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Will the Pope Declare Google Evil?
theodp writes "In the next few days, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue his second encyclical, in which he is expected to denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral in that they cheat the greater well-being of society. He is also expected to argue that the globalized economic world needs to be regulated. Prime technology companies playing the offshore 'profit laundering' game include Dell, Google, Microsoft, and Sun, who set up subsidiaries in Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is a low 12.5% and no taxes are charged on royalties (e.g. from patents)."
Sitting on a big pile of gold, and money in swiss banks.
Is the current pope rather stuck on ancient church history, at middle ages when church was actually a state ?
does god levy 'taxes' ? taxes are an earthly thing and have no place in religion. or is the pope trying to appease some circles that have done 'charity' for the church ?
Read radical news here
So will the church lead by example? Religion is the biggest tax haven in this country.
Just one more hypocrisy from the church, I am wagering.
As Jesus said, "Render unto Caeser what is Caeser's, and unto God what is God's"
All Global Corporations is what I actually meant, since not all the huge corporations are based in the US.
I was with you up until the end. Please recall that it's the Roman Catholics who take the heat for NOT basing their teachings on the Bible, and instead trust in the "consensus" of the Roman church as an organization, and on the Pope himself in particular. In short, the Pope's authority isn't based on the Bible as much as it's based on his own infallibility.
A large part of Google operations are in Europe, so is a big part of their R&D. Why should they tax all their income in the US?
"does god levy 'taxes' ?"
Yes. He taxes your free will as a retirement fund.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
It's sad to see that people don't understand what 'separation of church and state' means. Tell me, how is the Vatican violating this directive?
Here's a hint: 'separation of church and state' is only to specify that the state cannot endorse a religion or foist one on its citizens. It also, of course, doesn't apply to the Vatican, which knows no such separation. It has also never meant that the church stays out of politics, or that politics stay out of churches. The church can't be granted government power, and the government can't grant the church power. That's it, and it only applies in your own borders.
The Vatican isn't making a law. It's lobbying. That's what the Pope does every time he opens his mouth. Outside of the Catholic Church and the Vatican, he has no authority.
im from ireland, and practically every corporation has an office here
the corporate tax is low (12.5%) and income tax is ok as well (20%) tho EU slaps 20% VAT on everything
a lot of countries look enviously lately it seems at ireland and the low-ish taxes here (the country is doing fairly for last decade)
still i wouldnt call this a tax heaven, compared to Dubai lets say
As Mark Shea once said, "Deduct 50 IQ points when the media discusses religion. Deduct 75 points when discussing Catholicism." It is surprising (or not) that people are making judgments on a document that even isn't released. Wait until the document is released and read what it actually says before commenting.
The Alternet article mixes up two issues with different rates of taxation.
On one hand we have the way in which company profits can be moved around by changing the rates charged between subsidiaries in different countries. If your research division is in a high tax country and your manufacturing in a low tax country then you can shift profits to the manufacturing division by treating the research as a cost centre. If its the other way around then you can treat the research as a profit centre and charge manufacturing for all the valuable IPR they are using. This is a known bug in international company tax, and needs dealing with.
On the other hand there is generally low taxation on individual earnings and product sales within a country. The Alternet article gets into the politics of envy here by citing highly paid executives who also pay a relatively low rate of tax. But hey, they live and work in that country, so its an entirely local issue. Its up the the voters in a democracy to decide what taxes to charge and what they ought to get for that money. For instance the UK tax rates look much higher than in the US (35% GDP as opposed to around 26% of GDP) until you factor in the extra money paid by US companies for employee health plans. At that point the UK, with its tax-funded NHS, suddenly looks like a much cheaper place to do business.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
"does god levy 'taxes' ? taxes are an earthly thing and have no place in religion. or is the pope trying to appease some circles that have done 'charity' for the church ?"
I suspect you're not interested in knowing, but in fact the God of the Bible has a long history of taxation.
Citizens were required to pay a flat tax of 10% of all earnings.
Citizens were also assessed additional fixed taxes as civic needs arose, and were required to turn over some numbers of livestock on a regular schedule.
