Reply #1: That bit about God divinely inspires the books of the bible [View All]

[lapfog_1]

has always been funny to me. After all, it was a Pope in 382 (Pope Damasus) and the Council of Rome that decided what books would form the New Testament. So the logic goes something like this: A Catholic Pope 400 years after the time of Christ comes up with the inerrant word of God... but now (for most evangelicals) the current Popes are wrong and have been since the Protestant Reformation... not to mention many Popes before then. So... some Popes are divinely inspired... but others, not so much.

Great logic there.

And another thing. John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelation (something the fundies dearly love)... but he was not an associate of Jesus, and possibly lived some 150 years after Jesus was crucified. Most early Christians of the same era dismissed his writings as the ranting of a sick person (he lived as a hermit in a cave), but Pope Damasus loved the Book of Revelation because it had "scary stories" of eternal hell and damnation that, according to historians, he thought he could use to keep Christians in line and fearful of a vengeful God should they stray from Catholic teachings. Doesn't sound like the inerrant word of God to me.

Fundies scare me.