Ask a Catholic

[Randy Carson]

My turn, yet?

So.. catholic, ex-protestant... I'm guessing, US born and raised, huh?

What's it like being a catholic in the US?
No old timey churches like we have here in Portugal:

I remember we exchanged a few photos.

It has always been my impression that the heads of the church are fully aware that they run the institution without any "outside" help... that is... no god intervenes. How else can we explain those nice things that happened a few centuries ago, like the Avignon Papacy, the crusades... and Galileo?

I didn't feel the need to comment on an impression that is based on a faulty assumption.

Since I'm going to delve into history, how about we consider the very real possibility of fabrication of the concept of Jesus? PErhaps as an amalgamation of other pre-existing deities and some other real people. I'm not even going into other gods (egyptians, greek or romans, or assyrians) who were claimed to be born of virgins, died and resurrected and other tri-parted heads of pantheons.... I'm going into my favorite simple and evidenced Teacher of Righteousness:

Michael O. Wise posits that the Teacher of Righteousness was the "first messiah", a figure predating Jesus by roughly 100 years.[9] This figure - who Wise believes was named Judah - rose to prominence during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, and had been a priest and confidant to the king. However, he became dissatisfied with the religious sects in Jerusalem, and in reaction, founded a "crisis cult". While amassing a following, the Teacher (and his followers) claimed he was the fulfillment of various Biblical prophecies, with an emphasis on those found in Isaiah. The Teacher was eventually killed by the religious leadership in Jerusalem, and his followers hailed him as messianic figure who had been exalted to the presence of God's throne. They then anticipated that the Teacher would return to judge the wicked and lead the righteous into a golden age, and that it would take place within the next forty years. Wise explains that dating of manuscript copies among the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the Teacher's postmortem following drastically increased in size over several years, but that when the predicted return and golden age failed to materialize, his following dissipated rapidly.

The story does sound familiar, does it not? The troubling bit is that it pre-dates Jesus by over 100 years. It could have been revived some time before the Council of Nicaea and found its way into some text that would later be considered a gospel.

Atheist Tim O'Neill address the problems with the mythicist view in a devastating two-part article entitled "An Atheist Historian Examines the Evidence for Jesus". Part one covers this, but you'll want to read the whole thing, I'm sure.

According to Bart Ehrman, prior to this council, there were several flavors of christianity, gnostics, trinitarians, non-trinitarians, orthodox, etc, etc.... After the council, there were catholics and orthodox... all others were persecuted. As a persecuted minority, some fled away from the Turkey/Israel/Syria area, further south, into north Africa and the arabian peninsula. There, a few centuries later, a tribal leader, knowledgeable about Moses and with this authority figure on his back, rose up and conquered other tribes. About 70 years after this guy's death, the caliphate he allegedly initiated was too big and its leaders instituted a caliphate-wide religion with schools dedicated to teaching the principles of this religion... and a book: the qur'an.
It seems unlikely that this tribal leader had direct contact with an angel who told him to conquer all the neighbors and spread the message of "believe in me, or else...", so it stands to reason that the Qur'an popped up after the flash conquest took place, as the guy gained some acclaim as a military genius, or something.... and his descendents took advantage of that awe people gained for the man and added some extra bits to the tale.
Thus Islam was born.
Taking hints from Judaism (prophet figure in Moses) and from roman-catholicism (implementation of a state-wide religion).
So, my point is catholics are responsible for islam. Thanks a lot!! -.-'

And this wasn't worth commenting upon.

Shall we go further back in history? What, no christ figure back then? awww... you poor fellow...

And since you have not Christ now, does that make you even more pathetic than me?

You had Moses and Abraham.... the though part is that there was a world before them... Did I mention the Assyrians? How about the Egyptians? And the chinese?
There were civilizations... great civilizations... prior to Abraham. There were religions. There were polytheist religions, shamanism, animism...
The complexity of religions seems to have evolved with time.... climaxing in the single god that takes care of everything... and does nothing - the creator god whose plan you cannot mess with, that set everything in motion prior to the big bang and whatever you do now, won't cause any change in that motion.... the deist god.
And all (perhaps except the very first - animism?) are man-made concepts that build upon the previous.

Why believe?
To me, the requirement of belief in the existence of a god only signals that the religious institution lacks a solid base... hence, it lacks credibility.

Uh...yeah. It is true that ancient religions search for God in the shadows whereas more recently God has sent His Son to be the light of the world...but I'm not sure what you're really aiming at.

TL,DR?
0- HAHA, the US has no cool churches!
1- church leaders must know that god is frightfully absent from this world.
2- Jesus as an amalgamation of other fictional or real figures.
3- Thanks a lot for Islam, catholics! Fuck you!
4- Religions evolve... it's almost like they're man-made concepts.
5- the requirement of belief removes all credibility to any religious institution.

I suggest that you think about these things when you're a bit older.