Catholics vs. Evangelicals. Have you chosen to be chosen (correctly)?
The more I read comments by American Evangelicals online- the more I’m mystified by their organogram of beliefs. You see, a Catholic can at least say to himself that his belief system relies on the institution that invented this ideology in the first place. Texts, doctrines, philosophies- the lot. (Even if heavily borrowing from Judaism.) In fact, had copyright/trademark law been in place back then, there’d be no such thing as protestantism at all. The Catholic church would’ve gone all Disney Corporation on them. No you can’t use our logo, no you can’t use our story. No you can’t pretend you know what the character we invented really wants. We invented him. We get to make up what he wants. No, no variation of the cross logo either. Make your guy somebody who gets hanged and use a noose as your symbol.
It’s like someone taking Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, rewriting half the scenes, and then claiming their version is the actual original. So this 1000th re-write of Romeo and Juliet is the one. All the other Romeo and Juliet’s were totally wrong. Romeo wasn’t even born in Verona, he was born in Texas. If it weren’t tragic it would be funny.
My Mazamet 
Yes, it is tragic… because it so often presents such a moving target that addressing an actual problem descended from the central tenets becomes one long whack-a-mole game while the effects continue to harm.
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And at the same time it suits each new generation of con-artists perfectly.
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Pink, I think tragi- comedy should be word to describe it.
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Maybe we’ll get lucky and Donald Trump will build them a wall 😀
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I don’t think Donald knows what goes into a wall.
I want to know how he will get the Mexicans to pay, maybe that way I can get my neighbours to build my house
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I couldn’t agree more.
I was a Protestant once.
Six weeks was about all I could take.
Nevertheless, I was an atheist for about 30 seconds before I threw in the towel.
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Interesting. What made you choose one over the other?
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The frocks 🙂
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LOL. Not the wine and crackers?
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Protestants are taught to hate the Pope before they are taught to love Jesus.
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Interesting method of manipulation isn’t it?
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I’d be quite happy to have all of these idiots who want a wall to build a circular one in a nice place like the salt flats in Utah and all go hide behind it.
Most if not all theists, and Christians especially, love to declare that their version is the one true story. They always seem to forget that many people don’t just accept that anymore and just snicker as they invent God in their image once again.
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They also seem not to understand math. What’s the statistical probability that a god created humanity just so the 20 people at Westboro Baptist Church go to his heaven? 😀
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The Catholic church would’ve gone all Disney Corporation on them.
Pulitzer, right there!
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Once I told a nun that the Catholic Church was set up like a corporation.
She was appalled!
She was terribly disappointed when the Pastor told her it was just so.
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“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
– Bertrand Russell, 1952: http://russell.mcmaster.ca/cpbr11p69.pdf
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It’s tragic anyone has to be born in Texas. Talk about a state that needs a wall around it! BTW, there’s only one God, and He ain’t Christian. From the Koran: 3:85: “And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers.” As soon as all the sects of Christianity accept this true, true reality, the world will no longer need walls. It will be bubbling with joy, happiness, equality, and tasty food. Allahu Akbar
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I was raised Catholic, and I believed in Catholicism until I was ten years old. From the ages of ten through sixteen I was taken to Catholic Church (and enrolled in Catholic school) by my parents, but I didn’t believe in anything, I just didn’t know I could SAY I didn’t believe in anything. When I was sixteen, I learned the word atheist & what it meant and realized that’s what I was. Of course I still had to graduate from Catholic high school & wear a virginal white dress on graduation day (my parents didn’t pay all that tuition money for nothing) but they can’t force me to believe anything.
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On claiming we’re right: my allegiance was to the Episcopal church, but I did not deny the others- my lot was too small to be the One True Way. Quakers are an even smaller proportion, and I read that officially we stopped believing we were the One True Way in the mid 19th century.
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“The question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” has been used many times as a dismissal of medieval angelology in particular, and of scholasticism in general. The phrase has been used also to criticize figures such as Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, who explored the intersection between the philosophical aspects of space and the qualities attributed to angels.[1][2] Another variety of the question is: “How many angels can stand on the point of a pin?”[3]
Scholasticism used these kind of questions in dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference, and to resolve contradictions. The need for rationality as complementary to faith was raised as an important point for Catholic theology at the Council of Trent.[4] The question has also been linked to the fall of Constantinople, with the imagery of scholars debating about minutiae while the Turkish besieged the city.[5][6] In modern usage, it therefore has been used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence, while more urgent concerns pile up.[3][5]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F
Keeping in mind that I spent nearly 6 years of my complicated life earning a degree in theology and ministry, I remember these endless theological arguments being the beginning of my religious life’s end. Looking back, I realise theology is just philosophy with a “divine” subject, which allowed nevertheless to explore depths and angles of consciousness, hardly in reach otherwise.
The above quote, which doesn’t seem at all unbiased, reveals on the other hand, the absolute chaos caused in otherwise brilliant minds, by logical quests pursued from “faith” premises. Because both the process and the results would be as fantasmagorical as the departure point.
