[Flint]

Originally Posted by morethanpretty

If you say that you are a doctor but have never been to med school and recieved the proper training and liscenses, are you still a doctor because you say that you are?

Doctors are licensed and legally responsible for making life-and-death decisions.
Christians are self-defined as having made an optional lifestyle choice.

Originally Posted by morethanpretty

If a law suppresses violent crime does that make violent crime worse?

Did Prohibition stop people from drinking, or did the suppression of that urge create a bigger problem (organized crime)?

Originally Posted by morethanpretty

And if you say you are one thing but act differently than the guidlines that define that thing, then you are a hyprocrite.
Unfortunatly most of the "Christians" today are hyprocrites and therefore not Christians.

I’ve said it again and again, but let me say it once more: I agree 100% with this. My point is one of practicality. We could invent a new word to refer to hypocrites who claim to be Christians, but I am not aware of such a word. Therefore I define Christian to mean the millions of people who call themselves Christians. I assume this to be the standard definition in the demographic sense. Otherwise, we would have millions of people in the "other" catagory of religious preference. If Christianity is a word that means strictly an ideal adherance to a theoretically perfect set of guidelines, and there is an admitted scarcity of people who meet this standard, then does it not lead to the conclusion that Christianity itself is something that exists only in scarcity? Being a realist, I can observe that Christiniaity exists not in scarcity, but at a great magnitude. It's simply a matter of words having clear meanings. When I refer to Christianity I mean the observable Christianity that is defined as Christianity. When I refer to Christians I mean the observable Christians that are defined as Christians. It isn't a theological analysis, it's simply a matter of words having clear meanings.