Must a Christian beleive that Jesus is god?

I know this is below the belt, but:
anyone who can beilieve a god, his son and a ghost are all one can believe anything.

It's not below the belt at all, and it's not offensive. In fact, many Christians themselves have a hard time wrapping their head around this concept. I can give you a better explanation than you've probably heard till now, and in fact, better than many Christians have heard.

Early Christians who were dealing with three supernatural entities (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) were familiar with two kinds of current theologies: the monotheistic Judaism and the polytheistic Greek or Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses. These Christians developed the three-in-one concept of the Trinity.

Basically, while each entity was an individual, they had almost everything in common, were compatible, worked together, were harmonious, etc. That is, in comparison to the polytheistic pantheons, whose individuals often worked against each other, fought each other, stole from each other, bedded each other's women, etc. The pantheon was a cutthroat, every-man-for-himself, battle royal kind of outfit. More pathetic than pantheon, if you ask me. It was like playing rock-paper-scissors at the supernatural level.

So that's the Trinity in a nutshell: three individuals, but not to worry, because they're all on the same page, they're all in complete agreement.
 
I capitalize Jesus, Jehovah, Zeus, and other words I recognize as names. To me god is a generic term like deity, which Christians do not capitalize.

If the word god was always used as a name & never used as a generic term, I would capitalize it to show respect for my Christian friends, just as I capitalize Jehovah & variations out of respect for my Jewish friends.

There are so many spelling & grammatical errors at SciForums, I am surprised that anyone noticed that I and many other atheists fail to capitalize god.
 
Dinosaur…


I capitalize Jesus, Jehovah, Zeus, and other words I recognize as names. To me god is a generic term like deity, which Christians do not capitalize.

If the word god was always used as a name & never used as a generic term, I would capitalize it to show respect for my Christian friends, just as I capitalize Jehovah & variations out of respect for my Jewish friends.

There are so many spelling & grammatical errors at SciForums, I am surprised that anyone noticed that I and many other atheists fail to capitalize god.



I hope you can appreciate the Irony, as your own name here is Dinosaur, and we are all obliged to capitalise it. Why? It’s not like dinosaur is a proper noun in itself?

The reason is, of course, because Dinosaur is your name. All names are capitalised, and this includes words that are not, in themselves, names. The fact that the word god is not a name is not an excuse to leave it in lower case, and your excuse ( which I assure you I’ve heard a lot) that you mean a generic god and not specifically the Christian one is simply put a falsehood on your part. For one thing this thread is entirely about the Christian God, not s generic deity, and most importantly, it still wouldn’t even matter if you were being honest, the word is used as a name.

Let me explain.

1: You claim you mean by god a generic deity, but the question is must Christians believe that Jesus is god. Its obvious that no Christian believes Jesus is Thor or Zeus. God in yoru question is not a generic deity, and only an idiot would think it was meant that way. I conclude that this is an excuse based on that alone.

But…


2: Even if you had posted a different thread, the Grammatical Rules are clear. You are referencing a specific person in using God, not a generic deity. You arne’t saying “Must Christians believe that Jesus is a god”, or “Must Christians believe that Jesus is the god”, but simply saying God. The reason this must be capitalised is because it is a name as far as the sentence e is concerned.

Follow the link below.

htt p : // public.wsu. edu/ ~brians/ errors/ god. html


OK, I added spaces. I did not know that I was limited and could not post links. I won't try again till I hit 20.


The word God must be capitalised if you are referign to a specific peson, which you are. It doesn’t even have to be the Judaeo-Christian God, the word is capitalised even when referring to Zeus. If you pick up a Translation of the Iliad, such as that done by Rouse, you will often see Zeus addressed as God. Zeus is not the same god worshipped by Christians, but the G is still capitalised. God is not the name of Zeus, yet the word God is still capitalised. This is because the word God effectively replaces Zeus in the Sentence. But a word that replaces a name is itself a name.


