QUOTE (Werthead @ Sep 26 2008, 17.33)

Something that I think is a dealbreaker for a lot of Christians is that there is supposed to be that whole deal about not accepting false prophets, and the founder of Mormonism is seen by many as a false prophet in that light and thus definitely a heretic, but the argument over whether that makes him and all Mormons by extension apostates is another matter.

Why is he as a prophet any more or less false than those in the old school Christian bibles? Really the only fundamental difference here seems to be that Joe Smith translated his hallucinations or completely invented BS into scripture in more or less modern times so its easier to call bullshit on it.

Though I can really give a shit what one Christian calls another. A number of Protestants still hold Catholics as a step (small step) above devil-worshipers, so such holier than thou BS goes with the territory. If Catholics aren't Christian, I am kinda curious where Christianity was during the 1000+ years between the Disciples and Martin Luther finding a hammer and nails, but hey, you can't expect logic with these sorts of things. They all have equivalent merit to the Flying Spaghetti monster and his universe creating noodly appendage, which is none. So if one party wants to claim that they're the true spokesman of the omnipotent invisible man, more power to them. So long as they don't start killing eachother over it, who gives a shit?

I think any fair reading of the history makes it clear that Mormonism was pretty much the Scientology of its day and Joe Smith was L. Ron without the sci-fi novels. Unless anyone actually believes that Joe discovered gold plates inscribed in a language that doesn't exist that he was somehow able to translate into a missing biblical book with no credible accounts of anyone ever seeing this astounding archeological find. The entire religion is premised off of Biblical fan-fic. Its pathetic really.

QUOTE (the Blauer Dragon @ Apr 8 2009, 19.42)

I neither consider the Mormons nor the Catholics to be Christians, so I am probably the wrong person to ask about this.

So did we not have Christians in the west for fifteen-hundred years then? Did half the continent spontaneously combust into Protestants circa 1500? We (I become Catholic whenever a non-Catholic theist knocks it) are the motherfuckin church. Protestants are our rotten leftovers.

QUOTE (Matrim Fox Cauthon @ Apr 9 2009, 00.57)

And I become a Reformed Protestant when Catholic wannabes knock it. The Roman Catholic Church does not nor never has had a monopoly on being THE Church.

And Catholics haven't claimed one since the Reformation. Protestants to this day still do. Where the hell were they in 662? 1066? Those little upstart children have a hell of alot of nerve. We've been crushing heretics and suppressing Pagans since 325AD. They weren't even a thought back then. Ungrateful little shits, should've let the Muslims conquer them all. Or better yet, not bother converting the marauding barbarians and leave Europe a pagan paradise. What great victories have the Protestants won for Christendom? We fought the Crusades. We held off the Muslims on both fronts. (I'm claiming the East til the Great Schism) We purged the pagans from Europe. We conquered and converted the America's. The Protestant patches of America barely had any natives left to convert once they were done. We took out massive empires building pyramids while they genocided jumped up cavemen living in tents. We pioneered the age of Discovery while your rowboats weren't seaworthy enough for ponds!

Johnny come lately's in EVERYTHING. We were writing philosophy, maintaining ancient knowledge, building universities, and innovating technology in the monasteries before you were even born. What have the Protestants given us? Televangelists and the KKK?

QUOTE (ljkeane @ Apr 9 2009, 12.00)

Of course Mormons are entitled to call their faith whatever they like, having said that I don't think that considering the amount of different beliefs they have from mainstream Christianity it is unreasonable to consider it a different religion rather than a different interpretation of the same religion.

I agree. And since Catholics account for more Christians than all the other sects combined, I think we can declare their beliefs 'Mainstream Christianity'. Since Protestant beliefs differ from mainstream Christianity, I think its about time we tell those upstarts that they are not nor have they ever been Christian. Though we'll allow Eastern Orthodox to use the label as an apology for sacking Constantinople.

Everyone good?

QUOTE (ljkeane @ Apr 9 2009, 12.11)

I wasn't aware that the actual beliefs of most Catholics and Protestants what that dramatically different but if that's the way you want to go I won't disagree, before you make any pronouncements on how Catholicism considers other denominations I think you have to ask the Pope first though.

The Pope is too busy attacking sinister, EVIL CONDOMS. He's delegated this fight to grass roots Catholics. We didn't start the fight of course. We didn't spend the last 100+ years declaring the other guys false Christians, or labeling the head of their church the anti-Christ. That was the Protestants. I'm simply taking the fight back to them.

QUOTE (Zabzy @ Apr 9 2009, 12.17)

I was at an Episcopal (high church) service on Palm Sunday that was more "Catholic" than many Jesuit services I've been to. The Bishop of Rome is a relative upstart, historically. Where's Mashiara? I'm sure she can tell us more about that.....

Episcopalians are lame knockoffs who would be Catholic but for Henry VIII's libido. Its not surprising that it 'looks Catholic', because they copied damned near everything from us. Just replaced the Pope with the King/Queen and razed all of our monasteries while plundering all our wealth.

QUOTE (the Blauer Dragon @ Apr 9 2009, 12.21)

Ethiopia

Not Protestant. Their Christian tradition goes back about as far as the rest of the church. They can do as they please.

