Considering Catholic practices only the stupidest adherents would. You betcha they pulled a bitch Roman Catholics hated out of Syria to enshrine in Rome 50 years after the fact; during a civil war.
Chances are, it isn’t. The early Catholic Church did a lot of this kind of thing, where they would claim to have a piece of the cross, or a bone of St Peter in a church. It was just to drive tourism into their churches. If you took all the claimed pieces of the cross and assembled them, it would make far more than one cross.
As someone who grew up in a Muslim country, I have to say, Westerners this is some weird shit man. Like, call the police weird. We are supposed to be the barbarians yet you get to have skull thrones and shit? WTF?
All the Abrahamic religions are death cults. It’s just as morbid as muslim sects that force women to dress head to toe black robes or w/e. The extremism just becomes part of the scenery when you’re around it, but it’s all objectively bizzare.
Like think about it, these religions were literally invented by bronze age goat herds who thought the earth was flat and covered by a dome, and people in the modern day still believe in them. It’s literally group insanity.
It would be like someone who still believes in the greek gods or something.
How to say that you have no idea about Abrahamic religions without saying that you have no idea about Abrahamic religions.
The Bronze Age ended around 1200 BC. 1200 Before Christ. Most of the prophets of the Torah are estimated to have lived around 1000 BC up until Jesus was born. Mohammed s.a.s. lived in the 7th century AD.
Also if your argument is that something originating in the bronze age is bad, i recommend you to stop using metal tools, eat bread and cultivated fruits. Obviously no beer and while you are at it reject math, astronomy and most of architecture. All stuff originating in the Bronze Age.
The Abrahamic religions are based on superstious oral traditions that extend into the bronze age. They are a hodge podge of cults and spiritual traditions that got absorbed as tribes genocided eachother over the millenia. Taking over a conquered group’s pantheon is a regular occurrence throughout history, similar to how the Romans took Christianity and adapted it. There are remnants in the torah/old testament of the stitching together of different polytheistic religious narratives that eventually became the Abrahamic traditions.
I don’t really care about technical specifics of when any given era of the Abrahamic religions began, believing in invisible skymen is not the same as a material tool or a mathematical proof. It’s a bunch of bullshit stories people told eachother for why the rain fell or why lightning happened, it belongs in the past, there’s no excuse to still believe it now.
You shall make no idols to yourselves; and you shall not set up for yourselves graven images, or a memorial pillar. And you shall not set up any image of stone in your land in order to bow down to it. For I am Jehovah your God.
He went pretty ape shit about the golden cow—as believable any part of that story goes. Catholics seem to be all about idoloc knick-knacks and getting all stabby and controlling over them… Like, the opposite of what a Christian is meant to do.
When Luther brought that up it started a global trade/religious war that last over 100 years.
Ideas are a life and death matter since people are willing to kill over them. Never underestimate the religious, they are as dangerous as they are stupid.
I think that’s what a lot of people miss is the trade/political aspect of schism. While I’m sure millions held genuine beliefs, it’s hard to understate the economic reality of the church in those days. Huge land holdings, an ancient web of power and obligations reaching into every life, every transaction, every political appointment. When it became conceivable to break with this system, it was broken. This breaking was Consequential. Hence the centuries of warfare and strife. It’s all about that money honey.
That’s one of the fundamental disagreements between Catholics and Protestants.
A Catholic would argue that veneration of saints isn’t worship, it’s showing respect for someone who exemplified Christian ideals, or died as a martyr. Canonization is basically the religious version of the Medal of Honor.
A Protestant would argue that the distinction between veneration and worship is arbitrary, and veneration of a saint essentially amounts to idolatry anyway.
As an apostate, I don’t really see a difference, but it feels inconsistent to see people praying to a specific Saint all the time. Are they supposed to be the middle man between you and God? Didn’t Jesus die specifically for that?
Are they supposed to be the middle man between you and God?
Yes
Didn’t Jesus die specifically for that?
Uhh, not exactly. I think catholic god sealed heaven off after Adam and eve did the thing. Jesus came down and died to fix everything and open heaven back up. I assume the waiting room was getting full. He also died for all sins ever, but you are still born with original sin and have to go to confession etc.
