this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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A Christian is anyone who says they are. Christianity is how those people conduct themselves. Prosperity gospel is valid doctrine, just like liberation theology. I don't wanna play True Scotsman with the believers.
I get what you're saying, and I agree with the basic principle BUT
A) Trump doesn't honestly self-identify as a Christian. Like almost all he does, its a grift for money, attention, and power. Nobody who's not part of the cult honestly believes that he's actually religious.
B) Prosperity gospel is by definition a grift. It's a religiously themed pyramid scheme and nothing else.
We can abstain from defining people's sincere beliefs on their behalf without pretending that obvious fraud is the real deal.
This is a straw-person argument. Claiming two beliefs being valid is not the same as two beliefs that are equal.
You can prefer liberation theology to prosperity gospel. I do. But that's a question of politics, not theology. A non-believer taking such a side is making a mistake because doing so implies the following:
That's conceding that the Bible is a unique moral document, probably miraculous.
Thanks for warning me in advance, but it would have been more clear formatted as a headline or followed by a colon rather than a period.
I'm not talking about validity or equality of beliefs, I'm talking about sincerity.
If I sincerely profess to belong to an obscure sect of Christianity whose founder believed that Jesus went to America, underwear is magic, and black people are inherently inferior to white people, that makes me sincerely Christian no matter the validity of those beliefs.
If I, on the other hand, don't consider myself Christian but pretend to be in public for personal gain, that doesn't make me a "less validly believing Christian", that makes me a fraud.
Likewise, if I preach that god almighty will bring joy to anyone who forks over cash to me, that doesn't make me a practitioner of a "less valid denomination", that makes me a "multilevel marketing" (AKA pyramid scheme) salesperson with even worse aesthetics and morals.
The strawman is that you're pretending that I'm making a "no true Scotsman" argument, when in reality I'm just stating the obvious fact that, contrary to your claim that you'd have to be religious to spot someone lying about faith, both of them are grifters and completely aware of it themselves. To the extent that they're capable of self-awareness at all.
That's a incendiary affliction of the third degree!
I'm an atheist who doesn't beleive in god and, also, a christian.
Calling other Christians heretics and fake is the most Christian thing there is.
And fuck no, there is no equivalence between Prosperity gospel and Liberation theology.
Don't let religious pluralism and tolerance get in the way of punching up. Their point is to keep people from punching down and oppressing religious minorities.
I politely contest the validity of prosperity doctrine. Does it not rather fly in the face of the whole "camel through a needle eye" metaphor? Not a theologian.
Showing a theological stance is contradicting their holy book isn't going to be any more convincing than showing contradictions between different parts of the book itself is going to convince them to stop being Christians. It's a dogma that starts with a conclusion and works backwards to find evidence confirming the conclusion.
Sure, but that's also why they're considered to be heretics and not heathens. They believe in the same god and most of the same doctrine, but differ on some key parts. Ergo, Christian heresy instead of just some heathen religion.