Lol, yeah, that was the joke.

'Tell us one of you flaws' can be the question of nightmares. cos there's a good answer that's hard to get out of your head.

A: 'I have a tendancy to give smart arse answers to stupid questions'

I went for an interview the other day.

The guy asked me, "what's your worst quality?"
I said, "I think I'm too honest."
He said, "I don't think that's a bad quality."
I replied, "I don't give a **** what you think."

FLOL.

I would hire you on the spot.

I personally don't agree with the church itself being inevitably evil because Jesus is the head of the church.

However, I do see how individuals who are given to much power can do evil things. We have seen with the scandals.

What do you mean by the church's pulling back?

Guys, why can't you just see that the bad christians are not the true christians? What makes them bad? Well, they're not true christians. What makes them not true christians? Well, they're bad.

Organized religion, or the Church itself is a corrupting influence.

Churches are realizing a lot of the flock does not look to them as they used to and are more willing to judge and even leave the church. Thus they are pulling back from such corrupt and immoral behaviour, that they would have gladly engaged in and covered up prior and starting to pull back on that. Out it. Punish it.

Like a good politician trying to wash their image.

One obvious vice of mine is spending valuable time and energy in this thread.

sure it influences people to follow Jesus but even in the opinion of an atheist the Bible has wholesome and good "stories". So it influences people to be better humans at a bare minimum. The Church's essence is not to be corrupting even though there can be corruption within it.

just like a corporation, the Church is going to adjust once it starts to lose parishioners. The Church itself is under a lot of scrutiny both from an external and internal due to the scandals, rightfully so. The Church right now is in a purification stage and here needs to be genuine change.

If the Church was a Politician it would change all of it doctrine to fit modern progressive society but it doesn't. It teaches the same thing it always has.

Trump will use 'good stories' (build America, support America) towards his goals of ultimately drawing people into a cult where he can take further advantage of them.

A good salesmen always focuses on the 'good' will trying to not get you to look at the mass wall of bad.

What you say about the Church doing some good is a necessary veneer but does not change how the indoctrination and push to have people accept that faith, and not science or logic or reason or truth, should guide them, is their biggest grift of all.

Trump said it best when at the start of his term he said to his acolytes they should not believe what they see or hear over his term and instead only what he tells them. Have faith in what he says and ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. If you see me shoot someone but I say I did not, believe the latter.

I am not using Trump to make this about him specifically but because he is an example of using the exact same 'Religion' tactic. One used by various cult leaders throughout time to indoctrinate sheep.

If Trump was to leave office and proclaim himself the leader of the new Trump religion, it would quickly become one of the larger religions in America.

And that is why Religion is on whole negative. It functions largely like a political party who holds power but with far less ability for the people (sheep) to check those in power as they naturally tend to abuse of power.

Do you identify as a born-again or evangelical Catholic? I don't mean whether you were born again in a theological sense, but rather whether this is how you describe yourself.

I disagree with the criticism of Cuepee and others here towards organized Christianity - I agree with them that it is easy to find hypocrisy and evil in the church, but a complete evaluation would have to include the value the church brings to people's lives as well, which to me seems worth preserving.

However, I think Christians should resist the attitude you describe here as well. Churches and denominations of course need to be fiscally prudent, but they have a mission which is very often opposed to the profit-seeking motive, so they should be concerned about temptation when their own motives align with making money. In particular, over time powerful institutions have a tendency to focus less on their original mission and more on the pragmatic decisions necessary to maintain power and influence - and the need for money is a huge part of this. In other words, Jesus was right about the difficulty for rich men (and institutions) to enter the kingdom of God, and living in a strongly capitalistic wealthy society like the US only makes those difficulties harder to avoid.

Politics has nothing to do with Christianity. Politics politicizes religion now more than ever. It's a belief system that has a set of moral teachings and members of that belief system are able to vote so naturally politicians are going to capture that market share.

Christianity aligns with science and we are saved through Gods grace. There is nothing that us Christians can do to make you believe.

Excellent post.

As a rule, I oppose "bigness" in institutions. The larger the institution, the greater the potential for major corruption and other abuses.

That's why I oppose Big Government, Big Corporations and Big Churches.

I belong to a Baptist Church. Baptist churches are independent in the sense that we choose our own pastors, elders, deacons, and even craft our own Doctrinal Statements. A given Baptist congregation answers ONLY to its own congregation.
(Some Baptist Churches belong to "conventions", such as the Southern Baptist Convention, but each congregation in the SBC are still independent.)

Aside from some doctrinal differences, perhaps my biggest problem with the Roman Catholic Church is their enormous wealth and influence, which basically permits the Vatican the luxury to do what they want to without ANY consent at all from the parishioners, or the even the Priests at a given parish. Rome can remove or install a priest at any parish any time they want, and the needs and wants of the parishoners are basically irrelevant.

