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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Whatever I'm calling myself this week)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Re: one more time...
Message-ID: <2952@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Sep-86 12:29:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.2952
Posted: Fri Sep 12 12:29:29 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Sep-86 05:41:57 EDT
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Organization: NOT affiliated with the Rich Rosen Computer Learning Center
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>>                                                There is only one unique
>> thing about the Bible/Christianity that makes it any different than other
>> religions: Jesus. No other religion has a central human figure ('prophet',
>> whatever you want to call it) who claimed to *be* God. Everything else
>> about Christianity, including the true value of Jesus' death and resurrection,
>> stems from that one thing: either Jesus was who he claimed to be, or he
>> wasn't...                                                                   

> Aw, c'mon!  Every Pharaoh of Egypt was a human/god, and proclaimed it
> quite loudly!  And they had as much *substantiated* evidence to back 
> it up as anyone else.

This reminds me (lately EVERYTHING reminds me of something else) of the joke
about the atheist who winds up in heaven because she led a good life, and
apparently THAT was all that any deity of the benevolent variety would care
about in "rewarding" and "punishing" people.  So she witnessed people of all
religions enjoying the pleasures of heaven.  (Even humanists & Ubizmatists...) 
But this person found a wall, beyond which he heard a lot of noise.  When she
approached the wall to look over it and see what was going on, she was told
that she must not do this, because "on the other side are the Christians, and
they think they're the only ones up here; it wouldn't be heaven for them were
it otherwise".

The moral being that a lot of Christians declare themselves and their religion
to be unique, often using this as "proof" of its veracity.  Surely it IS
unique in the sense that it names a unique set of deities/entities/aspects,
uses a unique set of books, etc.  (Actually, of course, there's a lot of
overlap there with other religions, so the uniqueness idea actually goes
bye-bye there too.)  But to claim that "Christianity is the one and only
religion that... [INSERT PET 'UNIQUENESS' HERE]" winds up being 1) wrong,
2) erroneously used as "proof" of the correctness of the beliefs.  It's
really quite amusing to see people do this sometimes.
-- 
"If you see this boy", said the ballerina, "do not---I repeat, do not---attempt
 to reason with him." 			Rich Rosen    bellcore!pyuxd!rlr