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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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Is Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten not created, coeternal with the Father, who died for the forgiveness of sins and will return in glory to bring life to the world?

If the answer is yes, then you stay within Christianity, and no amount of church heresy about sexuality can change that.

Likewise: is Muhammad the final prophet of God, and the Qur'an the true word of God, directly dictated to the prophet by the archangel Gabriel?

If the answer is yes, then you should become a Muslim, no matter how good or bad Christians or Muslims might be on the subject of sexuality.

......

But the core claims matter.

This perspective always strikes as odd from an outsider's perspective. To me, the divinity of Jesus or the prophethood of Muhammad are clearly the legitimization methods, not the essence, of their respective religions. "You should believe X because Y." Imagine an alternate universe where Muhammad taught Catholic doctrine on grace and God's kingdom, preached radical forgiveness and against material wealth; while Jesus related the Quran to his disciples, who subsequently waged Ghazwah against polytheists to protect the faith and bring fellow monotheists under a protection/patronage system. I would still pattern match the first as Christianity and the second as Islam despite the "core claims" being reversed.

Of course, the moment one becomes cynical enough to meta-reason past these legitimization claims and choose a belief set on its own merits, one has ceased to be religious in any appreciable way, and might as well just make up one's own beliefs.

I would still pattern match the first as Christianity and the second as Islam despite the "core claims" being reversed.

And if a pig was a dog he'd be a dog?

I don't see how this pertains to if someone should convert to Islam from Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy.