7 Comments

1. Lastmod

   October 24, 2024 at 3:43 pm 4 weeks ago

   Many of these are good questions. Christians just cannot fall on the sword of “the Bible says so, so it must be true”

   Even Thomas doubted and Jesus didnt “send him to the lake-of-fire” he was told to see, touch and believe. Men need to be convinced and its not a sin to question….especially one who does not understand. Sometimes a question(s) (even from athiests is actually a deep inner calling / or longing of WANTING to believe)

   Jesus expected his disciples to bring this message but when you just sing “touching the weeping face of jesus” songs on Sunday (modern praise) or say “I’ll pray for you” is not the evangelism He expected.

   “dont throw pearls before swine” is commonly stated on other Real Man Christian pages, forums and blogs. Christ wanted NONE to perish and its not the message of the “good news”. It is the messenger….because the messenger has sin, is not perfect and probably isnt prayed up to handle this ministry. It all starts with prayer

   But prayer is for simps. Real Men are attractive to women, work on cars, and are so smug in their own shortcomngs, it shows. Hence…..

   1. Derek L. Ramsey

      October 25, 2024 at 12:08 pm 4 weeks ago

      Many of these are good questions.

      I suppose it depends on who is asking them. When the atheist asks these questions, he’s not doing so out of intellectual curiosity or a genuine sense of exploration. He’s doing so in an attempt to discredit. These questions are somewhat valuable if you are a genuine seeker, but not if you are a sycophant.

      1. Surfdumb

         October 25, 2024 at 5:54 pm 4 weeks ago

         I’ve heard and like this formulation (I think from Stand to Reason): the same question could be a desire for an explanation (to learn more), or a search for an excuse/exit.

         1. Derek L. Ramsey

            October 25, 2024 at 6:21 pm 4 weeks ago

            Correct.

            If Jason asked me any of these questions, I’d answer them because he wouldn’t ask them if he didn’t genuinely want an explanation. When Seidensticker asks these questions, I respond according to his aggressive rejection of God.

   2. Derek L. Ramsey

      October 25, 2024 at 1:50 pm 4 weeks ago

      Here is what Bruce Charlton said:

      Nobody seriously argues that the world underwent an unique and qualitative change around AD33.

      If we take Jesus as his own word in the Fourth Gospel; then his work was not about this world, but the next world: not so much about what happens in life, but instead mostly about what happens after death.

      I put this forward as an instance of the way in which Christians need to be careful, much more careful than they generally have been, about how they describe the faith, and the aspects that they emphasise. To advocate Christianity as a means to the end of a better life or a better world, seems like a good idea in the short term – but it is fundamentally false and alien to reality. And, sooner or later, this tactic will – and rightly – discredit Christianity.

      Many of the atheist’s objections involve assuming the utilitarian premise that Jesus came to make a better world. Seidensticker consistently takes Christianity’s failure to “make a better word” and uses it to discredit Christianity. No kidding!

      The problem, of course, is with the assumption that Jesus came to make a better world. This is objectively false.

      If you pay close attention, you’ll realize that The Red Pill makes this same mistake, always trying to use Jesus to make the world better. This is one reason why I constantly call The Red Pill a godless utilitarian philosophy.

      The Red Pill likes rules and regulations. It’s why so many of its participants lean towards Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But when I cite the book of 1 Peter, I note that Peter—the supposed apostolic patriarch of the whole church entirely—was concerned with what happens after death. It’s why I say:

      “Many a modern man is not interested in what Christ had to offer. He isn’t interested in suffering, let alone using it as a tool to learn, and he isn’t interested in glorification after death as the solution to suffering.”

      1. Lastmod

         October 25, 2024 at 5:13 pm 4 weeks ago

         Interesting. I was looking in / at the context of someone who doesnt know about Christianity or has been hurt, or didnt get questions answered in a way that was indeed Christlike.

         I ponder some of the above questions now.

