No, not all atheists. I am testing you out to see if you are worth the time debating. If you are just going to talk trash about religion, I’m not interested. You don’t have to believe in religion to discuss it but you have to treat it as a topic worthy of consideration by it’s own terms. In otherwords be able to discuss what it means to the believers, and not just what it means to you. If the topic I offer is irrelevant then why does it matter if I discuss it with you? Let the thread die then. I gave you an opening. If you’re interested in discussing the topic, then lets discuss. I am not interested in discussing the validity of religion as a whole.
It’s not all atheists. I talk to atheists about this topic all the time on other message boards. There is no responsibility to debate you, and trying to guilt me into some sort of shame at being elitist isn’t going to work.
Look, Christianity has a history, it’s discernable, it has had sociological impact, and that sociological impact is defined by what the believers believe it to be. Christianity exists, it’s an immutable fact, and it’s been one of the most significant factors in human history. There is no getting around that. The idea that the tradition can mean whatever people want to think it means is total BS.
So, do you want to discuss whether or not I should respect atheism or do you want to discuss the idea? I respect atheism as far as it goes, but I don’t respect atheists who simply want a soap box to talk trash about religion.
Good grief. I have to pass a test to meet the lofty standard of “worth debating”? Well, you already specifically said that I, personally, don’t meet that standard, so I guess that’s that. (Though admittedly you did not say that about all atheists - I can do hyperbole too :smack: )
If you do feel like replying to this, I’d actually prefer you replied to post 55, preferably with a post with some content in it this time. Don’t telling me I’m entirely missing the point; respond to the points I’m making. (You may feel free to ignore that post’s first line, as that issue has been amply discussed, I think.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you see the difference between Priest as teacher, and Priest as speaking for God over you?
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?)
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.
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.
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.)
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?
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?
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?
Do you understand the concept of sacerdotalism? Not all Christian sects have a sacerdotal hierarchy where the priest in theory has power over your immortal soul. You don’t hear about Protestants being excommunicated by the Protestant pontiff.
No; some of these other Christian sects’ preachers just lay the terror of hell and damnation into you, which is identical in effect (presuming we both agree that no god will back up the formal excommunication with literal damnation).
Is the only problem you have with Catholocism is that has a centuries-entrenched clergy?
Are you similarly offended by the Mormons because they also have a central authority and chain of command (albeit unpaid)? (if you dismiss them purely for other reasons, that doesn’t count.)
You really don’t understand the concept of sacerdotalism do you?
A Protestant preacher no matter how hellfire and brimstone has no power over your relationship with God. They can teach you supposedly, but that’s not the same as having a sort of supernatural authority over you.
Get it?
Yes, I do have a problem with Mormons for much the same reason.
I understand it conceptually; however I don’t believe in it, so I don’t have a problem with it as anything other than a scare tactic.
You don’t believe in it either, right? So why does it bother you? More than, say, just telling people that their own deeds will doom them to hell?
(Also, mormonism doesn’t get too much into that sort of thing, from my experience. The preacher does not hold your salvation in the palm of their hand.)
Not all religious messages are equal. I suppose I’ll leave it at that. I believe that one can have a personal relationship with God. You don’t believe in God. This conversation has reached that point. G’day.
