Yes, I am a christian. There are a couple around here, as well as other theists.

What qualifications are required to be a Christian?

I don't think I qualify as a Christian yet. Hopefully someday by God's grace.

I suppose the basic breakdown in modern times are
1. Those "Christians" who think the life and teachings of Jesus are to be emulated and followed.
and
2. Those "Christians" who think belief in the incarnation, atonment and physical resurection and salvation in an afterlife are necessary.
Is Chrisitianity a call to action in this world or belief about salvation in an afterlife?

There are many different members with various religious beliefs around here. Personally, I am an atheist, but I have no problems with any other people of various faiths unless they try to cram it down my throat as truth. I just expect the same respect in return from others that I generally grant them. We are all looking at the same things from our own perspectives.

I was born Christian, but practise Buddhism. However I am interested in conversing with Christians and usually stick up for the Christian view in arguments. I am philosophically aligned with Christianity in many ways; I actually am beginning to think that theistic evolution (NOT CREATION SCIENCE) makes more sense than neo-Darwinism.

There are some things I would like to discuss with a philosophically-minded Christian. Mhy view of the faith has changed a great deal since I declined to be confirmed about 40 something years ago.

For the record I am a Christian

I am the one true Christian; unless you hate Christians, and have a gun, and then I am the one true Chicken...

I went through the confirmation class and refused confirmation about age 12, I think. Maybe we should start a lapsed Christian thread where we can review.
Original sin, the incarnation (Jesus as God in the flesh), the atonment (substitutionary, vicarious or sacrificial) and the resurrection (of the flesh, of the spirit), heaven and hell and the second coming. How to interpret these Christian doctrines in a symbolic, mythical, or allegorical instead of a literal historical sense? I acutually like mystical Christian theology but literalists and fundamentalists are difficult to have meaningful dialogue with.

Well, as often the case, you and I are just about on the same page.

I think sometimes all these years I am actually interested in 'Jesus as Guru' rather than 'Jesus as Saviour' - and maybe I am actually beginning to find Him!

I also have real difficulties with dialog with some Christians. Not that I wish to be hostile or unfriendly to them. But often they are rather - how shall we say - insular, and often believe that truth is their's alone (about which I often feel like asking them, why then have their been so many arguments and schisms? If the nature of Jesus was evident to all, there could be no room for disagreement. But it is obviously not.)

But I have over the years found many ecumenically-oriented Christians, like the wonderful Father Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, the excellent John Hick, and many others. So I am starting to feel part of a cross-cultural Christian community.

Check out the Christianity Pageat Shambhala.

I like Jesus as comedian...If they sue you for your tunic, give them your pants too... It's a sight gag...

I am almost christian. Just waiting for the final push.

Jesus said: Do as they say; not as they do...

It is better to behave as a Christian before Christians were Christians than to become a Christian...

I'm not a Christian, but I was married to one. The marriage was hell on earth, but my ex-wife had a lasting influence on me, not all bad.

We have an 18-year-old daughter, whose middle name is Marie (for religious reasons). She is taking philosophy as one of her A level courses this year.

I received another push in the direction of belief in God from a Muslim cleric who had lost his own faith. It was as if he was being burned alive, and as if he passed a little bit of that fire on to me, as he did to many other people, before it all got too much for him, and he killed himself in 2007. I only found this out yesterday (after trying to contact him again to discuss religion and philosophy). So, I'm sort of wearing a virtual black armband for him at the moment, trying to keep a bit of his flame alive.

Round about the time I knew him, I wrote a kind of little religious poem, which was also about fire. Fire seems to be my favourite metaphor for spirit.

I'm less hostile to Christianity than I used to be. I'm even contemplating acquiring a Bible. I'm not promising, though. Philosophy is my interest.

I often find myself more on the side of Christians than atheists, in those ding-dong arguments they tend to have (partly thanks to Bush, Blair, bin Laden, and friends, and partly also thanks to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and friends).

Those tend to be flaming arguments, which generate heat and no light, no spiritual fire. However, it was one of those (over on the BBC Radio 4 message boards), which came to a premature end (like my friend on the Internet) just as it seemed to be going somewhere, that gave me the final push to try to find a better Internet forum for philosophical and religious discussion than the BBC could offer. So there may have been a spark of spiritual fire in that particular argument.

I do go on a bit!:whistling: But I hope you will find me to be not too hostile, for a non-Christian.

I'm really sympathetic to your plight Twirlip and it is awfully sad about your cleric friend. Basically I am very religiously inclined but turned Eastward many decades ago. I have since developed a pespective which is very accomodating of Christian spirituality and spiritual philosophy. I had to do a lot of reading and soul searching to reach that point. I also would be regarded as an apostate or heretic by most Christians. But I don't really hold that against them, it is a very confusing world right now.

I can't stand Dawkins, Dennett, et al, in fact learning not to get annoyed when I think about them is part of my spiritual practise.

But the most important thing I have learned, or am learning, is practise of Buddhist meditation and understanding Dharma. That along with studying a great deal of Buddhist and Advaita philosophy, as well as the history of Western philosophy, has provided a framework within which I have made peace with Christianity (even though I am no longer part of it.)

Ah, good ol' Daniel Dennett. Such the materialist.

I had never heard of him - well much, anyway - until he published that egregious title Consciousness Explained, which I read about on Amazon. The comment I wrote in the review section was that he just had to change the conjugation and he would have it right: 'Consciousness Explains'.

Nobody got it. Anyway...breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.......

Someone else quipped that it should be titled Consciousness Explained Away.

(I must be honest and admit I haven't read it, but all my impressions of Dennett, from scraps I've read by him and about him, suggest that reading any more of him should be way down my list of priorities, however clever and eminent he might be.)

Good judgement. I have discovered a couple of far more fascinating philosophers of consciousness, both current professors of their subject: Alva Noe Out of our Heads: Why you are Not your Brain (I love the first part of the title purely for nostalgic reasons) and W Teed Rockwell Neither Brain nor Ghost.