[Shaden]

I disagree already. Christianity, like many other things, is based primarily on obedience. There's a difference, depending on where you are and the circumstances of your upbringing that dictate the extent to which it's a matter of obedience, but the definition of sin remains walking off the path of obedience.

The faith part comes in as the question of who the obedience is to.

The obedience is to their God and most significantly God's word which can be found in a Bible - a book of unknown and uncertain origin. They are being obedient to something which they cannot even verify the existence of - therefore they must place their faith in the fact that they are not being lied to.

First, you must show that the individual has made that sacrifice. The vast majority of Christians are, not because they chose to be, but because they didn't choose not to be. They believe because this was the first worldview they were presented. And this is often why they don't know the history of their own religion: the past does not exist, because it is irrelevant to truth.

The past is irrevelant to the truth because it does not exist in the present. If the Christian Church judged itself on it's past it would change and evolve as it learned from it's mistakes. Yet the fact of the matter is that Christians view God's word as timeless and unchangeable. The values presented in the bible are the values they adhere to. This never changes.

Second, I would find it more respectable that someone can take the core of their being and find it in themselves a willingness to question it. Instead, most Christians find the "sacrifice" comfortable. They find obedience and conformity to be comfortable. Myself, I have gone so far as to question things such as my own existence; I make the choice, consciously, to assume certain things. How many Christians would you say do this?

Not many but that is not the point here. What you are trying to do is shoehorn Christianity into a subjective mindframe. You are saying that if they don't question they're own beliefs then they are wrong. But that is not the Christian church's essence. Timeless values remain rooted no matter what. They may find it comfortable - so what? A lot of the time they are going against they're own human nature i.e. no sexual promiscuity, forgive and forget etc. etc. They deny what comes naturally to live a life of virtue and control. Sometimes this is not comfortable - sometimes it is. It is arguable that a belief in a deity is human nature - but a deity who denys all natural desires of the human psyche seems paradoxical at best.

Christians and other religious persons are people, just the same as other people, and just as much at fault. Would you respect someone who chose boundaries like, "I won't speak to white people"? Limits like, "I won't ever go outside my house"? Why are the boundaries that Christians choose better than these? And shouldn't this, not the fact that they have set them at all, be the arbiter of whether or not they deserve respect?

A person isn't respectable because they have limited themselves; a person is respectable if they limit themselves for the right reason. But whether those reasons are right is a bit subjective, isn't it? It might be worthwhile to know what those reasons are.

Yet the limits the Christian faith choose are often both personal and variable. They are never impositional nor intrapersonal. Their is no Christian faith that states people should go out and advertise their religion forcibly to non-believers. Bad eggs within the faith do this - not the group as a whole. Instead the faiths they choose are often personal and affect only themselves - no drugs, alcohol, gambling, sexual infidelity, adultery etc. etc.

Finally if the Christian faith and it's respectability are largely based on it's beliefs and morals then the entire faith (and indeed all those in the world) are based on the subjective and seperate views that people view them with. In that case this brings me back to the original intention of this post - that this was an opinion not a statement and no one person's view is more correct then any other.