Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

But really, why do you (Dubious) care what he (Trump) held up? You don't think there's anything in the Bible anyway, do you? So why would it matter?

IT DOES MATTER, because Trump was and will again, clearly use it to gain the votes...

He might. Or he might be sincere. Who's to say, now? As I say, that judgment is in the hands of God.

For all the bluster, though, I have yet to see any evidence that Trump is worse than, say, Bill Clinton, or Anthony Weiner, or Andrew Cuomo, or Epstein and Weinstein (both Democrats), or Hunter Biden...or plausibly the Big Guy himself, who is alleged, based on a taped conversation, to have taken kick-backs through his son by way of influence peddling, and thus sold out his own country.

If Washington is a rats' nest, it's a rats' nest on both sides, if perhaps not quite equally.

As an outsider, I find it bemusing that Dems scream about Trump, in particular, but let their own rats run free. And I think it speaks to the fact that the Dems are using moral language, the language of moral outrage and self-righteousness, to power their agenda, but not actually being moral at all. And I find that inconsistency kind of appalling. I think we have to stop taking their "moral outrage" seriously, until they start to demonstrate that they have some high ground of their own to stand on. That clearly hasn't happened yet -- not so long as they let the rats run.

We might say that all that is more an indictment of human nature than of one political party or another. It seems that being "on the right side" politically doesn't free anyone from hypocrisy and veniality, and doesn't prevent people from behaving like people often do when they grasp for power.

However, all that is political, which is not really our topic here. Perhaps these are comments I should have put on the Trump thread. So let's go back to what we were talking about.

[Alexis Jacobi]

We might say that all that is more an indictment of human nature than of one political party or another. It seems that being "on the right side" politically doesn't free anyone from hypocrisy and veniality, and doesn't prevent people from behaving like people often do when they grasp for power.

However, all that is political, which is not really our topic here. Perhaps these are comments I should have put on the Trump thread. So let's go back to what we were talking about.

There is no way, no way in hell, to separate Christianity, Christian ethics and the Culture Wars that deal on these themes that have just come up from the present conversation. To continue forward in the present line of discussion (politics and society) will shed much light on what we have been discussing in abstract terms. Too abstract terms in my excruciatingly humble opinion.

How is it that you-plural can justify the compartmentalization of things into discreet areas of conversation? Go to the Trump thread?!? I will have to deal with Hot Pants and that Vegetarian lunatic from NZ! Please, please, I beg you: spare me that! Have you no Christian mercy?

Can't we please fight, scratch, wallop and maim each other here?!?

A great injustice is about to go down! Must I appeal to Christian ethics? Must I get on my knees to beg?

We are dealing here, in our present, with the entirety of political, social, metaphysical and religious positions. How can you divide off one topic from another?

[Immanuel Can]

We might say that all that is more an indictment of human nature than of one political party or another. It seems that being "on the right side" politically doesn't free anyone from hypocrisy and veniality, and doesn't prevent people from behaving like people often do when they grasp for power.

However, all that is political, which is not really our topic here. Perhaps these are comments I should have put on the Trump thread. So let's go back to what we were talking about.

There is no way, no way in hell, to separate Christianity, Christian ethics and the Culture Wars that deal on these themes that have just come up from the present conversation.

I think there is...and needs to be.

We have no way of knowing if Trump is a "Christian" or not, for two reasons. Firstly, we don't know the man's heart; and Chritianity is about "conversion," meaning the changing of a man from one thing into another. But secondly, (and it will seem fractious that I even raise this again.) you don't have a fixed definition of "Christian," so we honestly can have no idea what you're talking about. It seems that you remain convinced that "Christian" means a "culture" of some kind, a kind of "Christendom" rather than a belief system. And so long as that remains the case, clarity and precision are bound to remain impossible.

Trump is "in Christendom" we might try to say? Hardly a good descriptor of our present ethos. So he's not "Christian" in that sense. If in any, it would have to be in a much more precise, personal and confessional sense that we call him "Christian." And that, as I say, we would need to ask him about.

Too abstract terms in my excruciatingly humble opinion.

This is precisely my concern about your defintion of "Christian." It's simply "too abstract" and unclear.

How is it that you-plural can justify the compartmentalization of things into discreet areas of conversation? Go to the Trump thread?

It doesn't need "justification." It's how this site is organized. I'm just respecting the preferences of the administrators and posters. That seems a perfectly cooperative and pro-social decision, to me.

Can't we please fight, scratch, wallop and maim each other here?!?

Ah, now I see you're being funny.

[Immanuel Can]

Something more interesting is this:

"Libido Dominandi is the definitive history of a sexual revolution, from 1773 to the present." "Unlike the standard version of a sexual revolution, Libido Dominandi shows how sexual liberation was from its inception a form of control. The logic is clear enough: Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido inevitably led to anarchy."

-- quoted by AJ.

There's something to this, there's no doubt. And it's interesting. Tease it out further, a bit, if you would. How does he suggest these "social controls" have been introduced and shaped?

I'm not sure about his "anarchy" point, though. I don't think sexual libertinism fears anarchy. I think it foments it, in fact. It's not "anarchy" that libertinism fears...it's rather something like conscience. And I think the "controls" come in to prevent conscience from raising its voice, not to prevent further ranging into anarchy.

[Alexis Jacobi]

We have no way of knowing if Trump is a "Christian" or not, for two reasons. Firstly, we don't know the man's heart; and Chritianity is about "conversion," meaning the changing of a man from one thing into another. But secondly, (and it will seem fractious that I even raise this again.) you don't have a fixed definition of "Christian," so we honestly can have no idea what you're talking about. It seems that you remain convinced that "Christian" means a "culture" of some kind, a kind of "Christendom" rather than a belief system. And so long as that remains the case, clarity and precision are bound to remain impossible.

It is totally irrelevant if he is a Christian. And it is not hard to discern, according to your strict criteria, that he is very likely not a Christian and never has been one.

In order to understand Trump's association with Evangelical Christianity one has to examine the entire issue from another perspective. It will be, in my opinion, far more productive to understanding to see Trump and all political machines as dominated by Machiavellian philosophy and techniques. True indeed that Mike Pence is (to all appearances) a practicing Evangelical. And Trump, through Pence, or Pence through Trump, managed to gain the support of a large and generally Christian faction within American culture.

It is more likely that Trump adapted his message when he realized he had the backing, and could increase the backing from American Evangelicals. Also there is no doubt that Trump played for the favor of Christian Zionists and should be seen as a helper or even a servant of specific Israeli interests. Hence the tremendous advantage to sponsoring the move of the embassy to Jerusalem.

Christianity, according to your too strict definitions, is about 'conversion'. I understand this and likely do all who read here. I do not accept your definition as being definitive nor is it the most useful one to hold to. It is better, for the purposes of examining culture and cultural and political processes, to refer to Christians as those who identify as such. And then to examine what they do and say.

As an absolute zealot for a specific branch of Christianity, and as its apologist in these pages (angling for the conversion of some of its denizens here) I get that you cannot accept, and will reject, my definition. That is not highly relevant to my position.

So I say that Evangelical Christianity and those who handle it, who use it, who guide it along, who use it as a tool of power within a power-dynamic, must be seen not in idealistic terms but in Machiavellian terms: power-machinations to achieve specific terrestrial objectives.

The 'heavenly' dimension is highly relevant to you, I admit that. And it is a useful term of discourse for 'believers'. But on this plane of reality I submit that what determines things is (as I say) Machiavellian tactics of social manipulation and 'strict power principles'.

[Alexis Jacobi]

"Libido Dominandi is the definitive history of a sexual revolution, from 1773 to the present." "Unlike the standard version of a sexual revolution, Libido Dominandi shows how sexual liberation was from its inception a form of control. The logic is clear enough: Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido inevitably led to anarchy. Over the course of two hundred years, those techniques became more and more refined, eventuating in a world where people were controlled, not by military force, but by the skillful management of their passions. It was Aldous Huxley who wrote in his preface to the 1946 edition of Brave New World that "as political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase." This book is about the converse of that statement. It explains how the rhetoric of sexual freedom was used to engineer a system of covert political and social control. Over the course of the two-hundred-year span covered by this book, the development of technologies of communication, reproduction, and psychic control - including psychotherapy, behaviorism, advertising, sensitivity training, pornography, and, when push came to shove, plain old blackmail - allowed the Enlightenment and its heirs to turn Augustine's insight on its head and create masters out of men's vices. Libido Dominandi is the story of how that happened."

Immanuel Can writes: I'm not sure about his "anarchy" point, though. I don't think sexual libertinism fears anarchy. I think it foments it, in fact. It's not "anarchy" that libertinism fears...it's rather something like conscience. And I think the "controls" come in to prevent conscience from raising its voice, not to prevent further ranging into anarchy.

It said:

Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido inevitably led to anarchy.

Not fears anarchy but *leads to anarchy*. The idea can easily be understood through Platonic terms: if the soul is supposed to be captain of the ship, and the appetites are supposed to be held by reins, seduction by sensual pleasures (sexual and other sorts of pleasure) results in a state of anarchy (lack of ruling power) within the body. When it extends to the 'social body' (again this is Platonic doctrine) the entire society can lose its bearings.

Anarchy is the result. Those out of control of their selves will be ruled by wild impulses, as we notice today so strongly.

How does he suggest these "social controls" have been introduced and shaped?

Through techniques and tactics of social control, social influencing, and public relations. I filled out these ideas in a wonderful and insightful post to BigMike.

My personal take on the matter goes like this: to distract a people, or a person, from real concerns seduce them to pleasures on all levels. Sexual pleasure and temptation is one area among many. The idea of concupiscence can be referred to:

In its widest acceptation, concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason. To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different. The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end. But the lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness. This is concupiscence in its strict and specific sense. As long, however, as deliberation is not completely impeded, the rational will is able to resist such desires and withhold consent, though it be not capable of crushing the effects they produce in the body, and though its freedom and dominion be to some extent diminished. If, in fact, the will resists, a struggle ensues, the sensuous appetite rebelliously demanding its gratification, reason, on the contrary, clinging to its own spiritual interests and asserting it control. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."

One can say all of this just as well with Platonic language and, in fact, Catholic doctrine is in so many ways expressed through Platonic terms.

My view -- this will not be acceptable to you naturally -- is that the facts about the contrast or conflict between 'higher dimensions' of the human possibility and 'lower dimensions' of sexual and other lusts (appetites as fixations and distractions) can be discussed in philosophical terms, in rational terms.

My assumption is that of those who write in this thread, and those who are adamant anti-Christians, that they fail to see that the Christian structure through which a full metaphysics is expressed, when it is removed or undermined, leaves people adrift. But it is possible, and without Christianity specifically, to recover the metaphysical principles and to therefore understand what is being talked about, and what principles stand behind Christian values, in a more fair way.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Too abstract terms in my excruciatingly humble opinion.

This is precisely my concern about your defintion of "Christian." It's simply "too abstract" and unclear.

AJ: How is it that you-plural can justify the compartmentalization of things into discreet areas of conversation? Go to the Trump thread?

Immanuel wrote:It doesn't need "justification." It's how this site is organized. I'm just respecting the preferences of the administrators and posters. That seems a perfectly cooperative and pro-social decision, to me.

If those who are the chief and long-standing denizens of this forum were not disordered types ruled by anarchic impulses I would support your respect. That is not the case though. It is also not the case (this is my opinion) that most people, generally, have sufficient internal organization (i.e. are not fundamentally disordered internally, to use a Catholic metaphor) to be able to reason things through in a fair way.

What results from the *disorder* I refer to? Hysteria, over-the-top emotionalized declarations, bickering, misunderstanding: all these things (again in my view) are symptoms of disorder. And what results is 'atomization' in which each individual becomes an anarchic particle with private sentiments, private opinions bound up in subjectivity.

And this leads to a situation where people cannot agree and where lack of agreement reigns.

Therefore, there has to be essential and categorical agreements that are defined through soundly reasoned principles. Now the fact of the matter is that this is often done through sound Christian reasoning. Especially Catholic reasoning where it seems better expressed (see the Catholic Encyclopedia for example). But it can also be done through Platonic and Aristotelian means. Additionally it can be done through reference to other philosophical and metaphysical systems such as Vedanta or Buddhist philosophy (related of course in their origin).

If we cannot make a case in rational terms though, the entire ground will be lost.

[Immanuel Can]

We have no way of knowing if Trump is a "Christian" or not, for two reasons. Firstly, we don't know the man's heart; and Chritianity is about "conversion," meaning the changing of a man from one thing into another. But secondly, (and it will seem fractious that I even raise this again.) you don't have a fixed definition of "Christian," so we honestly can have no idea what you're talking about. It seems that you remain convinced that "Christian" means a "culture" of some kind, a kind of "Christendom" rather than a belief system. And so long as that remains the case, clarity and precision are bound to remain impossible.

It is totally irrelevant if he is a Christian.

Then it's not a topic for this thread, I guess.

And I was right: we need to move it to the Trump thread.

Trump's association with Evangelical Christianity

Well, historically, the Republican Party has some association of that kind. Whether Trump has any special connection with them that, say, Reagan or Bush or Pence would not have also had is a matter of pure speculation -- especially since we have no idea what Trump actually is.

It is more likely that Trump adapted his message when he realized he had the backing, and could increase the backing from American Evangelicals.

That's possible. There's also no way you could know if it was. As you say, you regard his internal condition as "irrelevant." Funny, though, that you do seem to feel confident to declare him merely a strategist, when you don't know what he does or does not now believe.

I thought you could not know his inner state, and it was "irrelevant"...

Also there is no doubt that Trump played for the favor of Christian Zionists and should be seen as a helper or even a servant of specific Israeli interests. Hence the tremendous advantage to sponsoring the move of the embassy to Jerusalem.

That could have been cynical. Or it could be sincere. Without taking stock of his actual beliefs, how would you know?

I have to say, you're being awfully judgmental of Trump's alleged beliefs, for a person who thinks beliefs don't matter.

Christianity, according to your too strict definitions, is about 'conversion'.

That's the Biblical definition. (John 3:3) If you find it "too strict," I can't help you. You'll have to take that up with God.

It is better, for the purposes of examining culture and cultural and political processes, to refer to Christians as those who identify as such.

Ugh. That's the old "self-identification" criterion. That's the very first one they debunk in any Comparative Religions or Religion and Culture program. I'm sorry, AJ...it's just been debunked to death.

The "self-identification" criterion would insist that a person can become anything simply by saying the words, "That's what I am." And were that so, then Trump was really a secularist, a lothario and a Democrat when he identified as one, and is now a Republican a man of rectitude and a Christian when he identifies as one...in all cases, genuinely so. But you insist he's not... That makes no sense, at all.

But I understand why it remains appealing. Since it's so simplistic, it's the easiest way for people to generalize. It may be weak and far too often wrong, but at least it's reassuring to generalizers, and lets them think they're referring to something. Viewed as it actually is, faith is too complicated and subtle a thing for demographers and such to unpack, and often too various for them to generalize accurately. So despite their full awareness of how inadequate the self-ID criterion is, they're always tempted to fall back on it.

Besides, it delivers them from the unpleasant business of having to discern for themselves, which is both hard and politically-ticklish. Nobody want to end up calling another person what you have claimed Trump is: a mere opportunist or false-professor of their religion. But the price the generalizers pay for simplicity is that almost none of their generalizations really stick. In far too many cases, they simply identify, as a member of one religion or another, those who are merely nominal and uncommitted to any serious belief at all. And in particular cases, they, like you, have no actual idea what the particular individual does or does not believe.

It seems to suit your thesis to call Trump an "evangelical," maybe, but also to deny that he really IS one. I don't know how you can ground either judgment. For you also say that anybody who self-identifies as something has to be regarded as authentic, and you also say that you regard Trump's actual beliefs as simply..."irrelevant."

I don't think anybody can make clarity from that.

[Immanuel Can]

Too abstract terms in my excruciatingly humble opinion.

This is precisely my concern about your defintion of "Christian." It's simply "too abstract" and unclear.
How is it that you-plural can justify the compartmentalization of things into discreet areas of conversation? Go to the Trump thread?

Immanuel wrote:It doesn't need "justification." It's how this site is organized. I'm just respecting the preferences of the administrators and posters. That seems a perfectly cooperative and pro-social decision, to me.

If those who are the chief and long-standing denizens of this forum were not disordered types ruled by anarchic impulses I would support your respect.

I'm not as judgmental about that as you, I guess. I'm content to take them at their word. I think that they can, at the very least, choose their own classifications of information. Your comments also seem a little unkind to the administrators, if you don't mind me saying.

