I also really enjoy reading the dialog between you and Vic. I learn a lot! It's like watching My Dinner With Andre. have either of you seen that movie?
Doug, you're getting me heated up about the RC Church now!
If I think of all the suffering they've caused over the centuries... unbelievable. Not to mention in my own family these past generations that I know of. For me, if they were ever to get into my good graces, they would all have to become beggar monks for the next thousand years. Maybe then, and only maybe, will I even be willing to consider anything they have to say as valid.
Naw, I do not think that you would consider validity based upon being a monk, not from what I have seen of you thus far. I do not know what your family has done, if you want to talk about something I am here.
In my family, Mother was RC, when she left her parents came over and called my parents anything but white. That us kids was being raised as heathen wild animals. Funny, I still had to go to sunday school in the methodist church. This was my first taste of religious thinking.
Then Sunday school was another strange experience for me. They told me I had a small door in my heart, someone was knocking at it, and I was to let him in. This guy, a murdered dead guy from 2,000 years ago. Yeah... riighttt... My heart is a muscle that pumps blood, no little doors, thank you. Then the easter bunny laid colored chicken eggs... and a murdered dead guy got up three days later and floated into the sky. I still wonder what the hell they was smoking... Santa Clause crashed and burned soon after as well.
I think I know what you mean, just think of all the alternative health benefits lost because they were too stupid to accept the results. Think of how much different our world would be now if they had not killed off most of the innovators, the people who could think, would we be enjoying a world of clean alternative energy, a world of loving health way into our 140's, a rational world of checks and balances between government, personal responsibilities, profits and planet health? No way to know, but once the world was well on it's way to a rational world of just that, then the dark ages came, a world ruled by religion, by hateful manipulators. It has taken centuries to repair the damage, and from the looks of things, we are once again on the brink of another dark age, due to the same cause.
Things are being done and said now that just 10 years ago would have been unthinkable. Preemptive war, based very little evidence is one. The sacrificing of freedom to secure freedom is another. When I saw the 911 families begging for more security, I thought "What they do not understand is the only way to make the security they are begging for is to become a police state." The security they was begging for can only be provided if they are caged, everyone is caged, everything that touches them is known. Sadly, we have people all too willing to provide just such security, it will only cost you everything you hold dear.
While you seem to separate out RCC, I see it much wider than that. RCC was the main player in the past, these days we have a whole new set of cats.
Take Care,
Doug