yes but you atribute its spread a profound message and it may be but I don't think one can discount the spread of conquest the victors write the history and pick the church

Soonk, I don't think you're trying to bring down Christianity, not in a large sense, but in your own sense, pointing out that it's flawed, that it is wrong, for you, because you have a superior knowledge and understanding than those who do believe. Not a problem at all, I've done it myself, sometimes, I still do, so I don't begrudge you the right to do that.

What I'm pointing out is the very unlikeliness of the thing having happened at all. Does that unlikeliness make it true, by virtue of the fact that it has survived and continues? No. It does make ME think about what the heck actually happened back there near the Sea of Galilee, with that bunch smitten and bedraggled Jews though. What did they see? What did they hear that made them do what they did? OT or NT, mostly NT, that so many people took it on as the central focus of their lives, made it their mission to go and tell others, made it the foundation of the societies they built afterward, even through all its abuses, failures, discrediting misuse, errors, and now, to my mind, so much pure silliness....and yet, remains powerful for so many people, and most, even the most critical, recognize that there is little likelihood that we will EVER get rid of it.

THAT my friend is one powerful conversation, and you know what? However much it's been bastardized, bent, misused, the basis, the deepest foundation of that conversation hasn't changed ONE IOTA in all that time, and it never really will.

It IS a profound message, 2fuzy, the very idea is beyond rational comprehension. as a quick response to the major criticism, though, it's not the result of the spread of the Roman Empire, it grew up within, and from the Roman perspective, in opposition to the Roman Empire, and they did all they could to stop it, but couldn't. Once it got huge, yes, it took over, and even took over the government of most of the world, but the inside game, not the popes, the hierarchy, or the pastors, the inside game, never cared one whit for power... all that stuff was nothing more than human failures to live up to the central idea. That inside game, the basic conversation, communion, if you will, is what kept it alive through all those abuses and errors.

See, it's not a rational, mental thing. It's the fulfillment of a plan, but it isn't OUR plan, and even though it doesn't seem to us, sometimes, as a good plan, we're thinking of it with limited human minds, and that's the whole reason we can so easily take it apart, examine, and criticize it. No problem. It makes almost no sense at all to people. It takes something more than our brains. Even when we profess ourselves to be believers, most of us are locked in a battle with it. Even the most pious and self righteous believer-bot is left with the realization that he/she is imperfect, less than what we could be, less than we have been shown we can be, less than we are called to be. It's NOT an easy cross to bear, knowing one's self as imperfect, but no one, NO ONE can ever walk all the way away from it, who has ever known in their heart of hearts what it really is.

Does that mean believers are saddled with guilt? Driven by rules and norms? Torn down by the constant beating into our heads that "WE ARE SINNERS AND WE MUST BE SAVED"? That we have to get that forgiveness to go on, can't deal with life without getting the feeling everything is OK again because God has told us we're OK again?

I doubt that most of us even feel anything like that kind of guilt. Being human is a state of NOT being what we could be, what we should be, we LIKE being that way, it's our nature to satisfy our wants and what we see as needs. That's what's funny about all this....Nope. We're not walking around feeling guilt and feeling like OMG I gotta do something before I burn in Hell. We don't even need to be fixed! WE don't NEED any of it. We're just all too simply invited into something greater than being merely a creature, a human, something not beyond being human, but what it is at the core to BE a particular expression of being human.....it's a bigger, larger conversation, and at the same time, a more profound private and internal conversation, than all the arguments in the world, all the best proof of non-existence, and best criticisms.

It's what makes Christians so able to be so STUBBORN, so self righteous, so infuriatingly sure of their beliefs, and so in need of remembering what Jesus showed us about how a person must live, and speak, and behave as who and what we are, really, and how to BE what it is we really are. The fact that we can think and experience the world is NOT an accident, it's the logical and likely outcome of the way in which we came into being, developed into what we are. We're supposed to be here, even if the only way we can get it into our heads is that it's an accident, the fact that we exist at all is miraculous.

Sorry about the sermon. Hope it sheds some light on it for you.

Then again, I'm just a pile of rubble that wants to be Solomon's Temple.

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“It is easy to find truth; it is hard to face it, and harder still to follow it.”

Bump...pastor

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No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775

I was think more along the lines of latter Europeans and there empire building but your point about the Romans is well stated as how it gained its initial foothold but later however Christians in Africa is probably more do to the Brits and the Dutch subsequent conquest and settlements as well as many other places

It's true that the message was brought into the rest of the "aboriginal" world in service to Imperial Europe, for that matter to America's aboriginal peoples. The churches thought they were doing right, sort of, but they were more accurately making a devil's bargain in trying to use the government to further their "cause". Nothing has really changed about that part of it, except they mostly ran out of aboriginals.....so where is all that energy going now? Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's is one of those parts that gets oh so conveniently ignored when it comes to the advantages of using temporal power to further the more political aims of SOME in the church. Same old devil's bargain. Try to see through it.

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“It is easy to find truth; it is hard to face it, and harder still to follow it.”

That is true and i don't think you would get an argument on this from most non believers, there is no way to disprove the existence of God.

Looking at the world from my stand point i can see no evidence for the existence of God, it does not fit in with my reality. I can however see a lot of evidence for the non existence of any Abrahamic God as perceived by most christians, a lot of those proofs have been mentioned here already.

I would recommend Victor Stenger "God the failed hypothesis" and Daniel Dennett "Breaking the spell" to anyone who thinks that religion should be empirically proven to make the claims it does.

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A man may fight for many things. His country, his friends, his principles, the glistening ear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn.

Edmund Blackadder 1485-1917

Just because you don't think my Invisible Pink Unicorn and my Flying Spaghetti Monster exist doesn't mean they don't exist.

Just because you don't believe in. . .
Zeus
Apollo
Hades
Poseidon
Helios
Chronos
Gaia
Vishnu
Ares
Thor
Loki
Odin
Freya
Bhagavan
Buddha

Yadda yadda yadda

doesn't mean they don't exist.