[QUOTE=mswas]
That’s because you do not see any value in the spiritual aspects of the religion, for you it’s merely a utilitarian cost/benefit analysis. What was lost is irrelevant to you as it is immaterial.
[/QUOTE]
Actually it’s because I think that without the support of the romans, Christainity would have vanished from the earth within 500 years, assuming the institutionalized persecution against them didn’t finish them off sooner. Thanks to their evil pact with the romans, Christianity is still flourishing today. (Or at least several variant forms of it are) I’ll note that the roman empire isn’t doing quite as well, so from a survival standpoint alone, Christianity got rather a boost. (I’m also not sure the roman empire was actually aided at all as an institution by the spiritual aspects of the religion, even theoretically speaking. It populace, perhaps. But the institution of the empire itself?)
[QUOTE=mswas]
You haven’t responded to the idea of creative destruction of traditional society. Do you understand the concept? Do you understand that it’s inherent to Christian theology?
[/QUOTE]
I’ll admit that the idea is foreign to me. A brief scan of the wiki indicates that it’s the displacement of the old guard as newer better ideas come to the fore. Based on the brief scan, I don’t see how that’s inherent to Christianity, unless you mean that it’s supposed to destroy all cultures before it (which is not supported by the evidence; Jesus didn’t try to overthrow rome).
Feel free to fight my ignorance.
[QUOTE=mswas]
If Shanhai’d is too strong a word for you, coopted. Yes, Christianity coopted Rome as well, but it was a Devil’s bargain. Rome got to remain and Empire, whereas the Empire then got to dictate to people how they should pursue their spiritual relationship. As such the church had a vehicle by which it could be spread using secular power, but the individual Christian lost the capacity for personal doubt, or at least the ability to express it, as it was now in the hands of an official authority that had the debates in secret and imposed the results on the populace. This created an elite priest caste. Christianity originally was a religion of personal conscience, that was abolished by making it the state religion. It was about community, as opposed to the institution. The Government Mithraicized the the religion so that it would be ruled by a priestly elect, as Rome had done for centuries prior to that.
[/QUOTE]
Hmm, there seems to be a lot of correllation/causation assumptions here, but it would seem to be nigh impossible to to sort out what happened because the Romans made it happen, and what happened because it was going to happen anyway -or which would have happened if the church was allowed to meet freely and out in the open, establishing places to meet and people in whom to concentrate their theological assumptions and debates.
[QUOTE=mswas]
Christianity’s history of Creative destruction is littered with the corpses of temple priests who saw themselves as being above the common man. That’s intrinsic to the religion.
[/QUOTE]
Actually I think it’s inherent to humanity, especially in the times prior to the printing press, when you inevitably had a few who knew the stories and rules, and everyone else had to listen to them to get an idea what the deal was. Given that plus the very human desire for self-aggrandizement, churches and pastors would have happened sooner or later anyway. (Heck; they’re common in the non-catholic christian religions as well.)
[QUOTE=mswas]
Exactly, I can thank the Roman political bureaucracy for picking which scriptures I am using, and for waging a war on information that pretty handily removed alternate versions. In some ways it was a good thing and in others it was not. The world is probably better off without the Cathars. The Catholic church has enough ‘breeding is evil’ dogma underlying it thanks to Paul, the Cathars took it to a serious extreme attempting to turn Christianity into VHEMT.
[/QUOTE]
Heh, you’ll pardon me if I don’t work to hard to convince you the negative effects of religion are good. However, even taking all this into account, I don’t see how this makes the modern Catholic religion any worse or ‘less christian’ than any other christian sect. These events are in all your roots; why single out the modern Catholics for the suspicious eye?
[QUOTE=mswas]
I don’t think he was necessarily against Priests, but he was against the sort of materialistic corruption that became the Catholic church. Without the separation of church and state, all material power flows from the Imperial seat, so the greedy have a vested interest in wresting control of the levers of power, changing the spiritual purpose of the religion toward their own personal gain. Christianity of course was more powerful and resilient than all that, but the attempt to subvert the power of God toward personal gain is ever present throughout history. The idea that a human being can determine the fate of your immortal soul is pretty repugnant, which is precisely what excommunication is about. So you are right about Christ interceding, though I don’t think you are correct about the apostles interceding. Christ supposedly is the Word made flesh, the only intercessionary one needs. The priests who are not the Word made flesh are upjumped con artists seeking to manipulate the proles through fear for their immortal soul.
[/QUOTE]
You’re painting with a bigger and bigger brush as you go. Are you quite sure that all catholic priests are “upjumped con artists seeking to manipulate the proles through fear for their immortal soul”? Or are you capable of hyperbole as well?
Plus, the catholics aren’t the only christain sect that has priests and pastors and whatnot. Do you hold all christians who are priests, or go to church under a priest, as unchristan as you hold the catholic priests and their flock?
[QUOTE=mswas]
Do you see the difference between Priest as teacher, and Priest as speaking for God over you?
[/QUOTE]
Conceptually, yes. Do you think that no catholic priests are teachers, or that no non-catholic christian preachers try and speak for god over their constituents?
