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I DO think that they don't have the truth and there are pagan influences in their modern day church.

That's all I meant.

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Yes, I am aware its origions... however we don't forsake tradition based on that... don't ask me why, it'd just be weird. But remember, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ... though Christmas was begun in this way.

Yep, knew that too, but we always have trees, same reason.

No... Mom and Dad always tought it was fake... I think they just didn't want to break our hearts and plus, thought it was stupid.

Nope... just wasn't something we did... but not for those reasons.

The actual Sabbath is saturday... Sunday was the day for the pagan services. We go to church on sunday every week.

Nope. My parents gave me chocolate.

um, sunday morning church? But thats usualy around 10am...

Nope.

I'm throwing out these statements, and yet I do understand my history. It's kind of a hypocritical thing.

When I say the Catholic Church has pagan influence I mean the serpent staffs, the fish-miter, the prayer beads, etc. But my job isn't bashing catholics... thats for The seventh day adventists. This flash has alot of the examples I'm talking about - http://www.remnantofgod.org/flash/whore/whoremenu.html

but anyway, yeah, I know there's alot of things we do for the sake of tradition that have pagan origions... there's no way for me to defend myself there, so I guess you're right.

Every religion grew out of paganism.

Thanks Andy, in my roundabout way I was trying to elude to that ;)

I saw something interesting on Discovery channel one night. They were showing how Jesus could NOT have been born during Christmas but actually in the Summer, but it was easier to incorporate it with the traditional winter solstice celebrations. Made a pretty sincere case for it.

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Women are fisher's of men because we all know.... The small ones you throw back. The medium ones you eat. The large ones you mount.

Santa Claus is the Germanic/Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. The saint of pawn shops oddly enough, but I will get to that in a moment.

Saint Nicholas was a bishop, and had Moorish servant, named Black Peter. St Nicholas believed in helping the poor, and would give gifts to poor children. A legend grew around him, as would in those times or oral tradition, that if you were good, then St Nicholas would give you gifts and if you were bad, then Black Peter, who in those times would have been considered quite frightful, would punish you. There grew the legend of Santa Claus.

To my knowledge, St Nicholas became associated with the three gold balls that are usually hung today on pawn shops. Perhaps he lent money to people for items of value, or perhaps it was just that he gave money to the poor. I don't really know, and I haven't done my homework on this facet of the story.

Oh come on, Nate - at least try. Give me your own arguments. Give me some examples of supposedly Pagan things in the Catholic Church, and explain why you believe they are Pagan. Doing it in your own words would be good. Please don't do the standard fundie thing and just throw other people's quotes at me. Try thinking for yourself for a change and construct your own arguments.

I know you are now pretending that you don't share the belief of most fundies that Catholics are not Christian, but what the hell, I'll argue against it anyway. As I wrote briefly in that comic, a Christian is a person who believes in a specific series of events: God is three beings, which are the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and yet is one God; God caused a virgin, Mary, to become pregnant, and she gave birth to a fully human incarnation of God the Son, an event which a large chunk of Judaic scripture had been leading up to; Jesus, who was 100% God and yet 100% human, was crucified and died; a few days later, Jesus came back to life; Jesus's death and resurrection meant salvation for humanity, since Jesus took on all of our sins and died with them, freeing us from our earned punishment after our own deaths; to achieve salvation, all people have to do is admit to Jesus that they are imperfect sinners and they need His help to get into Heaven.

That's it. Anything more is cosmetic. If you believe all of the above, then you are a Christian. If you don't believe all of the above, you're not Christian. Catholics believe all of the above, so they are Christian. Personally, I don't think you have to actually believe all of that to be saved, but that's just me...

Oh, and as for Saint Nicholas' pawnshop link, I read somewhere that he once gave three purses full of gold to... someone, I can't remember who. I can only assume that pawnshops were originally considered to be good places where people could get a helping hand in times of need, rather than the evil bastards that they are these days. The three purses came to represent charity, and gradually evolved into the three golden balls that represent the pawnbroker.

Oh, Bec is over on the other PC looking at that site you linked to. The guy who writes it is a fucking PSYCHO. Judging from what he has written, he is a certifiable paranoid schizophrenic. I really don't think you want to associate with "Christians" of that type. Bec is collecting examples of his poor logic, dodgy skills of quotation, and outright lunacy, and will post them here soon.

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Thanks Nate for referring me to that site (http://www.remnantofgod.org) which apart from being terribly misquoted and uninformed, is also very funny. Though they probably didn't mean it to be.

I was reading "Vatican Declares Scriptures Dangerous" and came across some of the following gems:

He also takes quotes from the "gloss" which is a word for word translation, quite often in a non-English word order and is quite often easy to misquote.