The same actually applies to any word. My late Father’s name was not “Father”, but if he were alive today, then if I referred to him as “Father” the word, despite not being normally proper, is treated as if it is his name. So, if I said “I have bought Father a tie for his birthday”, then I must capitalise the word Father. The same is not true if I say “I have bought my father a tie for his birthday”. It works on mothers as well. If you use the word mother in a way that it replaces your Mothers name with the word Mother, the M is capitalised. It is utterly irrelevant if your mother’s name is Mother or not, and only a daft fool would think you were addressing a generic concept of motherhood.



If I decided to call you “Peter” instead of “Dinosaur” then as far as the sentence is concerned Peter is your name. The same applies if I decide to call you Rock or Tree or Dog or Dirt. None of those are on their own proper nouns but as soon as I replace “Dinosaur’ with them then it must be capitalised. The same actually applies if I call you God. Whenever I do that, then God is your name, and must be capitalised.


It neither implies respect nor belief, its just simple Gramatics. I’ve grown bored and indeed irritated that many Modern Atheists have decided to spell god in lower case to show off that they are Atheists. Its really evident that its done to demean the concept of God but it also reveals an emotional need. Only someone with a Childish, petty hatred of the concept would need to spell god in lower case to show off their Atheism. It really just makes me question whether someone really is an Atheist. Why would I think you don’t believe in God if you are so pedantic about him?
 
2: Even if you had posted a different thread, the Grammatical Rules are clear.
If you're going to whinge you could at least get it correct. It's not grammar, rather a subset of punctuation.

:rolleyes:
 
We speak of two seperate entities when we speak of our Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ. Jesus is God like, but there is only one God, our Heavenly Father. And he has asked that we recognize there is only one God, and it is he.
 
I started this thread due to a remark by a Catholic friend of mine. He claimed that a person is not a Christian if she/he denies that Jesus is god. I merely wondered if this was Catholic dogma or was the dogma of most Christians sects.

It was not my intent to put down Christians, mock them, or otherwise disrespect them. I was merely curious about the mainstream Christian POV on this bit of dogma.

I thank all those who answered the question I asked in a non-controversial manner. Apparently, my Catholic friends' POV is the mainstream Christian dogma with only a small minority POV (Eg: Quakers & Jehovah's Witnesses).

BTW: I do not think there are many Christians who make a point of denying that Quakers & Jehovah's Wintnesses are Christians.

Zav: You seized on my failure to capitalize god as a chance to to put down the atheist POV.
I really do think modern day Atheism is driven by Childish aspirations and not by actual thought when I see such nonsense.​
The above is a childish, vindictive, stupid, & insulting remark.

BTW: Is the capitalization of atheism & childish typos or some weird attempt at satire?

It takes a lot more thought to become an atheist than it does to be a Christian. Almost all atheists were raised in a culture with strong theist pressure from relatives, teachers, peers, movies, TV dramas, & literature.

It takes very little thought & to go with the flow & be a theist. Becoming an atheist takes a lot of thought in addition to being willing to take some verbal (& possibly physical) abuse.

In spite of initial anger due to your post, I made a benign remark about viewing god as a generic term like deity. I misrepresented my true POV because I did not want to get involved in a nasty argument, but did not want to totally ignore your fanatic & insulting post.

Your reply to my benign remarks was condescending & pedantic, implying that I was too stupid to know that failure to capitalize god was incorrect usage.

You recognized that my explanation was not my true POV. You could have expressed your opinion in a more friendly manner instead of essentially calling me a liar & implying that I was stupid and/or uneducated. Since you want a nasty argument, I will present my true POV.
I view the majority of Christians as smug & arrogant. Their influence on English & other languages has pre-empted the generic word god as the name of their god & insisted that it be capitalized in deference to their POV. I choose to not capitalize god as a mild & subtle way of indicating that I do not like their influence on language usage.

