FSTargetDrone wrote:I also had trouble with the concept of transubstantiation, which is the supposed miracle that takes place during a mass when the bread and wine are literally (and not symbolically or figuratively) changed into the body and blood of Christ, which is then consumed--how cannibalistic, eh? I saw that the eucharistic wafer did not appear to be any different than I had seen before, so I reasoned that it was all bunk.
It's always struck me as bizarre that the Catholic church has maintained this. I suspect this bit of dogma was laid down in the early years of the Christian church by some of its more fanatical members, who were more disconnected from reality. More sober churchmen would probably never have promoted this idea. This has caused them some degree of difficulty since the beginning. Transubstantiation has always had its doubters. Back in the 12th century, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury (the same one slain by drunken knights who had heard an exasperated Henry II declare [probably rhetorically] "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"), used to hurry through this part of the mass, because he was very uncomfortable with the doubts it raised. It is, however, indicative of the effectiveness of Christian indoctrination that for thousands of years, the religion has maintained its position, and kept so many followers, despite this doctrine putting the clear evidence of people's senses so directly at odds with the church's official position, and producing many a doubter thereby.
But back to the topic of this thread...
My father was Catholic, but was lapsed, and in any case, he divorced my mother when I was five. So I was dragged to my mother's Free Will Baptist church every Sunday when I was growing up. Now as I have said elsewhere, Free Will Baptists are fundamentalists and Biblical inerrantists. They believe the KJV Bible is God's word, and is 100% true and accurate from cover to cover. But in high school, I actually went and read it. Now when you are told all your life that this is the only book on earth of which not one word is false or incorrect, and you then find passages in it which contradict each other... well, you've got yourself quite a conundrum haven't you? After all, if the book
can't be wrong, in
any detail, as the Biblical inerrantists maintain, but it contains two mutually contradictory passages, you find yourself in a kind of Moebius loop. (This always makes me think of the
"Star Trek" episode "I Mudd", where they shut Norman down -- Kirk tells him that
everything Harry Mudd says is a lie, and Mudd tells him "Now listen to me Norman old boy... I am
lying!"). Most FWBs, I can tell you from experience, simply dismiss these contradictions with outright denial, or the most twisted rationalizations you ever saw, or a mixture of both. But the effort to reconcile these contradictions and dispel my doubts led me on a quest for knowledge. The more I read, the more I saw the skeptics had the better argument, and when I got my hands on a copy of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" in college, it delivered the
coup de grace to the last, tottering remnant of my religious faith.