         Christians must expect hard questions, and questions meant to justify their own belief. Making disciples is not easy and the modern church tells us “His message is so simple”

         well…..is it? You just cannot point at a Bible verse and say here “this will answer your question”

         Not to sound like a gushy christian……but I hear about relationship, walking, matters of the heart and when at the same time, answers to questions are just “here is a verse” and “I’ll pray for you” and “come to our church and learn about Jesus (while most of the service is modern praise, siging up for ministry, and full of unrepentant sin (usually from the leadership levels)

         What’s a man to do? Of course some questions like these will be asked.

         Some of my healing Derek hasnt been at a “man led Bible study” it has been by you. Listening. Posing another situation that could be relatable.

         After coming here, I began to read the Bible actively again. I began a prayer life again. Finding a church???? No way. Not at this time and even if a “real red pill / masculine church” was here in Pasadena, I wouldnt be welcome.

2. professorGBFMtm

   October 28, 2024 at 12:01 am 4 weeks ago

   What is my main barrier to believing atheists are arguing in good faith about Religion?

   When they bring up how Religion is the cause of most wars.

   Which has been has been proven false before.

   https://apholt.com/2023/01/03/the-myth-of-religion-as-the-cause-of-most-wars/

   The Myth of Religion as the Cause of Most Wars
   The following essay, by Andrew Holt, is republished from John D. Hosler‘s edited volume, Seven Myths of Military History (Hackett, 2022). It is provided here with both the permission of Professor Hosler and Hackett Publishing. Thoughtful feedback and comments are welcome and can be emailed directly to the author at aholt@fscj.edu.

   ———————-

   Chapter 1. War and the Divine: Is Religion the Cause of Most Wars?

   Andrew Holt

   “It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history.”

   —Richard Kimball[1]

   To uproarious laughter, the late comedian and social critic George Carlin once condemned God as the cause of the “bloodiest and most brutal wars” ever fought, which were “all based on religious hatred.” He stated that millions have died simply because “God told” Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians it would be a “good idea” for them to kill each other. Carlin’s comedy routine, entitled “Kill for God!” has received rave reviews by its viewers for being “brilliant” and “spot on,” with one anonymous fan confirming that religion is “by far the single biggest cause of human deaths.”[2]

   To be clear, it is not modern military historians who claim religion is the cause of most wars, but rather many prominent intellectuals, scientists, academics, and politicians, often with far greater influence over popular cultural assumptions than professional historians, who have popularized such claims. In a 2006 interview, the neuroscientist and cultural commentator Sam Harris stated, “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology.”[3] The Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins claimed in 2003 that religion is the “principal label, and the most dangerous one,” by which human divisions occur, contributing to “wars, murders and terrorist attacks.”[4]

   Prominent American politicians have commented similarly. Richard Nixon argued in 1983 that the “bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”[5] Perhaps unknowingly, Nixon was following his predecessor George Washington, who remarked in a 1792 letter that “religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”[6] That Washington held such views in the late eighteenth century is not surprising, given the rationalist spirit of his social class and times. Some of his contemporaries equally expressed their concern over the propensity for violence among traditional religious believers. Thomas Paine is perhaps most notable in this regard. In The Age of Reason he argued that “the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been . . . the most destructive to . . . the peace and happiness of man.”[7]

   Paine’s views reflect a particular strain of thought that emerged in a slightly earlier period of the European eighteenth century, which many persons then and now have referred to as the “Enlightenment.” While intellectuals of the period tended to emphasize religious toleration, many also wrote harshly about the negative social effects of traditional religion. Such concerns undoubtedly reflected the fact that they were writing in the wake of the so-called age of religious wars, during which Catholics and Protestants engaged in lengthy and destructive conflicts including, most notably, the French Wars of Religion (1562–98), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), and the English Civil War (1642–51).[8]

   None can challenge the claim that religion has often inspired or motivated violence, but has it truly been, as Harris claims, the “most prolific” source? Are, or were, religious wars, as Nixon wrote, the “bloodiest” sort of wars? Is it true that “more wars have been waged” and “more people killed” because of religion than any other institutional force, as Richard Kimball claims in the quotation that begins this essay?

