Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

Martin Luther was a rabid anti-semite - other than his Theses nailed to the cathedral, his most (in)famous literary work is "On the Jews and Their Lies."He was the prime inspiration for Hitler's "Mein Kampf."Yup. Divinely inspired.

I think "On the Jews and Their Lies" was a bit more than an "overreaction." Whatever he may or may not have been at one point in his life, he was definitely anti-semitic when he wrote that. Sufficiently anti-semitic to be used as an easy inspiration for Hitler. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more anti-semitic. Your minimization of his racism isn't particularly persuasive. When I get home (I don't like accessing hate speech at work) I can dig up some quotes for everyone to judge for themselves. Of course, this is an inaccurate portrayal of evolution. Woefully inaccurate. Evolution is not about "survival of the fittest;" it's about "survival of the fit enough, with increased propagation of heritable traits carried by those individuals that survive to reproduce and decreased frequency among traits carried by those who do not."It's not a ladder, like "supremacists" would like to portray. It's a giant, branching tree of variety that constantly changes as environments change. On these points you'll find no argument from me, though I'm somewhat surprised - most Creationists try to pass Hitler off as an Atheist and deny his Catholic roots.I'm

And that's exactly how Protestants tend to portray Catholics: they liken the performance of good deeds with the indulgences of the church's history, whereby money bought salvation.

Faith believes she is saved.Faith believes that her belief in her salvation is what saves her.That is, essentially, the doctrine of salvation by faith: if you believe you are saved, you are saved because you believe you are saved. She doesn't know, she has faith that it is so.She has answered the question, accurately even. It's just that faith alone is not particularly good at convincing others that the belief is justified or should be adopted....talking about "faith" is a bit more awkward when one of the participants is named "Faith."

I'm aware of that.At issue is that people are asking you "how you know" that what you believe is accurate. In other circumstances (say, if asked how you know there's a pen on your desk), you would present evidence and argument establishing that your belief is more likely than competing hypotheses (for example, you might provide a picture of a pen sitting on your desk). We could then determine what evidence you're using to tell that your belief is worth holding instead of other mutually exclusive ones, or even simply the null hypothesis.In this case, you feel no obligation to "convince" anyone that your faith is justified. You have faith; that's it, that's all, that's how you know, and it doesn't particularly matter what anyone else thinks. You aren't playing missionary.This confuses participants who expect a different sort of response to the question "how do you know?"You believe in your salvation; therefore you believe you are saved. It appears rather circular to the outside observer, but that doesn't matter to you - the Biblical support for salvation by faith (I'm not distinguishing here between works+faith and just faith) is pretty clear, at least to me (as a former Christian I was pretty well exposed to those lines of faith; others may not be so familiar, I don't know). No, I don't. I don't follow the extension of the "scapegoat" theology to human sacrifice, I think it's rather silly (for clarity - it's silly whether applied to the traditional goat or when a man-god is sacrificed, it's all the same). No ethical dilemma is solved by casting responsibility onto a third party and killing it; all you've done is needlessly killed something/someone. A murderer still committed murder after the goat is slain; his victim is still dead and the blood remains on his hands, for instance.And I don't actually believe that anything like a god exists, so the theological point is rather moot.I'd just like people in general to stop being so scared and shitty to each other and be willing to help. I don't much care if there is an afterlife involved, I think it's pretty clear that if we were a little less fearful and a little more compassionate we could make this life an awful lot better. Theological doctrine aside, the whole "love thy neighbor as you love thyself," "what you do to the least of these you do to me," and "turn the other cheek" set of ethical guidelines resound pretty strongly with me.Instead of believing that all people are reprehensibly evil monsters who need saving from the eternal torture we all deserve, I rather think that nobody deserves torture or even death, that there's nothing anyone can do to deserve those things, that nature is unfortunately amoral and so death and suffering are frequently unavoidable, but that we can and frequently do make the world a better place. I don't think I or you need "saving," I just think we could (and should) be a little less shitty to each other and more willing to help out when help is needed because we'll all be happier in the end. That makes me more inclined to get along well with Christians of any flavor who think "works" are "good to do," regardless of whether they think works are necessary for any sort of salvation.

It's interesting that you continue to portray a defensive/combative stance toward me. My reply was intended more for other participants than for you - I was trying to help clear up the confusion caused by the difference between your actual answer and the form they expected your answer to take, and why you had actually answered the question as asked. I'm not debating against you at all, really - we have different beliefs and I soapboxed a bit to point them out, but I understand your position and the difference between us is a set of polar opposite beliefs on how to determine which beliefs are actually accurate in reality. It's a fundamental difference in basic reasoning and so you and I would never get anywhere on a theological debate - instead I was just trying to help you explain, because your brief answers (while perfectly sufficient for someone familiar with your beliefs) were just not doing it here.

That is the way it's portrayed in many Protestant traditions...and in fact this doctrine consistent with its ancestor, the "scapegoat" tradition.A village gathers with a domesticated animal, perhaps a goat. The village ceremonially casts all of their moral culpability for the past year/season/time cycle onto the goat. The thief no longer bears responsibility for having stolen - the goat now bears that responsibility. The goat is then "punished" instead of the villagers themselves, by sacrificing it or simply driving it into the wilderness.It's a very old tradition, and it's quite clearly the root of the Crucifixion myth; Christians simply use a human (or divine) sacrifice instead of the goat. The principle is identical. Instead of all individuals being punished according to their crimes, an uninvolved third party is punished instead.The whole point of the exercise is a "cheap get outta hell card."