Hello everyone

Yes, it should and in fact it often does, but if there is an unresolvable contradiction you go with what you KNOW is true and for me that IS the Bible. It's proved itself to me over and over again, I know it is God's own word, and archaeology is the work of fallible human minds. The "evidence" for anything in the unwitnessed past is nothing but the guesswork of fallible human minds. There can never be anything hard and fast about knowledge of the past put together only from the standpoint of the present. This is why evolution and other sciences about the past are not really Science the way laboratory sciences are, where theories can be replicated and tested over and over.As for "something" being taken "dogmatically as truth" it depends on what that something is and whether you are able to rightly judge it. The Bible has been recognized as inspired by God by all believers in all generations. When you are born again you are changed, you have a new "faculty" as it were, a new spirit that recognizes the Bible as God's word. A mere intellectual judgment can be lost, a spiritual judgment can never be lost.

We're talking about certain old books aren't we? Who else has read them that you are talking about? How do you know their verification is different from mine? I could certainly find plenty of people who share my verification. Why are you making such a big mystery out of something so ordinary?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry it is not like every other religion in the world, and that would take so much time to discuss it's beyond us here.Yeah if I grew up in India I might have been a Hindu, though if I was blessed I'd have heard the gospel and changed my religion. So what. I'm not a Christian because I grew up in a Christian country by the way. I went to church as a child but I never really understood the gospel at all. I was in my forties when I suddenly believed in God, and I believed because of what some Hindu gurus wrote in some books, speaking of Hinduism, but after reading and reading and reading about lots of religions over the next couple of years I recognized the gospel of Christ as the truth given by God Himself and all the other religions as fallible human searching for God that could never get it right because we're fallen. That's why we need God's revelation and that's why He mercifully gave it.So, sure, you may make a different decision. I'm not going to argue forever with someone who's made up his mind in a different direction.I believe the first FIVE books of the Bible were written under the authority of Moses, and some of it probably by him personally too.

Archaeological evidence is pure speculation without the possibility of independent verification or independent witness. They make guesses about when things happened that can never ever be proved, they make guesses about what particular finds mean, all a matter of interpretation by fallible human minds. I'm as honest as you are, friend.I respect true science, and the sciences about the unverifiable past are NOT science.

Oh an honest reading of the books I'm talking about could only lead one to have a hatred of Catholicism as the lying murderous antichristian religiopolitical system it is. Only through preconceived bias AGAINST what those books say could you come up with some other opinion, but if you read them honestly even you would come to the same conclusion. John Adams wrote a book against the Jesuits. It if exists anywhere it would probably cost a fortune to possess it but he might persuade even you that they are nothing but Murder Incorporated in the service of the political power of the Vatican.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Bible is a collection of books written by independent witnesses.

They are called the books of Moses not only because he wrote them or authorized their writing but because they are about him and his times. The idea that somehow generations of Israelites and Christians managed to overlook the fact that it reports on Moses' death is just weird.If your former faith was genuine and not just an intellectual matter then you will come back to it eventually because God won't let you get away. But to give up on it as totally as you seem to have done suggests it wasn't authentic, that's not just a convenient assessment, it's an honest assessment. God will give you a way back if it was genuine.But you are asking for the wrong kind of evidence. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You hate Nazism don't you? (I hope). Stalinism? Maoism? If you understood it you would also hate Catholicism. And so would honest Catholics hate it. But the knowledge is suppressed and the RCC is good at keeping people in its thrall.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah, this Pope is a masterpiece, I agree, he'll soon have the whole world eating out of his hands. Except Bible believers of course. Maybe a few diehard capitalists as well.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If you want to believe the recent Bible scholars, many of whom were unbelievers, over the 2000 year old understanding of the sources of scripture, you've made your choice. The Bible is to be believed, period.

God can show you, I can't. Ask Him.

