Aerobic respiration - the evolutionary moment where our ancestors traded immortality for complexity
That was the phrasing used in a biology of death class I took many years ago. It lives rent free in my mind because ruminating on it so perfectly summarizes the “choices” made by natural selection and the way they echo throughout the history of life on Earth.
I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.
And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.
Catholics do not worship the saints. The dogma is that one may ask a saint to pray on their behalf. Do some Catholics not follow this format to the letter? Nope, some do not. Some/many will follow dogma mentally but use a short hand phrase like, “pray to X,” to mean requesting intercession.
The statues, pendants, and other ornaments are not idols but just works of art or symbols of allegiance to a specific order. They hold extra significance for some, but that is effectively as far as they go.
Offerings are to the church. Leaving an offering at the shrine of a saint is not an offering to that saint. It is an offering to the church, possibly to the portion of the church maintaining that specific shrine.
I know this can feel nit-picky, but it is what happens when teachings build upon teachings for thousands of years. One can certainly argue that Catholics are wrong about any number of things in this world, but the notion that Catholicism runs on idolatry is at best an accidental misinterpretation and unfortunately is often an intentional misrepresentation by the leaders of fellow Christians.
The concept of changing the Bible gets a little weird because we are almost universally discussing a translation of the “original” text, with the original as we commonly think of it being a Greek translation that was commonly in use in the years preceding and including the life of the historical Jesus. It gets more complex than that, but it’s a good start.
I am using the historical Jesus as a reference point because there are things that scholars, theistic and non-theistic alike, almost universally agree to as being historical as opposed to matters of faith.
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants number the commandments differently though all contain effectively the same content and total up to 10. The Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering by centuries. I do not know the timeline of the Jewish numbering. One could easily assume it predates the Catholic numbering, but many Jewish customs date to later eras (often medieval Rabbinical Judaism). I have not looked up the Jewish tradition recently. Regardless, the Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering.
Idols are an interesting thing, especially taken in the context of the belief of ancient Semitic peoples. The short version being that it takes much more than just the existence of a statue or an image to be an idol. There are cultural nuances from the time, but at the very least it requires worship of the image as on par with God. The comment you cite even includes the concept that worshipping these images is what makes them bad. The images in Catholic churches are not treated that way.
Would you care to explain that thought process? I mean the idolatry part. Inconsistency is pretty common along religions and nearly universal among Cousins Christian ones. I say that as a Christian, so I’m not even putting them down about it in particular.
But idolatry in particular from Catholics? That accusation is usually not based in the actual faith but I’m in outside interpretations. Still, I’m open to being incorrect.
Edited because I am the worst phone typist ever.
Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea
It is a French cartoon whose English dub aired on a Nickelodeon in the early '80s. It had everything my young imagination could want in a story - an alien world within our own, strange people and cultures, a mysterious guide, a man overcoming a difficult past, and an ancient cataclysm whose threats echo into the world today.
It also had the most slapping opening theme I may have ever heard.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/CG6aGpnP6kSuiXbY/?mibextid=jmPrMh
Sorry for the Facebook link, but this is the only active copy of the opening I can find because the corporate takedown game is strong for a 40-year-old cartoon that can only be watched in Australia.
Yeah, this is wildly inappropriate. When I play board games with my kids, I find Old Fashioneds are the ideal way to deliver that numbing hit of booze. Wine requires too much fluid volume per unit alcohol, and the red varietals can stain your games.