The Top 40

What an absurd either-or assertion. Even if Christianity is false, if it encourages its practitioners to live in a moral and constructive way, it's important. In my experience, the latter "if" statement is demonstrably true for a large fraction, probably a majority, of professing Christians. I'm a Buddhist, so have no personal horn to blow about Christianity.

I'm with Mr. Day. I'd wager most visitors here would consider Islam to be "false", but would have to acknowledge that it's managed to make itself rather important anyway.

Thank you for tooting it.

A popular view these days is the idea that humans invented God in order to meet their needs and fulfill their desires. But it is at least as reasonable to believe exactly the opposite: that the innate desire humans have for God exists because there is Someone who satisfies that desire. As C. S. Lewis wrote,

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

Well said, Mr Sensing. What the first few commenters are ignorant of is the Pauline argument that Christianity is centered on Christ's death and resurrection, and that without it, no book of morals is in any way satisfactory to them. I mean us, of course.

Now Jack's words make perfect sense.

Allow me to add that ignorance of Christian beliefs in this present day is a hallmark of poor education.

I'm an ex-Christian, yet will mostly agree with Lewis on this point. But with a caveat: if false, Christianity is potentially dangerous because it gives a lever that manipulative people can use to control others.

Obama's buying a new fighter plane

http://youtu.be/knb3qNq-Uho

John,

Christianity is "potentially dangerous" in the same way that serving pizza to school kids is potentially dangerous. Obesity is a choice, and slavish obedience to a religious leader is also.

We really, really don't want Michelle Obama deciding which religious leaders are appropriate, do we? And I'm a former Christian also.

Wow. The lack of context gives people full rein to append all kinds of end-points to what is obviously a transitive statement within a longer apologetic. Important to whom or what? Unimportant in what way, and what does that look like?

There's a world of "think!" to be explored but we live in a world of "thunk," which is as dull and plodding as it sounds.