So, does everyone who embraces their beliefs and attends a Christian church think they are perfect? Or is it just a majority of them? Half of them? Only a few of them? Your experience at 'church' or with people of faith is far different from anything I've experienced. No one that I know thinks they're perfect, they know they need the grace of God and fall short. Study of the Bible is an important part of faith, and most that I know in the faith and study it diligently and know it well. So your 'christian acquaintences' are far different from mine.
It's bullshit...all of it.
The church required infant baptism for a thousand years and when folks began to doubt that an infant would burn in the flames of hell the church stopped requiring it. The scripture is still there.
The church was responsible for the torture and deaths of untold numbers of innocent young women because they were accused of witchcraft. When folks stopped beliving there was any such thing as a witch the church stopped mentioning it. The scripture is still there.
The church preached billions of fire and brimstone sermons and when people began to doubt that a just god would punish people eternally that way for their mistakes the church began to say all the past was due to errors in translation. The scripture is still there.
The church tolerated and sometimes accomodated slavery for thousands of years but after slavery was found to be wrong by just about every legal system on the planet they stopped mentioning it. The scripture is still there.
The church preached the submission of women for thousands of years but after they began to vote and take part in things outside the home the church shut up. The scripture is still there.
The church persecuted and condemned homosexuals for thousands of years but now some of them actually not only have members who are homosexuals some are allowing Gays to pastor or minister. The scripture is still there.
Anybody who fails to see the games played by the church to maintain a membership and continue to get in people's pockets is either blind or a half wit.
There will be a day when all of this will be in the past and then when reasonable, intelligent people refer to it......MYTHOLOGY will be it's name.
Put me in the class with Thomas Jefferson and Dr. Einstein:
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
FROM THE OBITUARY OF DR. ALBERT EINSTEIN:
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human fraility. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world," he said on another occasion, "is that it is comprehensible."
OH I see now you were a Catholic?
Written in the front of his personal Bible, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator."