Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

From an outsider's perspective, that's not so much a difference as a similarity.

Some of which appear to be spurious. That aside, I could present you with a similar list of quotes about the role of the Jews in history. Especially if I was allowed to make quotes up, which is apparently legitimate for conspiracy theorists. I hardly see how it would prove anything. Quotes are just people saying stuff.

Yes, but to different degrees. In America, you are arrested for attempting to overthrow the Constitution by force, not for criticizing it or for trying to amend it through a lawful process. You are arrested for shooting or conspiring to shoot the President, but not for saying that he's a bad man. You are even free to go around saying: "Democracy sucks, I wish we had a dictatorship", so long as you don't try to create one by force.Now if the Papacy had confined itself to arresting people who assassinated the Pope, or fighting defensively against those who started a holy war in order to institute something other than Catholicism, then you'd have a point. But what the Papacy did was institute thought crimes.There is a difference between "enforcing authority with punishment" by on the one hand punishing people who perpetrate actual bloodshed, assassination, terrorism, and revolution, and on the other hand by punishing people whose worst crime is thinking that not everything you do is above criticism. How is that bias rather than an exercise of judgement? "You're just biased because a medieval Pope would have burned you alive for your opinions and President Obama wouldn't." Well, is that not a subject on which we're entitled to an opinion? And for an opinion to count as biased, does it not have to be slightly more arbitrary than that? It might even be argued that my preference for not being burned alive is a rational preference.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sure. Though I think some of those people are exaggerating a little. The Catholic doctrine of grace is not in fact so far from that held by many Protestants; but it's to the interest of Protestant propagandists to misrepresent it as such.Indeed, many Protestants may be closer to Thomas Aquinas on the issue of grace than they are to John Calvin, but they're encouraged to think of themselves as being on the same team as the Calvinists.

Yeah, but the quotes were made up. Y'see, when I read you writing something like that, I know that pretty much all your research must have involved reading books by morons. Morons who have literally no idea what the Holy Roman Empire was, but have apparently made a wild guess based on the name. Instead of looking it up.

Well, there are degrees in bias. And there are definitely forms of assertion other than unsupported.

I'm right here. If there's anything I've said that you feel is not such common knowledge as to require documentation, you have only to ask me.

I don't think he was given a new name. The most obvious reading of Matthew 4 is that Peter was already his nickname: "Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

OK. Thank you.

Actually, it goes all the way back to the Apostles.

Socialism isn't defined by being involuntary any more than, for example, chastity is. One can simply choose to be chaste, or to join a socialist society. You told a similar lie before, remember? It didn't end well.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Of course that is not what I mean. That is why it bears no resemblance to anything that I've ever said.

I did. You asked me if I meant "we don't HAVE to pay taxes to support welfare 'cause it's all VOLUNTARY?" I replied "Of course that is not what I mean. That is why it bears no resemblance to anything that I've ever said." That would be addressing the point. Your question was whether the meaning of my statements was the crazy gibberish that you made up in your head. I replied in the negative. As that singularly retarded question was the whole of your post, there can be no point in that post that I have left unanswered. This is why I have never denied it. You can tell that I have never denied it by the way that I have never denied it.Well, you probably can't tell that. The proposition that X implies X may be a little over your head. For once in your life you are speaking the truth.Do you have to do some sort of penance for that?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I did not argue with your contention that the early church's sharing was voluntary.Socialism, on the other hand, can be voluntary or involuntary. This depends crucially on whether it is ... I hope you're sitting down for this ... voluntary or involuntary. Please stop telling this lie. It degrades you and convinces no-one.

I have addressed your point, so now I've pretty much got nothing else to do except wonder whether you're a retard or a liar.