Picking and choosing, "this book should be part of the Bible" and "this book should not be part of the Bible" is as arbitrary as they come, and no Christian denomination is better than the other. After all, none of the books currently in any bible was written by the apostles.
I'm not talking about picking and choosing books, I'm talking about rewriting books to add baby-baptism for example. And afaik, many of the new testament books were written by the apostles. Who taught you otherwise? Peter, James, and John wrote bits, and I'm pretty sure Luke did too.
Before judging people as not being "truly" Christian, you might want to read up on early Christianity. None of the current denominations believe in anything remotely close to what early Christians believed in, so it's kind of tough to make the argument that you have the correct version while other modern denominations do not.
Again, who taught you this? The parts of the bible written by Paul give a decent indication of what early Christians believed and agreed and disagreed about.
Just believe what you want to believe, let others believe what they want to believe. Don't try to tell them they are wrong, and don't let anyone tell you that you are wrong. If your religion is making you happy, that's all that matters.
I've never understood this. I don't have religion to make me happy. Often times, it just makes me upset with myself because I don't live it enough and don't have enough faith. I believe it because I believe it to be true! Pretending you believe something you do not to be happy is a ridiculous idea imo and could never actually make you happy. If I believe I have the truth and you do not, why not share the truth with others?
You have made a fallacious assumption that your interpretation is the only valid one.
IMO, it doesn't make any sense to not believe you are right. Of course I think my interpretation is the right one.
Catholicism was around a lot longer than Protestantism and for that reason has a number of traditions and non-biblical authorities built up along side the "letter of the word".
This is only partially true. Protestants were people who left Catholicism to return to what they believed (and I believe) were the true doctrines. There were other sects that had those same doctrines who never left the Catholic church because they were never part of it. Today, they would typically be called Protestants, even though their beliefs are older than the Catholic teachings. The Catholic Church killed people for "heresy" for their entire early history. Many of those martyrs had similar beliefs to the modern protestants.
While you can point all you want to them having beliefs in addition to the bible, their traditions are just as old, if not older than the bible itself. So, where is your justification to dismiss it?
Though fully compiled later, the entire new testament was almost certainly written before 100AD, before the Catholics. Maybe you don't know this, but Peter didn't know he was a pope. (Hint: He wasn't).
An interesting question, if Jesus had passed through oral history a matter of significant religious significance that affected your salvation, but since this oral history was never codified into the bible... would this make it wrong?
He didn't, therefore it isn't an interesting question. I believe that everything you need to know about Christ is in the bible.
You might want to inform the Pope and the billion or so Catholics of this fact.
It's true, you might. The Catholic church makes me so angry because it gives true Christianity such a bad name. The really sad and interesting part is that a large percentage of Catholics don't realize that the church they've been taught to idolize and love doesn't follow the same faith and doctrines they themselves actually believe.
They are relatively good but absolutely terrible. -- Alan Kay, commenting on Apollos
