What got me, growing up going to a Lutheran church, was the pastor telling us in catechism class that pretty much all the magic shit was merely metaphorical, along with how every church of every denomination I had ever gone to did things Jesus explicitly hated on in the bible. But especially churches of Catholicism with the gilded everything and statues and depictions of God and Jesus, the worship of Mary, and just the creepy nature of how they handle rituals like communion.
On the other hand, Baptist church is fun as fuck. Singing, dancing, better food at reception. It’s like a party!
I feel like one has to be atheist, or at least agnostic, to really be looking at religion and theology for the interest of learning culture and history, because a religious person is not very likely to actually explore another faith because they already “know” that it is “wrong.” And theology can tell you so much about people, culture, and how history has been shaped.
Shit in my life had made me hyperraltional with all the bad and the good that entails. I just can’t understand how anyone doesn’t care about the history of their church. Like southern Baptist sect only exists because they liked slavery and didn’t like being told slavery was wrong. Catholics added hell into the Bible to sell indulgences and launched wars to protect their power and unite fraying catholic countries from violating their pledge not to attack other catholics. Those seem obvious errors that make those sects “majorly influenced from somewhere that isn’t god”. I don’t know the history of all of sects though, i admit.
I know some history of the Lutheran church, specifically the dude it takes its name from. He basically saw the corruption of the current big church and didn’t like it. He even got so mad, he wrote a big list of shit they were doing wrong and stapled that shit to the front door of the building so everyone could see how fucked up they were. Martin Luther was big on “the bible is the only thing direct from God” and he basically saw how Catholicism was adding their own lore and profiting off things like indulgences and wanted to put a stop to that shit.
True, which puts them above catholics in my book, but the Bible was cobbled together from any who wrote something they wanted (timothy is straight out), so we can assume either
Man has screwed up religion except for the books chosen for the Bible and the translations they chose to use because God violated free choice just for that
Or
It’s probably as screwed up as the rest of religion
Break just to try to make formatting work
Even if divine inspiration comes into play instead of divine fiat. You still choose to believe the men in the room who had shown want to help themselves, decided to follow that inspiration. It’s possible, but I don’t find it likely. Theism or atheism is the only choice I can logically come to. Any book or religion just seems massively unlikely.
What got me, growing up going to a Lutheran church, was the pastor telling us in catechism class that pretty much all the magic shit was merely metaphorical, along with how every church of every denomination I had ever gone to did things Jesus explicitly hated on in the bible. But especially churches of Catholicism with the gilded everything and statues and depictions of God and Jesus, the worship of Mary, and just the creepy nature of how they handle rituals like communion.
On the other hand, Baptist church is fun as fuck. Singing, dancing, better food at reception. It’s like a party!
I feel like one has to be atheist, or at least agnostic, to really be looking at religion and theology for the interest of learning culture and history, because a religious person is not very likely to actually explore another faith because they already “know” that it is “wrong.” And theology can tell you so much about people, culture, and how history has been shaped.
Shit in my life had made me hyperraltional with all the bad and the good that entails. I just can’t understand how anyone doesn’t care about the history of their church. Like southern Baptist sect only exists because they liked slavery and didn’t like being told slavery was wrong. Catholics added hell into the Bible to sell indulgences and launched wars to protect their power and unite fraying catholic countries from violating their pledge not to attack other catholics. Those seem obvious errors that make those sects “majorly influenced from somewhere that isn’t god”. I don’t know the history of all of sects though, i admit.
I know some history of the Lutheran church, specifically the dude it takes its name from. He basically saw the corruption of the current big church and didn’t like it. He even got so mad, he wrote a big list of shit they were doing wrong and stapled that shit to the front door of the building so everyone could see how fucked up they were. Martin Luther was big on “the bible is the only thing direct from God” and he basically saw how Catholicism was adding their own lore and profiting off things like indulgences and wanted to put a stop to that shit.
True, which puts them above catholics in my book, but the Bible was cobbled together from any who wrote something they wanted (timothy is straight out), so we can assume either
Or
Break just to try to make formatting work
Even if divine inspiration comes into play instead of divine fiat. You still choose to believe the men in the room who had shown want to help themselves, decided to follow that inspiration. It’s possible, but I don’t find it likely. Theism or atheism is the only choice I can logically come to. Any book or religion just seems massively unlikely.