   Interestingly, these claims—often confidently asserted—that “more” wars have been waged and “more” people killed as a result of religion, can only be substantiated by an accounting of all major wars of which we have historical knowledge and both a means of separating the “religious” wars from other types of wars and counting the bodies. Such a list is destined to be incomplete and open to debate for many reasons, not least of which is the ambiguity surrounding many human conflicts. Was, for example, the English Civil War primarily a struggle over parliamentary rights vis-à-vis royal absolutism, or was it driven by a deep religious divide? Or was it both? Regardless of these pitfalls and uncertainties, such an accounting, no matter its imperfections, that seeks to understand the causes of particular wars and the degree of their lethality is possible. It is only with such an accounting that one can determine if religion is, indeed, the cause of most wars.

   To most historians, this may seem an impossible task, with insurmountable methodological problems. Nevertheless, the critics cited here—neither specialists on warfare in any era nor trained historians—assume an ability to do this. Indeed, there is no other basis for making their claims without these assumptions.

   The critics cited thus far do not provide such an accounting. Kimball and Harris imply that their claims are transparently obvious. For Kimball, religious ideologies and commitments are “indisputably central factors” in the “escalation of violence and evil around the world.”[9] He states that this “evidence is readily available,” after which he cites not data but the headlines of seven newspaper stories about contemporary religious violence.[10]

   Yet this is anecdotal evidence. Moreover, alternative causality is dispensed with, as when Harris rejects out of hand the notion that the Hindu-Muslim conflict has political or economic roots.[11] Furthermore, neither author endeavors to sift through history’s wars in order to make even a rough estimate of how many were primarily motivated by religious considerations, much less offering a method for how one distinguishes “religious” wars from all other types of wars. And neither acknowledges a basic proposition that all historians would accept: that most, if not all, wars are driven by multiple factors. At what point does a preponderance of religious factors, however they might be defined, outweigh secular motives or goals allowing for a war to be categorized as a “religious” war? The critics cited here appear to consider such questions and modes of inquiry irrelevant.

   Of course, one could reasonably argue that firmly distinguishing between religious and nonreligious wars is so impossible that any effort to count and categorize all known wars in this manner is doomed to failure. Indeed, as I prepared this essay, I spoke with multiple historians who all inquired how one could possibly accomplish such a task, with some intonating it is not possible due to the complexity of warfare, which is almost always based on multiple causes and motivations. If this is true—that it is essentially impossible to distinguish “religious” wars from other types of war, much less provide accurate casualty figures for all wars ancient to modern—then the debate is over: there can be no basis to the argument that the former is the most frequent cause of war and/or the bloodiest type of human conflict. In sum, Harris, Kimball, and others would have zero basis for their claims. Likewise, those who seek to refute their charges would be unable to offer anything even approaching quantifiable evidence to support their objections. Game over.

   But let us not fall prey to defeatism. Complexity and ambiguity pervade historical research and are elements in every conclusion reached by every historian. With that in mind, let us dare to hazard a definition of religious warfare.

   Defining “Religious Warfare”

   In attempting to define religious warfare, it first seems worthwhile to consider the origin of the term “religion.” In its earliest Ciceronian sense, the Latin word religio meant to have respect or regard for the gods, as demonstrated by the performance of obligatory rites in veneration of them.[12] Although a critic of Roman religion, Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) adapted the term in such a way that it could be uniquely applied to a Christian understanding of and relationship to the sacred. For Augustine, religio meant worship, the actions by which one renders praise to God, but he also sought to separate what he understood to be true worship from false worship.[13]

   Yet while many in the West think of religion as worship centered around a god or gods, accompanied by adherence to theological doctrines and rituals, such a definition fails to embrace the totality of the worldwide religious experience, both past and present. Definitions evolve and change, and modern scholars of religion have come to accept a broader definition of religion, one that phenomenologists who specialize in comparative religion now generally embrace, which sees “religion” as any spiritual or pragmatic connection with a transcendental Other. This Other could include gods (or God), sacred forces, a supreme cosmic spirit, or even a universal law, like Buddhist Dharma.[14] Consequently, if “religion” represents belief in the Divine and reverence for the Other—and these beliefs influence the thoughts, morality, and deeds of believers—then it follows that “religious wars” are those conflicts in which religious belief or devotion plays a key role in the motivation of most of their originators and/or participants.

