Well, i thought it was interesting..

Nobody could deny the enormous good the modern Church did in today's troubled world, and yet the Church had a deceitful and violent history. Their brutal crusade to 'reeducate' the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries, employing methods as inspired as they were horrific.

The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum - or The Witches' Hammer - indoctrined the world to 'the dangers of freethinking women' and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture and destroy them. Those deemed 'witches' by the Church included female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers and any women 'suspiciously attuned to the natural world'. Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth - a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God's rightful punishment for Eve's partaking of the Apple of Knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women.

The propaganda and bloodshed had worked.

Today's world was living proof.

Women, once celebrated as the essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic preists, nor Islamic clerics. The once hallowed act of Hieros Gamos - the natural sexual union between man and woman through which each became spiritually whole - had been recast as a shameful act. Holy men who had once required secual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favourite accomplice... woman.

Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for 'left' - gauche and sinsitra - came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day, radical thought was considered left wing, irrational thought was left brain, and anything evil, sinister.

Yeah man, it's like, your basic Yin and Yang, init.
The Chinese philosophy is the same (evil=feminine).

Errr, and what good has the Church done in modern times, exactly?
Sorry if you're religious (I am not), but the Church is as much a business as Microsoft (although if the Chuch is shut, there is no CTL+ALT+DELETE lol) - they're in it for the money - so anything that they have done has been for financial renumeration of some order.

Sorry, got oof point slightly lol - that bloody soap-box!

Interesting reading though :)
Res...

Res, I am no more religious than you. When I was about 12, five years ago, I left the only religion I had ever been a part of, and have never looked back. I completely disagree with the Church as a whole, but there is no doubt that it has brought peace, happiness and a sense of meaning into the lives of the people who don't question what they're told. The old adage 'ignorance is bliss' springs to mind... That's all I meant by the beginning of my last post :)

haha - no, I was addressing the whole, rather than you personally lol

The trouble is that religion is just a set of ideals laid out by people who have a vested interest in their own wealth and power.
Mass thought control and conformity.

I believe that there is a higher power than us mere mortals, and for the sake of labels, I would call that power 'God'. However, I do not need a book of stories to tell me how to live my life. I have a firm understanding of what is right and wrong, and to me, that's all one needs to live a 'good' life.
The only rule that should apply to our lives is "Treat others as you would have them treat you."
As long as noone is getting hurt by your actions, then do what the hell you like, init lol

Res...

Couldn't of put it better Res. :D