These taxes went to the religious state, whose responsibility it was to provide judicial, executive, and legislative services, as well as to provide for the common needs of society, including various primitive safety nets for those who had fallen on hard times.
Further on, according to the Bible, in Christian communities this developed into an entirely socialist system, where resources were jointly held and distributed by a central authority. Failure to comply was punishable by death.
'God' used to levy taxes. They were called tithes. Part of it was religious reasoning, but if I remember my schooling correctly then there was also a degree of taking away some of your worldly possessions so that the church could protect you from their evil influences (since the church members are, of course, stronger in this kind of thing than your normal person).
:D
Hang on, that last bit sounds like something Scientologists and strange cults do - "Here, join us and give up your worldly possessions. No, it's okay, we'll be kind and look after them for you so that you no longer have to burden yourself with them"
Attempting to stay on topic: since you agree that they've strayed from the Bible, you can't conclude that his statements today about taxation are biblical.
Straying further off topic: Once you've "gone quite a far way" from the Bible, it's not your basis anymore; you regard something else as foundational. Also, it was the early, and truly catholic, church which collected and distributed the New Testament and developed the Creeds. Note that the canon was not dogmatized by Rome until the Council of Trent, after the Reformation.
Yes, apparently the diety of a bunch of goat-herding nomads from thousands of years ago doesn't like it, so it's got to be stopped.
The crucial detail here being that it was citizens of the ancient theocratic state of Israel. It is pretty clear from the New Testament that God's people are citizens of heaven, rather than of an earthly state and that they should follow the laws of the states they reside in, so long as those laws do not force them to go against the law of God.
Nothing about a central authority distributing possessions in the New Testament. Believers voluntarily shared possessions with those in need and people like Paul would go round from time to time making voluntary collections so that those who were well off could those in need.
You're either misinformed, or have completely misunderstood Ananias and Saphira. They were killed by God for lying about the money they were giving. In fact, the amount they were giving wasn't an issue at all. If they had been honest and said "We got x talents for our field and our giving y talents to the church" rather than "We got y and are giving y," with the subtext that they were great, then everything would have been fine. There were quite a few early Christians who were well off, but were never required to surrender ownership of their possessions to the community. Called to be good stewards and loving neighbours, yes, but never forced to give things up.
so Bill Gates converts to become a Roman Catholic - they do everything nowadays to get followers since their sex rules are so unattractive - well, except in the US, that is...
First and foremost that little Hitler Youth is evil because he still prohibits birth control. How much suffering in how many Catholic countries is caused by over population? That is all the fault of the Pope. Ever poor family of 12 that loses kids to starvation or the side effects of malnutrition can look to the Pope for why they couldn't just have two kids that they were able to take care of. Every treehugger that wonders why Brazil is cutting down rainforest for farm land to feed their ever expanding population can look to the Pope. I know that there are other reasons that impoverished people have large families, but that usually stops as soon as the women there have access to the pill.
Then you can ask him why he thinks that paying taxes is actually contributing to the good of the common man? Hasn't every war in history been started by either those-collecting-taxes or those-who-want-to-collect-taxes ? The Papacy is the epitome of taking power and money from the poor masses and giving it to the elite few.
We are all just people.
The Papal authority has (debated) Biblical backing, in the little part where Jesus says something to the effect of "Behold, I give you the keys to the Kingdom of God... whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven" and such. The regular Protestant approach to that is that the passage applies only to Peter specifically, but the Roman Catholic church considers the Pope as the successor to Peter.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
(a) should the Internet move to IPv6 or stick with IPv4? Which one is the lesser evil?
(b) Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD: what would Jesus watch?
Then I am in full support of revoking the all churches' 501(c)(3) status within the USA. Christ said to pay taxes? Then people shouldn't be allowed to use the church as a tax break, and the church itself can pay taxes on its income too.
The Scientologists will be screwed especially hard over that one. Couldn't happen to a more deserving lot, honestly.
=Smidge=
So we have the Pope thinking in German, writing in Latin, and we're denouncing an English translation of a document that hasn't been published yet? Yes, sounds about right. Of course the document will be logical and well-reasoned, with a focus on protecting the poor who are paying more than they otherwise would have to without the rich evading taxes... but naturally - few will bother to read the always poorly translated English document, and no one will read the Latin. But everyone will be sure in their hearts that it's a scheme and a plot or an overstepping of boundaries. Lovely.
