One of the miracles of faith that bedevils nonbelievers about "the faithful," is the latter's unremitting ability to deny the overwhelming amount of horrible "fruit," as their own Bible puts it, of the "tree" they worship. That tree, like the one in the garden of Eden, is the cross, of course.
Christians claim that God is steering his "Church" to right action, and everywhere in defense of His moral laws. That all of those laws have been repeatedly broken by His holy "Church" in order to ensure that "the gates of hell shall no prevail," is not only ignored by the faithful, but is always rationalized, not as any kind of evidence for the very nature of the "tree" Christians worship, but only ever as evidence of just how right Christians are to worship such a tree.
Consider the example of the Inquisitions.
After centuries of ever increasing laws, of every kind imaginable, laid upon the backs of Europeans like a cross by the Catholic Church, and then the Protestant churches right after (like father, like sons), the Church felt the need to ensure that all those it had tried, in every way it could, to coerce into accepting the faith (Catholics always claim the Church was simply defending itself from error - as if God couldn't be trusted to do it Himself on their behalf) were being honest in proclaiming they had "converted."
Since loss of property, imprisonment, torture, and even death, all waited for those who had failed to convert to either Catholicism or Christianity in its protestant variations, in different countries at different times,those who today are all seen as "converting to the one true faith" from as much enlightenment as Paul on the road to Damascus, were actually forced to pretend (i.e. lie) that they had accepted a faith that was incapable of persuading them through reason.
As such, after the Church had used every horror at its legal disposal to save people's miserable souls, it then had to police all those it had forced to lie in the first place.
That God never once thought it necessary to intervene on the behalf of all those who were tortured and murdered by the "one true faith," much as God decided to do the same thing with his own son at Calvary, was never once seen as evidence that maybe Christianity had simply become a greater form of power and evil than the Sanhedrin. Of course not.
The Catholic church, in particular, was too 'infallible" for any of that.
Obviously.
Christians claim that God is steering his "Church" to right action, and everywhere in defense of His moral laws. That all of those laws have been repeatedly broken by His holy "Church" in order to ensure that "the gates of hell shall no prevail," is not only ignored by the faithful, but is always rationalized, not as any kind of evidence for the very nature of the "tree" Christians worship, but only ever as evidence of just how right Christians are to worship such a tree.
Consider the example of the Inquisitions.
After centuries of ever increasing laws, of every kind imaginable, laid upon the backs of Europeans like a cross by the Catholic Church, and then the Protestant churches right after (like father, like sons), the Church felt the need to ensure that all those it had tried, in every way it could, to coerce into accepting the faith (Catholics always claim the Church was simply defending itself from error - as if God couldn't be trusted to do it Himself on their behalf) were being honest in proclaiming they had "converted."
Since loss of property, imprisonment, torture, and even death, all waited for those who had failed to convert to either Catholicism or Christianity in its protestant variations, in different countries at different times,those who today are all seen as "converting to the one true faith" from as much enlightenment as Paul on the road to Damascus, were actually forced to pretend (i.e. lie) that they had accepted a faith that was incapable of persuading them through reason.
As such, after the Church had used every horror at its legal disposal to save people's miserable souls, it then had to police all those it had forced to lie in the first place.
That God never once thought it necessary to intervene on the behalf of all those who were tortured and murdered by the "one true faith," much as God decided to do the same thing with his own son at Calvary, was never once seen as evidence that maybe Christianity had simply become a greater form of power and evil than the Sanhedrin. Of course not.
The Catholic church, in particular, was too 'infallible" for any of that.
Obviously.
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