BryanMaloney
Premium Member
Christianity does have its roots on Judaism, but as it was brought to Rome it started to become something else.
This is very typical of the Latinocentric beliefs of Western Christianity. Rome is all, Rome is everything, Rome is the beginning, the middle, and the end. My Church existed before "it was brought to Rome" and has existed independent of Rome from those days. Jesuits and Evangelicals are united in denying this, since it would violate their political ecclesiology and call into question their competing claims of absolute supremacy. Regarding the tired old lie that Christianity = Mithraism, that's a fairy tale invented in the 19th century by Evangelicals seeking to discredit anything they deemed to be "Popish". Fortunately, some Evangelicals have been honest enough to actually study history and not just repeat the same old tales: http://www.ralphwoodrow.org/books/pages/babylon-connection.html.
Spirituality, not religion has been at the forefront of human evolution. There is substantial evidence to prove that proto humans such as homo erectus, homo habilis, Neanderthal and the first Homo sapiens all were spiritual and even helped propel their evolution.
And the evidence that this "spirituality" was not expressed as religion is what? I have equally as much evidence to claim they WERE religious and the various artifacts found are all artifacts of religious activities.
Also take into account that once religions appeared on the scene humans started to war each other.
More 19th-century empty speculation.
Also note that a religion among other things has the sole purpose of self preservation
Sounds more like dogmatic diatribe on your part than a necessary attribute of religion. You sound like the teenage self-appointed philosophes of my college days. Blah blah blah--religion bad. Blah blah blah--religion bad--but be sure to construct a straw man parody of religion and then blindly and dogmatically insist that this is the "true" definition of religion.
Does your faith provide you with the proper facts based on what has been proven to be true, on the origin of the universe? Of humanity? Nope. Does spirituality do? Nope, but it at least will leave room for that acceptance, where as your faith doesn't.
Prove it. Prove that my faith does not do these things. Go ahead, since you write as if you are infallible and omniscient, go ahead and prove your accusations. You can certainly find clergy of my Church who might have written or write all manner of things--including things that contradict each other. This is because the questions are bigger than any man's ability to comprehend the answers. My Church does not have a human monarch considered omnicompetent to rule on all issues.
Also consider that if your faith is superior,why is it divided and have many sects?
My faith is not divided. There is the Church, and there are those who left the Church or have never known the Church. Christ's Church has never been divided. Catholics and Protestants kill each other because they are human, and that's what humans do when confronted with the idea that something is greater than they are. In any case, what two groups of heretics do to each other is not a matter of issue regarding the Church. Both groups are outside the Church.
If christs word is the word, why is his church divided? Why were catholics killing protestants and protestants killing catholics? Before you mock spirituality as a totalitarian belief system consider that your faith at one point tried to unify the world with Christianity at the helm
And any "spiritual" person who blindly and dogmatically puts down "religion" is trying to do exactly the same thing--he just lies to himself and everyone else about making the attempt.
Spirituality is the oldest form of veneration to the unknown.
Evidence? No tired old 19th-century nonsense or modern re-hashes of that stuff.
mock my faith that is fine, I will not mock yours as that is disrespectful, but what I will do is continue to show you facts, to show that you and your faith are nowhere near superior to anyone or anything.
Every negative screed you post about "religion" is mocking my faith. Of course, you exempt yourself from your own standards.