Koyaanisqatsi

Did any of you go up on top of the Chapel and notice the little christly concession stand run by Nuns on top? I shit you not.

You could buy everything from a solid gold rossary (why?) to those little "winking Jesus" 3-d-esque bookmarks.

I never laughed so hard in my life. Nuns, on top of the Sistene chapel hawking winking Jesus bookmarks as if the grotesque oppulence of the Vatican wasn't proof enough of their true purpose. They had to (literally) put a cherry on top!

hezekiah jones

lolol

Ron Garrett

Bread and circuses. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Deadend

There are plenty of uses for empty churches, most of them have excellent acoustics, so many are used for concerts. Many non-monumental churches are being converted into office space or apartments, or even mosques.
Often the larger churches are used for exhibitions, or for large gatherings of people. For example, the largest church in my hometown was the location where, in 1875 Darwin was given an honorary doctorate from Leiden University. As you can probably imagine, we have don’t have many people demanding that creationism should be taught in schools. (Lucky us )

Amos

They were built out of abundance sullster and still are the envy of the world. They affect us all and are like majesty to the believer and a tombstone to the doubter. Interesting, but true.

Amos

A false religion? What is interesting here is that the Worlds Youngest Atheist (who probably can't earn his own living) is judging the Church that built the greatest empire in the history of mankind.

Did it ever occur to you that you and hundreds of millions like you never were Christians? Either that or those that built these churches were not Christians.

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Amos

You must have a boring life and to make it more interesting you could always go to England and pay to vist to burial grounds of Lady Di.

sullster

Well, my fellows, we have just been mass attacked by my friend Amos. He doesn't take kindly to his religion being called "dead", "false", or being shown as a bunch of hucksters. That is his right, I have no problem.

The rest of you will have to defend yourselves, but I want to expand on my definition of cathedrals being the tombs of a dead religion. Amos, says they were built out of "abundance", and until he elaborates on that word, I will give it a try. It was the abundance of money extorted out of credulous peasants by sly priests who sold indulginences and objects like the "hay from jesus's manger" or "pieces of the true cross". It was the abundance of artistic and architectural talent bought with extorted funds to not only build cathedrals but to extol the popes and bishops who ruled Europe.

It was the abundance of money that was taken out of society where it could have gone to fund businesses or build decent housing for the peasants. It was the abundance of numbing superstition that the cathedrals embodied that keep Europe ignorant for centuries.

We know better now. Your cathedrals are moldy giant tombs to a dead religion. Monuments to an age of ignorance and superstition. Traces of that time still plague us, but it is slowly fading away. Interesting, but alas true.

Koyaanisqatsi

I must have a boring life?

How do Nuns shamelessly shilling the most insulting, garrish trinkets imaginable for the Pope on top of the most grotesque contradiction to Jesus' alleged teachings equate with me having (or not having) a boring life? Are you indirectly trying to imply that that is what Jesus wanted? To have his "brides" sell a grossly ethnically incorrect graven winking image of Jesus for three dollars (for a goddamned bookmark) while standing on a solid gold roof that houses hundreds of billions of dollars worth of paintings and statues and solid gold crucifix, representing over two milllenia of torture, victimization, unjustified imperialism and murder all in the name of a Rabbi who may (or may not) have been crucified by the same Empire that the Catholics embraced like a crack whore at Mardi Gras?

Give it a rest Amos.

kwigibo

Maybe i should start worshipping Genghis Khan and Alexander the great, d'ya think, Amos. They sure had big empires. to paraphrase Carlin, it seems like a lot of prick-waving to me, everybody seems so concerned with the size of their, ahem, empire. It's not the size of the empire that counts, it's what you do with it