organised religion

As Jesus's light should. He is a beautiful incarnation of the Supreme Lord. All glories to Lord Jesus Christ, and all glories to Lord Chaitanya!

 

You have it backwards, the state was dependant on the church! The order was God > Pope (and thus the Church) > Kings/rulers. But with a politicized Church, it wasn't a pure spirutual leadership, but a corrupt greedy one (just as bad as the kings) but with the added "bonus" of being the infallible mouthpiece of the Almighty God! Talk about scary shit! That like what goes on in Islamic theocracies today, like Saudi Arabia.

Anyways, in my opinion, yeah, organized religion is bad (and i mean all religion, not just Christianity, despite it being the common example in this thread) with a few good sides to it. I am in agreement with what BlackBillBlake has said. Really I can't say I really disagree with anyone so far on this thread.

 

humanity's intelligence has become so degraded, that they kill each other because they call God by a different name. The Kali Yuga....

 

hmmm what I read is that in medieval times church was dependant on state (for getting their message across and poer etc.) , and state was dependant on church (a way of uniting their people). But yes, the popes had great authority, such as the guy that spoke out an interdict against france.....that was crazy.

 

Just like to add something to that about the power heirarchies of medieval europe. The feudal system was one of 'suzerainity'. A king was a liege lord, or suzerain, and his nobles and knights were vassals, who had to swear an oath of allegiance. This was the basis of all political power at the time. The pope was regarded as exercising suzerainity on a spiritual basis. Although technically, all the kings of europe were his vassals, this applied only in spiritual matters, not in 'temporal' affairs. There were attempts by the papacy to claim full supremacy, but they were never powerful enough militarily to pull it off.
In my earlier post when I said the church was politicized, it has many aspects. On one hand, the state sought often to array the power and authority of the church for its own ends, and would use church law for purely political ends, such as in the burning of Joan of Arc.
The church, on the other hand tried to manipulate rulers to act in ways beneficial to their interests. And increasingly, as the middle ages wore on, the popes became increasingly corrupt, and prepared to abuse church office and power for their own political ends.

 

What about compassion for those who do not know God? Their mind's should be set on everyone, including God.

 

The truth is that organized religion without compassion is bad.

 

I absolutely agree with kharakov on the compassion!