There's an incident I think back to that took place in Italy. A mid ranking member of the Vatican was recorded by his male prostitute/stripper, getting dressed for Sunday mass after having had sex the previous night when they met at a gay bar the previous evening.
Don't tell me you believe in God when you're butt fucking gay prostitutes before mass.
Don't tell me you believe in God when you're the pope and you know good and God damned well you didn't just have a chat with God before claiming that God revealed something to you. Don't tell me you believe in God when your army just happens to keep discovering ancient religious relics to keep morale up in a time of crisis. Don't tell me that you believe in God when you say that each church must be adorned with an ancient holy relic in order to be legitimate, and 3 of them claim to have "The Spear of Destiny", each have their own individual spear; none of which are Roman infantry spears from the era.
The people in positions of power in the Church are atheists because if God was real, they'd behave very differently for defying Him so clearly.
Similarly, the elites do not believe in Satan. They believe in their own power. There may be some foolish idiot elites that can be persuaded by charlatans to believe stupid shit (like alchemy); but mostly they believe in their power to manipulate people.
According to Pew Forum, 85% of Catholics believe in heaven, but only 63% believe in hell. This isn't too far off from mainstream Protestants, orthodox Christians, and Mormons. Evangelical and historically black Protestants have higher rates of belief. Jehovah's Witnesses have lower rates.
I think it might be worse than that.
There's an incident I think back to that took place in Italy. A mid ranking member of the Vatican was recorded by his male prostitute/stripper, getting dressed for Sunday mass after having had sex the previous night when they met at a gay bar the previous evening.
Don't tell me you believe in God when you're butt fucking gay prostitutes before mass.
Don't tell me you believe in God when you're the pope and you know good and God damned well you didn't just have a chat with God before claiming that God revealed something to you. Don't tell me you believe in God when your army just happens to keep discovering ancient religious relics to keep morale up in a time of crisis. Don't tell me that you believe in God when you say that each church must be adorned with an ancient holy relic in order to be legitimate, and 3 of them claim to have "The Spear of Destiny", each have their own individual spear; none of which are Roman infantry spears from the era.
The people in positions of power in the Church are atheists because if God was real, they'd behave very differently for defying Him so clearly.
Similarly, the elites do not believe in Satan. They believe in their own power. There may be some foolish idiot elites that can be persuaded by charlatans to believe stupid shit (like alchemy); but mostly they believe in their power to manipulate people.
According to Pew Forum, 85% of Catholics believe in heaven, but only 63% believe in hell. This isn't too far off from mainstream Protestants, orthodox Christians, and Mormons. Evangelical and historically black Protestants have higher rates of belief. Jehovah's Witnesses have lower rates.