[Serious] Christians what would change your mind?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Paintings illustrate but do not necessarily show what Catholic Church actually believe.

There's so much work that has gone into this! The relationship of what can be shown to what is beyond human understanding has a long and fascinating history, and in its way is integral to the development of theology.

The biggest fights took place in the Byzantine world, when iconoclasts and iconodules worked out with involved philosophical arguments what exactly is present in a picture. The iconoclasts were very cognizant of the stricter Muslim ban on images to their immediate east, and took those arguments seriously. 

But in the Western church, also, there was debate and controversy. Catholics, for example, settled on symbolic representations of unknowable levels, but Protestants removed this possibility. That's why Michelangelo could paint God the Father but Rembrandt couldn't -- Rembrandt could only show those things which had manifested themselves to human eyes. 

One of the most interesting movements was the devotio moderna of the 15th century, which enabled van Eyck and others to represent Bible scenes in familiar Flemish surroundings. 

Claiming those paintings as evidence that all Christians believe in magic sky fairy is just stupid, and the kind of bigotry we've come to expect from certain closed-minded atheists. Seeing them read the minds of vast numbers of Christians, living and dead, to declare that Christians don't really believe what they say they believe is about as assholey a thing as can be imagined.

The point is that ‘vast numbers of Christians’ DO believe in the magic sky fairy. This explains the popularity of intercessory prayer. It doesn’t make much of a difference if they’re praying to win the lotto or for famine relief in Africa or for great Uncle Frim’s piles to get better - they’re seeking to have a wish granted (see Bierce). 

To take the position that because Aquinas, Augustine et al didn’t necessarily subscribe to the idea of a wish-fulfilling magician means that the overwhelming majority of rank and file Christians also don’t is to ignore the facts.

Boru