I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. You acknowledge that the Catholics don’t have control over what is and isn’t Christian, and that there are secta they’d deem as heretics at best or apostates at worst. That said there are many protestant denominations that won’t. There are wildly different interpretations of the Bible, WBC for example says a bunch of things that most Christians would consider unchristian, but the same holy texts, are used as source material.

Similarly, the belief in things like miracles, transubstantiation, literally of the Bible, the invention of the bodily rapture… Oh hey, and the trinity, let’s not forget about the monophosotes (sure they haven’t really been around for like a thousand years but…) What about the coptics? Are they not Christian cause their books are different?

Public education in US… Thanks for the correction.

Regardless… Mormons, JWs and Seventh Day Adventists get away with being Christian, so yah, I think you can get away with calling yourself a Christian and believing whatever you want.

But that’s literally the second thing to happen in the protestant reformation. King Henry saw that Martin Luther guy and said “shit if he doesn’t have to listen to the Pope, I don’t either. Let’s strait up rewrite the Bible motherfucker!” So that the parts he didn’t like didn’t apply. Are you gonna say anglicans aren’t Christian?

You go ahead and do that. Worth noting that Islam doesn’t have a protestant reformation thats come in to say “f this the rules are whatever I want them to be personally,” so it’s basically still in its Catholic hegemony phase.

I understand what you mean, having had to deal with SPF nonsense for a job back in the day. The SPF nonsense is what prevents selfhosting email, as you effectively point out yourself. If there were somehow a way to use federation to tackle that, it seems like it could be kinda cool.

That feels a lot like your personal interpretation. You do not get to decide how people who call themselves Christian define themselves.

Fables are worth listening to for the morals they include. Why wouldn’t an ancient holy book be a moralistic guide to show the way to heaven, whatever that is which is not defined in scripture

Decentralized email? I feel like I could get behind that

My parents weren’t executed horribly, what are you talking about about? I’m still talking about contemporary Christian belief. Thesis: You can consider yourself Christian without belief in Jesus as a historical figure. Many Christians are happy to understand Jesus as metaphors and an ideal. Like if you took the actually good Superman stories and removed all the context, you could idealize the individual to the point of worship without believing he’s real.

Comfort and well-being, or so they believe… for some reason. Personally I like knowing I only get one shot

The context within which you are raised matters so much more than what’s written in your chosen scripture. That and self interest. Between those two, pretty much anyone can wrangle themselves into believing anything they want. The history of how we got here from there is similarly irrelevant.

It really isn’t so clearcut. You don’t need an actual Jesus for the words attributed to him to be true. “Jesus” works perfectly fine as a container for an idea.

Frankly, I have no primary evidence of your existence. I could be arguing with a bot right now and it wouldn’t be unbelievable. Primary evidence is a motherfucker, the guy we are talking about was probably illiterate, talking to more people who were illiterate, what kind of primary evidence could there be? Even if we had a body, could we really point to it and say with any real confidence that it was Jesus or just some other person that was crucified?

Honestly ask yourself, what would you accept as primary evidence?

Ehhhhhh, you probably aren’t trying to be technical, but it’s worth noting that circumstancial evidence is definitely a thing; is evidence that suggests but doesn’t definitively state. As mentioned in this tread, Nero calls out pilate for executing Jesus. There’s also the often overlooked circumstancial evidence that there’s a whole ass religion to the guy, which sure there are other religions etc etc, but most of them don’t have a semi Devine being that you can point to specific dates and times…

I will continue on, I’m an atheist, so I’m not arguing for Christianity, so here’s obligatory circumstancial evidence against historical J.

Wasn’t a census when he was supposed to be born. No written accounts of Herod executing every baby boy in Judea. Etc etc lmgtfy if you need it

Complain all you want, but if you dare do something about the injustice being inflicted on you, that’s where you lose me! - Troed

That’s what you sound like. Are you ok with sounding like a moron?

Homeassistant?