When Christians lobby to have under god included & capitalized in the pledge of allegiance, they do not consider a phrase like under a deity. I am sure they would object strenuously to Islamic Americans replacing their phrase with under Allah.

When Christians lobby to have nativity scenes on public property in the Christmas season, I am sure they would object to having some Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu display.

Christians lobby to have biology classes include creationism/ID taught as an alternative to evolution. I doubt that they would want to allow some creation myth other than the Adam & Eve story. What about a Native American or Hindu creation myth as other alternatives?

BTW: Why not require the teaching of evolution in Sunday School as an alternative to the Genesis story? Evolution in a religious context makes every bit as much (perhaps more) sense that teaching creationism/ID in a science class.

Christians want their prayers to be part of public school curriculum, not Islamic, Hindu, or Native American prayers.

It is a shame that America is starting to fall behind other countries in science. If Christians were allowed to force their POV on more people, we would regress even further. They do not seem to realize tht science is more important & helpful than religion.

They do not realize (or ignore) the fact that in circa 5000 years of recorded history, religion had done little to improve the life of the ordinary. Mainstream religion did not object to slavery until some time in the 19th century. The robber barons & scientists did far more than religion to improve the standard of living of the ordinary worker.

The amount of money collected by TV evangelists sickens me. It makes me even sicker to see so many taken in by what is essentially a scam.​
BTW: Unlike some fanatic evangelizing atheists, I do not try to convert theists to my POV. I wish certain Christians would likewise refrain from trying to convert me.

I realize it is almost always a waste of time to try to convert a Christian to an atheist POV. In addition to being a time wasting activity, I worry that a successful conversion attempt might be psychologically damaging. I suspect that many Christians have a pathetic need to avoid contemplating their own mortality. Slightly shake their silly belief in a life after death & some of them might lose their sanity. They have already lost their minds.

BTW: It makes me laugh when I listen to theists attempt to use logic. They should stick to unthinking faith in the absence of any evidence. Blind unthinking faith is their strength, not logic or rational thought.
 
Let me clear this up a little. Jesus, is not God. Jesus, is the angelic/human form of the quality which makes God God, to human beings, that being pacifism. Its not a matter of belief, God made Jesus just like everything else.
 
So he's not God, but he has a divine nature. What's the difference?

YHWH
Hierarchy of the sons of God Jesus, Michael Gabriel, etc.
Sons of God

We all lose our divinity trough a prior forgotten agreement with God that stated "on earth you are but a man, you will live as such." In that day men walked hunched down and used stone tools. Not until "Adam" was free will noted by God. Most, if not all present day people are alive because of divine intervention. "Adam" had the only successful bloodline still alive. Adam was the first man incarnated angel, he and Eve woman incarnated Gabriel made up the holy bloodline, kept hidden to this very day. We all have divinity, but we do not posses the knowledge to unlock the blocks in our mind, and we probably won't achieve that because faith is leaving this world. Faith being the key.
 
There is no truth to the Adam and Eve myth.

Says you. Adam may not have been called Adam, but I assure you there was a first man to give rise in both stature and mind, and this man talked to God through the holy ghost which is activated on one's faith.
 
I started this thread due to a remark by a Catholic friend of mine. He claimed that a person is not a Christian if she/he denies that Jesus is god. I merely wondered if this was Catholic dogma or was the dogma of most Christians sects.

Hi Dinosaur. I think that Christ's divinity is Catholic dogma. And it isn't just Catholic dogma either, since it's the dogma of the great majority of Christian denominations as well. (Protestant, the Eastern Orthodox churches etc.) So it's definitiely the majority view. It's been defined as Christian orthodoxy since late antiquity and Christians who disagreed with it have often been condemned as heretics and sometimes burned at the stake.