   The oft-cited Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously argued that all wars are political.[15] Yet when religious motivations influence political goals, it becomes trickier to determine to what degree religion is the inspiration for a conflict. Must both sides in a conflict have religious motivations for it to be considered a “religious” war, or is one side sufficient? At what point do economic concerns, for example, outweigh religious concerns so that one would no longer consider a war “religious”? What if a war begins as religious but ends as an overtly political conflict, as was the case with the Thirty Years’ War? Those who make the claim that religion is the most prominent cause of violence or warfare never seem to bother with such details, yet they, nevertheless, obviously define “religious wars” broadly enough to support them.

   To be clear, few would object to the proposition that religion or religious motivation often inspire violence. Many examples of religiously inspired warfare are to be found in the histories of the ancient Near East, Greco-Roman antiquity, Europe, the Far East, India, the Americas, and sub-Saharan Africa by members of various religions. Spanning the ancient to modern worlds, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Aztecs, and many others have embraced religious beliefs that at times led to, justified, or encouraged violence or warfare, sometimes resulting in a massive loss of human life. Yet the aforementioned critics of religious violence do not claim that religion sometimes inspires violence or warfare. If this were the case, then their claims would be noncontroversial. Instead, they claim that, more than any other factor, religious faith has led to more war throughout history and across all cultures.

   Religious War by the Numbers

   Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars includes an analysis of 1,763 wars covering the worldwide span of human history. It has become an influential reference in the popular sphere, often cited by persons seeking to define specific wars as religious or otherwise.[16] In their lengthy index entry on “religious wars, Phillips and Axelrod do not explain their classification methodology. They only provide clues in their limited commentary on the concept of religious wars in their introduction, where they seem to suggest that religion was often used as a sort of cover for premodern wars that resulted from more mundane causes, including territorial, ethnic, and economic concerns.[17] Yet each war they list in the index under the category “religious wars” contains clear references to its religious nature or features, providing an apparent justification for its classification as such.[18]

   What, then, did Phillips and Axelrod find? Interestingly, of 1,763 wars they list only 121 entries fall under the heading “religious wars.” In one case, two wars are considered in a single entry (“Sixth and Seventh Wars of Religion”), bringing their total to 122.[19] Thus, only 6.9 percent of the wars they considered are classified as religious wars.[20] One presumes they see the remaining 93.1 percent as primarily wars that took shape due to other factors, such as geopolitics, economic rivalry, and ethnic divisions. One may certainly quibble over the omission of some wars from Phillips and Axelrod’s list, but it would take a lot of quibbling to get to the point where religious wars represent the majority (882 out of 1,763) of the wars they count and consider. They also list other categories of warfare that have higher totals than religion. Under the heading of “colonial wars,” they list 161 wars.[21] After cross-referencing both lists, one finds that Phillips and Axelrod only list two wars in both the “colonial” and “religious” categories, suggesting that they have made every effort to categorize these wars based on their primary causes, as they interpret them, rather than secondary ones.[22] Consequently, based on the total numbers presented by Phillips and Axelrod in each category, one could argue that imperialist ideologies, regardless of the latent religiosity that occasionally colors such endeavors, have historically and collectively been the primary inspiration of more wars than explicitly religious ideologies.

   Again, historians could certainly look at Phillips and Axelrod’s list of religious wars and criticize the omission of many and the inclusion of some. Indeed, in my rough accounting of the 1,763 wars they list in their encyclopedia, I would likely come up with a figure of religious wars that, perhaps, doubled theirs. Other historians may arrive at still different figures, both lesser and greater, based on how they choose to categorize “religious wars.” Yet it seems highly unlikely that any historian would look at the 1,763 wars considered in the Encyclopedia of Wars and determine that a majority of them were primarily religious. If someone were to attempt to provide such a systematic accounting, their efforts would, indeed, be interesting to consider here, but nobody besides Phillips and Axelrod seems to have been bothered.

