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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: The roots of religion
Message-ID: <617@pucc-h>
Date: Tue, 27-Mar-84 03:44:56 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.617
Posted: Tue Mar 27 03:44:56 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Mar-84 01:33:40 EST
References: <144@morse.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 42

Just a few comments on morse!klootz's theory that "religion" results from the
intervention of aliens:

That's half true!  Of course, the aliens who seek to impede the progress of
the race are Satan and his followers; not "aliens" in the traditional sense,
but alien to us.

>         About 2000 years ago, they again decided to come
> forth as a deity, and have an offspring that would teach
> a humanistic, but extremely reactionary religion, one that
> would precipitate the downfall of the current civilization and
> ensure limited growth for a time after that.  The new religion
> was constructed so that everything one needed to know was
> written in a book.  The organization was made to feel that
> it would be threatened by any ideas that disagreed, even superficially,
> with that book, thus eliminating scientific progress for nearly 1600
> years.   At the same time, several other "missionaries" of this
> alien race went to other parts of the world, each teaching the
> population a unique religion that would reject all others.  Some
> of these "missionaries" went so far as to include exhortations of
> violence in their denunciation of other religions and cultures,
> as it seemed politic at the time.

Jesus's teachings are certainly humanistic (in the best sense) but hardly
reactionary (radical might be a better word).  And surely Christianity was
not the principal factor in the downfall of Rome, seeing that Christianity
does not encourage (for example) the drunkenness that was so common in the
last decades of Rome.

Actually, I don't think Christianity teaches that EVERYTHING one needs to
know is in the Bible; rather, Jesus is recorded to have said, "When...the
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth." [John 16:13]

The remainder of that paragraph I respond to with my earlier idea, that
exactly this could have been done by demonic forces.

See?  Not all critics of Christianity are 100% wrong!

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
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