WARNING! The following questions and musings may be offensive to some. It is not intended as such.
Drinking wine as if the blood and eating bread as if the flesh of Christ seems awfully cannibalistic. Why does Catholicism promote these symbolically cannibalistic rituals?
The Roman Catholic Church takes Jesus' words in the gospels very literally when he says "this is my blood" and "this is my body." They adopted an Aristotelian idea of substances, which would have been rather foreign to 1st century Jews, to try to explain how this works. The actual substance of the bread and wine are believed to transform into the body and blood, even though all the accidents (i.e., all physical properties that could ever be detected in any way) remain unchanged. (Many other Christians emphasize the "do this in remembrance of me," and consider it a symbolic reminder rather than actual transubstantiation.)
Catholics believe that when Paul spoke of taking communion in an unworthy manner, not perceiving the body of Christ, he meant that anyone who does not believe in transubstantiation damns himself. In the context I think it makes more sense for taking communion in an unworthy manner to refer to being gluttonous rather than sharing with the poor who need the food and drink. The next chapter goes on about how the community of believers is the body of Christ, so not perceiving the body of Christ could mean not loving one another and treating each other with the same respect due to the lord.
It may be worth noting that the oldest christian text outside of the new testament cannon (The Didache, which is probably older than any of the gospel accounts and several of the epistles) goes into detail about how to conduct the Eucharist but does not mention anything about the body or blood. It portrays the wine as symbolizing the holy vine of David from which Jesus spring. It compares the bread to the church, which is to be gathered from all nations and brought together into one just as many grains are gathered from diverse hills to make one loaf of bread.
Why do people worship Jesus and thank him for everything? Won't God get pissed off that his son gets all the credit?
Trinitarian Christianity asserts that The Son is just as much God as The Father or The Spirit. The book of John portrays Jesus as the Logos (which means not only "word" but also "reason," "meaning," "order," "plan," etc) through which all things are made. Even if The Father is ultimately responsible, The Logos is the agent through which every act of God is done.
Why isn't there more Jewish traditions in Christianity if Christ was Jewish? Won't God get pissed off that Christ changed all the rules?
There is a lot Jewish about Christianity. Unfortunately, many Pagan Greek ideas slipped in too, usually without much apparent reasoning. Many of the problems with Christianity arose because Hellenistic converts were not careful to analyze their preconceptions and just assumed that some things were more like what they were used to.
Was it part of God's plan to kill his son?
Probably. Apparently the Eastern Churches tends to emphasize the incarnation more than the crucifixion of Christ though. Salvation is through a mystic union with Christ, which perhaps could have happened somehow without such a death. It is thought that when the incarnation merged the nature of God and the nature of Man in one being, it did not merely make one God-Man but forever combined the nature of all men with God. While union with Christ is a far more biblical soteriology than penal substitution, I tend to think that this argument goes to far into the nonsense of Platonic Forms.
Why is God wrathful and Jesus forgiving? Don't do wrong or God will smite you, but it's ok, because Jesus forgives you. That sounds like being part of a dysfunctional family where God, as the father, beats you for doing something he doesn't like; but then Jesus, as the caring 'mother', tells you that everything is ok, it's not your fault, father is just having a bad day, and you're forgiven. No wonder the crusades happened. Like a bunch of angry teenagers looking to start some shit because of the shitty childhood they had.
There is quite a bit in bible, including the Old Testament, of God the Father being very forgiving to those who sincerely repent too. The Son isn't portrayed as particularly forgiving when he forces the money changers out of the temple, or when he returns in the Apocalypse.
I've read that in the original languages, God is never actually described as punishing anyone. The words used instead have meanings like "correct, "refine," and "add value to." The word for punish in those languages denoted receiving satisfaction from harming someone back, which is very human rather than divine.
..or how did the human race continue if they only had two male sons
Nothing in the bible says that Adam and Eve had only two sons. It actually mentions
three sons, although Seth was not born until after Abel was murdered. It is generally assumed that this is far from an exhaustive list, and that there were many daughters that it neglected to mention.
People worship Jesus as god because Jesus is god's avatar, who sacrificed himself to save the souls of man from sin. Sooooo Jesus is the Last Airbender.
But really if you study what was going on during that time period, Joshua bar Joseph ("son of Joseph"; also Jesus is Greek for Joshua) was a jewish carpenter from a poor family who may have learned teachings from traveling Buddhist monks, or reached enlightenment in his own manner, whether it be drugs, meditation, etc. He wish to teach the jewish population, who were at the time occupied by the Roman empire, that we are actually all divine sons and daughters of god (Christ-beings), don't be material-obsessed, mean-spirited, etc. which countered the Roman culture of orgies, vomitariums, vicious gladiator duels, population control through propoganda, war.... all the workings of a dystopian empire on the verge of collapse.
