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[Newbie]

[Francis-Pax]

I went to Catholic Theological Union, one of the largest graduate schools of Catholic theology in the United States. At that time, I was studying for the priesthood. The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, University of Chicago Divinity School, and an evangelical Christian seminary were nearby. We would often cross-register for courses in our respective instutions. All of us had very different theologies but I never came across such disrespectful anti-Catholicism as I have read on this thread.

Calling the pope the devil with a picture of John Paul II is simply pathetic and disrepectful.

[shortskirt_longjacket]

It's clear to me that religions which rely on text to transmit their brand of spirituality are just asking for contention and misinterpretation.

Ever been in an undergrad English class where the students are trying to explicate a poem? You'll get forty-five different interpretations on 14 lines of poetry. Some will be along the same lines, but there will be shades of interpretation. Everyone has a slightly different understanding. That's like with the bible: every single scripture is wide open to interpretation and so you must expect that people will see it differently. The picture of how all the bible verses hang together to form a cohesive theology is going to be different depending on who's connecting the dots.

So I say: don't base your spirituality on a book. Base it on your own spiritual experience (whatever that may be). If there is a God who expects some kind of personal commitment or response from you, he'd come to you on personal terms, right? Like if a friend or a co-worker expects something from you, they better darn well come to you and ask for it themselves, right? Not through some stupid whack-ass channel like a book that's a couple thousand years old. Christians say it's ridiculous to expect God to reach us all on a personal level like he did with various biblical figures (Moses, Abraham, Enoch, Jesus, etc.), but I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation at all. If God isn't willing to bring his end of things on a personal level, why should I be expected to do the same? If he's just tossing a musty old book my way and saying, "Here's everything you need to know" and walking away, what kind of response on my part would be commensurate with his effort? (I'm not talking about his "effort" of sacrificing his son for our sake...I'm talking about making an effort for a personal relationship.) If I'm expected to talk to him daily, why the bleep shouldn't he have to talk back? He wants me to acknowledge him, he better acknowledge me! To my face!

I personally don't think anyone would have a "spiritual experience" if they were unaided by the stories and words of the bible and other people. If you were born in a spiritual/religious vacuum, I doubt the idea of spirituality would even occur to you. All religion today has been culturally transmitted.

P.S. Also, I want to agree with whoever said that science has now done the job of explaining things that the church previously tried to explain (origins, natural phenomena, emotional experience, etc.). Religion was born during a time in human history where we had the curiosity about where things came from but we had no way of getting that knowledge. Now we do. Yay for science!

[rapier]

[Satori]

First of all, the whole idea of the Bible as the "innerrant word of God" is simply absurd. The bible was collated from a huge amount of religious writing, and what was finally chosen to go into it was ENTIRELY political. And every subsequent translation has been a political act. Christianity is simply a very effective means of population control.

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[Bee Positive]