Jamie_L

I don't know that it would do so with regularity, but I believe firmly that it can. I've seen an odd correlation between fundamentalist Christians and believers in grand government conspiracies. Normal religions also seem to be gateways for cults. There's not hard evidence, but it seems like a bad idea to train people, from an early age, to trust to faith in the absence of evidence on supposedly the most important issue of their life: eternal salvation, and then to tell them that on less important issues they should do precisely the opposite. I'd imagine some people have a hard time figuring out where that dividing line is.

Plus, when you get a bad apple in a position of church authority, then you've got all kinds of trouble. Because that is specifically the blindspot that has been created in the Christian. Be it about Crusades, swindling money, or sexual abuse, blind faith in human beings seems like a dangerous thing to build any part of your life around.

Admittedly, one of my favorite mantras is "Time wasted on something you enjoy wasn't wasted." However, my point is I think people could find more fulfilling things to do with their Sundays if not for the obligations of religion. From the perspective of the individual, religions seem to assign arbitrary moral judgements to many activities that people might otherwise derive pleasure from, while encouraging people to derive pleasure from activities that seem like they would otherwise be somewhat wasteful of one's time. I suppose, if someone is really happy with these activities, more power to them. But it seems like some might never have had the opportunity to try the other options.

*shrug*

Jamie

Amos

Well, I never claimed to be a good Catholic. In fact, I have claimed that poor Catholics are the good Catholics.

Amos

Sorry Starboy, I missed this question.

Faith cannot be conceived to exist without doubt and therefore when we understand "a concept" we will neither have faith nor doubt about that which we now understand. Hence we say that "knowledge frees." The Gospels are written to show how we place our entire rational mind aim is to understand our own soul

In the Gospels (all metaphysics), Peter was faith and Thomas was doubt and they were twins for this reason. Therefore, when doubt was removed from Thomas (when he was shown the wounds of Jesus) also Peter was left without faith and therefore without [the Hebrew] "cloak of faith." The exclamation of Thomas "My Lord and My God" has futher denotations of at-one-ment with the word "and" as if Lord and God now have become one and the same (but that is not significant here).

What is significant is that in this Catholic Gospel the faith-less naked Peter goes fishing and after fishing all night they caught nothing out of the left brain-waters (metaphysics) to indicate that indeed all doubt had been removed and there was no faith left to be made understood. Jesus later met them and told them to cast their nets in the right-brain waters and there they found large fish and plenty of them (this signifies revelation and inspiration). Upon seeing this Peter put on his claok of faith and dove headfirst into the celestial sea (right brain) and upon this faith Catholicism would be built. It is just their way of confirming that Catholicism is an inspired religion and no left brain criticism (gates of hell) will ever stand up against it.

Got it?

I could add that Jesus promised he would built his church upon the Peter the rock of revelation because it was his keen insigth into the second nature of Jesus as Christ that Jesus called him "rock." Just after this he said to Peter-the-faith in Judaism "get thee behind me satan" to indicate that not religion itself but the purpose of religion is what we need to isolate.

Starboy

I think so. I have seen you post this explanation before. I understand that you interpret the bible as metaphor. As you explain it, it all seems so mythical.

Starboy