   In a similar way, Matthew White, a self-described “atrocitologist,” is sometimes cited by those comparing religious wars to nonreligious wars. His 2012 book purports to list the one hundred greatest atrocities in human history, based on total deaths.[23] Although a popular-history writer, White’s work was favorably reviewed in the New York Times and has won academic acclaim in some quarters, with Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker dubbing it, in a complimentary foreword, “the most comprehensive, disinterested and statistically nuanced estimates available.”[24] Historians, as well, have praised White’s efforts. Harvard University professor of history Charles S. Maier, in the same New York Times review, praised White for trying to arrive at “the best figures” and not being, like most historians when it comes to this type of research, “afraid to get his hands dirty.”[25]

   White is clear and upfront about both his methodology and the controversial nature of his statistics. He notes, for example, on the first page of his introduction, “Let’s get something out of the way right now. Everything you are about to read is disputed. . . . There is no atrocity in history that every person in the world agrees on.”[26] His methodology, as described in the Times review, is simple and transparent. He gathers all of the death estimates he can find for an event, with all data on his website available for public review, throws out the highest and lowest numbers, and then calculates the median, “arriving at what he acknowledges is often just an informed guess.”[27] Yet, White’s “informed guesses” appear to be the best ones currently available.

   Like Phillips and Axelrod, White also categorizes and provides a list under the heading “Religious Conflict.”[28] He notes that it is “impossible” to find a “common cause” in the various atrocities he considers, and that they can often fall under multiple headings. For example, White lists “Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland” under the categories of both “Religious Conflict” and “Ethnic Cleansing.”[29] Yet even allowing for this, White lists only eleven atrocities that fall under the heading of “Religious Conflict.” He provides insights into how he arrived at his list in a section of his work subtitled “Religious Killing,” while pointing out that “no war is 100 percent religious (or 100 percent anything) in motivation, but we can’t duck the fact that some conflicts involve more religion than others.”[30]

   In an attempt to solve a problem we have already noted here, White then asks how we can decide if “religion is the real cause of a conflict and not just a convenient cover story?”[31] In response, he lists three primary principles that cumulatively address this question. The first is when “the only difference between the two sides is religion,” for which he cites examples of people who look alike, speak the same languages, and live in the same communities yet engage in conflict over what can only be ascribed to religious differences. This would include Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The second is an ability to describe a conflict without reference to religion or religious trappings. For this, he gives the example of the US Civil War, which he notes certainly had religious elements, but can also be described in a detailed history without ever referencing those elements. White argues this would be impossible, for example, in writing a history of the crusades. Finally, the third is when the parties themselves declare religious motives. Here White notes that “we should at least consider the possibility that they are telling the truth,” especially if there are not other significant potential reasons.[32]

   With these rules in mind, White lists eleven atrocities from the one hundred that he classifies as “Religious Conflicts”: Taiping Rebellion, Thirty Years’ War, Mahdi’s Revolt, Crusades,[33] French Wars of Religion War in the Sudan Albigensian Crusade, Panthay Rebellion, Hui Rebellion, Partition of India, and Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland. [34] Thus, according to White’s study, only 11 percent of the one hundred worst atrocities in history can be attributed, in some major part, to religion, with 89 percent primarily attributable to some other cause. Yet there are other atrocities in White’s book that seem to deserve to be grouped under a more general heading of religiously inspired atrocities, even if they do not meet his definition of “conflict.” These include the Roman gladiatorial games and Aztec human sacrifice, both of which White categorized separately under “Human Sacrifice.”[35] If we add these two atrocities to the eleven listed under religious conflict, this would bring the total of the one hundred greatest atrocities, based on White’s death estimates, attributed primarily to religious motivations (a broader category than just “conflicts”) up to thirteen, or only 13 percent.

   A final breakdown, depending on how one evaluates White’s work, is therefore as follows: 11/100 (or 11 percent) of the worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict,” and 13/100 (or 13 percent) of the worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict” or “Human Sacrifice.” Although these percentages are higher than Phillips and Axelrod’s more comprehensive findings (6.9 percent), none supports the claim that religion has been and remains the cause of most wars. Indeed, “Hegemonial War,” a category that White defines as similar countries fighting “over who’s number 1,” and “Failed State” conflicts, involving the collapse of a central government and the division of lands among warlords that results from the civil war that follows, individually account for more of the “worst atrocities” on his list than “Religious Conflict.”[36]

   Again, one may quibble about White’s categories, arguing that he omitted some significant wars and instances of mass violence or incorrectly included others, but it seems highly unlikely that any historian reviewing White’s list of the one hundred greatest atrocities in history would see a majority of them as primarily religious. An alternative accounting would be welcome for consideration here, but nobody else has offered one, certainly none of the prominent voices proclaiming religion as the cause of the “bloodiest” wars.