At the end of the article, he goes off on an off-topic rant, and ends with this:

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Years ago when I first came to Jesus I was used to share to many of my "Rock and Roll" buddies the dangers of the music. Just the other day I was listening to a Preacher by the name of John Osborne on tape and he opened my eyes to something I think you will find just as shocking! We all know that Lucifer (Before he fell and became satan) was the Angel of Music right?

Now check out this song that was written by a man IN TWENTY MINUTES for Barry Manilow. The writer admitted he couldn't get the words to the paper fast enough, it was as if an "outside" influence was at work! Read the words to this song that he wrote for Barry Manilow. But keep in mind that Satan IS STILL the Angel of Music because the gifts and calling of God are WITHOUT repentance...

I Write The Songs

-Artist: Barry Manilow as sung on "Greatest Hits" -Arista A2L 8601
-peak Billboard position # 1 in 1976
-Words and Music by Bruce Johnston
(apparently Barry *doesn't* "write the songs"!) :-)

[words of I Write The Songs]

Now do you understand why the music is as it is today? Keep in mind the "easy listening" stuff is more deadly than the open blasphemous stuff of Marylin Manson simply because you don't expect the attack to be hidden in the songs of "love and special things."

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A word on glosses...

A gloss is a word-for-word translation of a language that has not been fully-translated so that it is grammatically correct. For example, a language which has different word order and grammatical rules from English would gloss as almost total gibberish. This means that a gloss is very easy to misinterpret. The only reliable translation is one done by a person who is fluent in both the original language, and the one being translated to.

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I'm throwing out these statements, and yet I do understand my history. It's kind of a hypocritical thing.

When I say the Catholic Church has pagan influence I mean the serpent staffs, the fish-miter, the prayer beads, etc. ..but anyway, yeah, I know there's alot of things we do for the sake of tradition that have pagan origions... there's no way for me to defend myself there, so I guess you're right.

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I'm not religous in any way. As far as I know all religions are more or less the same, just with different beliefs to what they do about it (sit on a mat facing that building and praying 5 times a day, or just going to church.)

Oh and just for the sake of making an argument I can easily understand, Nate, you suck big floppy donkey dick!

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I am not 16 going on not 17, I know that I'm naive.

hahahaha that is very funny it is making me laugh NOT!!!!!

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we're sending our love down the WE-ELL-ELL-ELL! WELL IT'S THE BIG SHOW!

quote:

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But my job isn't bashing catholics... thats for The seventh day adventists. This flash has alot of the examples I'm talking about - http://www.remnantofgod.org/flash/whore/whoremenu.html

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i would like to mention at this point that i am a christian

my second point i would like to make is that nate, i am ashamed to have to be associated in such a way with you

if i as a christian can see you are talking bollocks about catholicism then there is something hugely wrong

ass

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Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men? MIKE BOBSICO KNOWS! And if you give him a decent tip when he delivers your mail , he might tell you.

Actually, the spectrum of Christianity is much wider than that, even. The United Church of Christ, for example, doesn't even mention the virgin birth in their Statement of Faith. It's about as liberal Christian as you can get without being Unitarian. They would say much of the Bible is allegorical or should be interpreted in the context of the writer's times.

On the other end of the spectrum are biblical literalists who are young-Earth Creationists and who feel that the only path to salvation is to accept Jesus as yout Lord and Savior. (You can be a good and nice person, but if you don't accept Jesus then you are damned to Hell.)

But these two extremes and everything in between are all Christian.

It is interesting that the more conservative (narrow in it's beliefs) a Christian group is, the more likely it is to call other approaches to Christianity "not really Christian."

For example, even Nate's church has had to defend itself against the Baptist-based Zondervan religion guides calling his church a cult.

I'd note that the same guide calls my Unitarian church a cult, as well.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

that could explain my acceptance of other religions

you see, im Church of England (what a farce!)

admittedly the basis of CofE is hating catholocism cuz some fat guy in the 15th or 16th century didnt like how the pope was too strict for him

or at least thats how i remember history, it was a long time ago and i was drunk. would you remember a drunken conversation you had 5 or 6 hundred years ago? i bluddy well think not!

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Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men? MIKE BOBSICO KNOWS! And if you give him a decent tip when he delivers your mail , he might tell you.

Skagg, you are disturbing close to the truth. Henry the Fat Bastard (though I believe some called referred to him as Henry VIII) had a problem with his sperm - they were genetically predisposed to making girls. Since he wanted boys, this was a problem.

As I recall, he demanded that the Church in Rome give him a divorce from his useless first wife and her recalcitrant overies. The Pope said no, and Henry promptly convicted his wife of treason of some sort and had her executed. As I recall, he did this twice. The third time he got sick of the CHurch telling him what he could and couldn't do, so he made his own Church and set himself up as the pontiff. Since he was a genetically-programmed egomaniac, this came fairly naturally to him.

