The idea that any church has more to offer seems weird to me. What does that have to do with truth? Who cares if a religion offers more? Shouldn’t all you care about is whether there’s sufficient evidence to justify a belief in it? At least protestants don’t offer nearly two millennia of failure to help the poor while their religious leader lives in a solid gold palace. Not that protestants don’t have their share of con-artists taking money for personal gain, but it’s on a smaller scale.
What evidence are you referring to? Failure of individuals to live up to a religion’s doctrine doesn’t constitute evidence against that religion, unless that itself runs contrary to the tenets of said religion.
It’s also noteworthy that those whom the Church upholds as examples to follow did in fact help the poor. Sts. Martin of Tours, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Nicholas all come to mind. Note that there are very few popes from the Middle Ages and Renaissance that the Church honours as saints. It isn’t as if we think they were all good popes. Many were corrupt and immoral, and some were rebuked by saints such as Catherine of Siena or Bernard of Clairvaux.
There’s no concrete evidence for the existence of God or Jesus Christ. I know it’s based on faith, but there’s also clear evidence of Church corruption on a grand scale that would point towards it not being a particularly holy institution.
No concrete evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ? What about the gospels, Josephus, Tacitus, etc.? Jesus’ existence is just as well attested as many other historical figures of the time.
Not really. The gospels were written much later than he was supposed to have lived. Definitely long enough later that there’s no reason to believe they are quoting him verbatim. And there’s definitely no historical documentation that would point towards those documents being credible. I’m not sure what historical figures you’re talking about so I can’t attest to that.
There are also scientifically inexplicable miracles, still visible in the Shroud of Turin, the Tilma of Juan Diego
There are images that look like certain things appearing in everything. I just googled around a found examples of chicken nuggets shaped like Abe Lincoln. What about the “face on Mars”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)
Doesn’t anyone believe in coincidence anymore? If we’re taking all of these as literal divine interventions just because they look like something or because someone claimed it happened, then you have to accept all other similar claims made by other religious people or even nonreligious people or you’d be intellectually dishonest. My brother claims to have seen a ghost in our childhood apartment. Was that apartment haunted? What makes him less credible than eye-witnesses to other such apparitions?
the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano…
How could you possibly say that a priest 1300 years ago claiming to have found flesh in his eucharist is a scientifically inexplicable miracle? I guess if we had any reason to believe that it actually happened, it’d be a scientifically inexplicable miracle. But there are people every day that claim to have meetings with aliens, or Elvis. Do you believe them? I have a theory about the miracle of Lanciano: the guy lied. Or at best was totally mistaken.
The universe has no explicable origin without God. Matter doesn’t just spontaneously generate itself. Not to mention the unliklihood of life simply coming to be through a chemical reaction of some kind. The fact that you believe these things occurred is itself an example of faith without concrete evidence.
Where’d God come from? Why doesn’t he need an origin, but the universe does? And I don’t “believe” in anything. That’s something you’ve attributed to me. I don’t know how the universe came into being. Haven’t claimed to, don’t plan on it. Not to mention, even if I granted that a god was a necessity, that grants no credibility to any particular religion.
Church corruption was no greater than any other organization in history. It should have been far less, of course. However, if you were to look only at those Catholics who have actually tried to live out their faith, I suspect you will see very little corruption.
I have higher expectations for God’s representatives on earth and there are plenty of irreligious people that have been just as great as Catholics that have tried to live out their faith. And it’s definitely not true that it’s no more corrupt than any other organization in history. What, is the Women’s Christian Temperance Union as corrupt? What about SETI? Or the Free Masons? How are you gauging the level of corruption?