I think you may be confusing ethics and religious belief. Jesus didn't teach anything new ethically. Confuscius taught a similar system. As does the Koran. Mankind has never been in any serious dispute about what it took to be a good human being. The question that religion answers is is this "Are humans the only interested party when it comes to ethics?" You, as an athiest would answer this question in the Negative, but a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Bhuddist would all answer "yes". For the religious person ulimate reality is, in it(him)self, an interested party. The universe, on it largest level, cares about who we are and what we do.

You can, with little ethical fear hold that you strive to attain the best of what human nature can acheive. The believer would say that you set your sights to low. What if you strived to attain what divine nature can achieve?

Very few "professing" Christian follow Christ in his walk toward selfless death and limitless grace. But then, very few humans do either.

There is a scene is C. S. Lewis' "The Last Battle" where a servant of the dark Lord is found by Aslan (the God Character) and Aslan tells him that he has been in Aslans servant all along - [Paraphrase] "For you were a good servant and all good servants are my servants, and every Bad servant I have is really a servant of the Dark Lord"

The parable of the Sheep and the Goat draws the line between saved/condemmed based solely on the type of people that people chose to be. "I was hungry and you did not feed me.. therefore depart from me".

Christians should be human and ethical par excellance plus a bit more beacuse they have available to them divine assistance.

My belief is that Judgement day will be full of surprises. Many who think they are "home and hosed" are in for a shock.

And perhaps you could ponder the type of humilty that made the apostle paul say "My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent."

My contention is that no religion - including the one surrounding the Jesus character - provides any specific teachings regarding human life that can't be taught without religion. And with human life I mean human desire, emotion, values, need or anything else you can think of (if I expressed myself clumpsy before so that it seemed I was only aiming at morals and ethics, then this should take care of the reach as I meant it to be).

I'm not asking as to which questions people try to answer with religion but if religion - "pure religion" or not - is, in fact, about the marks that you put forth as specifically Christian. To reiterate, you said that "the marks of a true Christian (what the apostle James called "pure religion") is purity and looking after the poor, is love, joy, peace, kindess and gentleness" and that's what I respond to. For it is NOT particular marks of a true Christian, it is the marks of human nature. Regardless of which questions or realities any human individual is wrestling with.

The latter is, in fact, what I referred to as fanatism because, once a particular religion has presented the questions as dogmatically answered, the divine nature of the "divine assistance" available to the person seeking answers makes no other answers available (hence the dogmatic mode). And that's really all that's left once we've taken all the teachings away that allegedly should instill certain properties in us - properties that do not depend upon religions but are or have been instilled regardlessly.

That's exactly what I'm on about. Why a bit more than non-Christians? I could just as well say that Christians are in fact 'ethical par excellence' minus a bit because they imagine to have divine assistance available to them, which means that some parts of life can be imagined as being out of their jurisdiction and therefore not their responsibility.

I would of course never say such a thing because, like it or not, it's not religion that makes us who we are but rather who we are that makes religion fit so nicely into our brains that it seems the other way around. Except, of course, in the eyes of those who have not, yet perhaps, had religion fit into their brains.

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Any teachings about how men should worship (the) God(s) or how mankind should "seek first the kingdom of God" or even about how having worldly desires impacts future reincarnations all have intrinsic religious components.
Its true that many teachings commonly associated with specific religions could (and often do) exist without those associations (e.g. "Love your neighbor as yourself", "Thou shalt not murder", etc). But its not true of all teachings. Some involve intrinsic religious components.

Hmmm, my experience does not lead me to conclude that "purity and looking after the poor...love, joy, peace, kindess and gentleness" are necessarily "marks of human nature". Pure, loving and peaceful don't really seem to describe us as a species.
But I think (and I'm sure clerk will correct me if I've misunderstood him) the point is not that anyone with those qualities must be a Christian, or that only Christians could possibly have those qualities. Rather, that anyone who is a Christian should have those qualities; that to pursue Christianity is to pursue those things, amongst others, and that if you lack these things you are not being fully true to the religion.

I suspect the difference in perspective there is simple to explain.
If someone is striving toward a goal and getting some outside assistance, you would naturally expect them to do better than they would if they were not getting (or were resisting) that outside help.
If someone is relying on assistance that isn't actually there, then naturally you'd expect them to do worse than if they didn't have such a false notion.
The expectation depends on one's view of whether that assistance is actually present or not.

Dilettante, thanks for pointing out that theClerk didn't say it was exclusively Christian. That's why I said "particular marks" but, otherwise, you're right that I didn't mention it more specifically than that. My bad.

But yes, those qualities are necessarily "marks of human nature". Not exclusively those qualities, since we of course have far more qualities than that (even some quite nasty ones that are also borrowed by various religions and claimed as originating from own tenets). Both "good" and "bad" qualities are necessarily marks of human nature.