Having said that, I think that it's entirely possible to be a Christian who doesn't believe that Jesus was literally God. Millions of Christians don't. Since people are no longer being arrested for different-belief, it's safer today to express less-mainstream views and they have become very common in the more theologically liberal denominations. I'm sure that the great majority of Unitarians believe that Jesus was a human being, a God-inspired religious teacher of some kind, and arguably a role-model for mankind. That kind of view is common in the Episcopalian (Anglican) church in the United States, even if it isn't exactly the church's official doctrine. (To the extent that it has one.) Many Methodists, Presbyterians and Lutherans would certainly agree with it. Not just lay parishoners either, but many ministers, clergymen and theologians too. I'm sure that millions of Catholics think that way too, even though it's definitely not their church's official teaching.

The ironic thing is that I don't think that Jesus hiimself would have agreed with the idea that he was God incarnated in human flesh. That suggestion might have horrified the historical Jesus. Jesus was very much a Jew, and the whole idea of claiming to be God would have sounded like the grossest blasphemy to Jewish ears. Jesus would likely be totally aghast if he came back to life and saw the Christianity that arose in his name. He wouldn't recognize it and would probably condemn it emphatically.

I thank all those who answered the question I asked in a non-controversial manner. Apparently, my Catholic friends' POV is the mainstream Christian dogma with only a small minority POV (Eg: Quakers & Jehovah's Witnesses).

BTW: I do not think there are many Christians who make a point of denying that Quakers & Jehovah's Wintnesses are Christians.

Probably only a few of the more wild-eyed fundies would do that. Many Christians would probably think of them as badly-mistaken-Christians or seriously-off-the-track Christians though. But part of the broader Christian family nevertheless.

Christians as a whole have grown a lot more relaxed in recent centuries, as they've come to terms with divisions within their own ranks (such as the reformation), the scientific revolution and the growing secularization of the West, and the appearance of transport and communications that bring Christians and a never-ending variety of non-Christians together every day.

So in a way, the last three hundred years or so have been a very exciting and newly creative time in Christian thology, because a whole new set of issues have thrust themselves forward and because it's a lot safer today than it once was to express divergent views about them.
 
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It takes a lot more thought to become an atheist than it does to be a Christian. Almost all atheists were raised in a culture with strong theist pressure from relatives, teachers, peers, movies, TV dramas, & literature.

It takes very little thought & to go with the flow & be a theist. Becoming an atheist takes a lot of thought in addition to being willing to take some verbal (& possibly physical) abuse.

This is not universally true. I have tried for many years to become a Christian, I was under considerable pressure from Christians - and yet haven't become one.



It takes very little thought & to go with the flow & be a theist.

This is totally not my experience either. My experience is just the opposite.
 
Originally Posted by spidergoat
So he's not God, but he has a divine nature. What's the difference?

I used this example before but it still applies. A woman can be a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, a teacher, a grandmother, etc. These are many aspects of the same person. She is not schizophrenic, even though each of the above labels will involve certain parts of her personality; relate at many levels.

As the wife, the intimacy with her husband is not shared with others. She is only this with him. Her mother still remembers her as the freckled little girl and to make her mother happy, she still sings their song. As a mother, her children know her as fair but tough, etc. It is one person but different specialty aspects.

The trinity is similar. This is one God, but like the women above, the one God has three attributes, each specialized to different people making it easier for them to each relate. God the father was all about law. This is right and this is wrong. The attribute Jesus was not about law, but about love. The Holy Spirit is about intuitions and thoughts. Just as the female above is many things to many people she is still one. But by being many things, she is able to specially touch more lives.

For example, say she was an orphan, had no children, but was married. She is only able to relate to her husband in a very close way. The God of the old testament only had a limited audience. Next, she has a child. Now she relates in two intimate ways. Christianity was much more inclusive since the God head gained another attribute, allowing it wider appeal.

If one is by the book, you worship the father. If you are more emotional and feeling you worship the son. If you nee more in the way of independent thinking there is the holy spirit. All of just attributes to the one person with each attribute the window or door to God. This diversity is why Christianity was able to expand.
 
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