Chinnubie: I went through 12 years of Catholic schools, but the majority of what I’ve learned about religion started with my parents and expanded into the reading I’ve done on the subject. As such, I can actually clear up a couple misconceptions you’ve got.

First, science and religion.
Science and religion are not at odds; they mesh very well. Some of the best evidences for something bigger than time, space and the rest of the universe come from modern astrophysics (I’ve got a degree in this, so trust me on this one.) Modern science is based on the idea that, rather than a random occurrence, the universe was created according to some order and design by a powerful intelligence. Therefore, there are rules that are discoverable and reliable. Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Kepler… these men were not atheists. I’m going to pull out a couple Einstein quotes because they work so well to show what I’m saying. Einstein, while searching for what could be called the theory of everything, said “I want to know all God’s thoughts; all the rest are just details.” Science doesn’t search for the random chance, it looks for laws and rules and it finds them. When Einstein was working with other scientists to create quantum mechanics, he complained about the way that it’s based on probabilities with the phrase “God does not play dice,” and his peer Niels Bohr responded with something along the lines of ‘Who are you to tell God what to do?’ So, if religion was good enough for some of the greatest minds in science in the last century, and required by the greatest minds in the centuries before that, I’ll keep it as a viable option.

Second, gospels as word-of-mouth only being written a couple centuries after Jesus’ death.
Courtesy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have evidence that the Gospel of John, thought to be the last of the Gospels written, may have been the first, whole and complete before AD100. That means that while this would have been written and spread, there still would have been people alive who could refute it, but no Roman or Jewish writings that say “No, this guy was there and that’s not what he heard/saw” have surfaced. The new testament also has far more surviving physical copies than any other historical text of that era. This allows them to confirm phrasing and meaning by cross-referencing each other. So, we know that people wrote what they saw, or wrote what they were told, firsthand, what someone saw, and no one else disagreed with the facts, only the meanings. No eyewitness disagreed that Jesus healed this person or performed that miracle, and they would very much have liked to throw evidence at the freak cult that seemed to be popping up in His wake.

Third, Jesus as God, or Jesus as very nice guy.
Jesus claimed to be God. This leaves us with three possibilities. 1 – He was God. 2 – He was lying. 3 – He was crazy. He had a dozen men follow Him around everywhere. He spoke with them, taught them and had them around for years. They died. Horribly. And they held to their convictions. People will die for a lie they think is truth, but they will not die for a lie they know is a lie. If Jesus was just crazy, these men would have known it. If He had been lying, they would have caught it. In neither case would they have done what they did – help create a community that has lasted for two millenia, and die in the doing.

Organized religion as killing people and making money.
The biggest culprits for the church killing people are the spanish inquisition and the crusades. The crusades were largely in reaction to expansion of muslim rule even up into Spain. A lot of bad things happened on both sides of this series of wars, but I’ve never heard of any nice wars from medieval times. The Inquisition lasted for around 350 years, and estimates range around in the tens of thousands for people killed. 32,000-40,000 seem like popular numbers, although some estimates range up to above 125,000 and below 8,000. Atheism (through Hitler’s fascism) saw 11-17 (depending who you count) killed; through Stalin atheism knocked off anywhere between 20 and 60 million. Documentation is spotty and people did their best to rewrite history there, so the exact figure’s a bit tough to determine. Mao had more than 70 million killed in peacetime. I’ll go with organized religion during peacetime. (As long as infidels exist on earth, Islam doesn’t have peacetime, if anyone’s wondering.)
Making Money? The Catholic Church has created and is associated with a ridiculous number of charitable organizations which do a lot of very good things for very unfortunate people.

I am glad that you are grateful for church teaching the basis for conservative values (ie. personal responsibility before God and man) to any who attend.

Now, to put a little bit of this post on topic: Looking at the Vatican’s reaction to muslim aggression I just wish they’d act a bit more like Jesus. See, I remember the gospels mentioning one time where Jesus came into the temple, and saw vendors and moneychangers making it into a marketplace. He trashed their little market, used some cords as a whip and chased them out for defiling a holy place. There are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I’m curious where that line is today. I’m reminded of an anecdote, where a professional boxer, after retiring, became a Christian. Now, a jerk in the area where he lived discovered this and soundly mocked him for it. Finally, the day came when this jerk hit the boxer in the face. The boxer said “Turn the other cheek” and did, returning no further aggression. Emboldened by this, the jerk struck out once more. At that point the boxer said “The Lord gave me no further instructions” and beat the guy half to death. I think right now the Church is being antagonized, and there’s a couple real blows to be had before the Vatican will change its tune. Still, God is in charge of everything, and in the long run everything will work out according to His plan. That doesn’t mean I’ll like His plan or that I don’t want to be a good shot, though.

I know someone like that, 12 years of Catholic school and he was surprised that his priest acted sternly when my acquaintance showed up one day with a Protestant wife he married in a Lutheran church and their baby. They wanted to baptise their baby. The “Catholic” had no idea he should have been married in a CATHOLIKC church if he is CATHOLIC.

Catholicism is perfect, but not Catholics.

Chinnubie … All the questions you’ve posed in your discourse have simple, uncomplicated answers… problem is your not looking for truth; one reason could be that it may convict you, or inconvenient to you lifestyle… better to live by a flexible (ever changing) personal morality, rather than God’s!……. right buddy?

Chinnubie why do you believe (I get the feeling you do) whole heartedly in cruel and cold Science… that say’s your family and children that you love are just part of a larger accident (just chance)… and at anytime you will all cease to be!
Why would you believe in something like that?
Something so empty, so unproven, so hypothetical with more holes than a pasta strainer!

