Christmas being about the birth of a child does rather make it the single date in the Christian calendar at which abortion would be most relevant, I'd have thought, though perhaps raising the topic nine months earlier would be a good idea? ;)
You say a lot of things here which if sorted into order are very penetrating.
Are there any religions that don't require literal belief? Like, an acknowledgment of narrative and symbol and ritual for its own sake without having to believe literally in what they stand for?
Think about this --- suppose there is a real religion. By adding to that real religion, whatever it is, narrative symbol and ritual for their own sake, the original religion can come to be obliterated from the minds of those present, whilst they worship (attend to devotedly) the things they can touch, feel and see. In my view that is exactly what happens in much of the RC, and many other churches that act the same way but have other names. It may also be the case with other religions, but I am not qualified to say.
The result is that wherever those forms are present, basic Christianity is obliterated.
That is why the bible says such physical representations should not be made - because as soon as you put them into a place of religion and let them get into people's heads, they stop thinking about the basics of their religion, and transfer their attention to the forms. Now if a religion STATES that the forms ARE the religion, that is good, but if it says they are PRECLUDED, then having them there actually creates a false version of the original religion, and acts to prevent the real one, whether true or not, having any effect on the minds of those present.
In fact there is a trail of historical development that shows how this first came about, and remains to this day.
In about the 5th century there was a church council at Laodicea that decided on some very far reaching decisions that have affected most of what has been called Christianity ever since. Now up to that time the faith had been spreading rapidly, and did not previously incorporate those changes; afterwards it ceased spreading in anything like the same way, spreading only by power and compulsion, and the changes are why.
The New Testament does not, to my knowledge, ever refer to any Christian as a priest in a way that makes them different from the rest of their brothers and sisters; what it does talk about is the priesthood of all believers, and in Corinthians we see that worship in the church was originally based on the spiritual gifts and spontaneous worship arising from the body of the church as the Holy Spirit guided each one. This was a process which could be abused, and thus at times it was necessary for someone to make sure that it was not abused (as Paul does at Corinth), but nowhere in the New Testament is anything that we see in mainstream churches today approved of, or called Christian in nature.
That council, at Laodicea, decided that in future the giving of communion would be restricted to priests, and that some would be priests and others not, and a church hierarchy would appoint priests. All that that did was to go away from the bible and the ways of the church of Acts, and to reintroduce a pagan form of priesthood into the church.
Together with the false doctrine that salvation was lost if one did not regularly take communion, this turned the priesthood into a self-selecting tyranny with the power to not only kill the body but curse the soul to hell - or so they taught.
no subject
You say a lot of things here which if sorted into order are very penetrating.
Are there any religions that don't require literal belief? Like, an acknowledgment of narrative and symbol and ritual for its own sake without having to believe literally in what they stand for?
Think about this --- suppose there is a real religion. By adding to that real religion, whatever it is, narrative symbol and ritual for their own sake, the original religion can come to be obliterated from the minds of those present, whilst they worship (attend to devotedly) the things they can touch, feel and see. In my view that is exactly what happens in much of the RC, and many other churches that act the same way but have other names. It may also be the case with other religions, but I am not qualified to say.
The result is that wherever those forms are present, basic Christianity is obliterated.
That is why the bible says such physical representations should not be made - because as soon as you put them into a place of religion and let them get into people's heads, they stop thinking about the basics of their religion, and transfer their attention to the forms. Now if a religion STATES that the forms ARE the religion, that is good, but if it says they are PRECLUDED, then having them there actually creates a false version of the original religion, and acts to prevent the real one, whether true or not, having any effect on the minds of those present.
In fact there is a trail of historical development that shows how this first came about, and remains to this day.
In about the 5th century there was a church council at Laodicea that decided on some very far reaching decisions that have affected most of what has been called Christianity ever since. Now up to that time the faith had been spreading rapidly, and did not previously incorporate those changes; afterwards it ceased spreading in anything like the same way, spreading only by power and compulsion, and the changes are why.
The New Testament does not, to my knowledge, ever refer to any Christian as a priest in a way that makes them different from the rest of their brothers and sisters; what it does talk about is the priesthood of all believers, and in Corinthians we see that worship in the church was originally based on the spiritual gifts and spontaneous worship arising from the body of the church as the Holy Spirit guided each one. This was a process which could be abused, and thus at times it was necessary for someone to make sure that it was not abused (as Paul does at Corinth), but nowhere in the New Testament is anything that we see in mainstream churches today approved of, or called Christian in nature.
That council, at Laodicea, decided that in future the giving of communion would be restricted to priests, and that some would be priests and others not, and a church hierarchy would appoint priests. All that that did was to go away from the bible and the ways of the church of Acts, and to reintroduce a pagan form of priesthood into the church.
Together with the false doctrine that salvation was lost if one did not regularly take communion, this turned the priesthood into a self-selecting tyranny with the power to not only kill the body but curse the soul to hell - or so they taught.