Christianity, the Murderous Lunatics

Before I begin, I would like to say I have argued many times about Christianity. I am a Gnostic and believe in most of Jesus' teachings. I have debated countless times with people and they seem to bring up a few valid points as well as The Roman Catholic church's dark history.

If you ask many Christians about the murder of many innocent citizens, most don't know what to say. They fail to realize what divides them from the Catholic church.
The Catholic church believes that the pope is the mouth of God.

Malachi 2:7 “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men
should seek instruction—because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty.

The pope is believed to be the successor of St. Peter. People bow down to the pope and hold his teachings as the word of God. People fail to realize that the pope is just another human being, a puppet, like the president of the US. If the pope was truly great, he would have abolished abuses within the Vatican, or abolish the Vatican bank. Yet people still hold his word as infallible.

If you use the argument that Catholics are Christians, Christians don't follow the Vatican. They don't speak for Christians, and are not the same.

Now sure people have killed in the name of Christ but people have also killed in the name of science, and by using science.

EXAMPLE:

Nuclear warheards, destroyer ships, warplanes, guns, ammo, virus', mad nazi scientists, and the list goes on and on.

It is ignorant to blame violence on religion or science. It is human nature to be aggressive whether you like it or not. Ask yourself, if religion never existed would that stop people from separating each other and killing each other? Stalin didn't think so, neither did Pol Pot. They didn't do it in the name of Atheism, but it didn't stop them from doing it.

The same could be said for the Roman Catholic church. To conquer, they through the title of a holy war and all the ignorant masses followed.

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.
~Josef de Maistre

[edit on 21-3-2010 by Equinox99]

Please don't confuse the Catholic church with Christianity. The Catholic church has elements of Christianity in it but is not Christianity itself. Christians follow Christ not a Pope or tradition etc. So your Title would be more accurate if it said " The Catholic church, the murderous lunatics" (not that they are).

I have an answer on this question of your's. Why all the violence? Why all the evil in the world? It starts in the last couple of verses in Malachi 4.

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.
5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

It turns out this prophecy happened. The world was struck with a major curse. This is what Matthew 17 says on the subject.

11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.
12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

Elijah the prophet was supposed to precede the Messiah and prepare the way for him. They both were to appear at the temple to clean it up so to speak in Malachi 3 verses 1 through 3. John the Baptist was beheaded too soon.

And then there is the punishment of the curse. And that is in the book of Hosea. To understand the curse you need a knowledge of Leviticus 26 and the agreement made between God and the Israelites. THe benefits of the agreement and the punishments for breaking it. Then the book of Hosea needs to be studied. But here is the Readers Digest version of the curse.

Hosea 3.
4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:
5 Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.

Hosea 5.
13 When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.
14 For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him.
15 I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.

Hosea 6.
1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

And the thing about the days in Hosea 6-2? According to Psalms 90 and 2 Peter 3-8 a day in the presence of God is like a thousand years on the earth. Those days are thousand year periods of time.

The world has been cut off from God for the past 2000 years. And that's the answer to your questions here.

And feel a little privileged here. It's not often someone shares one of those hidden secrets eh?

Originally posted by Equinox99
The pope is believed to be the successor of St. Peter. People bow down to the pope and hold his teachings as the word of God.

This is not true. There are times the Pope says he's speaking on behalf of God, but those times are few and far between. The rest of the time, though very knowledgeable and, hopefully, wise, he is considered fallible just like the rest of us.

Now, when the Pope does say he's speaking on behalf of God, what he says after can trump scripture, which I disagree with.

To say that Catholics aren't Christians, though, would be like saying those Jews way back in the day who refused to eat mean but believed in Christ as their Savior were not really Christians. Some of us are weaker, and we need support to help us worship God. As long as a relationship with Christ is at the center, they're as Christian as the Evangelical who has a relationship with Christ.

At the same time, the Catholic who puts all of his trust in Mary, or Peter, or some other patron saint and doesn't know Christ is just as lost as the Evangelical who puts all of his trust in knowledge of scripture without that relationship with Christ.

reply to post by Equinox99


I will say this, too. What you're bringing up happened hundreds of years ago, and at a time when the church wasn't so much about God as it was about political power. It was the political power of Europe, and had to work hard to maintain that. That often meant tossing scripture aside to play just as dirty as other European leaders were.

To say Christianity is false because of something that took place hundreds of years ago and over a thousand years after Christ died is like me condemning you as being dishonest because Gnostics around 100 and 200AD were changing scriptures and attaching people like Paul's name to their letters to give them more authority and twist the religion to match theirs. Seems kinda absurd, doesn't it?