Up until recently I was agnostic and secure in the belief that God could be neither proved nor disproved. I supported all religions while choosing not to follow one myself. (I figured that a decent God would let me in to the good place based on my life)
I considered Sonhouse a Militant Atheist who maybe had had a bad experience with a Priest as a lad.
HOWEVER ... the Sprituality Forum has really made me think. So many different opinions, so many lies, so many wasted lives.
The probability of there being a god (ie no evidence at all) is so close to zero that I am a DEVOTE ATHEIST now. And what Sonhouse says is so true. Religion is actually destructive: it wastes money, resources and peoples souls (ie their one and only life) and holds back science.
But the biggest and most evil "sin" of religion is the indoctrination of our children. If any of your religions were so special they would be able to convert adults at the age of 21 but we all know that most "devotees" are dragged into religion at birth.
It is a crime!
End of rant ... back to my games ...
Originally posted by wolfgang59Well, if you want to get down to it, organized religion is something like a "social virus" that transmits itself by infecting minds with its memes (rather like genes). It can evolve and adapt to avoid becoming extinct just like any mayfly, and serves oppressive hierarchical power structures and authoritarian attitudes about "who should be in charge" very well.
Up until recently I was agnostic and secure in the belief that God could be neither proved nor disproved. I supported all religions while choosing not to follow one myself. (I figured that a decent God would let me in to the good place based on my life)
I considered Sonhouse a Militant Atheist who maybe had had a bad experience with a Priest as a lad. ...[text shortened]... re dragged into religion at birth.
It is a crime!
End of rant ... back to my games ...
Originally posted by SoothfastYou are quite correct - I'm only just seeing the insidious evil of religion; it really is such a shame that so many good people are wrapped up in it.
Well, if you want to get down to it, organized religion is something like a "social virus" that transmits itself by infecting minds with its memes (rather like genes). It can evolve and adapt to avoid becoming extinct just like any mayfly, and serves oppressive hierarchical power structures and authoritarian attitudes about "who should be in charge" very well.
What can society do? The UN is possibly the only hope since individual states are normally obsessed with a single religion (despite their constitutions). Should the UN Rights of the Child be extended/amended?
Originally posted by SoothfastSoothfast,you have called me subhuman,"sumbitch",a bloody hypocrite and someone who makes a pretense of being a "Sadhak" !
Does the real rvsakhadeo know his 9-year-old little brother has access to his account?
You're Mr. Namaste when Taoman comes 'round for a chat, putting on transcendent airs of elevated high-falutin'-ness as a "fellow sadhak" on the "path to spirituality" or whatever; but in reality you're just about as nasty a sumbitch as can be. Being something of a ...[text shortened]... ative spiritual wisdom, or drop the pretense. As it stands you seem a bloody hypocrite.
Why ? What makes you call me all these names ? I am nearly 65 years old and a practicing engineering consultant,being a team leader on a complex urban interchange construction.I am deeply into Bhakti Sadhana and I love the Universe and its Creator.
Why are you getting so violently personal when all that I am saying is that modern science esp.neuroscience has written off Mind,Emotions as bio-chemical activity let alone Free Will and Soul.
I respect my fellow posters like Taoman and Black Beetle etc.and atheists like rwingett or andrew hamilton or twithead.Never did I get such choicest expletives hurled at me from any opponent.Not even from 667joe or sonhouse.
By the way Hitler used to call all slavs and jews as subhuman.Do you admire Hitler ?
Originally posted by sonhouse
So you think somehow I APPROVE of all this brainwashing? I don't think you have been reading much of my posts then.
I've read quite a few of your posts, and some of them seem quite rational, especially the ones in the Science forum. It's only the ones where you mention religion that seem to be rants from one end to the other, without much reason to sustain them.
And once humans are gone from the planet Earth, hopefully by colonizing elsewhere in the solar system or Alpha Centauri or something, the planet will get along just fine without us. I guess that is what you meant.
You're being purposely obtuse. 🙂 I think what I meant is pretty clear: you appear to want to use the force of law to get rid of religion. For those who won't give it up, you'll have to apply a Hitleresque solution. Don't know whether you're up to that personally, but clearly there's no shortage of people who are. And as far as I can tell, you wouldn't mind.
But if we off ourselves before we can colonize say, the moon or Mars, there will be no fairy god mother come down and go bippity boppity boo and everything will be better, all the boo boos we created on Earth will be magically restored. Good luck with that one.
That is one of my biggest gripes against religion, this idea that there is this magic backup plan where we cannot screw things up so bad we will be saved at the last minute.
Which religion says that? Not mine, for sure. Here as elsewhere, when you let your hatred for religion carry you away, you stop making sense.
"Deus ex machina" is a device in a play, not in any real religion I'm aware of. In Catholicism, God will not return to save the world, but to judge it. And His schedule is unknown to anybody here, so nobody's counting on it for anything--that's the whole point. In Catholicism at least, you're judged for what you have done (and may be forgiven, if you've done ill and you're truly sorry).