QUOTE (ljkeane @ Apr 9 2009, 12.25)

I'd expect papist scum like yourself to be against the perfectly reasonable act of beheading your wives when you get bored with them!.

Hmmm...maybe there are some things we could/should learn from other faiths.

QUOTE (the Blauer Dragon @ Apr 9 2009, 12.57)

I'm sorry, but wasn't the question meant to ask where the "Christians" were during that time?

No, the question was where were Protestants at that time. We had Christians all over the place. Gnostics, Arians, Nestorians. Hell, we even had whole Mongol tribes that were predominately Christian long before their conquests. Some Chinese too. The faith had some legs in the first several centuries. It took on variations of course, none of them even vaguely familiar to Protestantism. Different disputes, different heresies.

QUOTE (the Blauer Dragon @ Apr 9 2009, 12.57)

When I say that I do not consider Catholics or Mormons to be Christians, it is not meant as an attack. I consider them separate only because of practice and priority in faith. It isn't that they do not believe in, and follow the same God. It is just the manner in which it is done and the ordering of their priorities. That's all.

Then perhaps you guys should call yourselves something else since we had the claim on 'Christian' 1500 years before you were born. The iconoclasm crap is silly. It was ridiculous 1200 years ago and remains so today whether people use it as an excuse to riot over cartoons or to declare the BY FAR oldest and single largest Christian denomination non-Christian.

QUOTE (ztemhead @ Apr 9 2009, 13.18)

not really. Episcopalians have better hymns.

-- as a group they earn more money per capita

-- much lower birthrate

It was the church of the imperialist bastard Brits who for centuries discriminated against and oppressed Catholics both here and back on the 'motherisland', and they're still reaping the benefits of their bigotry, exploitation, and barbarism. And they're still posers!

Btw, modern American protestants are not peace and love shouting hippy communists like Jesus (more or less) said they should be. Therefore they are non-Christian.

QUOTE (Matrim Fox Cauthon @ Apr 9 2009, 14.30)

Protestants were not born in a vacuum but evolved out the context of Roman Catholicism. (For someone with a Darwin avatar, you would think that you would be able to apply evolution to social changes too.) There was nothing to protest to at that point and Europe did not have the right economic or intellectual climate to foster what would become the Protestant Reformation. So where were the Protestants? They were waiting for the rise of the merchant middle-class, Renaissance Humanism, the fall of medieval values, and modernity.

If Protestants were the modern, middle-class humanists than why did so many of them become puritanical, reactionary ideologues? Catholics aren't the ones trying to ban (at various points) alcohol, dancing, rock music and gambling. Catholics were (or became) the laid back party guys, Protestants the socially conservative nutjob prudes. Joking aside, outside of the question of church authority, they weren't really a progressive movement. Not morally, not as a matter of individual liberty, not intellectually. Many of the strains were quite fanatical and repressive.

QUOTE (Matrim Fox Cauthon @ Apr 9 2009, 14.30)

Shall we go into the subjugation of Protestants in Catholic lands?

The Catholic Church's problem was not subjugating and suppressing Protestants enough. If they'd been on it early, we could have snuffed those heretical upstarts out in the crib like so many other heretical movements. A single Catholicism was useful at the time in creating the sort of uniformity and unity that ensured internal stability before the rise of the nationalist nation-state. The Catholic-Protestant split saw no end to internal European wars, conflicts, oppression and suppression from every side. Perhaps it would've been better for all parties if the Catholics had stamped it out quickly. Their main failing was waiting too long to react.

QUOTE (Matrim Fox Cauthon @ Apr 9 2009, 14.30)

And are American Roman Catholics? Also, you are ignoring the liberal and left-leaning Reformed Protestant churches in your assessment. (Also, I am not sure where you got that in what Jesus said.)

American Roman Catholics are much more laid back than most American Protestants. I can drink and gamble at church functions. We have bad cover bands at the annual church carnival. (Its also a great place to pick up townies that you haven't seen since High School) And noone takes the rhythm method seriously.

QUOTE (Meili @ Apr 9 2009, 14.57)

We're talking about definition no? Not how someone interprets their religious beliefs. If you believe in the New and Old testament PLUS additional material you view as holy and also required to get into heaven, you are not part of the definitive mainstream Christian faith. She could be in the Heaven's gate cult and call herself a christian, it still is a fact she wouldn't be one. She of course is entitled to call it what she will as Mormon's call themselves christian, it is of no consequence to me but it still doesn't change the fact that those group's beliefs put them in a separate religious group than the one they call themselves.

Well, if I recall correctly Protestants did remove a book or two from the bible that the Catholics maintained. Several of the Eastern churches (Armenian, Assyrian, Greek Orthodox, etc) were split on the validity of several biblical books and actually included a few extra ones up through the middle ages. It was not uniform for a very long time and its only 'mostly' uniform now. You say Canonical, I say apocryphal and so on.

That said, I'd agree that the 2,000 years, gross inconsistency, and almost certainly fraudulent nature of the book of Mormon casts that in a different light than the back and forth dispute over whether to include the Apostolic Fathers or the Book of Revelations.