't follow these rules you'll go to hell" (as chaostheory has) is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of Christianity.

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The crux of Christianity is that if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, you’re going to hell (or purgatory for Catholics). How am I wrong? What exactly am I missing that you’re alluding to but fail to elaborate?

Nothing, this is one of those rhetorical devices for which one sacrifices their moral agency to the collective. Your read is of a clear phrase even a child understands, its the sensitive adult that seeks to deny what is clear in front of them due to distaste.

Bad take. The Christian faith, outside of fundamentalist sects, is not built around clear-to-a-child interpretations of individual phrases in the bible. The bible is a product of the Christian faith, not it's source. In other words, it's teachings are defined by those sensitive adults, not the naive childlike readers of things they wrote.

> The Christian faith, outside of fundamentalist sects, is not built around clear-to-a-child interpretations of individual phrases in the bible.

To classify your argumentation, this is a "No-True-Scotsman."

Not even remotely. I'm disagreeing with your characterization of the Christian faith, not changing mine to exclude unwanted elements. Disagreeing on the meanings of terms is not the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Yet, I still see the characterization of your comment is spot on. "No real Christian sect interprets things as a child can" is a clear reading of your verbiage. Logically applying your definition results in understanding why it is a no true scotsman.

With that, I'm three comments deep and thus have made my point sufficiently and it will either be accepted or never can be. Good rule of thumb I picked up from religious subreddits and serves well with topics that are always flame wars. Have a good day.

I can respect cutting off conversations before they devolve into endless back and forths. However, I'm still going to take advantage of you giving me the last word to say: the fact that you can rephrase what I said to turn it into a no true scotsman statement doesn't mean that the argument I actually made was an example of one. I did not claim or imply that anyone who disagrees with this position is not a true Christian. I claimed that Christianity is not adequately defined as what some relatively small subset of Christians commonly believe. You would like to characterize the whole (Christianity) by the part (certain fundamentalist sects), which is actually the fallacy of composition. It may be that you won't read this response (I hope not, your resolution really is sensible) but I had to write it up anyway to get it off my chest. Enjoy your day as well.

I read your comment, appreciate the thought, and will do my best to enjoy the day!

> I claimed that Christianity is not adequately defined as what some relatively small subset of Christians commonly believe

Ok, back up your claim

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