Religions merely set all our qualities - the "good" as well as the "bad" - and actions derived therefrom into dogmatic systems that are easily referred to. Something like 'rest assured that someone's watching you so that if you do A then B or C will happen but not D'. So yes, everyone who is a Christian should have the qualities that prevent reprimands from above but it's no different than saying that any human should have the qualities that lead to the most beneficial and least harmful consequences to himself and his fellow human beings. What is different is the belief that the consequences are, as said, systemized; constant and inescapable. If that's what you mean by "outside help" then by all means. If your imagination of such a system assists you to do the right thing then by all means. I'll swear that it's possible without it. Non-religious persons live entire lifes that you would not deem as particularly out of whack with the qualities you think should belong to a true Christian and they do not and need not imagine any such "outside help". Which leads me to this sentence of yours:

Absolutely not. Your expectation of how people do may depend on your belief of the presence of such an assistance. My expectation of how people do does not in any way include an imagination of divine assistance (so talking about presence or not is meaningless). It makes no difference. In fact, it makes me curious as to why would you believe that it takes outside assistance for you to behave well. If you think it does make a difference, aren't you actually degradating your own abilities to maintain and express certain qualities?

Actually, that's not what I meant by "outside help" at all. But before I better define that, I'll yet again emphasize that no one is claiming that such assistance, or a belief there in, is necessary in order to be a good person. You keep repeating that "non-religious" people can live good lives, but no one is arguing that fact.

Now then, what I meant by "outside help" (and I admit I failed to define it in any meaningful way) wasn't the effect of the threat of punishment or the bribe of eternal reward. Indeed, many Christian sects in emphasizing the primacy of grace deemphasize the notion of rewards or punishment to such an extent that it hardly exists as a bribe or deterrent for people who are already believers.
Rather, I was referring to "help" on a more personal level: the notion that God will help those who wish to be better people to become so. The belief that God (perhaps via prayer or worship or whatever the sect in question believes) actually helps one become a better person: someone more naturally inclined to do good and less inclined to do evil.

Hence the assumption that, if such an avenue of sanctification exists, one who avails himself of it will become a better person than he would have had he not. Not, I emphasize again, that he will necessarily be better than someone else who has no such help, for different people are largely incomparable, only that he will do better than he himself would have done without help.

Surely it makes sense to believe that one will behave better with help than without it. That's what "help" means.

No no no, not live good lifes but have the qualities that you and theClerk say are marks of true Christians. That's two entirely different subjects.

First, it's all the same to me what the "outside help" is to you. If it's on a supernatural level then it's on a supernatural level. Second, I don't understand such an incentive should be needed. As said, "I" do not pray to become a better person and yet, "I'm" no worse or better than those who do pray (and please, no more confusing this with "living just as good lifes" .. that's not the issue). If your belief helpdesk system does make "someone more naturally inclined to do good and less inclined to do evil" then "I" must be more inclined to do evil than good. It's meaningless.

This makes no sense, either, Dilettante. Person A will do better with the belief helpdesk thingy than person A would have done without the belief helpdesk. How do you know that? Where does that leave person B? Will person B do worse without the belief helpdesk than person B would have done without the belief helpdesk?

Does that mean that you ARE selling yourself short as to your own abilities to achieve and maintain decent qualitites?

Let me wade back in again here. SMadsen, the problem I have with your contention is that it commits to irrelevance anything you view as uninvolved.

Imagine a young Issac Newton meeting an young man of his time and trying to describe gravity. Newton drops an apple and says "See, gravity made the apple fall to the ground." The young man is confused and picks up the apple again and drops it and replies "Nope, seen I can drop it without appealing to your gravity, it must just be the apple that falls itself."

I see atheists and God in much the same way. You argue that "Human Nature" can "on its own" be good, gracious, ethical, honorable people. I do not. I would follow the scripture that says "All good things come from the father of lights" and "He who loves is already borne of God".

See, for me, anytime mankind breaks out of his natural selfishness and narcissism to honest be "a good human" (and this is a rarer event than you claim) God is always already involved - already an interested and invested party to the action and transaction. (Thus the curious and almost universal religious belief of apologizing to God when we hurt others.)

A Christian should be good par excellance not simply because he is receiving help (we all are) but because he understands where my help comes from, and knows how to honor that help and request it when needed. (And all that is specifically Christian teaching)

I will attempt to be more specific then: No one is claiming that non-Christian cannot ever be pure, loving, joyful, peaceful, kind or gentle. Everyone seems to agree that there are often times when these qualities appear in people of all metaphysical persuasions.

I fail to see how that's meaningless, or even difficult to understand. It seems fairly straightforward: Those who seek help from God in being better people will receive it.
I have no idea what your personal inclinations are, but it seems fairly straightforward that (if help in being a good person exists), I will be a better person if I avail myself of that help than I will be if I do not.

The belief is that God helps all those who ask, so it would be the same for A, B and all other people.

If saying "I do better with help than without it" qualifies as "selling myself short", then I suppose I am.
I admit that I have no firm belief in my own natural inclinations to be a good person; my first inclinations in many matters are often quite bad and have to be overcome. I'll take all the help, from God and man, I can get.