No, really. This is funny: Evil and good are subjective adjectives given by opinionated pricks..
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Frankly, I've never seen any passage in the Bible describing the position or, or need for a pope.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No, that was pretty solidly troll/flamebait... and I'm definitely agnostic, not religious at all. Not only was it nothing more than a rant against the pope and religion, there was a good dose of profanity thrown in for good measure. Just because you may agree with those sentiments, doesn't mean that the post wasn't written in an extremely flameish and abrasive manner.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The point being made is that rich individuals and corporations are setting up a minimal presence in a foreign tax country (tax haven) in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they actually live or work. This is "bad" because by not paying local taxes, they're not supporting their local government and social programs. If you live in the [insert your country here] and use the Netherlands as a tax haven, then you're not paying your fair share for your country's universal health care, or 911 services, or military that keeps your democracy free, or whatever.
If you're going to benefit from your local country's laws and services, is it really too much to ask that you pay your fair share? If local taxes are too burdensome or wasteful, then work to improve them instead of hiding from the problem(s). We all complain that money influences politics. If people are allowed to hide money overseas, then they have no motivation to reform existing local laws. If they were forced to resolve the issues locally, they would be subject to local laws and publicity, thus making it difficult to corrupt the reformed laws. By hiding money overseas, there is little legal or public oversight to prevent abuse (such as laundering drug money.)
Thus tax havens create at least two problems: local services, laws, and legal protections are not being paid for, and local laws, morals, mores, and publicity are being evaded. The latter is probably the greater of the two sins.
A third problem that the Pope appears to be concerned about is that local taxes pay for social programs. You know, homeless shelters, health care for the poor, etc.. By turning to a tax haven, you are implicitly turning your back on your fellow man. Do you really think that anyone using a foreign tax shelter is actually using the money they saved back to build up their local community? Granted, the Catholic Church shouldn't be throwing stones, but a Christian who hides tax money isn't much of a Christian. Belittle the Pope all you want, but he is probably the only individual who has the ability to bring worldwide attention to global morality. You don't have to like the guy shining the light on the cockroaches, but do be glad that someone is doing it. (But we do keep a mirror handy to throw some of that light back.)
Of course the Pope is concerned about money.
The Roman Catholic Church has been funding schools, hospitals, charitable institutions and enterprises of every sort for 2,000 years.
In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels -- loved and wanted." Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food. Mother Teresa
Humm, come to think of this, I think the Pope's own book has some advice for situations like this. I think it goes something like "He that is without sin...first cast a stone".
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Agreed. Most certainly reaching for a flame ware with his verbiage. I would say a more subtle way to put it would be to ask, "Has the Pope looked into the Catholic Church's collective mirror lately?" ;-)
It doesn't. The Bishops exist as successors to the Apostles, although there are a lot more than 12 of them nowadays. Bishops are described in the New Testament, along with Priests, Deacons, and the Laity.Frankly, I've never seen any passage in the Bible describing the position or, or need for a pope.
Historically disputes between Bishops were resolved by Metropolitan Bishops, a term that I believe is still used by the Orthodox Churches. These are merely Bishops of large cities which were influential, but have no position of spiritual superiority. Rome was one of these, and was the only Metropolitan Bishopric to never fall to a Heresy. (FYI see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07256b.htm for way too much information about Heresy.) Of course Matthew 13 shows Peter being elevated above the other Apostles when it comes to running the Church (You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.) Remember Peter==Rock, so it is a play on words.
The result is that the Bishop of Rome is just a "first among equals" who handles disputes. Mostly the Pope is juse the permanent tie-breaker if you will, and can only override the rulings of local Bishops in very rare circumstances. There are plenty of topics where US Bishops do things that Rome doesn't like, and there is nothing that the Pope can do about it. The whole infallibility thing only deals with specific points of doctrine, and almost never applies. It is certainly less useful than popular media makes it out to be. Remember that when the church does big shifts (Council of Trent, Vatican II), it is a coming together of large parts of the Church to form consensus, not the Pope making a decree.
