Did the Pagans Fight like the Christians?

[Callisto]

Even worse, Scientology often gives away free introductory sessions of auditing, while whittling down one's psyche, establishing an emotional need to pay for additional / lifetime sessions. Drug dealer's tactic.

Back in college, a friend and I got dragged into one of those. They approached us on the street, "Excuse me, would you ladies like to take a free personality test?"

"No, thanks - we don't have any," my friend said and we kept walking. They kept walking with us blathering about how insightful it would be. She and I looked at each other. "Yeah, ok."

Worse mistake those Scientologists ever made. They separated us, not that it matter because we both challenged everything they said. I made the guy interviewing me so mad, he told me I had "hostile tendencies" (yet he was the one grinding his teeth). I made him give me back the questionnaire he'd had me fill out. I come out of the room the same time my friend came out the other.

"Guess what, they don't want me," she said. "Me neither. Imagine that." *evil chuckles*

 

[shawn001]

My main criticism is that is violates the norms even for religion. Without even trying to debate the bizarre, apparently made-up nature of the religion or how it has aggressively reacted to criticism, it stands alone as a "mainstream cult" that is allowed to fleece its congregation for mandatory fees.

Just imagine if the Catholic Church impressed upon its adherents that confession was necessary to save their immortal souls. But then it charged a flat $160 fee for doing so.

Buy your way to Heaven! The Catholic Church brings back indulgences

Buy your way to Heaven! The Catholic Church brings back indulgences

Although not sold outright, "charitable giving"?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I found a claim that Alexander the Great fought the Persians because they destroyed Hellenic temples, but I don't know if any Persians were Pagan or polytheistic at the time. The same source has information about an inter-city war in Greece over the sacred grounds of Apollo. Were there any wars in ancient Greece where religion played a major part?

The Persians themselves were largely Zoroastrians if my memory serve. The Empire in a larger sense was as far from homogenous as you could imagine, so there would certainly have been pagan elements (Babylonian?). Let's be honest, though...Alexander was a warmonger. He might have needed a casus belli, but he was always going to take on the Achaemenid Empire.

It's hard to be definitive, but for the most part religion (in terms of war) was more simply a cultural marker. Tearing down a temple was less likely establishment of a God's dominance as marking one culture's victory over another. Like raising a flag over Berlin.
There was a great deal of blending of pagan deities over time in any case, which would further reinforce this. Pagan pantheons are interesting to track in terms of cultural influence, if confusing as hell.

I can't remember the book, but I have a text at home I haven't read for a few years focusing on the identification of Hercules/Heracles in different regions around the Mediterranean, and what this suggested about trading and settling of the time. It led particularly to support some theories about Phoenician merchant routes, supported by the pottery and other materials uncovered.

Near as I can tell, though, there isn't a huge amount that is 'known'. More like 'best guess'.

 

[Glaurung]

Buy your way to Heaven! The Catholic Church brings back indulgences

Indulgences don't forgive sins, they remit a person from the temporal punishments of an already forgiven sin.

In Catholicism, it's not enough to simply repent, you also have to take action to make right whatever you've done wrong; a penance. An indulgence earned under certain conditions is the satisfaction of a penance. So no, you cannot buy your way into Heaven, that's a gross misrepresentation. Yes, there were historical abuses which the Church recognised and clamped down on, but the idea that they were tickets to Heaven (or ever presented as such) is a smear.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

No, the church did literally sell "tickets to heaven" by way of plenary indulgences. Whoever's telling you that it was a smear campaign is a massive apologist blowing rose smoke. (source: 4 years of Catechism and Church History classes)

 

[Glaurung]

No, the church did literally sell "tickets to heaven" by way of plenary indulgences. Whoever's telling you that it was a smear campaign is a massive apologist blowing rose smoke. (source: 4 years of Catechism and Church History classes)

It is a smear campaign. For one, you cannot obtain an indulgence for a sin which hasn't already been sacramentally absolved.

You don't think it's possible that the early Protestant rhetoric didn't exaggerate Catholic abuses to help justify their movement?

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Bassist, why would the Catholic Church teach a "smear campaign" designed to smear it? That makes no sense.

 

[shawn001]

My family took Martin Luther into their house for a year in Germany right before the reformation. They ran one of Germany's earliest publishing houses and published for Schiller and Goethe.

 

[Glaurung]

Bassist, why would the Catholic Church teach a "smear campaign" designed to smear it? That makes no sense.

Because many in the Church have also been taken in by a history written by Protestants, especially in the English speaking world. (I grew up with those same assumptions). It's one thing to recognise that abuses took place, no one denies that, it's another to blindly accept anti-Catholic accusations because they serve a particular historical narrative. (Look at the link provided, it's clearly not impartial). For one, an indulgence simply doesn't do what is being claimed here.

We know that Luther and others peddled increasingly unhinged rhetoric as his movement took steam. A man not only responsible for a schism but also ranted on about the anti-Christ pope is someone you should take with a lot of salt. Consequentially, Protestants (and anti-religious atheists) have a vested ideological interest in pushing this kind of historical narrative, which certainly has a grain of truth but also many gross distortions.

In short, the Church does not and never has taught that you can buy forgiveness. That there may have been instances of opportunistic clerics peddling such things doesn't justify the misrepresentation of the actual practice as approved by the Church.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Sure thing. Every scandal ever was just Protestant propaganda so heinous that even the Catholic church itself fell for it. And in a few years, who knows? That'll be scandal too.

 

[Glaurung]

Sure thing. Every scandal ever was just Protestant propaganda so heinous that even the Catholic church itself fell for it. And in a few years, who knows? That'll be scandal too.

Okay, it's clear to me that you're not interested in fairly addressing what I'm actually saying, so I won't bother anymore.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Taking historically recorded instances of heaven and salvation being used as motivation to war and tossing it out as "Protestant smear-campaigns" is unfairly addressing the topic right from the get go. Claiming that the conspiracy goes so deep that Catholics themselves believe it compounds any and all attempts to discuss it with any level of fairness. So I'm not sure exactly what you're expecting me to do or say, when it's just going to be met with conspiracy.