Yes, I have a brother in law who is more knowledgeable about such things so I consult him. That would be logical. I hardly knew him when I converted though.
I wasn't trying to insinuate you were mocking.
As for the history of the church, I am aware of the disputes with how it all happened. I think you're taking a biased view of what fits your beliefs, but I would do the same. I am aware of what I believe, of how it disputes logic, and I am ok with that. It's my decision to make.
I'm curious though, are you an atheist, agnostic? What do you believe?
I believe in the concept of God, but I do not have specific knowledge of who or what God is. God may be a father or mother to all of us, or it might be that we are all parts of a cumulative spirit that makes up God, or it could be something else entirely. I am even open to the possibility that there is no God and we simply exist as the result of an amazing chain of events over millenia that resulted in increasingly complex life forms.
I do have a huge problem with the idea that God would ask us to blindly obey, or that we should ever be required to ignore our ability to reason. To me those sorts of strategies appear to be the tools of men who have chosen to utilize (and even fashion) organized religion for their personal power. Sadly that has been all too common throughout history. It remains one of the biggest problems in the world today. More people have been murdered in the name of religion, by far, than for any other reason. Christianity has a lot of blood on its hands, as does Islam, etc.
If you look back over religious history you will see that its primary attraction has been to explain the unexplainable. In tribal times forms of paganism arose in virtually every culture to explain whatever phenomena that people could not understand. Lightning bolts were the result of waring gods, good harvests were the result of satisfied gods, etc. As science began to explain more and more these gods were left in charge of less and less, but to this day there remain important questions which are still unexplainable. Throughout all of this history the ruling class have been well aware of what a powerful tool organized religion is for controlling the masses. In fact, the ruling class of the various European nations and the leaders of the Catholic Church were closely related members of the same families for centuries and centuries. They intermarried back and forth to keep these bonds strong.
There can be no disputing that Constantine played a central role in creating Christianity as we know it today. Was he divinely inspired in this task or did he undertake it for other reasons? I believe there is overwhelming evidence that he and his counselors decided how Jesus, God, etc. would be portrayed, and that they made these decisions specifically to accomplish their personal goals. No matter why they made the decisions that they did, the result has been a very effective strategy and it has played a central role in the ascent of western society. But I believe we owe it to ourselves, as free-thinking individuals, to question what we are told in the bible and elsewhere, and to discard anything that does not stand up to logical inquiry. In fact, I believe that is what a just God (the only sort worth following) would want us to do.
