How an obscure cult grew to become the dominant religion of the Western world

Re:How an obscure cult grew to become the dominant religion ... by flukus on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @12:52AM (#13587390)

> 99.9% of the time such a person person means that they are a follower of Jesus Christ and that they believe Jesus Christ to be the son of God.

But this itself is devoid of meaning. Many people say they follow christ but may have completely different beliefs on what that means. Even believing the son of god is not universal among Christians.

These aren't just blurred lines, it's more like saying a car mechanic, an airline pilot and a web developer are all programmers.

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Re:How an obscure cult grew to become the dominant religion ... by learc83 on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @01:02AM (#13587429)

> Even believing the son of god is not universal among Christians.

It is nearly universal--universal enough to be useful. If someone says they are a Christian, absent any other knowledge, you can be very confident that they mean that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Obviously not 100% confident, but confident enough to proceed with that assumption in most cases.

I could say that a car mechanic, a pilot, and a web developer are all skilled trades. That doesn't make the term skilled trade meaningless, it just makes it less specific. "Christian" is a very broad classifier and it is about as useful as any other broad classifier. It lacks specifics, but language is recursive--I can add as many extra identifiers as I like, e.g., Protestant Christian, Roman Catholic Christian, and Orthodox Christian.

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