Evidence of What?

Orion Auld errancy@freethought.tamu.edu
Tue, 26 Sep 95 14:45 CDT (00812166300, 199509261941.OAA08179@dhostwo)


>
> > From: "Donald Morgan" <dmorgan@pacificrim.net>
>
> > > Ultimately, I think we need to start talking about Christianity being
> > > true or not. Defining what Christianity is is pretty worthless if it
> > > is false, don't you think?
> >
> > How can you decide if something is true or false before you have
> > defined what it is?
>
> You can easily argue the basics of the Bible without defining what a
> Christian is. I think ultimately we're going to get back to the
> fifty billion ways Christian sects define themselves without getting
> any agreement and never deal with the possibility that *ALL* of them
> are false.

A few points here:

1) "Defining" something is not the same thing as giving an "exhaustive definition" of something. One can arrive at a "workable definition" of something that is not necessarily "exhaustive". In fact, some things can never be comprehensively defined. That doesn't mean they can't be defined at all.

2) If you are arguing against Christianity using "the basics of the Bible" then you have already contributed to the "definition" of the word -- that is, you have implicitly defined it as someone who feels a certain way about the Bible -- a way that may or may not be supported by many who call themselves Christians.

3) "Defining" Christianity or giving a taxonomy of Christian sects could be a rewarding activity on many levels whether or not Christianity is true.

***** Orion Auld ***** *------------------------------------------------* "We are only fabulous | "The mind boggles. It even plays scrabble." | beasts, after all." | -- christopher g. williams: cgw@io.com | -- John Ashbery *------------------------------------------------*