From: grendel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alyosha Bourgea)
Subject: Re: Christianity causes the fall of civilizations...NOT!
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa, world
Date: 12 Dec 92 06:43:15 GMT

In <1992Dec11.161943@IASTATE.EDU> dickw@IASTATE.EDU (Richard Wallingford) writes:

>grendel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alyosha Bourgea) writes:

>>>The Christians have lost almost all their power in this country.  God is

>>I think not.  Virtually all elected officials of any great significance
>>are Christians, and almost all corporate CEOs are Christian.  Christianity
>>is the religion of choice for over eighty percent of the population.

>Only because they were "born" that way.  If they were born into a
>Chinese family, they'd be Buddist.

Not quite that simple.  Religion is not genetic.  My mother is a pagan
and my father follows the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda.  I have
a philosophy that is completely different from either of them.  There
are numerous people who do not follow the religions of their parents.
It's a matter of choice.

However, it is worthwhile to note that in order to be successful in business
or politics, it helps a great deal to be Christian; not only that, but
Protestant.  Kennedy's biggest liability in 1960 was his Catholicism.
It's quite possible that a number of successful politicians and business
people are Christian as a matter of convenience.  If you say "God bless X",
there's precious few who will argue, and plenty who will think you're a
swell guy.

>Really, most self-professed "Christians" are pretty sorry-assed sights.

How many Christians do you know?

>Given that Jesus' most profound idea was to love your enemy, almost 
>nobody is a *real* Christian.  I've found from observation that 
>the more "Christian" one is, the more one *hates* his/her enemy.

I think that's a pretty bigoted statement.  Hatred is not endemic to any
religion or philosophy.  I think you have a pretty skewed vision of what
Christianity is all about.  Not being Christian myself, I'm not the most
qualified to speak on this matter, but from what I understand, Christians
don't aim to be like Jesus or even to imitate him, but merely to do their
best to live in accordance with God's Word as much as possible.  Now, one
may do lipservice to this moral code, and I'm sure some people do, but I
strongly doubt that all Christians are hypocrites.

>Most people think that to love your enemy is an unrealistic ideal
>and do not practice it.  Thus Christianity, truly remains an 
>untried religion for nearly everyone.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  This is not a Christian
concept; in fact, it is found, with some semantic variation, in nearly all
of the world's religious faiths.  Loving one's enemy is something we all can
aspire to do, Christian or no.  I'm not of any faith, but I believe that
unconditional love is one of the best ideals one can work toward.  I guess
I'm not "most people"...oh well.

>|Dick Wallingford      | Internet: dickw@iastate.edu                  |
>|Center for NDE        | Packet  : wd0anb@n0an.ia.usa.na              |

--
Yosha Bourgea                   "Newspapers screamed for blood...
grendel@camelot.bradley.edu     it was the best of times."
Squid Power                              --Sting

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