   Steven Pinker has provided his own rankings, based largely on White’s research, of the twenty-one worst wars or atrocities based on death tolls in his widely reviewed 2011 book, Better Angels.[37] His list includes the following: Second World War, reign of Mao Zedong, Mongol conquests, An Lushan Revolt, fall of the Ming dynasty, Taiping Rebellion, annihilation of the American Indians, rule of Joseph Stalin, Mideast slave trade, Atlantic slave trade, rule of Tamerlane, British rule of India, World War I, Russian Civil War, fall of Rome, Congo Free State, Thirty Years’ War, Russia’s Time of Troubles, Napoleonic Wars, Chinese Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion. Pinker then provides a unique perspective by factoring in population differences at the times such events occurred. While Pinker lists 55,000,000 deaths resulting from World War II in the mid-twentieth century and only 36,000,000 for the An Lushan Revolt in mid-eighth-century China, he then uses population estimates to adjust the rankings per capita between the different periods.[38] Using this “mid-twentieth-century equivalent,” he finds that the An Lushan Revolt would move from fourth place to first place on his list with a mid-twentieth-century equivalent of 429,000,000 deaths, far surpassing World War II.[39]

   While Pinker singles out religious conflicts/events in neither his ranking based on total deaths nor his population-adjusted rankings, it is interesting to note that religious conflicts appear to play a minor role in both. Only three of the conflicts would clearly seem to qualify as primarily religious conflicts or religiously inspired events: the Taiping Rebellion, the Thirty-Years’ War, and the French Wars of Religion, resulting in only 14.2 percent of the twenty-one worst atrocities in history as referenced by Pinker. It is worth pointing out that at least four of the twenty-one atrocities listed by Pinker could be attributed not to religion but rather Marxist efforts to establish or develop communist states, including the reign of Mao Zedong, the reign of Stalin, the Russian Civil War, and the Chinese Civil War, equaling 19 percent of the total. Consequently, one could argue that Marxism is a greater cause of violence and atrocities in Pinker’s study than religion!

   The numbers, therefore, as provided by our three major studies to enumerate history’s most violent wars and conflicts, break down as follows: 6.9 percent of Phillips and Axelrod’s 1,763 historical wars were religious conflicts; 13 percent of White’s 100 worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict” or “Human Sacrifice”; and 14.2 percent of Pinker’s 21 worst atrocities in history were religiously inspired. Thus, our only existing quantitative analyses suggest that religious motivations inspire only a relatively small percentage of all conflicts. Moreover, there seem to be other causes or motivations that have inspired more wars or atrocities than religion.

   Conclusion?:
   The main cause of war is this thing called Government that wraps itself in Authority & ”Legitimacy” mainly through the dominant Religion of the people in its land.

   Like the Roman Empire under Constantine saw how Christianity had become the main dominant Religion in its lands and then wanted to wrap himself in Authority & ”Legitimacy” through Christ.

   This also happened in the MEN’s sphere as grifters like Athol Kay saw that most MEN begging Roissy in ’07 and ’08 for Marital advice were Christian so he claimed to be one to get their money and then when he thought his 2011 ”MAP” book was being held back sales-wise by claiming Christianity?

   He made it clear he didn’t care if anyone even worshipped the ”flying spaghetti monster” in his should have been titled ”Christian or not I couldn’t care less what you are TBH while you should be Shaking-your-head per –
   Matthew 28:16-20
   Amplified Bible
   The Great Commission
   16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. 17 And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted [that it was really He]. 18 Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority (all power of absolute rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance, and on every occasion], even to the end of the age.”-” in Summer 2011.

   See why i don’t trust those who claim game & Christ(Boxer was more a Christian like Roissy=Heartiste in that way as he didn’t sully JESUS by insisting game was ”Christian” & should be instituted to teach as such in Churches like too many”Christians” did) in the sphere now?