Asking saints to intercede is just asking for personal bullshit. Different saints were known for different things, so being experts on those things they would be the best to hand your prayer based on that thing to God.
If I die and find out the universe really works this way, I will renounce all of existence and opt out. I rather an eternity not existing over living in a stupid children’s book universe of weird arbitrary rules about who gets to do what and go where through these systems of hierarchy.
The way it was explained to me, praying to a Saint to speak to God on your behalf is like asking a friend to pray for you. You could just pray to God yourself, but for some reason, having more people pray for you is better.
I’m a secular person now but as a formally very religious person I know a bad Bible translation when I see it.
Assuming you a referring to Leviticus 26:1 a better translation from the NIV is:
Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.
Given this I can see how Catholics can justify having statues and art and the like.
In case you don’t like the NIV here is a meta comparison.
Ah, we were taught to avoid the NIV as it was like the Merrium-Webster of translation; a bit more adapted for the modern Pentecost, so obviously it would be lenient compared to traditional translations.
The thing that stands out to me in the translation you have is making idles to yourself. Instead of for yourself. That and using the term Jehovah. Those to me are major pointers to using the NWT, which among the Christian diaspora is seen as less reputable.
But saints are not gods, they are more like emissaries. You pray for them to bring your word to God.
But in the end, religious beliefs don’t make sense anyway, so why bother analyzing contradictions. Faith is based on believing without needing proof, so any logic reasoning against religion fails against that statement.
If memory serves right most of these are basically a method of clearing out old graves for new bodies. Basically dig up someone who was burried a hundred years ago and stick em in the bonewall. So ethically sourced so long as no one fucks up the paperwork.
I’d disagree, unless you want to say pop punk isn’t punk (and if that’s what you’re saying, that’s fair).
Stuff like this springs out of acts of popular piety. When you teach that the relics of people in heaven can work as prayer aides, it’s a foregone conclusion that some may want to decorate (or even wallpaper, like the photos of the skulls) a prayer space with the highest class of relics.
This is how altars came to have a relic in a stone that the priest kisses at the beginning of every Mass.
It’s an unanticipated but popular reaction to authority and came from the bottom up rather than top down, ergo pop punk.
Just because something is old enough to become mainstream doesn’t mean it’s not punk. Green Day. Blink 182, et al. started out being labeled as punk before the term pop punk became widespread.
I get where you are coming from. Skull Aesthetic can be used to represent both authority (Religion/govt) and rebellion (Pirates/Bandits), but Holy Relics only really rep one side of that equation. Your Pop-Punk blow works as a jab/word play. That said your label isn’t actually Punk /s :).
These are pre-Christian Imperial Roman catacombs. The important part is the Imperial. People seem to forget that Rome was Authoritarian, and extremely, homicidaly so. Both pre, post, and during Constintine (hell Constintine was as well).
Yep, Christianity is filled with stuff like this and art. Most churches contain a decent amount of art. Most famous of all being the Sistine chapel, ofc. Found out this year about The Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran. Which is basically the Pope’s main church. Always assumed it would be the one in Vatican, but no, it’s a different one, in Rome. It’s a very impressive place. Huge statues. This being the best. St Bart is said to have been skinned alive, hence the knife and his face.
I went to a crypt in Britain as a kid, can’t remember where tf it was, but I still remember it because it was super interesting.
It’s where I learned about Trepanning and how they did it back in olden times to “let the bad spirits out” and it actually worked because it reduced swelling around the brain by giving the blood a way out.
Yeah that’s what the dude said when he was showing us around, blew my preteen brain.
I recently watched an episode of Hamiltons Pharmacopoeia where this lady was talking about her experience living with the guy that made all the LSD for the south of Britain back in the day. She fell in love with a pigeon.
Anyway this dude was well into trepanning, thought it was a way to increase the brain capacity and expand the mind.
She ended up trepanning herself on film and releasing the footage, yeah they watched it on the episode.
This is correct. There’s actually a little plaque that has this explanation on it before you go into the crypt.
It’s this funny little Latin lesson before you descend into a skeleton catacomb and are confronted with the living memory that you, too, are temporary.
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