In decline.

The part about having an iron clad control over who had Bibles is pure poppycock. Before the printing press there were not a lot of Bibles around and not a lot of people could read, but the Church did not forbid owning or having a good and accurate translation. The fact that so many still believe these made up stories is a sign that knowledge and you are not as close as you may think.

Knowledge is a great thing for true religion, it refutes false religions and philosophies like secularism.

Quote: Nareed

Jesus was not one of the urban poor, but rather one of the very small middle class of skilled tradesmen.

what was his trade?

when the Bible uses the phrase temple prostitutes doesn't that mean gay males owned by the temple?

Quote: Face

I imagine you're the same way. I find it hard to believe you'd see and abandoned bag or wallet and decide to take it. It ain't yours. Don't matter if it looks completely ownerless and you wouldn't even get caught. It ain't yours, so you'd leave it. Yet here, we have a bunch of "good minded" Catholics who want to take and do something good, never once thinking it already belonged to someone else. And generous they were indeed, for if the redman accepted their way of life, they were allowed assimilation with no qualms. But resist? Kill, murder, vacate, relocate.

I would trust a random Christian with a wallet, even if it were filled with $10,000 bills. Money doesn't rank so high.

What they're after is something more valuable: your soul.

Is that not the most precious thing anyone possesses? But according to Christianity, it's not yours. It's their god's. It's their holy mission to "save" it. And that gives them license to do whatever they want and call it "salvation."

Quote: Face

In decline? I wouldn't be surprised. Knowledge trumps belief for all but the most passionate.

If only it were that simple <sigh>

I'll grant my general interest in science played a part in my ability to cast out religion from my life, but not a huge part. I was more concerned with the topsy-turvy ethics found all over the Bible, the lack of sense in prayer, the lack of sense in religious practices and other related things.

IMO, you are right, but indirectly so. The vast storehouse of real, scientific, practical knowledge we've accumulated since the days of Galileo and Newton matured in the XVIII and XIX Centuries to produce the Industrial Revolution. There is much that can be criticized about its first few decades, but in the long term it has brought unparalleled levels of material wealth and prosperity to every country in the world. This includes longer, healthier lives as well.

For many people, particularly in the West, what is there to plead to the gods for? What good is it, now, to be promised a glowing afterlife, when this life keeps getting better?

People may still believe in a deity, but their lives and well-being no longer depend on it. Hope and well being is found outside of churches and temples, not in consuming the flesh and blood of the Jesus.

Quote: FrGamble

The part about having an iron clad control over who had Bibles is pure poppycock.

Uh Huh. John Wycliffe was the first person
to translate the entire Bible into English.
This so infuriated the Church and the pope,
that 44 years after he died the Church dug
up his bones and burned them. Of course
the Church controlled the Bible. By keeping
it in Latin only, which almost nobody could
read, they could keep knowledge of the whole
of the scriptures out of the common peoples
hands.

The funny thing is, Wycliffe's main beef with
the Church was the Eucharist. He thought it
was baloney and set out to get a real English
translation of the Bible into the hands of
the people. His translation was so accurate
that much of it was used for the King James
version. Wycliffe was often appalled at how
little of the real scripture most priests and
those above them knew.

Quote: Face

. I usually go the Indian Affairs route because I know it..

A lot of Indians thought that Christianity
was a primitive unsophisticated religion.
Here you have a guy in a long sweaty
robe, (the priest), who stinks to high
heaven because he's never had a bath
in his life, trying to teach what the Indians
consider gobblygook. They look at the priest,
who's god can't even tell him to bathe once
in awhile, they look at him like he's a nut
case. Some of the cleaner tribes who bathed
almost every day, refused to deal with priests
because the stench was so bad.

FrG will now say that's total bull, the Church
teaches another story entirely. No doubt..

As usual I just assumed everything you wrote was total bull, but I was wrong. The entire thing about the generic "lots of Indians" and these mysterious priests from Europe who never bathed is total baloney. However, there were some things you got right, embarrassingly so for me, about John Wycliffe. First, what you got wrong about him: His big beef with the Catholic Church was not the Eucharist. He lived and died as a Catholic priest after all. His main gripe, a righteous one, was the luxury and wealth of the priests and bishops - including the Bishop of Rome. His experiences of the clergy seemed to go directly against the Biblical vision of the followers of Jesus Christ and in many cases he was correct and even at many times had the support of good clergy in the Church itself. You also get wrong that he was the first translator of the Bible. There were translations of the Bible into the vernacular as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. The Church had no desire to keep the Bible from people, only the false interpretation or translation of the Bible. Anyway much to my chagrin it looks like you were correct about the disgusting treatment of Wycliffe after his death.

I'm really sick and tired of all the falsehoods
the Church has crammed down your throat.
It's like arguing with a Mormon, it's less and
less worth your time.

Is that really your response? I have often thought the same about whoever crammed your mind with such falsehoods, but thought we should at least try to help each other discover where we were wrong or ignorant. I didn't know or I repressed what happened to Wycliffe after his death. So if you want to stop talking like Nareed I don't think it does any of us any good. Peace!