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I meant Church, as in the 'institutions' throughout history (which obviously wasn't always the same). A bit depending on which part of history you're looking at, the Church as an institution has always very much influenced people.

In the old days it has been easy to take advantage of people who couldn't read, but it's also quite impossible to let people know what's in texts when you don't explain it to them. Thus as for the biblical message itself, Churches may not be that bad, however e.g. the 'donation box' (especially in the past) made certain Churches very very rich. Now where does that fit in with the biblical message?



The catholic church, for instance, has gotten rich off of scaring people with their unbiblical doctrines of things like pergatory and so on.

But yeah, there are people out their who use the religious nature of the human species to their profitable advantage. John Popper (sp) comes to mind. As well as Benny Hinn.

I don't think its necessarily bad for a church to collect money, as long as they use it for missions, or helping needy, or building up their church to support the congregation and so on. But you're right, the greediness of certain charlatans has been an unfortunate consequence of many christians being, more or less, 'mindless.'

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Okey, I'll see if I can find some articles for you on this. I'm starting to doubt a little bit though, perhaps I've read about it in a book or magazine instead, I tend to use all kinds of sources, which kinda makes it dangerous to claim 'articles can be found everywhere on the net', but I'd expect a handful at least.



Yeah, I wouldn't mind reading on that. I can see some things, while studying the bible, that some people might object to. So I may already know what your sources are going to discuss. We'll see.

"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."