I'm going to choose to respect their classifications, if I can. And when an unacceptable degree of overlap takes the conversation in an other-topical direction, I'm content to move it to where they want it to be.

[iambiguous]

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig says there are good reasons for thinking that He does.

(II) God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe.

We have pretty strong evidence that the universe has not existed eternally into the past, but had a beginning a finite time ago.

Really?

And how might one square that evidence with the gap between what they think the evidence reveals and all of the evidence that would be needed to know for certain that Existence itself "had a beginning a finite time ago"?

And then back to the final conjecture from Rumsfeld:

"But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Dark matter, dark energy, anyone?

In 2003, the mathematician Arvind Borde, and physicists Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past, but must have a past spacetime boundary (i.e., a beginning). What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds so long as time and causality hold, regardless of the physical description of the very early universe.

Right, and how can "the Gap" and Rummy's Rule possibly be relevant to their own "here and now" intertwining of an educated calculation and a wild-ass guess?

And then -- presto! -- the existence of a God, the God, your God?

As though a hundred, a thousand years from now astrophysicists will look at Borde, Guth and Vilenkin and think, "by golly, they were absolutely right about everything!"

And, what, IC's descendants will be there with them to exclaim, "see, Immanuel Can was right, it is the Christian God that resides in Heaven!!"

Because we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, we can’t yet provide a physical description of the first split-second of the universe; but the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is independent of one’s theory of gravitation. For instance, their theorem implies that the quantum vacuum state which may have characterized the early universe cannot have existed eternally into the past, but must itself have had a beginning. Even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called ‘multiverse’, composed of many universes, their theorem requires that the multiverse itself must have had a beginning.

Okay, any astrophysicists here -- Astro Cat? -- able to connect the dots between this "theorem" and, say, these facts:

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages"...

[Alexis Jacobi]

You always amaze Immanuel. You just cannot read without infusing what I say with what you think I am saying or wish that I said. It is frustrating to no end.

It is irrelevant if Trump had some level of Christian awakening or if he did not have it at all. Because the games that are played in politics are essentially Machiavellian. Trump however clearly has made use, politically, of the Evangelicals. This would be the same if he had 10% belief or 30% or any level of belief. That use has nothing to do with his own convictions.

Get it now?

That's possible [that Trump adapted his message when he realized he had the backing, and could increase the backing from American Evangelicals]. There's also no way you could know if it was. As you say, you regard his internal condition as "irrelevant."

Funny, though, that you do seem to feel confident to declare him merely a strategist, when you don't know what he does or does not now believe.

It simply became evident. It has been written about extensively by those opposed to him and by those (among Evangelicals) who support him.

It does not matter (much) what he believes or doesn't believe. It makes more sense to see him as a Machiavellian player in grand political games. In any case this is how I see things. You are free to see them as you wish to.

I thought you could not know his inner state, and it was "irrelevant"...

Cold you read better you'd have understood initially. In the larger picture his inner state is not relevant.

AJ: Also there is no doubt that Trump played for the favor of Christian Zionists and should be seen as a helper or even a servant of specific Israeli interests. Hence the tremendous advantage to sponsoring the move of the embassy to Jerusalem.

Immanuel: That could have been cynical. Or it could be sincere. Without taking stock of his actual beliefs, how would you know?

You have established a too-binary division, not me. It does not matter if he has sincere beliefs about Israel and Jerusalem. It matters what was played in a larger game. I have no reason to believe him either cynical or insincere. That is not the point. He clearly has *played for favor* among those who believe it is 'ordained by god' that America support Israel without any question or compunction.

That is the point.

That's the Biblical definition. (John 3:3) If you find it "too strict," I can't help you. You'll have to take that up with God.

I do not have to take anything *up with god* to make the assertions that I do. I accept there is a category of *sincere Christian practitioner*. And I also accept that there is a great mass of Christians who seem to me, and also seem to you (take Benny Hinn and a dozen others we could mention) who are manipulating people for specific ends. You yourself have decried this activity (according to biblical condemnations of such).

I am only concerned in seeing what those larger masses who *identify as Christian* do in this world, and how what they do affects the world. For example the numerous invasions and occupations in the Middle East that were carried out by political machinations influenced by Christian Zionists and those who associate with such.