And yes, this mechanism of Rome being the arbiter of disputes between Bishops is not Biblical. The Church is an artifact of Mankind, and as such is imperfect. Attempts are made to keep it working well, and somethings change over time. Remember that Bishops were installed due to popular decree (democratically, if you will) until corruption ended that process about a thousand years ago. Likewise the College of Cardinals is an attempt to shield the Papacy from local Roman politics. That hasn't been an issue for several centuries, but it is still the mechanism in use. A bit vestigial, somewhat like the US Electoral College.
Who lives in his own special country that his church set up as a tax dodge.
Actually, its mild compared to what a lot of us feel.
"denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral"
Says the Pope sitting in his tax haven called Vatican City. "Fucking hypocrite" is mild ...
Says the Pope who signed up with the nazis because "he could get in trouble otherwise, and it didn't mean anything." Sig heil my arse! The only reason we can't call him a dirty nazi is because he (probably) takes a bath once in a while, when not figuring out ways to try to maintain respectability while continuing to demand that his priests remain celibate, thus perpetuating holy buggery and child sexual abuse.
We tolerate religion - that doesn't mean we have to accept pronouncements from somebody who's so busy pointing fingers at everyone else in an effort to keep them from looking at the huge pile of wrongs he continues to promote. Hey, how about that "no birth control" policy? Nice way to doom another generation to overpopulation and starvation. And the "no condoms" bit. The Pope is promoting AIDS, herpes, clamydia, etc. How about the whole "virgins are better, they're pure" so its not so bad to rape a woman who's had sex, because she's a slut anyway, since she's not a virgin. Or the "divorce is wrong" so stay with hubby as he beats the shit out of you and the kids.
The pope is a fucktard.
Its all about money and power, same as always. Look up Banco Ambrosio Pope Murder
If you let government tax religion, then you run the risk of taxes being used to suppress religion, or to favor one religion over another.
Not worth the risk, IMO.
Moreover, it's basically the biggest fallacy ever that maintaining the celibacy of the priesthood perpetuates child sexual abuse. The decisions that those priests make are THEIRS, and theirs alone... not the Vatican's. Hell, I guess since I'm not getting laid, I should be going and molesting little boys, by your logic. Well, except for the fact that no one's forcing it on me, I guess, so I have no one to blame the molestation on.
Hey, how about that "no birth control" policy? Nice way to doom another generation to overpopulation and starvation. And the "no condoms" bit. The Pope is promoting AIDS, herpes, clamydia, etc. As someone else so succinctly points out in a thread further down the page, that isn't true at all. If you can't use birth control for religious reasons, don't have sex. It's not hard. How about the whole "virgins are better, they're pure" so its not so bad to rape a woman who's had sex, because she's a slut anyway, since she's not a virgin. ...wow. Please, find me actual proof that this is the position of the church. That's not in the Bible, nor is it the church's position in the least, as far as I'm aware. Until you present some evidence or proof, this is an absolutely ludicrous assertion. Or the "divorce is wrong" so stay with hubby as he beats the shit out of you and the kids. My understanding of the position on divorce (which may well vary by denomination, too) isn't that you can't divorce, it's that you shouldn't remarry if you get a divorce, unless it's to your original spouse, who you've somehow magically worked things out with."16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Thus began the least-successful marketing campaign in history, which we'll be examining over the next semester...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Such an uneducated and unintelligent rant as this is a waste of bandwidth, as is any attempt to make sense of and reply to it. However, I have some free time I'm willing to waste on this. A brief investigation will show that each and every attempt at fact in this drivel is not so and the opinions expressed (so elegantly) are of no value whatsoever.
About a billion Roman Catholics care (to one extent or another) what the Pope says.
The assertion that the Pope is merely a "figure head" who nevertheless has undeserved power is, of course, self-contradictory.
As pointed by another poster, the Bible isn't the primary source of the Pope's authority; tradition (supported by scripture and other early Christian writings) is what really gives an apostolic church it's authority.
I find it amusing that you think that "with science, people don't have to believe anything." A lot of philosophical schools would debate that. At minimum, you need to believe that your reality is "real", something not all would immediately affirm.