And so the jewish rebellions that were going on at the time in Jerusalem and such used Joshua, and another man I forget his name, as idols, their "saviors", and the Romans were all like "HEEELLLLLLLL NAW" and so there was much fighting, conspiring, and ultimately Jesus was betrayed, killed and martyred by his people to give them hope in the continuing battle against Rome. Years later, some followers of Jesus got together, may have conspired with priests of Rome, formed Christianity and what once was a pure philosophical teaching of a wise man became an evil power structure used by Rome for millenniums well into today.
In fact, if you study symbols, history, follow the money and what not, you can see that Rome may not have actually fell, but changed it's face...
There is no good reason to believe that Jesus was a poor carpenter. We are simply told that Joseph was a "tekton," which is often translated as carpenter in English but is much broader that that in Greek. The word literally means "skilled laborer." There is no reason to believe he worked exclusively with wood. He could have been a blacksmith, a jeweler, a siege engineer, a shipwright, a painter, an architect, or many other things. As the word is likely being used to translate a similar but not identical Aramaic term, he could even have been a scribe, scholar, or rabbi. Most experts tend to assume he was most likely a stonemason though. There were many major construction projects going on near Nazareth a generation before Christ, and evidence of may very prosperous masons. Jesus probably grew up in a middle class family, far better off than the majority of his society.
There is no good reason to believe that Jesus had any contact with Buddhist or any other adherents of an eastern religion/philosophy.
A vomitorium is not what many people think it is. It is true that many wealthy Romans were gluttons who stuffed themselves and then forced themselves to throw up in order to eat more, but there was not a special room for that. The term vomitorium referred to the exits of buildings like Theaters, Amphitheaters, and Circuses. While there were strong pagan associations with those things of which Jesus likely did not approve, there is little reason to believe he would oppose people being able to leave the buildings.
Christianity did not go from a philosophy to a power structure due to any conspiracy. The hierarchy emerged gradually from what were original rather egalitarian communities of devout believers. Rome was actually adopted a monarchical episcopate much latter than most centers of the church.
so there's Jewish law, but Jesus is like above the law. he is like the OG. God was all like,"these bitches can't follow the law. it's too hard for them." so Jesus comes and stuff and he's like, "yo dawgs, let me just break it down for you. love God and everybody, and we can forget about keepin' kosher."
yeah...
The great commandment and the second great commandments were actually direct qutes from the Law of Moses. Jews have not traditionally believed that the Mosaic Law ever applied to non-Jews though. Gentiles are bound only by the Seven Noahide Laws, which include the 4 commandments which the Apostles decided are all that gentiles should have to follow.
Christians, why was it necessary to destroy the Library at Alexandria?
It wasn't.
They didn't destroy the Library at Alexandria, but there wasn't much need to do what they did do either.
Julius Caesar burned down the Library of Alexandria in 48 BC. Some of the texts were salvaged and another library may have been rebuilt, but it was hardy worth comparing to the original.
In around AD 274, the Emperor Aurelian burned the entire Royal Quarter of Alexandria to the ground. This is where the Great Library had been located. Its last remnants were probably destroyed then. It should be noted that while Aurelian was not a traditional pagan he was certainly not a christian. He was devoted to Sol Invictus, a syncretic pagan sun god derived from combining Apollo, Bacchus, Mithras, and a various other minor or local deities. He also minted coins on which he declared himself to be a god. Aurelian was tolerant of other religions during his sort reign, but many believed that would have changed if he had lived much longer. (Emperor Constantine was also a devotee of Sol Invictus, even during most of his reign. His mother and many of his friends were Christians, but he did not officially join the church until he was on his deathbed.)
In AD 391 Emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the empire and outlawed paganism. This was more his doing than the Church's though. Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria supported it, but many other Christians at the time got along rather well with many Pagans (certain church fathers praised the ethics of certain contemporary pagan Neo-Platonic philosophers, and engaged in a sort of Platonic philosophy themselves; Christians still tended to dislike Aristotle though), and did not want to persecute others as they had once been persecuted. Part of the order involved demolishing pagan temples such as the Serapeum, which had been built on the site of the Great Library. The best evidence we have suggests that the Serapeum was first built before Aurelian burned the Royal Quarter, and that at that time it included a small library housing the remnants of the Great Library. It seems that those were all lost in the fire though, and that the even smaller library of the new Sarepeum contained only very recent literature (mostly poetry devoted to false gods) at the time that the Christians destroyed the temple. There were no great scientific works destroyed by the christian mob.