clipka wrote:
> "David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> Unfortunately, "fundamentalist" is one of those terms much abused by the
>> media.
>> It ought to mean something like "believing or adhering to the
>> fundamentals of",
>> whereas, it has come to mean something like "one ready to exercise violence
>> against those who disagree with his beliefs"
> 
> That's what I'd call "radical" (though they're typically also fundamentalists).

"Radical" is another media buzz-word that has come to have little 
descriptive
meaning.

> 
>> For instance, the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism
>> is the acceptance of Jesus as divine.
> 
> A bit more than that, to all I know; Judaism does not even acknowledge Jesus as
> a prophet (which, for instance, Islam does).

I think you are right, but they could accept him as a prophet 
misunderstood or misrepresented
by the christians with little or no change in their beliefs.

> There's also strong dissent about the position whether the Mosaic rituals are
> still binding; Jews are obviously convinced that this was the case, and even
> many of the earliest Christians (who were Jews after all) seem to have
> continued, and partially even insisted on, this tradition, while Paulus seems
> to have taught otherwise among the Gentile christians (though he also seemed to
> have strongly opposed the position that it was particularly *bad* to follow
> those old rituals). And the thing is of course complicated further by various
> christian sub-groups having introduced their own rituals instead (which
> apparently were often adapted versions of older traditions).

I think this is all true.

> 
>> A lot that many christians believe about Satan,
>> heaven, angels, etc. is,
>> I think, accumulated tradition. Of course some no doubt regard the who
>> of christian belief as
>> accumulated tradition.
> 
> That's a very difficult topic, because a lot can be interpreted into the bible,
> so it's hard to tell which is true christian, and which is heathen tradition
> projected onto biblical terminology and the like.
Also true.

David :)

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