I too find "religion in deities" to be ridiculous, almost as much as I would actual belief in multiple deities, but I believe in only One. So, too, does the pope, I hear.
Do you have any idea what the Pope is actually paid and actually owns? He doesn't actually have a "salary" as such and personally owns very little. He just lives in a palace, which he doesn't really own. I believe they they had his old car on eBay a while ago - a rather modest VW Golf. He does have access to the "Peter's Pence" collection from around the world, which may be several (maybe hundreds of) millions, but is mostly used for his charitable purposes and just to pay the bills at the Vatican.
Oh, and evil is usually defined in Christian theology as the "absence of good", somewhat like the absence of any sense in your screed.
More to the point, since the Encyclical isn't even released yet, no one knows really what it is actually going to say, so all this is speculation of the most uninformed and useless kind. The old Roman saying is "Those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk." I believe the Holy Father may actually deal with this, as with all ethical issues, in terms of the liceity of both means and ends. It is entirely possible that there are good ends which may be pursued by valid means which result in less taxes being paid. Simple greed isn't one of the approved motives, however, anymore than law-breaking is an approved method.
Frankly, I think the AC poster is either under 15 or has some serious problems that I really hope he gets straightened out.
God bless
The Pope does not tell them to have lots of unprotected sex.
In fact that is exactly what the Pope tells them to do. They are not allowed to have safe sex, birth control is prohibited. Recently there was a secession for married couples to use condoms if one of the partners had an STD. So clearly the church expects married people to be having regular sex, yet they forbid the use of contraception. The rhythm method doesn't really work so well. I'm pretty sure oral sex is rather frowned upon by the Pope as well.
We are all just people.
First and foremost that little Hitler Youth
who skipped out on their rallies and only joined because everyone was basically forced to
is evil because he still prohibits birth control. Ever poor family of 12 that loses kids to starvation or the side effects of malnutrition can look to the Pope for why they couldn't just have two kids that they were able to take care of.
No, they can look to their own genitals for that reason. I know plenty of families that don't use birth control and have a reasonable number of kids.
Then you can ask him why he thinks that paying taxes is actually contributing to the good of the common man?
Because the more that the rich ged rid of tax havens, the more money goes into governmental redistribution programs for the poor. Do you seriously think he's asking the poor to pay up their taxes?
Hasn't every war in history been started by either those-collecting-taxes or those-who-want-to-collect-taxes ?
Yeah, this sentence means nothing. The only forces capable of starting actual wars (not rebellions) are governments or proto-government-oids, which need taxes to survive. And to, uh, finance their war.
I guess this makes sense if you presuppose a great deal of freewill, but not even the Church does that (if people had all the freewill they could, it would be possible to never fall into sin). By the Church and by reality, people are flawed and vulnerable to temptation. Not having sex is hard--that's why marriage is sanctioned in the first place, as an acceptable outlet for those urges. (1 Corinthians 7: 1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.)
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Exactly the opposite actually. By exempting churches from taxes the government gets to chose what is and isn't a religion. That sounds much more dangerous and risky to me.
Then you should look a bit closer at Matthew 16:18-19, which quotes Christ thus: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
If you call what the early Christians had "socialism," then you must also think open source software is socialism*.
Repeat after me: "Socialism isn't voluntary. If it's voluntary, it's not socialism."
* (Which, by the way, instantly makes you unpopular around here, which I'm sure is the opposite of what you intended when you publically misinterpreted the Bible here.)
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
"Moreover, it's basically the biggest fallacy ever that maintaining the celibacy of the priesthood perpetuates child sexual abuse. The decisions that those priests make are THEIRS, and theirs alone... not the Vatican's. Hell, I guess since I'm not getting laid, I should be going and molesting little boys, by your logic. Well, except for the fact that no one's forcing it on me, I guess, so I have no one to blame the molestation on. "
The catholic church's own internal studies show that a celibate priesthood attracts the wrong kind of person. 20% struggle with desires to have sex with children, and half with desires to have same-sex partners; these numbers are WAY over the average for the ppulation at large.
The same-sex bit isn't a problem for most people, except that in this case, again, its the whole "sex outside of marriage is wrong" crap.
