Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> Science replaced religion all the time, you people just keep moving the
> goal posts and insisting that, "Well, even if we now know X, we don't
> know Y and God is hiding under Y."

God is not hiding under X or Y, it's everywhere for people with eyes to see and
ears to hear.

> And, just to be clear religion is bad because it derails discovery and
> promotes dogma, which, as has already been mentioned, **is not allowed**
> to be questioned.

Discovery and technological progress is made outside of religion, let religious
dogmas alone for believers.  It's not like one isn't allowed to question, just
that said questioning is moot, since it's a matter of faith.

> When the first versions of the Bible where published
> in English, it caused paranoia, fear and fundamentalism, since it
> demanded that everyone accept *all* of its contents as literally true,
> by its own definitions, and people where so scared of getting it wrong
> that they where willing to kill people to force them to follow it.

"God writes right by twisted lines."

You'd be more accurate, though, to say that many people have died as result of
fanatism of all kinds:  patriotic fanatism, political fanatism, racial
fanatism.    Why stop at religious fanatism?  Besides, the Crusades had mainly
economical motives, not religious.

It's well known how those in power corrupt weaker minds by any means they can
get.  This includes religion, of course.  It's a powerful thing because you can
make people willing to die for salvation to perform terrible acts.  So, yes, the
Catholic Church as an extension for Rome imperialism really committed several
acts that go against anything Christ ever taught.  This does not invalidate His
teachings and guidance, nor God's covenant with the Hebrews.  We're humans,
bound to sin and to misinterpret things due to our bias.

still, by blood, suffering and death has Christ made a new covenant for us with
God.  A similar fate awaited early for those while the religion spread like
wild fire.  you know, "no pain, no gain".

Wasn't it for the Roman Empire and their will to conquer, Christianity would not
be as widespread and many more people would never have heard of the Gospel and
the salvation... evil, it seems, is not without purpose.

Someone asked before what would make me lose my faith, or something.  Well, it'd
be to know for sure that Christ didn't exist; that he was a fraud invented by a
group of hellenic israelites to fit existing prophecies; that his marvelous
quotes and moral quidance are product of poetic and moral inspiration rather
than divine inspiration; that he didn't die for us since he never existed; that
the whole OT is just retro-writing and folk tales.  It all seem very likely and
even logical.  Certainly a sure-bet from the non-believer's point-of-view.

> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SIMBUR.html

nice, thanks.

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