I didn't suddenly "become a Zionist." I'm a simple Bible Belter, and Bible Belters are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish because of Biblical sentimentalism. Try it some time.
I became a Noachide, which isn't a cult or sect but the Halakhic designation for non-Jews--all non-Jews, regardless of their religious beliefs. That means technically, you are a Noachide. One can only be a Noachide or a Jew. There is no middle ground.
My defection from chrstianity would never have been possible without first defecting to Catholicism, a religion as radically opposed to the Bible Belt mentality as it is possible to be. Growing up, to me being a Catholic was like being a Communist. I overcame that prejudice. And while it didn't work out, it made my other prejudices easier to overcome as I carried the logic of my historical investigations to its conclusion. For now I'll just say that as I went from Protestantism to Catholicism to Orthodoxy, I noticed that the defects of human nature were becoming less severe and human responsibility was becoming greater. Why stop somewhere half-way?
We don't have time to discuss this now and you wouldn't listen to anything I had to say anyway, but if I could give advice to the Catholic catechumanal committees (I won't say missionaries because American Catholics think missionizing is a "Protestant thing") I would tell them that they are missing the big picture. They are defending individual Catholic doctrines without transmitting the Catholic worldview. They are expecting people whose only understanding of chrstianity is Protestant to just add purgatory and confession to what they already believe. This doesn't work because no matter how accurate Catholic claims of authenticity are, neither purgatory nor confession make any sense from the uncorrected Protestant perspective.
No Protestant has ever been told that Adam and Eve in the Garden were in a probationary state waiting to be "translated" to the "beatific vision." They think Adam and Eve were placed in a static paradise that was an end in itself, with nothing to prove. Once J*sus "saves" them they are restored to status quo ante. What's this business about the "door to heaven being open again" and and now it's up to each "redeemed" person to "cooperate" lest they "lose their salvation?" It's merely a loophole anyway. Adam was not headed for any other "heaven" than the one he was already living in and to which each "saved" person is now sure to return, so what is there to "merit?" Why this need for "purgation" before entering heaven? That makes as much sense as saying Adam couldn't have been created until he was first purified. Try pushing purgatory onto that worldview. It doesn't work!
As for confession, what Catholics fail to realize is that even if its authenticity is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt chrstianity as Protestants have always understood it simply cannot assimilate it. Protestants are not damned for individual sins, but for the propensity to sin in the first place. A "totally depraved" person confessing individual sins makes as much sense as trying to cure smallpox by picking off scabs. It is what Catholics call "concupiscence," not the symptoms known as "sins" that damn the Protestant. You wanna here a Protestant confession? Here it is. "Bless me father for I have sinned. I have a monster inside me. I was born with it. It will be there when I die." Now, what penance would you assign for that, hmmm? And no Protestant that I am aware of has ever learned how to count every single mortal sin, even after an absence from the confessional for forty years, and then accurately report it. You cradle Catholics must be "rain men." Maybe you should all be working on getting us all free energy.
Why would someone who was meant to live forever in the Garden of Eden have to do anything once the loophole brilliantly preserves G-d's holiness while letting the sinner go free? Who ever said Adam had a journey to make in the Garden? I certainly never heard this. And why is confession or art or saints or rituals or anything necessary once one has taken advantage of the loophole? Why did J*sus come here in the first place if not to be vicariously damned in our place? And since he was, what is the rationale for thinking one has to do anything???
A Catholic FReeper once sneeringly referred to Protestants' "get out of hell free card" as if that were supposed to be ironic. Isn't that the whole purpose of the chrstian religion? It's not? Then how does one justify its existence? What's it for? That's something no one raised a Protestant can ever figure out.
I have read many Catholic apologetic books and articles (I own a good number, having once been a member). All Catholic apologetics make the same mistake: they take individual "Catholic things," justify them with history, and then think their job is done. William James was right. Catholics' and Protestants' centers of emotional energy are too different. "They will never understand one another."
And as one moves from Catholicism to even more ancient and "authentic" versions of chrstianity it only gets worse. Eastern Orthodoxy is "semi-pelagian" and professes that one must participate with G-d to achieve "deification" (they are very up front about this and call it "synergy"). They don't believe in original sin at all and think all Catholics are a merely Calvinists who are too dumb to notice what they are. Augustine is the "arch-heretic" who introduced the alien, pagan Greek idea of "original sin." I once asked an Orthodox priest if all this is true what was the difference between Adam in the Garden of Eden and me sitting right there talking with him. He said there wasn't any! (How he justified his job I have no idea!) And most of all, I have even read Eastern Orthodox writers (not liberal ecumenists, mind you, but the genuine article) who insist that the Talmud teaches the true, original, Biblical doctrine of human nature which all "western chrstendom" (Catholics as much as those "poor deluded Protestants") twisted and corrupted. Now . . . you wanna tell me what's wrong the Talmud since its conception of human nature is true and trumps that of Luther, Calvin, or Catholicism?
All this was headed to one place. I saw it. I embraced it.
And finally, though this will probably get no response, whatever else may be said about the ancient churches, they have all embraced evolution and higher criticism as a way to "prove" their not inbred American Protestants. No matter what they may be right on, any religion that says that G-d is (chas vechalilah!) guilty of errors, mistakes, or (G-d forbid!) falsehood is simply evil. But I notice most of the more "conservative" Catholics on this forum won't touch that issue. After all, who wants to be asked what "trailer park" one is from? But anyone who believes in either evolution or "higher criticism" while claiming his religious beliefs are identical in every way to those of Jerome or Athanasius (who never heard of either) is either very, very confused or something worse.
Good night, gentlemen.