Products of Creation Science

You're trying to draw parallels between now and thousands of years ago. It don't work quite like that. Nowadays, we've got tons of choices. We're inundated with different sets of religious beliefs.

Back then, I do not believe that was the case. Your choices tended to be more along the lines of conformity or death. Also, christianity was only confined for a year, before dwhat, it suddenly encompassed the world? Pretty sure Christianity didn't take off until Constantine converted back when. Would have been a few hundred years after inception.

Also, I think historically, the religion did spread through conquest. 100 years' war as a relatively recent example, every time some poor german province got seized by another prince, the official religion of the province changed. You had Catholic mothers with a son raised protestant, who may have then had a catholic daughter. It's not like people had a choice to opt out back then.

One could argue that the prevalence of Christianity today is a result of it being the religion of a bunch of empires, in which case Grail's got a point that if the Hope's had spread out from Arizona to conquer all of North America, and then discovered the new world of Spain, we might think naughty women were impregnated by coyotes or something.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Possibly nitpicky, but for further edification etc, R'yleh at least is part of an artificial mythos created by Lovecraft and then reinforced by other authors of the time. I don't know that it has the same significance as other mythologies with similar references. Basically an oshit you lost a data point.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't think that was unique to greek or roman myth. In fact I think it was characteristic of the time that the gods were part of a fickle and uncaring nature. You did what you could to appease them, and otherwise went on with your life and hoped you didn't catch their attention.

In God's defense though, there is some difficulty reconciling free will with bliss for everyone. If you define infinite love as bliss for everyone, things get sticky. I think all that implies is that bliss for everyone and infinite love are not necessarily identical. Assume that heaven and hell are natural consequences, rather than assignations and you see where I'm going.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church already tried that one a few decades ago. At least you know it could work! =D

If by decades you mean centuries? I thought indulgences was around Chaucer's time.

Gumby, I was thinking more along the lines of natural consequence of not being God's pet is not chilling with God after death. Might get kind of twisted into eternal suffering in comparison maybe. Thing that's fucked up with religion is there's a lot of people who can't do logic mucking around with it. Makes it difficult to discuss internally consistent ideas of God. Kind of like a Where's Waldo book, except with ideas. =(

Most amazing jew boots