<p>Christianity created all these holidays as their own. Poor Pagans :(</p>
<p>And seriously thrill, stop putting words in my mouth that I never said.</p>
<p>^^^ @hahahah: really? I’m sure there isn’t more than 10. The majority of mainstream muslims (including myself) are Sunni (90%). The others alter some things…but sorta generally follow the teachings… (for example: Shiite’s believe that Prophet Muhammad isn’t the last messenger…they believe his nephew (or cousin? dont remember) Ali is).</p>
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<p>LOL take note that I’ve been quoting word-for-word everything that you said.</p>
<p>Yeah, although there are 5-6 “main” ones that branch off of Sunni and Shiite. </p>
<p>cousin</p>
<p>I think that the term “religion” isn’t really correct… if we are talking about the aspects of god/gods and not the organization, then spiritualism is more correct. </p>
<p>Religion is just a mechanism to keep people under control, instilling fear in them to behave a certain way so they are not punished in the afterlife.</p>
<p>There is definitely a synergy between science and spiritualism. I think science can prove or disprove many things related to the spiritual world. I mean, look at Sir Isaac Newton, he is probably the best known physicist to date and he was an alchemist and a practicing occultist.</p>
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<p>I would argue that religion is an avenue for people to express that spiritualism. Note that not all people need such religion to do so, but yeah.</p>
<p>Religion can only express spiritualism to an extent… For example, Catholicism greatly frowns upon mediums, magick, summoning, and anything that goes against the dogma of the Church. I am not saying those things are real or not, but regardless, wouldn’t that me inhibiting spirituality? I think so.</p>
<p>Then move out from Catholicism or whatever religion if that inhibits you from expressing your spiritualism. That’s how I always thought of it.</p>
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<p>It’s not random… Most of the sects are the result of a tendancy for the dominant sect to begin to add new requirements to the faith, demanding that Christians follow not only the bible but them as well. We call this “becoming Pharisaical”. After a while a group splits off and attempts to return to the original faith, starting the pattern again. then there’s also the regional and political differences, for example Eastern Orthodox (which split when the Roman Empire did) and Southern Baptists (which originally split over the issue of slavery, I believe).</p>
<p>The vast number of sects is part of the problem with debating Christianity, since often people have misconceptions of our views. For example, someone mentioned Christmas. Nobody I know claims that Jesus was actually born on that day (calander changes would have made it irrelevant now anyway). Christmas was a season already significant in pagan religion, so we kept the festivities and decided to celebrate Chirst’s birth on that day. I think the Catholic church “ret-conned” Jesus’s conception to that day, but that kind of thing is one of the main objections the others have against Catholocism.</p>
<p>Wow, after all their best efforts at threadjacking failed, we derailed it ourself :P. I’ll get back to the other debate soon, I hope.</p>
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<p>What a biased statement. The Orthodox and Catholic faiths claim to be original by definition, so splitting off from them would be considered in that framework to be adding requirements.</p>
<p>Perhaps consider a more objective description.</p>
<p>No, I NEVER said everybody. I said that people take the bible literally. I never said everybody takes the bible literally.</p>
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<p>I’m not trying to present an objective description, I’m explaining my religious beliefs. Of course each sect believes itself correct, if they didn’t they’d switch sects!</p>
<p>I think this is probably a bad time to get into a Catholic/Protestant debate though… :P</p>
<p>^^ I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to take the bible “completely literally”. Given the troubles of translation, we don’t even know what the complete literal meaning of everything in it is!</p>
<p>^I was talking about how many people still believe that the world was created in 7 days. I said that with evolution, 7 days can mean a million years because there was no sun. So therefore there was no way to tell the time of how long “7 days was”.</p>
<p>^ No way just from reading the bible, you mean.</p>
<p>Huh 10 char</p>
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<p>Yet you presented it as objective. The correct way to have phrased it would have been, “blahblahblah because they think the Church has deviated blahblahblah and by splitting from it, they believe blahblahblah.” You didn’t present it as your own beliefs, hence the problem.</p>
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<p>It’s always a good time to discuss why people would voluntarily split off from the institution that Christ started as his Bride.</p>
<p>^ I was just trying to explain the proliferation of Christian denominations to eastafro. Sorry if I offended. If you want an objective view: “repeatedly through the history of the church various groups have split off, believing that their parent denomination had drifted from the truth.”</p>
<p>I’m not going to debate this here, because 1) I am not an expert on the subject and 2) inter-denominational squabbles are irrelevant to the main debate here.</p>