Originally posted by Hopeforeveryone
Sorry to jump in but that also sounds a lot like Christianity. We've got Catholics and Protestants and numerous other branches and churches who
follow "altered" interpretations of the bible. To me religions that are followed individually are really good things, it's when there's a mass of
people behind them, they start causing the trouble.
I'm a harsh critic of my own, for the reasons you mention. There is a lot of deception, corruption, hypocrisy, fallacies, etc.
But for me the key difference from the other religions is that Jesus rose from the dead, with plenty of eyewitnesses both hostile and friendly, and
fulfilling many prophecies with a significant number of them being impossible for him to have pre-arranged, such as the Roman guards' dividing up his
clothes while he hung on the cross. The rest of what I believe flows from that point. As even the NT says, if Christ has not risen from the dead then
we who follow him are to be pitied for believing a lie.I've said in other threads here that just as in genetics it's not the similarities that
matter but the differences, so it is also with theistic faith, which has moral overlap even with non-theistic faith (yes, even atheists have faith
somewhere along the line).
But like everything else in life, good things get overrun by bad people, because the dross always rises to the surface... the control freaks claw
their way to the top and take over. But their control and indoctrination is not total, and those who are willing to ask questions and seek answers
will escape. This isn't so much a matter of enlightenment as it is of choice; we can't control what life gives us but we can decide how to react to
it.
So when either side in this topic makes sweeping generalizations of the other, they're forever going to talk past each other. I point out the ones
against Christianity because that's what I know best.