Listen I still have Questions but many have been answered.
Who are you (or me… or anybody) that God should reveal himself instantly?
What Faith I required in that?
I recognize God from without and within and through his word. Try starting here.
Do you ask as many questions (of doubt) to science?
I bet you don’t! Yet you seem to have faith in the word of the science book.
Your no scientist.. You have to go on what your told.
Watch the Film “Contact” you’ll find it interesting.
It will better explain this point I’m trying to make… and it’s a very entertaining movie as well.

Chinnubie, My Journey has been one of slow revelations, slowly the Lord has and is answering my questions, but it always had to come from “me” – my freewill, my desire to seek him out and fight (spiritually) to know him.

The BHO election doesn’t disprove God either. After all, if catholics had followed the Vatican as blindly as VMAN suggested way up at the top of this strain, he wouldn’t have gotten elected. They voted exactly like the rest of the population, disregarding life issues in favor of ‘hope & change.’ Yes, liberals go to church, too. Some of them even go to my church, apparently. But God gave them the free will to act, speak and vote that way. Myself and other like-minded catholics, including the Pope and most church officials, failed to compel them to the properly formed point of view. After all, we can’t just pray for the Almighty to commit ballot fraud for us (that’s for the liberals); we have to get out and talk to people and make it happen, and we just didn’t pull it off. (We were relying too much on our evangelical brothers and sisters to win it for us again.)

As for the article itself, guys, what do you think the “head for the Catholic Church’s department of interfaith contacts” was going to say? It just wouldn’t be very politic to say “I’m cutting off all interfaith contact with the muslims. I’m tired of making up these limp excuses for them, and they just keep blowing things and people up in the name of their polygamist pedophile violent catholic heretic warlord of a prophet. I’m done with this sh*t. G’night.”

Okay, that totally would’ve been better.

Whew, finally, Obama has solved something important.

I know the Gospels are written from word-of-mouth 2-300 years after the events took place and I have a hard time believing hear-say as absolute truth. Do you guys really think Adam & Eve existed? I know that is Old Testament but those are good stories to help people on how to have better morality in their day to day living. This is the same thing with Jesus Christ I think he was an excellent prophet with some really good teaching but a Demi-God or half-human half-god, I simply do not buy it.

Organized religion has killed how many people in the name of whatever God? All I see in organized religion is a good excuse to make some people very rich. Inherently people are good and it is out of nature that we are this way not religion. I read Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” and I think he has nailed it in terms of religious belief and what or who God may be.

I am conservative because it is the right way to think for the betterment of my country and my children. I am greatful that religion helps people to understand conservatism and what befuddles me is that liberals go to church and are unable to understand what it is that is being taught to them in terms of morality.

VMAN: I find it a bit odd that you use the Nicene Creed to say all organized religions are unnecessary. It’s just that the creed was drafted by the heads of the Catholic Church, coming together in response to a schism within the Catholic Church. The creed was created to bind the Church together as one and protect it from heresies.

Now, on to the point of this comment.

Ultimately, while unpleasant, a muslim presence in Europe can do nothing but good for the Church. They will attack it on as many grounds as they think they can win and it will grow. They will kill its adherents and members, and it will grow. They will tax it, punish it, try to break it, and it will grow.

Historically, Christianity (and for the first 1500ish years that means the Catholic Church) has grown very quickly under oppression. According to Roman belief, the Church was made up of incestuous cannibals who were going to destroy Rome by angering the gods, spirits and other such creatures who supposedly protected it by not sacrificing to them what they deserved. They made a national sport of killing us. Despite this, the rate at which the Church grew in the Roman empire could only be described as explosive. One of the most zealous prosecutors of Christianity, Saul, converted after God knocked him off his horse and blinded him. With a new name to reflect his new outlook he wrote a good portion of what would become the new testament. Through him, God converted a great many people, and his words still help us today.

It is a death sentence to convert from Islam to Christianity. It is at risk of rape and slavery that Christian girls walk openly in public in areas of the Middle East. It is illegal to build new church buildings, or to try to convert muslims. And yet, today, the Church grows in the Middle East. If the muslims take Europe, the church will grow in response. While life is easy, people think they don’t need God. When life gets hard, people search for answers, and there’s one author out there who knows them all because He made them. As the good Cardinal said in the speech Reuters chopped up above,”God is at work in all, in the souls of those who search for him sincerely” and as the muslim population increases in Europe so will the number of those who search for God. If you don’t believe me regarding the growth, I urge you to pick up and take a read through a book called Secret Believers, authored by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen. It will scare you and infuriate you and kindle hope all at the same time.

Now, I’d much prefer we just kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity, but hey, I’m not perfect and I’m not in charge, so for now I’ll trust in the creator of everything.

I suspect, based on scripture and the good and bad thief, Jesus would say of capital punishment, give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

And another thing, what has happened to Massachusetts since the Puritans arrived.

You haven’t offended me. I just guess I have a hard time reconciling your “you don’t need a priest/pastor” sentiments with your approval of the Nicene Creed. However, I can’t, in good faith, sit by and allow misconceptions and misunderstandings about my faith be perpetuated.

No doubt everyone has opinions and everyone is entitled to them – for better or for worse. As I said above, and elsewhere, I’m all for standing beside my fellow Christians (and even the Mormons, who are the target of the hateful left) – regardless of the differences in doctrine – to defeat our common enemy.