Amongst others, it was the mathematical precision of the faith based logic which pushed me outside Christianity; the fact that from a logical perspective it became impossible to accept that a perfect deity, requiring a perfectly logical sequencing of causes and effects, would expect anyone to throw their thinking over board, when it comes to understanding the reasons behind the deity’s own actions. Because a father creator who expects his children to obey even the most vicious slave masters and rulers, allowing millennia of horrific suffering, is no better than them.
And if one of the basic requirements of the scriptures is to “hate unrighteousness” I just decided to simply start at its root.
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I think I was about 15 or 16 when I realised that at the core of every philosophy, including Catholicism, there had to be one foundation stone upon which everything else was built. Accept that foundation stone and all else became acceptable as well. My problem was that I could not accept the core tenet that one had to ‘believe’. For me, the foundation stone was logic. I expected proof, but of course, proof is anathema to faith so Catholicism and I agreed to disagree. The nuns even allowed me to have a free period during religion classes. 🙂
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Me too! Well… I was invited to not attend certain things 😀
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-giggles- I never thought of it that way! Duh. Clearly my presence would not have been comfortable for the nuns. Nonetheless, I do admire the principal for not expelling me from the school entirely.
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(Un) Fortunately, the Foundation itself isn’t at all beyond reproach… Christianity’s claims of being the fulfilment of Jewish prophecies is also severely flawed, having to do more with, again, faith than logical sequence/consequence. At just a bit of closer look, the prophecies in cause are “seen” to be fulfilled, when in fact the fulfilment is of interpretations of said prophecies only, which nullifies the fulfilment entirely. Furthermore, what has become to be accepted as “Christianity” is a gentile friendly version, called paulineism, which is in sharp contrast with the more Jewish version promoted mainly by James. If he existed at all, the “messiah” was just another, next in line soteriological prophet, who became important because he was perceived to have been in the right place at he right time, at hardly to be ignored historical crossroads. Collapsing and raising empires, the necessity of social control, all were seized by socio architects as the perfect blend of implementing plans less than divine. As for Revelations, one just needs to read Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel etc., get stoned (not in the mosaic way…) and you’ve got the Armagheddopocalypse…
This is how “Goodbye, blue sky, goodbye…” turns into “GODbye, blue sky, GODbye…” 😉
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-grin- history is so inconvenient isn’t it? Personally, I’ve always liked the moral values taught by the parables, possibly because they suit my personality, or possibly because I enjoy the irony that an atheist can behave in a more Christian manner than most professed Christians.
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In fairness the Catholics in the US have adopted a more hateful brand of Catholicism as well. Christians just do hateful bigotry right in the US. :p
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Absolutely true. They saw a chance to jump on the bandwagon of the Hate train operated by the Tele-Evangelical crowd of the early 80’s.
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Protestantism is very much the child of the 16th century, so the mentality is typically modern – it was an attempt to rationalize Christianity by sweeping away the hoary old traditions and building a new doctrinal system based on the most certain evidence available, the scriptures. The Reformers, except maybe Luther, were a lot like Bacon or Descartes in that sense.
The ancient churches – the Orthodox, Catholics, and Middle Eastern churches – have a different self understanding as communities in historical continuity with the apostles. The traditions and rituals of the community are the point of reference.
Of course these are broad generalizations, but I think those are the essential differences.
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There was also the “self-empowerment” angle. “I don’t need educated priests to explain anything to me, I can read and decide for myself.” Hence people getting bitten by snakes:
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Oh this is hilarious. …and rather wonderful at that.
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And it’s only Monday! 😛 By Friday I’ll have become Jimmy Carr 😀
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-grin- I just had a mini epiphany. Pinky’s blog is the modern day ‘salon’ where attendees get to debate the philosophical issues of the day. Bravo, Pinky!
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But the trouble then is the trouble now.Debaters exchanging and debating the value of ideas are the minority. People embracing ignorance are… well: https://ukuleledave.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/heres-what-people-are-saying-about-hate-speech/
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Mmm…the world against the US. I think this, along with the right to bear arms, is an issue where logic founders on the cornerstone of ‘faith’ – i.e. that ‘individuals’ need to have complete freedom of speech in order to stir up support for military action against the state should the need arise.
It completely ignores all the ‘actions’ against the state in countries without Freedom of Speech enshrined in the constitution. It also ignores the actions against the state in the US that have been repressed – e.g. Fergusson. Maybe their problem with the law upholding their freedoms is the fact that they have glaring examples of the law not upholding the freedoms of citizens who are ‘black’.
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I would venture to say the majority of Protestants are well-intentioned Christians who don’t know the first thing about the Catholic faith, and have no idea what the early church looked like. If that’s all you’ve been raised with, that’s all you know… and if no one is saying anything differently, you can’t change what you don’t know. Until I actively started looking into the Catholic faith and seeking out leaders in the Catholic church to find out the “real story”, I didn’t have a clue either. Protestants, for the most part, don’t know they’re relatively clueless.
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