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Originally Posted by expatCA
Possibly true, but ...they do very little to actually teach people about God which is of far greater value. In fact their behavior for centuries in Europe is why religion is going away there rapidly. Just look what they did to the inhabitants of Central and South America with the Spanish conquerors. I do find it interesting that the majority of "3rd world" Countries in the "West" were dominated by ... the Catholic Church.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Iam4USC
Well, unlike you, I would hate to imagine a world where the Catholic church never existed. The church spread the good news to every corner of the globe. And while it has never been perfect (no organization is and ever will be) it has done more for humanity and Christianity in the world than any other church, religion, organization or government.
And those are facts. But go ahead and keep bashing them. It won't stop our message of love and compassion.
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Both of these arguments are true enough.
The thing about politics and organised religion are that they prey on the natural goodness of great numbers of human beings - (those who help and serve and care etc) and provide system platforms in order for those people to be able to do so.
On the surface that appears to be a wonderful thing but in reality those very institutions (organised politics and religion) are that which help create and maintain the existence of poor people - poor in relation to the rich and the very rich.
It has been a partnership between 'church and state' since the days of tribalism with elders and shamen and has been evolving and fine tuning its methods since those ancient times. As much as the good people who are supportive members of organised religion think they serve a godly thing, it is a shadow of a godly thing at best.
Understood in such light, it nonetheless is a natural enough part of evolution. The crux will be whether it can be changed significantly from the inside out, by those very same good people waking up to the bad in the good and doing something about it.
Making oneself look good at the expense of the poor is really not good. Providing systems where the very poor can learn to feed themselves and be educated and better contribute to the worlds systems isn;t really solving the major problem because it is not helping change things for the better - only maintain the ancient status quo.
The chances of the good people who support political and/or religious organisations acknowledging the darker agendas involved in these platforms and finding ways of doing things to change those agendas are slim to none...but strange things have been known to happen.
People get comfortable in their 'ways' and life-styles and that is natural enough too.
Also, with the concept of Jesus returning to make those changes happen by force (aka the belief in the second coming of Christ) allows for good people to believe that such a thing is really the only way that any real change can happen, such is the stranglehold of the systems over almost everyone on the planet.
One could definitely be forgiven for thinking that such a story was created specifically for that reason, by these political and religious institutions so that the good people would understand the nature of their position and that thinking about how they can contribute to making changes to the way things have, are and will continue to be done, is pointless - thus the only alternative is to believe some stronger force from the sky is the only way change will be done.
The Jews have a slightly different version of how this 'Messiah' will reveal himself to the world and make those changes happen, but again, it is a story designed to make the good people believe that there is nothing they can do to change the way things are, even united.
So - either way, the good people are convinced that the powers of politics and other religions is such that nothing they can do will change things in the significant and necessary ways, which may be precisely what those powerful institutions want the good people to believe about them - that nothing the good people can do will ever affect the agenda of the powerhouses controlling them.
Pointing out the 'good things' that the particular institution your give support to and ignoring the 'bad things' is a sign that some of those good people are resisting waking up to and examining the positions they support - and worse, feel they are supporting because "G()D" want it that way.
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