Are you still Catholic? If so, go fuck yourself.

How is the treatment of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young by Mormons any more cultish than the treatment of Paul and Peter by other mainstream christians?

Also, no.

Aren't they paying $4000 in fines per day because they won't release church records about this to law enforcement?

*sigh* If people want to believe dumb shit, I really don't care as long as it doesn't affect me or anyone else who doesn't want to deal with it. But, at the very least, can we as a society move beyond the idea that "my imaginary friend said so, and he invented the universe" is a good enough reason to do anything, let alone allow these people to acquire massive amounts of power and run our fucking government?

Priests used gold crosses to ID kids as abuse targets and other horrors from Pennsylvania report

I don't think any more of the article needs to be quoted.

Fucking Trump administration is busy drafting laws (and succeeding!) that say having an imaginary friend means you don't have to follow laws.

Catholics, a sky wizard isn't going to burn your ghost.
Even if ghosts were a thing, they wouldn't burn.
You have to have mass to burn.
Burning happens at a molecular/chemical level.
Anything that had mass enough to chemically burn would show up a on a meter.
Ghosts don't show up on meters, so have no mass, so do not burn.
SO, you can walk away from this church of lies, stop giving the pedophiles money, and the pedophilia, and escape from the pedophilia will grind to a halt.
And your ghost won't burn for it after.
You have the power.
The power is in you.

Nope:
John 8:58:
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”

Mark 14:61-62:
But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

With the local religious establishment, sure, but with Pontius Pilate, he was awfully cagey, letting Pilate do all of the work without any of the actual payoff. There's also his propensity to shy away from being known as the son of god, especially with his own followers. It took Peter actually saying that he believed Jesus was indeed the son of god before he finally filled them in. I'd imagine it had something to do with timing, but that's just a guess.

You forget John 5:31-32: “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true."

We should probably take the gospel accounts of Jesus' interview with Pilate with a very large helping of skeptecism since it probably never happened and if it did, who is the supposed witness to what was said? Personally I think it's fairly clear that Jesus never claimed to be God.

I don't see how you arrive at that conclusion. "We just don't know", I'd agree with. But why assume, with weak evidence against you, that this religious leader acted differently from most of the religious leaders in that time and place in this one regard?

Most religious leaders claimed to be God? Which ones?

Around the time of Augustus, most of the leaders of the several cults springing up in the Middle East formed around leaders who used the title Son of God, yes. Unless we have a strong reason to think otherwise, we should bet at least even money that Jesus would do the same thing. Given that what little and admittedly weak specific evidence we do have confirms rather than contradicts this, I can see why someone would say that we can't know for sure, but not why anyone would think that it is more likely to be false than true.

Filth. And they let kids read this book?

Well, firstly "son of God" is different than him being God, which is what John's gospel has him claim. But okay.

What you're talking about appears to me to be originally and primarily a Hellenistic thing. It had certainly found its way into Judaism to some extent by the first century with the barrier between the divine and human having become fairly fuzzy and with the introduction of intermediaries such as angels, demons and so forth. However the dominant eschatology (see Daniel, Jubilees, Enoch) seems to feature the Messiah (who Jesus may have claimed to be) and a son of Man (who he repeatedly speaks of in the third person and who I think we can conclude he did not claim to be). I am not aware of Jewish religious leaders claiming to be the son of god and to do so seems to have been regarded as blasphemous by a lot of them. This reflects later arguments with Pharisees in my opinion contemporaneous with the gospel writings.
Instead the title of son of god is something that I suggest would have been added after Jesus' death as Christianity became increasingly Hellenised.

Looking at the Christology in the gospels, it is apparent that the very early Church had an adoptionist Christology. That is, they held that Jesus "became" son of God at some point rather than being born as such. In fact, one can trace the development of this where the adoption is pushed backwards from Jesus' baptism (Mark) to his birth (Matthew, Luke) and finally to the beginning of time (John). Crucially there is evidence that the original version of this was that Jesus was adopted - exalted - after his death. That being so, he would not have been son of god during his life, nor would it make any sense for him to have claimed to be.

Ah, that's where the whole "Gandalf the Grey/Gandalf the White" shit came from.

Like his daddy, I see boy Dayton runs away when forced to actually think or analyze.

Agreed on the adoptionism and on the Hellenistic nature of the 'son of God' monicker, which is even applied to Augustus himself at the time. But I don't see why it should have only entered Christianity later; Palestine at the time was Hellenistic, at least in its intellectual and literary circles. The accusation of blasphemy concerns the claiming of the tiel for oneself, not its impossibility. If a person in the US claimed today to be the Second Coming, many opposing religious leaders would call that blasphemy, not beacuse they reject the idea of a Second Coming as blasphemous, but because they would try to paint their opponent's stance as hubris.

It's not like child fuckers/abusers are unique to Catholic Christianity.

Should also note that African countries using child soldiers are generally majority Protestant.

Except that religion-particularly predominant organized religions-provide exponentially greater opportunities for abusers and then shelter them from consequence.

As an institution, religion is an enabler. Not just of kiddie fiddling, but of visiting atrocities upon unbelievers throughout history.

That's like saying that there would still be murders if the Mafia didn't exist. It's missing the point.
The doctrines of the church and the special reverence afforded to priests not enjoyed by representatives of other large organisations make/made the social environment in which they operate particularly conducive to child abuse.

Because the evidence shows that it's a moniker that was applied after Jesus' death. Paul's Christology is generally higher than the synoptics but in places he quotes what appear to be older traditions. They show that Christians believe that Jesus was exalted after his death. Mark moved that back to his baptism (the transfiguration was probably originally a post-resurrection story) and his successors farther back still.

See Romans 1:3-4: “The gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Phillipians 2: 9-11 "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing any more. The term 'son of God' at the time was used for many living persons of high religious or political standing. As I said, this applied not least to Augustus in Rome -- long before he died. That your quote from Romans says that the resurrection declared Jesus to be the Son of God doesn't mean he wasn't called that before, only that the supposed miracle confirmed this. The quote from Philipians doesn't address this issue at all. The gospels contain several instances where the phrase is used while Jesus lives. Now again, you can say that the gospels are insufficient proof; but they certainly don't prove the opposite.

LOL.

"throughout history" continues to this day. your point that for most of history it's what defined societies doesn't dissuade me from the belief that religion not only allows, but encourages terrible things to flourish.

I'm not just considering conflicts, but historic and ongoing cultural genocides. That is, not the competition between say christianity and islam so much as both sides of that conflict's eradication of other cultures.

It's alright folks! It's all lies!

I'll wager that man's dick has been in more than one choirboy.