Questions about Christian doctrine

[Cornfed]

I've been watching some of this Youtube playlist of men from a particular seminary answering common questions about Christianity.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... UgvF5jpkBe

Their answers are not bad but I think that I and maybe others on the forum could do better. How about in this tread people ask non-retarded questions about Christian doctorine and some of us try to answer them.

[fschmidt]

Must Christians love everyone?

What is required for salvation?

[Cornfed]

What is required for salvation?

This goes to the question of Heaven, Hell and such, which is not well explained in the Bible but relies on a certain strain of Greek thought, which is fine since Christianity is a Greco-Roman/European concept. We are not going to be able to prove anything here, so the best we can do is come up a plausible explanation that makes sense.

A related question is - what constitutes "you". Clearly you are not the atoms that make up your body - they will be swapped out. You could be viewed as a data structure that interacts with other data structures within and without your body. The informational content that constitutes "you" was likely not unemployed before you were born and there is no reason to think it will be unemployed at the moment of death. However, the universe is getting more complex on our perceived timeline, which is why it is our perceived timeline. Hence not all information can be carried forward whole. Certain incorrect information that is incongruous with the more cohesive future state of the universe will need to be pulled apart and recycled, much like the materials of a defective building could be dismantled and added to other buildings.

Therefore in order for salvation, i.e. in order to be carried forward is some recognizable form, you would have to have some nascent understanding of God and the universe and have some informational content to offer the future. So it is really about who you are rather than faith or works as such, although both faith and works will contribute to who you are.

Does this mean I disagree with the traditional idea of goodies going to Heaven and baddies going to Hell. Not really. It is just that like with a lot of things that is an upshot or summary without going into a lot of subtilties and nuances that might be in between.

[Cornfed]

Must Christians love everyone?

I'm not really sure about this one, but there could be practical reasons to not hate your enemies. As this is a training ground, some of your enemies may not be as advanced as you so could be capable of redemption. If they really are your enemies rather than chewing gum underfoot like the vax lemmings then they are presumably getting out and doing stuff and therefore opposing them in a goodhearted way may be important for your own personal development. You may simply have differing interests to them, much like I had different interests to the possums eating my parents' citrus trees as a kid. I'd still shoot them of course, but it was more in the spirit of "Tallyho and let the best mammal win". While hatred is useful in the short term it is likely damaging to yourself in the long run and also irrational, given that all the apparent scum might fit into the cosmic plan somewhere. So hatred is often not great but it doesn't follow that you are required to love everyone and act accordingly in the usual conversational sense.

[Cornfed]

What, no other questions? Come on people, I want to develop my own personal theology, and my answers are probably somewhat less ridiculous than you'd find in most other places.

[fschmidt]

Is infant baptism valid?

[Cornfed]

Is infant baptism valid?

In terms of guaranteeing the salvation or lack thereof of the infant I would say no. For one thing there is, as we know, no biblical foundation for it and for another the infant is not yet a complete person so there is not that much to save as such. There is nothing to condemn either. As a ritual to mark the parents' intention to raise the infant in the church's tradition and the church's consent for them to do so, it is worth keeping though.

[Gali]

Who won?
DEBATE David Wood ( Acts17Apologetics ) Vs Daniel Haqiqatjou ( Muslim ) | Violence & Tolerance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLz1Kc36L_U