{"id":630,"date":"2009-10-14T10:49:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T15:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=630"},"modified":"2009-10-14T10:49:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T15:49:09","slug":"christian-newspeak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=630","title":{"rendered":"Christian Newspeak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just like all cults, fundamentalist Christianity seems to have its own vocabulary. There are certain terms that seem to have pretty standard meanings, but when used in the fundamentalist Christian context they tend to mean almost the exact opposite.<\/p>\n<p>The most overused term I hear is \u201cTruth\u201d with a capital \u201cT.\u201d To most people, something is true if we can verify that it in fact matches up with reality. However, when fundamentalist Christians use the term, they are specifically referring to a belief which as a point of fact cannot be verified and does not match up with reality. Truth is the belief that Jesus was the only begotten son of a deity who died for your sins (even though blood sacrifice in exchange for wrong doing makes no sense). Truth has become a particular belief about the world which has not and cannot be verified.<\/p>\n<p>While many Christians will try to provide evidence for their claim of \u201cTruth\u201d the sad fact is that the evidence they present is so weak that it didn\u2019t even convince them.\u00a0 In general, Christians almost certainly became religious because they were taken advantage of when they were in a vulnerable position and probably even in a heightened emotional state or were just indoctrinated into religious belief at near birth. Attempts at providing reasonable arguments and evidence amounts to justification rather than facts or solid reasoning and when someone points out the flaws in their position, they almost always fall back to faith anyway. Faith for the record is non-verifiable by definition.<\/p>\n<p>Another Newspeak term used in similar fashion is the use of the word \u201cknow.\u201d Many times Christians have told me that they just know that the Bible is true and that God is real. They just \u201cknow\u201d it. Really? Like truth, when we say that we know something it means that we experience with it. We can verify that some set of facts matches up with reality. But vague feels caused by heightened emotion can hardly be considered knowledge. Making a claim that one just knows something is true doesn\u2019t make it so. The fact is that anyone can say that about anything. But that really doesn\u2019t make it knowledge at least not in any intelligible sense.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of times fundamentalist Christians tell me that they aren\u2019t religious, they just have a \u201crelationship\u201d with God. As far as I am aware, a relationship is a two way street. Talking to one self does not qualify as a relationship.<\/p>\n<p>The term, \u201cGospel\u201d refers to four particular books of the New Testament which weren\u2019t even written by the people whose name is ascribed to them. It does not mean absolute truth. In fact, if the Gospel of Mark wasn\u2019t even written by a guy named Mark, I can\u2019t see how someone could say that the term \u201cGospel\u201d means unquestioned truth. Don\u2019t take my word as Gospel on this though, research it yourself.<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:0\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=630\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just like all cults, fundamentalist Christianity seems to have its own vocabulary. There are certain terms that seem to have pretty standard meanings, but when used in the fundamentalist Christian context they tend to mean almost the exact opposite. The most overused term I hear is \u201cTruth\u201d with a capital \u201cT.\u201d To most people, something [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[814,589,133,9],"tags":[37,833,831,307,832,830,2214,2252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}