(September 16, 2021 at 4:30 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Um not true. This would assume that everyone born being sold religion is incapable of leaving that religion. I was raised Catholic, and as a kid and teen I really wanted to believe it. But others as I aged raised questions to me that caused me to keep questioning, and eventually I ditched religion and God belief because of the questions posed to me.
I'm not assuming that theists are incapable of leaving their religion, but it seems to me that the greed of clergy is just not the trigger because, when it comes to most religions, theists already see clergy rolling in money so they obviously are already deluding themselves, and it is already part of religious indoctrination in their religious upbringing.
Although, if you read Paul Haggis' Wikipedia biography, you can see that his family left Catholicism because the priest was driving a Cadillac (although they obviously didn't have a problem with the Vatican), but, then again, he did later became a Scientologist...
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
