Replies

You've got some really warped ideas about Christianity that really don't jibe with historical fact.

You took me to task for lack of humility. I think you need to have some yourself, because spouting these opinions (and you're not the first or last to come up with them) will get you laughed out of here in a hurry.

I'm no theologian, so I'll spare you the dissertation, but my brief response to your post is this:

1) You are mistaken that Christianity only exists because some Jewish people didn't want to be circumcised or prohibited from eating pork. Christianity existed because of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whom His followers -and myself - believed to be the Messiah, and God Himself. He founded His Church on Peter, and Peter and His followers naturally began building that Church on His teachings. They attracted both Jews and Gentiles (Christ did say that He had come for both His flocks). As with any institution in its formative years, there were issues about what to teach and how to teach it. In the early Christian Church, a lot of the divide was based on whether the Church should be exclusivistic and just another sect of Judaism or not.

Jesus overturned the dietary laws, as can be found in the Gospels. He taught that only what comes out of a man (words and deeds) can be unclean, not what goes into him. Also, circumcision was a sign of initiation. Baptism replaced it.

2) Blood sacrifice? I'm guessing you're referring to Christ's crucifixion or the sacrament of Communion. What do you want from us. Christ said to do this in remembrance of me, so we do it! Christ also offered Himself up on the cross for us. This is just the way things happened, I can't change that.

Communion was not borrowed from the pagans long after Christ died. The Church was doing it right after He died.

3) You mention the Church's political ties. Well yeah, of course the Church is going to have some relation to every facet of culture when everyone in Europe was a Catholic in the Middle Ages (except for those areas overrun by Islam or some of the more remote areas that practiced their old paganism). But like you said, people do interpret (or rather mis-interpret or intentionally pervert) religion to their own ends. But a look back at history will show you that in terms of the murders actually performed by the Church in the name of God, there are very few. Much of the killing was done by secular authorities in God's name. In many cases, the Church spoke out against it.

If you want to turn Jesus into God by relying on writings the veracity of which can't be confirmed, so be it. I don't really mind, because in the end it has made you, and billions like you, better people. The deification of Jesus didn't occur until long after the fact of his existence, and I think he would have been mortified to think people actually believed such things of him. After all, he was a Jew, and he upheld the Jewish beliefs, rituals, and law. His only qualification was that the law wasn't meant as a means whereby the Almighty tested the faithfulness of his creations, but as a gift whereby those creations would be enabled to live good and prosperous lives.

I've tried to retain my sense of humor in this series of posts, which started by you assailing me in an ad hominem way with your lip-thrusting sarcasm, but I've got to observe that, based on everything you've written, you've got just enough theology and religion in you to comprehend the hatred God has for mankind, but not the love. I wish you better than that.