@Tin-Man

Whilst in Italy, I came across what can only described as a Poe.

If was off season, so not many tourists around. In the Vatican, where the Sistine chapel ceiling had just been cleaned. We were allowed to lie on the floor and soak it in, for half an hour. A sublime experience.

As one leaves the Sistine chapel there is this large souvenir shop, just outside, run by nuns. They sell the tackiest, hideously expensive religious souvenirs you can imagine. Included are genuine PAPAL BLESSINGS. Anyone thinking the Catholic church has become less greedy and corrupt in recent centuries need only visit that distasteful place.

BUT, the Anglicans can be worse. Last time I was in England, they were charging 5 pounds to enter Westminster Abbey. My hostess told me they were not allowed to charge for attending a religious ceremony. So we went back another day at Evensong ,

---still hard to beat the medieval sale of indulgences,

One of the more notorious sellers of indulgences was Johann Tetzel, who apparently actually used this jingle'; "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"

The sale of indulgences I think began with the first Borgia Pope , Rodrigo Borgia , in the fifteenth century. It was one of the many corruptions Martin Luther used to kick off the Protestant reformation around 100 years later.

@Whitefire13

Or get theists to use words as they're intended, but yes I see your point, that's trying to square the round peg of religion again. Which theists was it that claimed atheists are "cagey" about the definition of atheism, that made me laugh. The same poster claiming he was going to present a thesis on the meaning of agnosticism, as if we can't just Google it's meaning.

"“Language” is their key to “unity” and identifying outsiders."

Yeah, I visited a prayer group with a friend of mine years ago, you're precisely right. They were a nice bunch, at least prima facie, but I didn't present them with much in the way of debate, so who knows how they'd have reacted, or what pertinacious beliefs they held as part of their religion. I do know they doubted the validity of evolution.