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Goodbye Jesus

Lack of unity


Wertbag

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One glaring issue that has always stood out to me is the lack of unity in Christianity. If there was a single message and a single understanding, then religion would have a very strong base to build from. 

It is actually hard to think of any subject which all Christians can agree on. Can women be priests? Should gays be allowed in church? What is hell, how do you get there and can you get out? Do we still follow the OT laws? Should we work the sabbath? Are fantasy movies the work of the devil? Which parts of the bible are literal vs moral stories? 

From what we know of the early Christians this problem has existed since day 1. There were sects and splits from the start, each believing in different holy books and following different leadership. Those problems continued with the formation of the bible, where no one could agree on which books to include and which were not inspired by god and today we have dozens of different versions of the bible. 

This then lead to the great schism, where the eastern orthodox church split from the Catholic Church and then to the split and centuries of bloody warfare between protestants and Catholics. 

These churches then further split into hundreds of denominations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members

The conflict peaked in the 1600s with the 30 years war, a conflict estimated to have cost 8 million lives. With the worlds population at the time that made it the worst war in human history, only since surpassed by WW2. 

 

In more modern times we've seen the creation of new factions such as JW (started 1870s,estimated 8.5m members) and Mormons (started 1820s, estimated 16m members), showing you can change the religion however you wish and still convince millions that the new version is correct. 

 

What is the outsider to make of this? As an atheist searching for truth why would I think any of these people have a clue what they are talking about? Christians will say "the false churches were created by Satan to cause confusion" which just leaves me thinking couldn't all-powerful god either stopped him or at least made his wishes clear? 

Sure there are 2 billion Christians in the world but if you can find any two who agree on their faith I'd call it a miracle. 

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On 1/23/2019 at 10:51 AM, Wertbag said:

the false churches were created by Satan to cause confusion"

 

Just to fuck with the fundy wife once I said "You mean Satan created all those OTHER churches to turn people away from Mormonism!"

 

 I seriously hope that caused even a few seconds of ponderment. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, I think this juts brings up the whole problem of evil thing. I mean the existence of Satan and evil. Confusion just being a form of evil. Sometimes, it al looks to me like someone got lost in the concepts. You define realities and you justify them based on your definitions which are images of realities then you justify your definitions, and it never ends.

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