there, i fixed it for you

mormons. No question. No other faith has a more unsturdy foundation.

For a faith with such an unsturdy foundation, there sure are a lot of them...

What do you mean???? hell good old Joseph Smith got the breastplate of the angels and the tablets straight from good old Moroni himself....... hell he came out of the sky in the woods in a blaze of lights and told good old Joseph to gather up as many wives as he could and to marry his daughters and cousins and nieces and aunts and whoever else he could hitch up too...... that way he wed them into mormonism and would get the ball started rolling goodlike

hmmm.. i think the snake thin is relativly dangerous and kinda not the smartest thign peopel should do

anti-hero wrote
<<I'd say the Snakehandlers would get my vote. Their entire religion is based on one entirely metaphorical verse from the Bible. They basically hold and toy with poisonous snakes, because the Bible says they will not be harmed if they are righteous. Thus, they believe that the more snakes you hold, the more righteous you are. So, the people holding like 20 snakes in their hands are the most revered. They get bitten all the time, but refuse to seek medical attention, because they "know" they'll be okay. I'd like to see them hold a bunch of king cobras... unscathed my ass.>>

this tradition is'nt solely a christian thing, this goes back to the very early prechristian days to ophian? gnosticism, As in they revered the snake as a sort of representation of orobos. I'm all for it if its done right, generally they use common rattle snakes and such. This probably would work well for a really EUPHORIC type service/ritual. I have been to pentacostal services and , well lets say that its already quite euphoric. The snakes would bring a much greater "high".

A lot of these people are pretty immune to the bites, as having been bit quite a few times. I don't know of any that have died from it.



As for mormonish, a dumb religion with more holes then christianity, however the mormons are usually the most well balanced people i have ever met- i know this from living in salt lake city for six months as a kid.

It's actually earlier than that. Indo-Europeans in the prehistoric fertile crescent praised holy men who could pick up snakes (which were apparently both worshipped and feared) and put them in urns where they would be left to die. That is the main theory on it, anyway. The only evidence we really have is really fucking OLD urns filled with dead snakes. The popular theory is snake-handling holy men.

Ok, I just did a whole bunch of background reading on the Church of Scientology, and they've got the Mormons beat hands down. A religion created solely by a bad sci-fi author, and he's got some of the biggest names in Hollywood throwing money at him...oh, and Issac Hayes. My respect level for the man has dropped immensely.

guy person wrote-

>>It's actually earlier than that. Indo-Europeans in the prehistoric fertile crescent praised holy men who could pick up snakes (which were apparently both worshipped and feared) and put them in urns where they would be left to die. That is the main theory on it, anyway. The only evidence we really have is really fucking OLD urns filled with dead snakes. The popular theory is snake-handling holy men.<<

thanks for that guy person , i could of guessed that it went that far back , of course the gnostics in there different sects alll borrowed a lot from older pagan rituals. As always you have a way of further illumanating a subject.

Thank you.

The Gnostics did the same thing that all the other Christians of a somewhat later time did, except they had peaceful people to work with, where the Catholics had violent Germanic tribes and the Orthodox had irate Slavic peoples. They just took the older pagan traditions and, in order to convert them, they changed Christianity to fit the tradition as long as it wasn't blasphemous.

Catholicism and things akin to it.

Why Catholicism?

Isn't that where Easter eggs came from?

Isn't that where Easter eggs came from? Pagan practices of the Celtics?

It seems that catholicism is very hypocritical and doesn't really explain anything in the Bible. I also don't like the idea of eternal damnation. Why would you be punished for such a little thing? Here's a question for ya, Why would a loving God do such things anyway?

who said anything about a loving god?? look at the old testiment people.

If you look in the very first chapter of Genesis it says that "God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good" that means he made nothing but good.

If I had to wait a year and eight months for an answer, I don't think that'd satisfy me.

i agree. they're always trying to offer me a free stress test and shit. i just don't get hubbard and his debunked dianetics... i already know i'm stressed out, i don't need some wacko device that doesn't actualy prove anything and a personal survey to help me out... i'll just end up more stressed thinking about what you do with my info

besides, i'm too poor to become a high ranking member. *sigh*

There's a top danger sign of a bad religion. If your status depends on the size of your bank account...bad idea.