Quote Originally Posted by rvg View Post
Nah. All you have are words from other humans. Nothing more. The luthers and the calvins with all their nonsensical perversions of Christianity, that's just about all that your view contains. So, it didn't come from God, it came from a calvinist minister, who in tun got them from his predecessor, etc, etc. It's just a regurgitation of centuries old nonsense that gets passed around as a brand new revelation from God.
I thought you were a practicing Catholic? Do you not believe in regeneration through Christ etc?

Or it is just that I couldn't possibly have had such an experience since I'm not in communion with the Church of Rome?

Quote Originally Posted by Viking View Post
But that sence is not an argument, it is a belief.

I'll come up with a theory about the 'natural form'. It appears to me, as someone who admittedly haven't studied religion too much, that there was a major shift in the religions once civilizations first arose; and perhaps also a second time when literacy became [more] common. This because religion in cities will have to fulfill other roles than religion in smaller societies; and because when you have texts to refer to, religion will become much more concrete, as opposed to a lose bunch of customs and tales.

If there was any truth at all in what I wrote, it could perhaps explain what you view as "diversion" as simply religion morphing into roles it traditionally has had. Perhaps one of the strengths of religion is that it can create internalt unity; but without traditions to cling to, this is harder to achieve.
You are right, I am not trying to make a solid argument here. It's more a case of trying to find some abstract ideas which we can generally agree upon or try to make some sense of, to use as a framework for the other stuff we were discussing.

There's probably a lot of truth in your above example as well. I guess to discuss such a topic as the origins and development of faith and institutionalised religion would require a big discussion, and it would take ages to really make a serious system out of it.