i'm looking for more than opinions on how horrible it is, eveyrone knows that background, but i would like to discuss what people know or understand about this particular form of faith, what is it that inspired those ideas?

Is roman catholicism christianity, can christian beliefs be joined with pagan beliefs, and still be christianity, why do people insist it's possible..why do some bibles have translations concerning hell, but arguements can be made there is no heaven or hell with other translations?

figuring out salvation was easy, deciphering everything else is sort of open to interpretation.

Christianity is based upon the principle that everyone is a sinner. This doesn't mean that God has ridiculously high standards or that once you thought about stealing your cousin Beth's cupcake at a family picnic. It means that God sees through to the heart of you and understands and knows all the evil and petty and vindictive thoughts and deeds in your life. When you've lied to others to get your way, cheated, manipulated, bullied, insulted, stolen, and done all the horrible things that every single person does in their life, it stains you with Sin. Hell is a concept introduced during the corruption of the religion as it moves into pagan Greece, and is essentially an overly literal perversion of the fundamental concept of sin. Sin doesn't send you to Hell. Living in Sin is Hell. All the wicked thoughts and deeds that people justify in fucking one another over in everday life and in disobeying the laws of God poison their lives and fill them with misery. Only through repentance and forgiveness, constant repentance and forgiveness, as humans constantly fall back into Sin, can you cleanse your soul and acchieve a peace with God.


Also, most of the actual "sins" of the church are greatly exaggerated or flat-out lies.

my parents were baptist missionaries, now my dad is head of the bible department of a conservative christian college. So I grew up in the church....

I dont attend a church now, but I still consider my beliefs vaguely christian.... with a postmodern twist.

catholics are christians, probably the oldest sect of christianity that is still around (or at least popular) and christianity has incorporated alot of paganism into it.... (ie pagan holidays are also christian holidays) but I think that the two modern day institutions are fundamentaly differant and probably not best mixed.

Because I am not interested in starting or contibuting to a long and drawn out discussion right now, I'm just going to dump these links for now.
http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/babble.html

Asking if catholics are Christians is like asking if cromagnon were humans. Yes it is. Its the oldest and longest surviving group of Christians and Christianity.

Why do you want examples on why its so bad? Its not all that bad, its not as bad as say Wicca and Modern Paganism which is basically just a laughing matter.

I agree with Nietschze that Christianity in its most popular forms goes against basic aspects of human spiritual will. Being scared into believing things with the threat of everlasting damnation proves no clarity of thought or resilience of spirit, things that I would argue should be among a Christian's true aims.

What Jesus actually did and taught in his life and the Christian church are two very different things. The church has always been in a position of trying to strangle the populous and maintain political control. They have tried to eliminate the goddess from the people's minds and souls, and in many cases they succeeded.

I feel that organized religion of most forms is completely flawed. One can glean bits of truth from various sources, but one must also consider the verity of those sources. And mainstream Christian thought tells us to rely on faith that what people right now are saying to us is right, well, because God says so and if you disagree with God, you go to hell. I just wonder how many of them actually go to church on Saturday.

Yes, Catholicism is Christianity, though it's not the oldest version, as Billy stated, just the oldest one that most people are aware of. One could say that it is the oldest of Christian sects originating in Europe.

Of course you can join pagan beliefs with Christian ones. Just look at Christmas and Easter...they're rife with pagan symbolism.

No heaven? Doubtful. Jesus speaks of heaven frequently in every translation I've ever seen. Hell, on the other hand, is a different matter.

Christianity and Judaism retain many relics of an uneducated, dangerous, and fatal past. Try to understand the writings that survive to use within the framework of their millenia-old vintage and not from a modern standpoint. Despite whatever bullshit Dan Brown has you swallowing, the past was not egalitarian or pretty, and women's rights were increased under both religions over the standards of the day.

Organized religion is often over-rated, but it also deserves some respect. The Church and other religious traditions have been preservers and spreaders of ancient learning, patrons of beauty and culture and art, and givers of charity. The Church is guilty of some sins, but many more than it is actually responsible for have been heaped upon it.

Go ahead and tell us which sects are older than the Catholics then. I seem to recall one of Jesus' apostles ya know... going to Rome to further the church. Before which time they were all Jews still.

