For those who don’t find “far-right” to be an applicable descriptor with what is known currently, I acknowledge that the meme creator could have been more precise with their word choice. However, I feel the difference is academic:
We can replace “far right” with the easily verified “not leftist” without changing the meme whatsoever, primarily because the meme is about Nancy Mace and her mercurial, disingenuous opinion, not (directly) about the shooter.
Edit - I modified it, though I still find it to be a distinction without a difference - alt version for those who prefer (whoops missed one first time)
They found him at a 7/11 in Missouri, and then they get their own planet when they die. They’re like the Scientologists of Christianity. Which I think was L Ron Hubbard’s point.
There is no authority, no person or group of people, authorized to decide who is a Christian and who is not. That’s just not how such identity markers work.
There’s encyclopedias worth of schism and heresy, all just more reasons to hate one another, like true Christians.
Yes there absolutely are. If you don’t believe that Christ’s death on the cross redeemed the world of sin you are not Christian as that is the defining belief. There’s literally no point in the faith if you don’t accept this. By this standard LDS are Christians.
I gave a post earlier describing why you can assert that LDS is a different branch of Abrahamic faiths which I will repost below. This is of course ignoring that it is entirely acceptable to view LDS as a fraudulent creation by Joseph Smith.
"Ypu are mistaken as to how that argument goes.
The idea is that Christianity is a separate faith from Judaism because they have an entirely different set of texts and a different view of the relationship with God and what is expected of the faithful.
Islam is a separate faith of Christianity and Judaism as it too has additional texts and a different perspective on God than what Judaism and Christianity has (which again differ themselves).
Thus LDS is a different faith because it has a wholly new set of texts, it has a radically different view of the relationship with God than every other Abrahamic faith, and we have a lot of evidence that suggests Joseph Smith was outright fabricating everything. That’s a critical difference and suggests it should be seen as something else following the same standards applied to all otherAbrahamic faiths."
well actually, the death on the cross is not that important to mormons.
To summarize, the person you responded to stated
To which you responded,
Followed by a wall of text that presented absolutely zero authority figures authorized to decide who is, and isn’t, christian.
All you gave is YOUR criteria, but there’s no reason anybody needs to follow your criteria. You’re also not authorized to decide. That’s the point.
No True Scotsman
First I reject the assertion that no one can make that determination so your “No True Scotsman” is not applicable
To be clearer there is one standard that all Christians agree to which is the redemption of Christ. If you don’t think Christ died to redeem sin there’s literally no point in the religion.
The rest of my post explains why those that think LDS aren’t Christian and what their claims are.
Except those that don’t. Your committing the fallacy right there. If those people over there that call themselves Christians don’t agree with your arbitrary criteria, then they’re not true Christians. Except your only evidence to back up your claim is, “trust me bro.” There’s no license or certificate from any kind of authority. It’s just you making shit up.
Allow me to demonstrate.
All Christians have a tattoo on their forehead of Jesus on the cross with a pool of blood at the base of the cross. Every year they go through a secretive cleansing and atonement ritual that culminates in an update to the tattoo that makes the pool of blood bigger. You can identify the most pious Christians by how big their pool of blood is.
If you don’t have this tattoo, then you’re not a Christian and your erroneous opinion of what criteria makes someone christian is irrelevant.
I think most of the early christian churches agreed on which books and gospels are part the Bible and in which order. The interpretations and translations of them often differ though.
Some groups like the Mormons decided to add additional books nobody else thinks is “inspired by God”.
In my personal view a better comparison than Scientology would be Islam. They also added stuff with the difference that they “degraded” Jesus to a prophet and made Mohammed the central figure.
Except we don’t have the outright evidence of fraud for Islam like we do for LDS
That’s only because Islam is older than 200 years and from a time before the printing press. If Joseph Smith had lived, say, 500 years earlier, Mormonism would be shrouded in the same “unprovability” that most other religions enjoy.
Other than the general acceptance that all religions are unsubstantiated fraud.