Normally I never bother to read posts like this, but I'm procrastinating so I clicked.

Ummmm......no!
I spent 13 years in Catholic school, and not once have I heard this.

The rest I didn't really find to be misconceptions, but maybe that's because I was forced to learn the bible inside and out.

Same here(which is why I am now Wiccan) but there are those who have either PM'd me or have come o my doorstep spouting alot of the things mentioned above.

I always have fun correcting them on it and referring them to the correct bible verses.

This is actually really good stuff, the actual contents of the Bible are surprisingly not well understood by society at large.

Annnnnnnnd speaking of misunderstanding something...

This is actually referring to a young goat, which is called a kid. It does not mean your child.

um....

I gotta go turn off the stove.

Strange, every catholic person I know believes in the Immaculate Conception that Mary was born without original sin, thus she was able to not pass along original sin to Jesus.

Maybe they teach us different up here in Canada! I actually phoned my grandma on this one (she's a darling little devout old lady) and she had heard of this only once, in Corpus Christi.

Either way, I got detention for not blindly believing that god knocked up Mary. I'm glad those days are over!

Haha.

I got in trouble from my parents for insinuating that God DID knock Mary up, maybe it was the way I said it though lol.

"...such as the rule about not cooking one's kid in it's mother's milk..."

Please please please tell me that no one mistakes this for the cooking of human children in any ones milk!

To the rest of it I say that my initial reading causes me to think that these are accurate. But I would add that just because there are many common misconceptions about what is in the bible only proves that there aren't many who actually study it. Too me none of these should be faith shaking revelations to anyone, except for some poorly taught Catholics and the immaculate conception stuff. Some of the other "misconceptions" are based on other historical and scholarly writings. Read Wikis entry on Mary Magdelene for example. I do appreciate the fact that something has been posted that supports the the consistency of the bible and its unchanging nature. All and all a good find!

Please please please tell me you're joking and not really underestimating the blinding stupidity that so often embraces humanity.

Curious. I actually have never heard that Mary was herself concieved immaculately either. Maybe it is a Canada thing.

Either way, I know the bible inside and out thanks to my Catholic upbringing, and I get a kick out of "out-bibling" some of the pushier Christians that feel the need to save my poor secular soul.
I like my rocks billions of years old, and I have yet to hear or see any evidence of the waters above. Now, good night.

I like statements that are worded well. "the blinding stupidity that so often embraces humanity" has now been entered into my memory slot of "well worded phrases that I hope to have a reason to use someday."

Like so much of Christianity, this little nugget has precious little to do with the Bible.

Pope Pius IX deemed it part of Catholic Dogma in 1854 that at the moment of Mary's conception* God intervened and filled her with his grace, protecting her from the burden of Original Sin™.

What most people mean when they say Immaculate Conception is Virginal Conception. Mary's was immaculate, Jesus' was Virginal.

I'm not a Catholic, but to me this is what I'd count as common knowledge (OK, so I had to look up which Pope it was, but the rest).

As part of Catholic Dogma, I am surprised that it's not a major part of Catholic education.




*The belief at the time was that conception took place at the point when the soul entered the vessel of the body, and so is not in any way connected to Joachim and Anne's rutting.



(Comment not directed at you specifically, Tundra. Just using your comment as the basis of mine, hence the quote. I don't want you to get the impression I'm criticising you for not being taught this).

I'd loved to have been a fly on the wall when Mary explained to Joseph that it really was magic.

I certainly wouldn't call these the top ten misconceptions, but they are definetly very interesting ones. Back when I was still being fooled into Christianity, most of my Baptist church liked to forget about the malicious wrathfully god of the old Testament and talk about the New Covenant. I never understood how an omnipotent and all-knowing god is supposed to change his mind.

Interestingly enough, I'm going to rescind my original quote where I said that every Catholic I know has been taught that. It's actually quite the opposite.

When I asked them about the immaculate conception, they said they believed in it, and when I pushed further about the immaculate conception being Mary born without original sin, they said I was wrong. I had to prove to them that the Pope said that Mary was born without original sin.

I thought it was interesting that I knew more about this part of their doctrine than they did.

It does, I suppose, raise the question of how much detail regarding a faith (any faith) you need to have before you can call yourself a member of that faith.

I'm always quite flabbergasted to discover how few people both inside and outside Christian churches don't know what being a Christian means.

And it's a lot simpler than most people think.