Christianity is silly. I don't understand people who praise the validity of THE BIBLE but then think that what it says is open to interpretation. The book lays down its rules pretty clearly, anyone who doesnt follow them to the letter is a shitty christian and should just accept the fact that they dont really believe what their faith teaches them is right. If you're going to follow a religion, follow it right, dont half ass it.

actually, i don't want examples on how it's bad, i've heard all of those, disagreements and have grown bored about hearing all the horrible history anyone can find out, i'm happy getting different observations from the usual, negative associations, while not being preachy or insulting on either side of the fence.

i never realized there was so much involved when switching faiths, it doesn't seem like there should be.

The rules are not open for interpretation. But the bible most certainly is. Take for example the book of genesis, I havent read it in awhile but I dont remember in claims by the author that the information was directly recieved from god. Which means that it is open for interpration. There is also the change of knowledge of man and the use of language and the diffrent authors and translators that inject there own ideas into it. So are the rules sound and good yes, is there a danger in interpret the bible to literaly yes.

Disclaimer I am a Christian.

While it's true that there's a long tradition of literary interpretation in Christianity, the faith, never, forget, is rooted in Judaism. And interpretation is a huge, huge aspect in Rabbinical lore, and you can see it in the new testament, too, it's just that the Church forgot it's history for a while. Even before science was around to refute claims the scipture was understood to be full of hidden and double meanings- when Jesus refers to all the prophecies regarding the Savior, if you actually go back and read the sections he's talking about they seem almost completely unrelated- for instance, from John;

"21They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me hates my Father as well. 24If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.'"

But the actual law he's talking about here is just one of the Psalms of David, lamenting persecution by his enemies. There are reasons that men and women have spent their lives just re-reading one book- every line is considered divinely inspired and laced with many meanings. This is why there's so much fragmentation in Christianity; they rely upon different readings of the same words. Many of the most commonly accepted tenants of Christianity- Heaven and Hell, Jesus' divinity- aren't explicitly mentioned in the Gospels or the old testament at al.

How about all the Christian communities that formed around the Mediterranian basin before it spread to the Italian peninsula? Coptic Orthodox Christianity in Egypt never answered to a Roman Pope. How about the Gnostics? They weren't "all Jews" because most of the people in those areas weren't Jews; they were Greeks, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Syrians, and other various people living in that area.

There's also a monastery in Ireland that was founded around 37ad, before the Roman Catholics got there...granted, that one may have been absorbed into the RC church eventually.

How convenient for people trying to justify their sins, eh?

that's because Jesus was a real guy on earth and his teachings were good. Christianity was cleverly used by Catholics to reel in unwitting people and control them, taking them away from the journey they were supposed to take in life.

Christ ( and i'm not talking Jesus ) is in you. It is the ability to make manifest anything in your life that you want. Everything is energy, and is affected and created by your perception. So the real christianity is not necessarily bad. It's just what source you get your understanding of it from that might make you feel that way.

The Romans created the Roman Catholic religion. The first "Christians" were Jews who recognised Yeshua as the Messiah. It didn't take long for opportunists to start jumping on the bandwagon though, and heretical teachers started reinterpreting scripture to suit their own ideas, and as a result, the message preached by Yeshua and His apostles became subtly transformed. This transformation was well under way even in the days of the apostles, when Shaul denounced those who were teaching "another Yeshua" and "a different gospel" (2 Corinthians 11:3-4).

This abandonment of the gospel's central message was greatly abetted by events occurring in the Roman Empire at the close of the first and the beginning of the second centuries of the Christian era. During the early part of the first century the Jewish religion was accorded remarkable deference by the Roman government. And, for a short time, Roman officials even regarded Christians as merely another sect of the Jews, meaning Christians received the same deference accorded to those of the Jewish faith.

But in the latter half of the first century a major change occurred. It was inevitable that Roman paganism and idolatry (which had come to include emperor worship) would come into conflict with the strict faithfulness of the Jews and Christians to the true G-d. It wasn't long before both Christians and Jews fell out of favour with the Romans. In A.D. 66 many of the Jews living in Judea rebelled against Roman rule, and in AD70 the Roman legions captured Jerusalem, razed the Temple and salted the ground where it had stood.