Here's a website listing the 95 THESES of Luther (not "treatise") for reference.Luther posted them as a list of errors he found in Catholic doctrine compared with the Bible that he hoped to debate. Instead the Pope called him a heretic and eventually excommunicated him. His theses became important planks of the Protestant Reformation that followed.Here's some of the history from History Dot ComI don't know why you are making an issue of this but there's the basics so maybe SIH will know what you are talking about.By the way, among your multiple misrepresentations of history you said the Waldensians and Huguenots were as violent as the RCC. The Waldensians were a group of dissenters from the RCC that were persecuted and murdered by the RCC. Here's Wikipedia on the Waldensians. I don't vouch for anything Wikipedia says but you won't find any mention of violence on the part of the Waldensians in this report. They committed no violence whatever, but tried to stay as far away from the centers of RCC influence as possible, making their settlements high in the valleys of the Alps. The RCC would periodically pursue and murder them.The Huguenots were a peaceable French Calvinist Protestant people who also did no violence, but they were slaughtered at the order of the King in the famous Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 after some Jesuits had persuaded the King to rescind the Edict of Nantes which had formerly protected them. The king suffered great guilt as a result. Here's Wikipedia on The Bartholomew's Day MassacreEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Council of Trent anathematized, i.e. CURSED, anybody who believed in an incredibly long list of Protestant doctrines. A curse from Rome is really a license to murder those they've cursed. Not that they'd do it except when they had the power. Openly anyway. The idea they adopted anything Luther said after excommunicating him and causing him to be kidnapped to protect his very life, is absurd. And how about some evidence, jar? You love to make scathing pronouncements against Protestantism, all assertion, no evidence. I can go find the anathemas of Trent myself, but you're the one making the ridiculous allegations.You should also produce evidence for what you are saying about the Huguenots being a military power. Perhaps they were but back it up. And if they were so what? This world is unfortunately such that military power is needed for defense. Murder, however, is what the RCC has historically done and will do whenever she has the power to do it, murder innocent unarmed people who merely disagree with their doctrines.The French King was Catholic and the massacre was a Catholic uprising against the "heretic" Protestants made possible by the King's having been talked into rescinding the Edict of Nantes which had granted religious freedom to Protestants. The Pope is given temporal power over kings according to their doctrines.And there is nothing wrong with wealth, power and property as such either. Depends on how you got it and how you use it. Used rightly those things are blessings in a fallen world. Rome, on the other hand, got all three by stealing from their people and they hoard it and use it for murder and power over the rest of humanity.You call Protestants genocidal, intolerant and violent as if anything they ever did even remotely compared to the orchestrated torture and murder of the multiplied millions done by Rome. I remember you making such allegations many times. You call self defense murder, you call a few cases of bad judgment intolerance and genocide, you call people who aren't remotely religious "Protestants" and so on and so forth. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I referred you to two Wikipedia articles that show that the particular Protestant groups you accused of violence were indeed the peaceable victims of the RCC, which you are ignoring for some reason. And here is a Wikipedia article about Coligny since you aren't going to produce any evidence but just keep making your unwarranted accusations and assertions. The Huguenots were sometimes tolerated, sometimes persecuted in majority Catholic France, but the article describes Coligny himself as of noble blood and highly respected in French society. He was murdered at the beginning of the Bartholomew's Day Massacre.What was your point about Coligny? What evil?He was head of the Huguenot army in the religious wars which were always started by Catholics persecuting the Huguenots. You can find this out by reading a number of articles on various people and events in that era.Yes, Protestants down the centuries have in fact overall been the innocent parties, the victims of the RCC for sure. Not perfect of course, but it's absurd to compare them to the RCC at all. Nothing in the story of Coligny or of the Huguenots in general suggests otherwise, and certainly nothing in the story of the Waldensians, who were absolutely innocent of any violence whatever despite your absolutely unwarranted accusation of them. The Huguenots may have had some political clout in France for a while, which as far as I've read they did not abuse in any way, but the Waldensians were a people alone unto themselves apart from the mainstream of European society with no army and innocent of any form of violence against anyone.In fact there is a reason Protestants would be more peaceable than Catholics, jar. It's not because as people Protestants are any better than anybody else, it's because Protestant DOCTRINE is peaceable and Catholic doctrine is not. I'm talking about real Protestants of course, who really believe the Bible. The Bible forbids violence and murder.Catholic doctrine on the other hand, actual written doctrine you understand, prescribes torturing and killing those who dissent from its doctrines. That's what the Inquisition was all about, it's what the pogroms against the Jews were all about, and there's every reason to believe it's what the Nazi holocaust was all about as well as the murder of the Serbs by the Croats.And it can can be seen in the Pope's condemnation of Luther's theses as well as in the Council of Trent which anathematized all the same doctrines that are derived from the Bible. Catholicism does not follow the Bible except wherever they can fit it into their own doctrines, but they even condemn those who follow it, while they follow their own manmade doctrines which often contradict the Bible.There are some astonishing things in their doctrines that few know about. The Pope for instance is given the status of ruler of the entire world to whom absolutely every human being is required to do homage because he's considered to be the representative of God on earth (which, by the way, is practically the definition of "antichrist"). Offenses against the authority of the Pope are often the cause of Jesuit vengeance.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I read it. Apparently you find something else in it. Do tell.