Ah, sorry about that. There are three kinds of families - Levis, from the old priestly caste, Kohens, and everyone else (like me.) In our Temple at least one from each class had to say a blessing over the Torah at Sabbath services. He, at least, took his heritage very seriously, so my point was that this wasn’t some random Jewish person considering that Mary could have been considered an idol, but someone who had studied quite a lot.
It definitely was not clear.
There once was a man named Oedipus Rex
You might have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud’s index
Because he loved his mother.
if you ask creationists to describe what evolution actually says, and get an answer before they disappear, you’ll find that their view of this is nonsensical - dogs giving birth to cats and the like, and slime to man in two steps. I trust our view of Christianity is a bit more accurate.
I for one don’t claim that Christians are polytheists today. What I do claim is that the incoherence of the Trinity comes from cramming the drift of Jewish monotheism into polytheism influenced by the surrounding polytheistic culture back into monotheism without losing the important polytheistic son of God aspects. Saints aren’t gods, but they take the role that the Roman minor gods played.
Saints can answer prayers. That gives them godlike abilities. Catholics pray to the Virgin Mary for a purpose. She is supposed to be able to grant wishes. I find the trinity problem to be minor in regard to polytheism. Is is just another example.
Okay, as an ex-Catholic, I need to clarify these.
Saints, officially, don’t answer prayers. They intercede with God to answer prayers. The thinking is, since they were holier than the average person in life, they have extra “pull” in Heaven. It’s the same with Mary, except she also has the Jewish Mother buff…
Ok sure; but what about exorcisms? The catholic church still endorses those, AFAIK, and those demons/spirits/whatever are not interceding on the part of god, I would think.
Yeah, I can’t explain those. But Catholics don’t pray to them, either.
Hey, I already took the ferry out of Incenseland, so I won’t try to justify that sort of thing. Just trying to correct gonzo’s “answer prayers” thing.
(My emphasis added to both quotes: )
Ahhhhh, the irony.
Don’t you think you should credit this Tomfoolery?
I’m still waiting to find out if polytheistic religions are automatically inferior to monotheism.
This is the Dope. Everyone knows where it came from. I have more respect for Dopers than that!
Duh. Everyone knows that monotheism is further up the tech tree than polytheism…
A claim I actually do hear people make seriously; that monotheism is the inevitable, “more advanced” version of religion over “more primitive” polytheism.
Well, it is only one god away from atheism. 
I try to get to Monotheism as fast as possible, but I don’t even bother with Divine Right. Who needs Versailles when I can just switch to Communism?
Ha!
Religious scholars dance around trying to conjure up what appears to a logical defense of their religions. I agree that the premise that there is a god that communicates with the people on this rock is silly. But churches are businesses competing for membership. They need to attract new church goers. They have to craft a palatable scenario. They can’t, but they come close enough to sucker heavily programmed people into donating their money to them.
I try for Republic, myself.
And what’s the deal with the Statue of Liberty? That makes no sense at all.
Well if science, particularly human pschology has anything to say about the three person/one God being one God, it should be stated that such a thing as three personalities in one person has now been recognized by the science since 1980. Its call Dissociative Identity Disorder.
I always wondered what “Future Tech” consisted of.
That was actually funny.