Additionally, I see your brand of Christianity as a form of sickness. So if you are, as you say, a real Christian, then I am forced to conclude that you and the Christianity you profess, are perverse. This does place me in an odd position vis-a-vis you. But there you have it.

You are a religious zealot, that is true, but I can still try to see through that and to identify what is *sound* within the larger stance or ideology of which you are a part.

It seems to suit your thesis to call Trump an "evangelical," maybe, but also to deny that he really IS one. I don't know how you can ground either judgment. For you also say that anybody who self-identifies as something has to be regarded as authentic, and you also say that you regard Trump's actual beliefs as simply..."irrelevant."

No, I do not think (personal opinion) that Trump is a Christian in nearly any sense. It is far more likely that he is a secular Jew even though he is not a convert. His attitudes and actions correspond much more to secular Jewish ethics of a NY variety (again in my humble opinion).

He makes use of Evangelicals, and is made use of by Evangelicals, and additionally by both Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists who pursue tangible terrestrial objects. My main point is there though, naturally, it goes over your head.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Your comments also seem a little unkind to the administrators, if you don't mind me saying.

I do not mind even slightly. Except to say I offered no comments about administrators. The present conversation, hundreds of pages, has moved in many many different directions, as it can and should.

You can move whatever you wish to move wherever you desire to move it though.

In my case I will keep exactly within the frames that have opened up. It is all relevant. Highly so.

[Immanuel Can]

Trump however clearly has made use, politically, of the Evangelicals.

I don't know, AJ...this looks like a judgment, to me.

But sincerity is not something that you can expect to matter, if, as you said, belief is "irrelevant."

I thought you could not know his inner state, and it was "irrelevant"...

Cold you read better you'd have understood initially. In the larger picture his inner state is not relevant.

I don't think the problem was in my reading. I think it was, if anywhere, in your lack of clarity about what you meant.

Keep in mind, AJ, that nobody here knows anything about what you mean, but what you write. They don't know you personally, they can't tell what you secretly believe, or even what you mean, except for by taking what you say literally.

I have no reason to believe him either cynical or insincere.

And yet you attribute to him "using" people and "playing," and being "Machiavellian." Those are your words.

You see, AJ, that if you use those terms, you can't blame people for deciding you're being judgmental, and for wondering how you can both deny that Trump's inner state matters, and yet also implying, as above, that you know what it is.

That's the Biblical definition. (John 3:3) If you find it "too strict," I can't help you. You'll have to take that up with God.

I do not have to take anything *up with god* to make the assertions that I do.

We all will.

I see your brand of Christianity as a form of sickness.

Wow. Not at all judgmental.

Sorry. So what this means is that you think that the people who only say their are "Christians" are the real ones, and the ones who really are, who believe it and try to apply and live it, are "sick"?

It seems to suit your thesis to call Trump an "evangelical," maybe, but also to deny that he really IS one. I don't know how you can ground either judgment. For you also say that anybody who self-identifies as something has to be regarded as authentic, and you also say that you regard Trump's actual beliefs as simply..."irrelevant."

No, I do not think (personal opinion) that Trump is a Christian in nearly any sense.

Wow. Super-judgmental, and also a denial of the criterion you actually insisted on above, the self-ID criterion.

If you're not even going to keep faith with yourself, AJ, how are we supposed to believe you?

It is far more likely that he is a secular Jew even though he is not a convert.

Really? Well, that's an allegation I have never heard before.

Good thing your opinion is "humble." Otherwise, I might suppose you're overreaching.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It seems to suit your thesis to call Trump an "evangelical," maybe, but also to deny that he really IS one. I don't know how you can ground either judgment. For you also say that anybody who self-identifies as something has to be regarded as authentic, and you also say that you regard Trump's actual beliefs as simply..."irrelevant."

Benny Hinn (for an example) identifies himself as Christian.

Is he a Christian? Is he according to you a real, genuine or authentic Christian?

[Dubious]

...why do you care what he held up? You don't think there's anything in the Bible anyway, do you? So why would it matter?

You would be wrong about that but I do admit to having a higher respect for that which created Judaism than that which created Christianity.

Oh? Interesting. What offends you, then, about a politician waving a Bible? Do you attribute some sacredness to that text?

Honest question.

Nothing sacred about Trump holding a bible like some cheap corner evangelist surrounded by bodyguards. What was the point of that anyway. Do you know?