"Cult of Mary"

Bob as I've pointed out before, by you simply calling everything I say circular logic or reverse engineering or Catholic spin you are giving us an example of circular logic. I fear you are trying to convince yourself to not take seriously what we are talking about and using this tactic as a defensive response to important points that we could talk more about instead of having you just shut down.

Quote: FrGamble

Not necessarily,

No? I actually think it was very necessary.

On the one hand the early church fathers couldn't publicly accept the pagan gods as real gods. On the other hand, they also couldn't tell the new recruits they had spent their lives worshipping stone statues. Demons are a good way out. It's not the fault of whoever fell for their scam, and it more easily lets you demonize those who still follow the old religion.

I like Paul's speech in the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-31):

"You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made form one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us..."

Quote: FrGamble

Bob, if you think about it for a minute nothing makes more sense than the virgin birth. It is God's modus operandi if you will.

Maybe it is. But...

Quote: FrGamble

Things truly awesome don't take place that often. The last virgin birth before Jesus was roughly 13.8 billion years ago.

Hold up. Stop the train.

You do realize that a goodly sum of all the major religions believe that to be true as well, don't you? Krishna of the Hindus "decended into the womb" of a woman so he could be born as her son. Granted, she wasn't a virgin, but the "conception" happened without intercourse. Buddha "entered the womb as an elephant in a dream" and "wise men" predicted he would either become a King or the Buddha, and would "remove the world from veils of ignorance and sin". Zoroaster was to preside over the final eon of humanity, where the final battle between good and evil was supposed to take place. His reign would be accompanied by the resurrection of the dead and the final judgement of the world. Zoro's mother conceived him a virgin after being struck by a ray of light from the heavens. Lao-tse was conceived when his mother glimpsed a falling star. Even the Aztecs, who couldn't have had any contact with the above eastern and western religions, had Quetzecoatl (sp?), who was born to a virgin mother after appearing in a dream.

There are many, many things in Judeo-Christian beliefs that have been held as true well before Christianity's time. Final battles between good and evil, crucifixions, resurrections, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, walking on water, it's all been done before.

So as I sit here sharpening Occam's Razor, I see two possibilities. First is there is no god. Religion is merely a placeholder, something to fill a void until knowledge can be put in its place. Stuff like creating man out of clay or toting the sun across the sky in a chariot fits the bill for a time, allowing an explanation for the unknown. Once knowledge is found, the belief is unnecessary and will fall by the wayside, just as it has in the past. Christianity is young. It can lord over the silly beliefs of the past and hold itself as the one true way. Until knowledge comes along and knocks it from its throne, of course, then some modern belief will take its place (Scientology, perhaps?). Or second, that there really is a god. But, of course, it won't be your god. It can't be. Because this god has been all over the place before. He is Krishna, He is Buddha, He is Zeus, He is The Creator, He is Muhammad, He is Mazda, He is Elohim, He is Odin, He is YHWH, He will be Xenu, and He only knows what He will be next. Of course, if that were true, then everything is true. And if everything is true, then nothing is true and all religion is rendered pointless.

An interesting aside - The religious will believe in not only vertebrate, not only mammalian, but human parthenogenesis, but at the same time will reckon RNA abiogenesis to be an impossibility. THAT idea is going to keep me occupied for a very long time.

Quote: Face

You do realize that a goodly sum of all the major religions believe that to be true as well, don't you?

Spend half an hour reading Campbell and
you realize all religions are basically the same
and have the same myths. There is nothing
like facts to blur the 'message'.

Quote: FrGamble

I fear you are trying to convince yourself to not take seriously what we are talking about

I do take it seriously that you believe
what you believe. That's your burden,
not mine.

Quote: Face

Even the Aztecs, who couldn't have had any contact with the above eastern and western religions, had Quetzecoatl (sp?), who was born to a virgin mother after appearing in a dream.

There may have been contact between the hemispheres before Columbus came along.

Quote:

An interesting aside - The religious will believe in not only vertebrate, not only mammalian, but human parthenogenesis, but at the same time will reckon RNA abiogenesis to be an impossibility. THAT idea is going to keep me occupied for a very long time.

I may as well bring this up here.

The Good Father is a Catholic. The most common form of Christianity in America is not Catholicism, but various flavors of Protestants (Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, etc. I've no idea where the Quakers go). By far the most resistant to the ideas of evolution, the big bang, an ancient Earth in an even more ancient universe, are the various Protestant splinters of the Christian tree.

We tend to confuse or disregard differences between the two because 1) in earlier times the Catholic church was the epitome of resistance to scientific advance (the whole Galileo affair), 2) most Christian denominations like to pretend they all constitute a monolithic block anyway.

There are other differences, too. Catholics, overall, tend to bring up the Bible a lot less frequently. I won't go into other differences because I don't want to open yet another front in this debate.

Quote: Evenbob

Spend half an hour reading Campbell and
you realize all religions are basically the same
and have the same myths. There is nothing
like facts to blur the 'message'.

I've read enough to see that Christianity isn't a novel idea. It makes me wonder how one puts faith in one and not another.

FrG often makes references to the greatness of God and uses these to bolster it. The love, the compassion, the sacrifice, the greatness. Why put your eggs in the Christ basket when Krishna was cleansing the world of sin before cleansing the world of sin was cool?

Quote: Nareed

There are other differences, too. Catholics, overall, tend to bring up the Bible a lot less frequently. I won't go into other differences because I don't want to open yet another front in this debate.

That's very true, that's why I'm
in this discussion. A Baptist would
be spewing scripture every other
paragraph, but the padre never
brings it up. Why is that, I wonder.

Yes indeedy the train has stopped, and quite abruptly if I may add.

All these similar myths and stories from so many different religions, cultures, and conceptions of God. They seem connected and similar to Christianity, but still always different. Many things Judeo-Christians find in their own beliefs are found in times past. It is almost as if a preparation is being made, a foundation being built.

Then comes Jesus Christ and the train stops. No other religions afterwards speak of an incarnation or resurrection. You must excuse what might seem shocking for you to hear but Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all these desires and dreams that God had inspired in every civilization around the globe since the beginning of time. This is why I recently gave that long beautiful quote from Paul's speech in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 17:22-31), it is worth a read.

Making that razor extra sharp could it be that there is a God and the other religions were placeholders for the true revelation of Jesus Christ? "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:16)