He divorced a succession of wives with equally disobedient uteruses (What the fuck is the plural of "uterus"? "Uteri"?) but since he could divorce them, none of them needed to have their heads removed.

As fuzzy as my knowledge of the topic just was, it gets even fuzzier now... Henry managed a single boy, but he was sickly and died young, and Henry ended up passing on the crown to a woman... Queen Mary? Not sure. Anyway, she was in an even worse state than her dad - she couldn't have any children at all. She had rejected her Dad's new church, and was determinedly Catholic. Unfortunately, she passed on without making any new heirs and a young lady named Elizabeth, a bastard daughter of Henry's, ended up taking the throne. She was a teensy bit psychotic, but those people who didn't get their heads cut off and didn't get burned at the stake seemed to like her...

Of course, feel free to disregard all of this, since I never studied the monarchs of England in school, and my knowledge of the subject is a conglomeration of many movies, TV shows, documentaries, and books.

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You have done three things in one week which have pissed me off, so I currently have no patience for you whatsoever. As for Bec, well, she's my wife, and she doesn't take kindly to people pissing off her darling hubby. :)

Not sure about Kajun... I think he just hates your guts...

We are still waiting for you to tell us in what ways the Catholic Church is Pagan. This thread is here for your benefit, remember. I'll make things nice and easy for you by making a template for you to use...

[begin template]

The Catholic Church makes use of [insert object or ceremony here] which is clearly not Christian because [insert reasoning here] and is Pagan because [insert reasoning here].

[end template]

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I just want to say that the flash animation at that site is really cool, especially the Antichrist Slideshow. It's just too bad that whoever made this web site can't use his/her skills for something sane.

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

Nah, nothing that harsh, I'm just an asshole.

I was thinking of changing my sig to something 'Sixth Sense'-esque

"I flame new people"

But then, 'Nate isn't new, so it wouldn't work.

The thing is Nate, that I come from a very strong Catholic background, both parents attended a Catholic school and both sets of grandparents were dead against my mum and dad sending me to a regular school, thankfully they did anyway.

I mean, it was nothing as weird as whatever your background is, both my parents were hippies and thought it was all a bunch of bullshit, just, it was less hassle for them to take me to church every week than have to put up with agro from their parents.

After my confirmation, I just said to my gran "You know, I just don't believe in it", she was cool about it, since I was the oldest of the grandchildren, everyone else just threw Catholicism out the window and my cousins got away without the pain and boredom.
(and since I came from a true Catholic background, I had a LOT of cousins)

anyway, despite the fact that I enjoy a good laugh at the Catholic church, it's because I enjoy a good laugh at most if not all religions, but I'm not going to start arguing that one group of people are bad, and others are good, it's basically racism.

although, I don't think I've flamed you on this issue, I just called you a moron after your "2001: A Space Odyssey" nonsense.

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Dad was flammable

aw screw it. See the main forum

Huh? What? Where?

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

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Skagg, you are disturbing close to the truth. Henry the Fat Bastard (though I believe some called referred to him as Henry VIII) had a problem with his sperm - they were genetically predisposed to making girls. Since he wanted boys, this was a problem.

As I recall, he demanded that the Church in Rome give him a divorce from his useless first wife and her recalcitrant overies. The Pope said no, and Henry promptly convicted his wife of treason of some sort and had her executed. As I recall, he did this twice. The third time he got sick of the CHurch telling him what he could and couldn't do, so he made his own Church and set himself up as the pontiff. Since he was a genetically-programmed egomaniac, this came fairly naturally to him.

He divorced a succession of wives with equally disobedient uteruses (What the fuck is the plural of "uterus"? "Uteri"?) but since he could divorce them, none of them needed to have their heads removed.

As fuzzy as my knowledge of the topic just was, it gets even fuzzier now... Henry managed a single boy, but he was sickly and died young, and Henry ended up passing on the crown to a woman... Queen Mary? Not sure. Anyway, she was in an even worse state than her dad - she couldn't have any children at all. She had rejected her Dad's new church, and was determinedly Catholic. Unfortunately, she passed on without making any new heirs and a young lady named Elizabeth, a bastard daughter of Henry's, ended up taking the throne. She was a teensy bit psychotic, but those people who didn't get their heads cut off and didn't get burned at the stake seemed to like her...

Of course, feel free to disregard all of this, since I never studied the monarchs of England in school, and my knowledge of the subject is a conglomeration of many movies, TV shows, documentaries, and books.

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Which Edward was the homosexual that they killed by ramming a red hot poker up his arse? Was that Edward II?

edward II was imprisoned in berkeley castle and murdered in his cell, dunno if tobor was a guard tho

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Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men? MIKE BOBSICO KNOWS! And if you give him a decent tip when he delivers your mail , he might tell you.

Edward II was murdered by his wife in the manner described. Probably enjoyed it, too, the dirty great poof.