06-16-2016, 07:26 AM
(06-15-2016, 11:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Barna polls seem quite varied in their questions and in the percentages of responses to them. I don't see how you can say that Barna has proven that only 10% of Americans are Biblical Christians.
What I see in Barna is that their very fundamentalist view of Christianity colors their questions. They claim that "contradictions" are shown between some answers Christians give and the true Christian religion where there are none, except in their own minds.
Barna cannot be useful, because they assume such things as the existence of Satan as truly "Biblical," whereas in fact Satan is not a necessary part of the Christian religion, and there's no basis for assuming the existence of such a being. It is a symbol of human temptation, but they take it quite literally. They make other such claims as well. They claim that symbolic interpretations of the Bible are invalid. They assume that to be a Christian you must deny that other religions offer the same truths, and hold that Christianity is the only religion in which truth is found. Such views are intolerant and foster hatred. They live in the Dark Ages.
IMO the popular conception of "Satan" goes against the essence of standard Christian theology and is an expression of the Manichean impulse that constantly erupts out of Christianity. When you listen to what the typical Evangelical thinks about Satan they literally sound like a Manichean.
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