Christian friends, please allow me, an avowed secular atheist, to give you a piece of helpful advice. This isn’t snark, I am completely serious.
Yes, really, I’m serious.
I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to you Christian types. Some of these annoyances range from the typical egregious offenses on the part of Christians, like your inexplicable daily need to encroach upon others with your backward theocracy, to relatively minor habits like thanking an invisible man for a meal you paid for and prepared yourself -- in your own kitchen, that you also paid for.
What I want to talk to you about today is of relative importance even though at first blush it may not seem to be that big of a deal. Well, it sort of is a big deal, and I’ll get into the details in a moment, but allow me to first set the scene for you. A Christian proposes, supports, defends some particular individual, idea, opinion, activity, or theological philosophy. Another Christian has a disagreement with the first Christian and instead of explaining his disagreement using sound reasoning, logic and offering specific evidence to give his argument weight and authenticity, he just dismisses the whole thing out of hand by saying the other Christian “isn’t a ‘real’ Christian.”
Well, I’ve got some news for you. The first Christian in my example more than likely considers himself a real bona fide Christian and regards some or all of the other Christians to be fake Christians. This is a terrible argument for several reasons, the first of them being it doesn’t make any sense, like at all. Besides this argument being circular reasoning, can anyone tell me what a “real” Christian is, as opposed to a “fake” Christian? What are the standards that should be met that would make someone a real Christian? Just blindly accepting Jesus as a personal savior and try really hard to not be an asshole?
I have a feeling this question is more complicated than we may realize, which would to some extent explain why there are so many variations of the Christian cult. There are literally thousands of distinct Christian denominations, and they don’t agree on much, and I’m pretty sure they all think of themselves as the one true church of the one true God. Are we going to find out at long last that the Anabaptists were on the right track, and the Ecumenical Christians were way off? What seems to be more likely, the Evangelicals are right on the mark and everyone else is going to hell, or could it be all of it is just a bunch of shit?
There is no way to positively identify what constitutes a real Christian, for one thing, there seems to be no set criterion for proper Christian status classification, there are too many sects and denominations within the Christian cult, and it is clear that the various groups do not agree with each other, and this being a man-made cult would explain why there are so many distinct groups in the first place. A great example of this is the fact that 100% of Christians cherry pick scripture, follow the bits they are comfortable with, discard the rest and rationalize. Absolutely all Christians do this, and to claim otherwise is an outright lie. Even the ironically self-identified biblical literalists cherry pick because it is impossible to follow the Bible literally. Plus also bacon wrapped shrimp is amazing (Leviticus 11:7-8; Isaiah 66:17; Deuteronomy 14:8; Romans 14:14; 1 Timothy 4:1-5; 1 Corinthians 10:25), and sometimes the yard needs some attention, or the laundry needs to be washed, or you must travel for business, even though it’s Saturday and the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2; Mark 2:27; Matthew 12:25; Nehemiah 13:15-22; Luke 23:56; Hebrews 4:9; Luke 6:1-20).
The second, and possibly most important flaw with the “fake Christian” argument is that it is a logical fallacy (no true Scotsman). What is a logical fallacy? Simply put, a logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. The “fake Christian” argument is logically fallacious because it attempts to revise an argument from universal to specific, without providing evidence or identifying any criteria for specificity. This is why I earlier asked what a “real Christian” is because there seems to be no specific criterion, hence why arguing someone or some group is of “fake” Christian status is logically fallacious.
In summation, you need to stop using this nonsensical argument because 1), again, it doesn’t make sense, 2) it marks you as dumb and uninformed, 3) and it’s all a bunch of crap. All of it.
Here is the friendly piece of advice from an atheist to you believers out there: when you have a legitimate disagreement with a fellow Christian, I highly recommend constructing an argument around facts, evidence, logic, and reasoning, instead of throwing out fallacious claims like “he’s a ‘fake’ Christian.” And if you are going to do something that monumentally stupid anyway, be prepared to demonstrate exactly what is a “real” Christian. Good luck with that one, by the way, because we all know you people won’t be able to agree on what makes one a “real” Christian, but it will be good entertainment for the rest of us to watch.
What brought this piece about is the special election for the vacant Senate seat in Alabama to replace Jeff Sessions who became Attorney General under the Trump cabal. One candidate seeking election seems to be a gentleman of reasonably normal moral character and comportment, the other guy is an accused pedophile. Which one do you suppose has the backing of the RNC and Comrade Chumpski? Right, the accused pedophile.
Obviously, there is legitimate disagreement among Alabama Republicans about whether or not to support Roy Moore. However, among these Republicans (on both the pro-Moore and anti-Moore sides), there are claims that anyone who doesn’t support (or does support) Moore is “a fake Christian”, but it is worth noting that the pro-Moore Christians have actually cited scripture in defense of pedophilia. I am not making this up. How fucking sick and twisted does your cult have to be to defend pedophilia just to win a political contest? The winning-at-all-costs and scorched-earth mentality of Southern Evangelical Christians will be their own undoing, with any luck. But I digress.
So, again, to conclude, once again, in the final summation, again, in totality and, again, completeness, allow me to, again, reiterate how insanely ignorant it is to throw around an unsupportable and logically fallacious claim that someone is a “fake Christian”. Because, if it isn’t plainly obvious, you’re all fake Christians, with your picking and choosing bits of a man-made bible, within a man-made mystery cult (based on man-made pagan tradition and man-made Jewish blood magic), that you like, you discard the rest, rationalize it, and then argue with each other about which parts are real Christianity. Some of us might suggest such behavior is completely mental.