09-06-2008, 01:24 PM
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Contributor
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: London UK
Posts: 16,024
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The Christian creed is full of bad science that makes it a religion of deception,
Wonderful piece in today's Grauniad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ep/06/religion
Quote:
I think I remember my reaction on first being confronted with the creed, but I have only fairly recently been able to put it into words, because only fairly recently has "So what?" become a current expression.
The creed is arranging the deckchairs on a fantasy ship, concerned with who sitteth at the right hand of whom and who had - or did not have - relations with whom, not the icebergs ahead.
You can deduce little or nothing from the creed on how you should live. As you believe in the holy Catholic church, you must do what the Roman Catholic church tells you to do - or if you have been taught to interpret catholic not as Roman Catholic but as universal, then you must do what the universal church tells you, but what does the universal church agree on?
The creed is your mission statement, but for all the guidance in it, our common enterprise could be burning heretics and stoning adulterers, marching to an unjust war, one in selfish hope of everlasting life for ourselves and one in enforcing intolerant doctrine upon others. It is left to a hymn-writer to add: one in charity.
Much as I deplore Paul's theology, charity is a better rallying cry than belief in Mary's virginity and in Jesus surviving after death. Though you believe in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Creed of St Athanasius, and have not charity, you are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Though you have all faith in the virgin birth, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, and have not charity, it profiteth us nothing.
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