I'd describe myself as a Catholic who reverted back to my faith after rejecting God for a long time.

Evangelical Catholic seems like a made up term and wouldn't describe myself as a born again Catholic either.


I'm not saying how they "should" act I'm just pointing out that it's not evil to collect money from members and adjust to local laws in order to sustain what it can of it's presence.

I'll speak to what I know. do you see how much ground Catholicism is losing in the west. Our Churches are closing, vocations to Priesthood very low, attendance is dropping, and most people are lackluster in the faith. Secular world is taking over.

Yes, it is harder the more you have. If one is wealthy and can get anything they want then there is little need for God. That is why we must embrace our sufferings and understand that they have the ability to make us stronger in our faith. If life is great from a worldy perspective it is a sign that Satan has you in his grips as he wants to shelter you from what is good...and that is God.

I feel like this is being opposed to corporations in capitalism. You can have a more or less decentralized organizational structure, but in a society with freedom of religion like the US, successful churches will always get big. I think a more decentralized structure helps renew the church - probably one of the reasons why religion in the US is still more common than in Europe - but it also causes these Christian denominations to have little sense for how they fit into the broader history and structure of Christianity and tends to encourage celebrity and anti-intellectual trends within the religion more broadly.

I'm pretty sure material blessings aren't the reason society is outgrowing organized religions.
Although that's something a rich master may put in your ear.

They're just failing in the marketplace of ideas. They will be replaced by something that people find more useful.

Humans will always need an interior life and be driven to seek a spiritual path of one sort or another. We've been doing it since neanderthal times according to the cave pictures.

Don't fret. I'm sure if Paul came back and saw what we've done to his religion he'd be aghast.

I am not saying religions do no good. It is in their interest to do and showcase some good.

Allow me to explain.

I think it was the 70's when a bunch of the biggest charities were outed and shamed for taking in massive amounts of money and only spending pennies per dollar on actual charitable work with the rest being eaten up in salaries and admin.

So yes they would showcase the millions spent on a project for Clean Water, etc, but not the 10's or 100's of millions they were grifting.


They have since fixed that with most 'pulling back' and now putting into their bylaws that 95% (?) of the money raised must go to the cause. They recognized the grift cannot be maintained at the exclusion of the cause.

But the grift is the game and reason for being. The 'cause' is the vehicle they recognize that they need to attract sheep.

Most of the major religions organized to seek power and raise money. Many to counter the power of Kings and birthright and to have a form of 'alternative gov't' that could direct society. Many faith leaders were politicians and/or warlords (basically).

What they 'believe in' is often just a combing through of all the past available material that existed and looking for the themes that resonated and then recycling it into a similar origin story to see if can be furthered.

The grift is the game. The rest is the window dressing to allow the grift.

Why not? The correlation between how rich a country is and how religious is negative. I wouldn't say "outgrowing," but it seems plausibly related to me. The opportunities and lifestyle available in more wealthy societies can substitute for much of the function of traditional organized religion.

Without a doubt, often the most duplicitous and dishonest people I see on TV identify as Evangelicals.

I was this weekend watching a Trump spokesperson gal just stream lies while touting her faith in a way that I just thought, if her god did hear her he would strike her down to stop the hypocrisy.


So no, I reject that "...it influences people to be better humans at a bare minimum...". The percent of top televangelists that are fallen in such a small field demonstrates statistically it is more common than not to be corrupted.

So I would restate it as 'some may escape the corrupting influence and become better humans'.

The church cannot switch on a dime and yet still maintain the traditional flock. Each decision to change is not done on what they think is the right and moral thing to do but rather a calculus on how many new sheep they think they might gain (as society changes) versus how many they might lose from their existing base.

not sure exactly what point you were trying to make here. Very confusing. But I will just say that the leaders in Christianity rise through elections. They just are not as accountable to the sheep (citizens) as most politicians are, as the Church only allows other politicians to vote.

This is the type of 'Good News' I like to hear religious people deliver.

of course it has correlated directly with societies population base being more educated.

Sheering sheep is most successful when people are ignorant and uninformed.

You're very cynical. This is like saying the main point of sports is to make money. Sure, lots of people involved make money. But the value of sports is in the joy participating in sports brings us, the relationships we build and maintain as participants or fans, the sense of home and community that local sports provides, and so on. It's good that lots of athletes also donate money to charity, but that's not the main thing. Churches are not just a charity for the poor. Claiming that grift is the reason for existence of organized religion just misses most of what is going on.

Same here.

On the other hand, the vast majority of Pastors that I have met who aren't on TV are among the most kind, generous, selfless people I have ever met.

This!!!