Bluecat

What a ghastly idea.

I agree with Rabbi O, actually. Possibly for different reasons.

Blessings to you all.

Most Christian groups believe God is eternal. No trace of "reformed Egyptian" is known to archaeologists. The (genuine) Egyptian papyruses from which Joseph Smith claimed to have translated, by means of a 'seer stone', The Book of Abraham - an account of the prophet's life, by himself - have been found again, and translated by actual Egyptologists. They don't say anything like what he claimed for them, have no mention of Abraham, and date from around 70 AD.

Awww, bless you for clearing up that possible confusion, RabbiO. I'm not either, except culturally. I was (a believing and practising) one, once upon a time. I have lived in places where saying you're not a Christian was tantamount to calling oneself a rabid babystrangler...

Our lovely cat Roxy once woke us up after my husband had left a kettle (one of the old-fashioned kind that sits on the hob) boiling and gone back to sleep. She jumped on his chest a few times, mewing, then got off, marched to the bedroom door and turned back with a 'follow me, you idiot' look. After a couple of times of that, he followed her. She led him to the kitchen where the kettle was boiling dry, stood in front of the stove and mewed in a 'told-you-so' kind of way.

Summer is ending: I am still at my work desk as the weekend starts.

Oh no! That's terrible. I am so sorry. They are in my thoughts.

Ah well, we get into who is (or isn't) a Christian, and who has the right to call it. There is no end to those discussions. If we use 'Christian' to mean 'a generally moral person' (or at least 'one of whose morality I approve') then almost anyone who seems moral (or with whom I share moral ground) will seem like one. If we use 'Christian' to mean 'one who subscribes to a set of beliefs (the creed, for instance) and/or behavioural norms (at least in public)', then we have to decide which beliefs, which norms, what forms they have to take. We may also have to decide whether an item of belief is falsifiable (ie, capable of being disproved) and if it is, whether it has been disproved or not. For instance, 'I have a purple unicorn in my garden, but it is invisible, intangible and neither eats nor excretes' is not falsifiable, so it can only be a matter of belief. Nobody can disprove it. Statements like 'the earth is 6000 years old' or 'God lives in a physical form on a physical planet' can be falsified: it's possible to have proof or disproof of it (though of course people tend to vary as to what they accept as proven or disproven). We may find the physical planet mentioned by Joeseph Smith and a physical, embodied god will either be there or not. 'By their fruits ye shall know them' is a very handy rule. The only problem with using it to assess large groups of people, and especially large groups of people over long time periods, is that we can't find very many such groups whose fruits are consistently good. I would say the number of groups of people whose fruits have been perfectly good would be... oooh let's see... something around zero? Personal impression is that the book of Mormon has much of the form of Christianity but not much of the content, whereas the practices vary from pretty close to mainstream American (I've only ever known American Mormons) to quite thoroughly ... um... different. So, can a Mormon be a Christian? Can a Randian be a Roman Catholic? Some reading: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/01/16/eliot-weinberger/theological-questions/ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n10/david-haglund/diary

All this reminds me of the Yiddish joke about the boy whose mother says he's a genius. But, her friends ask, by geniuses, is he a genius? Mormons, it seems, reckon they are Christians. Many Christian groups disagree, but some agree.

Depends on your definition of Christian. Mainstream - the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Mainstream Protestant versions, see belief in the Trinity the divinity of Christ and the idea that revelations ended with the book of ... erm... Revelations in the Bible as pretty much non-negotiable elements of Christianity. Mormons, as far as I can recall, don't have much truck with the Trinity, see Christ's divinity as nothing special (all men will be divine eventually) and get their revelation from a book that turned up in the early 19th Century. I read the Book of Mormon about 30 years ago, out of interest, but mainly remember how much a pastiche of the KJV it is.

Hey there Veri! Good to see you back here.

Wow! What a great picture.

Good to hear you're doing OK,Stormy. You are in my thoughts. Thank goodness for a good doctor. Here's wishing you a great recovery! H Pylori is horrible, does terrible things to your insides, but the little so-an-so can inded be fixed.

If no offence were really intended, you might choose different words, Dan. 'Wimpish' 'crawl' and 'brown nose' are not exactly neutral. But, overall, it does look like you have not done much research or reading as to what pacifism actually consists in. I believe the pacifist response to 'if you saw your daughter/sister/mother being raped" is 'I would try to get between them' - thereby thwarting the aggression and protecting the person under attack. In other words, they would intercede. There is a difference between interceding and attacking.