[rebelnyell]

Quote by: phoenix_fire (How did I know it would be another one that equates Catholicism with the whole of Christianity?) It would be even more dismissed today. Remember David Copperfield?

I am not equating Catholicism with Christianity. This is what I said first:

I would like to start off saying that I am not a Catholic.

Then when you said you weren't also I said this:

I am not Christian, follow any organized faith, or truly believe in a God.

I find it odd how you are comparing the actions of something being done by God to something being done by a human. Certainly there would be people questioning or trying to figure out David Copperfield because he is an illusionist and undoubtedly a human performing these actions. Some of which he explain (though this incident not being one of them) makes it even more believable that this action was an illusion or a trick. Clearly if some of the events that happened in the Old Testament happened to day it would be pretty hard to dismiss them with our knowledge. How could you explain manna falling from the sky, presence leading them to the promise land, or God destroying the Tower of Babel then confusing the whole world language and spreading them across the globe? If you can think of a reasonable explanation to explain these things with the knowledge of today and not using God then do it. David Copperfield's illusions can be explained without a presence of a God(s) or super being.

The Holy Spirit does not cause people to kill in the name of God. That's the other guys. And more often than not, that justification was just an excuse to burn, pillage, and rape. Even the priests that were in on it did so for power and influence. The advantage of the Holy Spirit and the fact that His presence is the biggest miracle cannot be easily explained if you don't know Him. I could lay out the theology, but it would be like explaining color to a blind person...no offense.

I already state that it wasn't caused by the Holy Spirit. Sorry for my wording above but I said somewhat caused by the Holy Spirit. If you read what I posted earlier this would have made a little more sense.:

Well from my stand point the flashier attempts to deny false Gods and the Evil of the Devil hit home much more successful then the miracle of the Holy Spirit on a massive scale. With the Holy Spirit it seems that it is much easier for the Devil to take control and twist things unlike when God could make himself present like he did in the Old Testament times to stop or halt these problems. I think that this has caused more problems than it has actually solved making it easier for the Devil to enter ones world through various ways that weren't possible before God sent the Holy Spirit. Now it is much easier to mistake the voice of God (the Holy Spirit) as the Devil's trickery. Now a days there isn't as much of a fine line between this good and evil that can help you determine which is which. It is harder and harder to know who to actually trust and to figure out which is the voice of God, the Devil, or just a person losing sanity conversing with nothing at all.

Here is just one example I could find quickly that it isn't used a justification that would support my statement above:
A killing in God's name.

Everett -- When the Prophet Elijah sat at his piano to play, witnesses say, the members of the Gatekeepers sect knew what to expect. The voice of God was about to speak. As Elijah played, eerie music filled the room, and strange sayings tumbled from their lips. Sometimes the voices spoke through Elijah. Sometimes through the clan. Always, though, it was Elijah -- Christopher Turgeon to the rest of the world -- who told them what it meant. One day, the voice told them to beat the children. Another day, to shoot a dog. Finally, it told them to kill a man. Turgeon, 37, and follower Blaine Applin, 30, are on trial this week in Snohomish County Superior Court, charged in the murder of former cult member Dan Jess, who was shredded with six bullets on the night of March 29, 1998, at the front door of his Mountlake Terrace trailer. Neither has denied killing Jess. The jury is being asked to determine whether the pair were insane when they shot him, so deluded by the belief that they were carrying out God's will that they were incapable of seeing it as wrong. In another sense, the trial is a deeper look at the ways in which people can be driven to surrender their wills, their families and their wealth -- and can even be driven to kill -- through the seductive attraction of a cult. Sometime around 1990 in the suburbs around Everett, an intense, intelligent, articulate young man named Chris Turgeon appeared on the scene of some of the local charismatic Pentecostal churches. He claimed to have a gift for prophesying -- for sensing the will of God on earth, and divining its direction -- said Joe McIntyre, pastor of Word of His Grace Fellowship in Bothell. That, in and of itself, isn't a rarity in charismatic churches, where the congregations believe the Holy Spirit is alive and active on earth. Speaking in tongues, experiencing visions, or simply feeling a divine intervention is commonly part of the experience.