" > > Hey, how about that "no birth control" policy? Nice way to doom another generation to overpopulation and starvation. And the "no condoms" bit. The Pope is promoting AIDS, herpes, clamydia, etc.
> As someone else so succinctly points out in a thread further down the page, that isn't true at all. If you can't use birth control for religious reasons, don't have sex. It's not hard.
" > > How about the whole "virgins are better, they're pure" so its not so bad to rape a woman who's had sex, because she's a slut anyway, since she's not a virgin.
> ...wow. Please, find me actual proof that this is the position of the church. That's not in the Bible, nor is it the church's position in the least, as far as I'm aware. Until you present some evidence or proof, this is an absolutely ludicrous assertion.
"
While we're at it, where in the bible does it say that priests must be celibate? Oh, it doesn't - it says priests must be MARRIED! Fucktard pope in the middle ages got his underwear in a twist because a priest and a bishop were having a "good time enjoying each other's company", and while the bishop was keeping it all quiet, his lover went on and on to anyone who would listen about how great it was. So the pope declared that, from that point on, priests be celibate.
Your papal "bull" is exactly that - bull. Its contrary to the bible, but that's not a surprise. There's not a single religion that adheres 100% to their own teachings.
" > >> Or the "divorce is wrong" so stay with hubby as he beats the shit out of you and the kids.
> My understanding of the position on divorce (which may well vary by denomination, too) isn't that you can't divorce, it's that you shouldn't remarry if you get a divorce, unless it's to your original spouse, who you've somehow magically worked things out with. "
People get the governments they deserve, because they allow and enable those governments. Explains both Bush and the Nazi Pope. Forgive his past? No - he's still a fascist bastard using the same tactics to regiment people's lives that any other cult uses.
What is it with religion and sex anyway?
...... each statement about the truth-status of Biblical content is spoken by human lips.......
n gelist
If you are accused of crime, say murder, you and the prosecution are dependent on witnesses. If there are say four witnesses whose testimony matches quite well, saying they saw you strangle the victim, and this testimony of ordinary people is generally BELIEVED by the jury, you get punished, as the law decrees. There is no absolute PROOF you did it, but the jury believed the witnesses. In court, it is assumed that witnesses are truthful. Peter, one of the 12 disciples, writes in 2Peter 1:16 that he and the other disciples are eyewitnesses, not some kind of hearsay.
Now if you come up with four witnesses that say the saw you far away from the scene of the crime, then the witnesses on both sides face cross examination. The object thereof is to determine the credibility of the witnesses and their testimony. Dr. Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of the Harvard Law School, wrote THE book on the rules of evidence, as it relates to courts of law. Every law student must still study it today. You might want to read a little treatise about evidence he wrote called "Testimony of the Evangelists". It is in the public domain or you can buy it from Amazon. There is a summary of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_the_Eva
His original goal for doing this was to try to discredit the Gospels and especially the Resurrection, by showing that the testimony of these four witnesses is not likely to hold up in court. He became convinced that the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as given in a written deposition about Jesus and His claim to being God was truthful and sincere. He also found them to be of sound mind. As a result He too came to believe their testimony in the same way that a judge or jury might in a court of law.
So, if you are willing, and that's the key, willing, to examine the written evidence of God's human witnesses as any court of law accepts witnesses, you too may come to a different conclusion. As in any court, you must ONLY use the evidence presented, not what you may have heard elsewhere.
All theory is gray
I disagree. If "willing to examine written evidence of God's human witnesses as any court of law accepts witnesses" someone would have to examine the so-called, at least by the Greek Orthodox Church, heretic gospels. There are many gospels, hence many witness accounts of Christ's life, beside the four acceptable ones. During the first synods these gospels were dismissed and the remaining four ones mirrored the official view of the christian church. And they are really a lot different, see for example the so called "Judas gospel" recently uncovered.
I thought that Bill Gates bought the Catholic Church?! See Here
The discussion whether good and evil are relative or absolute has been keeping philosophers busy for millennia.
The references section of this wikipedia article is a good starting point if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_and_evil
That "champion of Christian morality"?
Insert Dermot Morgan's "C.J. Haughey" voice: "You Two? Four tuneless gobshites who couldn't hit a cow's arse with a guitar."
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