God forgives and everything is all right in the end, for those who will love God more than themselves (which, if you actually read the Bible, involves "loving your neighbor as yourself" as well--this is one of the main ways we have of showing we love God)--but not before justice is served (Purgatory, anyone?).
I imagine that if we were to really, finally screw up the world, it would not go well with us on Judgment Day. So much for "fairy godmothers."
(You spend a lot of time ranting against "religion" and making demonstrably false claims about it. In another post you said that all religious people thought exactly alike. Even you should be able to see the laughability of that. Just look around in here, for crying out loud!)
If you think that way, take a look at how that worked out with dinosaurs. Don't see too many of them around today. They converted to chickens.
I don't have a dog (or a cock, I guess) in that fight anymore. Evolution could conceivably be right; no theory of *how* the world came about can affect the *why* or the *that* of existence. And even the "how" is a matter of evidence (but it still seems to me far from settled, for what that's worth).
The world moves on. If the dinosaurs had lived, would we be here? I don't know. (And neither do you.) But we can be thankful that "they gave their lives for tourism."
Much as you all desperately want there to be a fairy god mother to make everything right, you will find out the hard way when the last human breaths her last breath and dies, and the planet just goes on as usual, now given a chance to correct all our screwups which it can do very well without us, thank you very much.
It's not me who desperately wants a "fairy godmother" to patch things up, it's you. The only difference between you and the "religious believers," whoever they are, who want a "fairy godmother" is that you think you can build one. And your desperation to save the human race from the consequences of its own folly is such that you stop thinking and start shouting when your Nemesis, "religion," so much as raises its head anywhere. You sound panicked, and that's not conducive to clear thinking.
Your technological solutions depend on massive, uninterrupted supplies of cheap, portable, safe, clean energy. I got news for you: you can have two of those four 🙂 But that's not really news to you. The cheap energy is nearly gone: the marginal energy cost of extracting a barrel of oil has been steadily rising since we hit "peak oil" a few years back. And nuclear is turning into a boondoggle, at least the "weaponized" versions that are in use all over the world. True, thorium might be a good substitute, but can you get it past the quite justifiable reaction against nuclear that Fukushima, when its true effects are known, will engender? (And why haven't we heard from Ft. Calhoun lately? I hope it's because there's nothing to hear... but I don't necessarily believe that.)
Who is the realist and who is dreaming up "fairy godmothers" here? You keep speculating about the technology that is going to save us from the consequences of our actions, but your technological Kool-Aid is just the same pixie dust packaged to be attractive to the mechanically-inclined. Your competencies deceive you into trying to apply engineering solutions to non-engineering problems.
Maybe a hundred million years later some other life form will come about with our level of intelligence, maybe a super spider or chimps evolving into another higher primate. Problem there is, we will have screwed up the planet so much that even a hundred million years later, the resources we are using up at an astounding rate will be gone and may take TWO hundred million years to recover.
... snip ...
If we off ourselves, we would richly deserve to be thrown on the junk heap of history. And ten million years later, if some new intelligence does evolve, there won't be a trace of us left over, maybe some background isotope ratio's that don't add up or something, future scientists may deduce a past civilization but they for sure won't find our libraries, statues and such.
If you're right--if there's no God and we off ourselves--, there will *be* no history (and even the existence of "junk heaps" would be debatable, without anybody around to debate it).
E.F. Schumacher, who was no dummy, and who had what I hope you will agree is some small concern for the environment, converted to Catholicism while writing Small is Beautiful. This after (and partially because of) reading Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, the one in which the Pope confirmed the Church's ban on contraception. Schumacher said, "If he had written anything else, I'd have lost all faith in the Papacy." Who knows how many brilliant minds, who may have had the solutions to our problems, have been flushed down the toilet or tossed in the dumpster since then? And all in the name of convenience and "saving the planet from overpopulation." Give me a break. If people were really serious about saving this planet, they would show it by action, or rather by refraining from action--by doing the only thing that's guaranteed not to cause babies: keeping their pants on. (And staying together to raise the children they DO conceive wouldn't hurt, either.) But for some of us, being able to use our private parts however we want, wherever we want, regardless of their natural purpose(s), trumps all else. Contraception is the "vomitorium" of the modern West. (Chesterton pegged it as usual: "birth control" is really a misnomer--it results in no birth and no control. The epitome of a "technological" solution to a moral problem: unintended consequences all over the place, just like the hormones in the water supply. Yeah, technology will solve *all* our problems. Riiiight. We're such geniuses!) If you DO want intellectual help in solving the problems of the human race, it might be wise to stop killing people off before they even have a chance to contribute. That is the selfishnesss that will ultimately doom us, if anything does.
We need to at least replace ourselves. How are we going to reverse the graying of the West? It's looking like lights-out for all of the contraceptive societies in fifty or a hundred years. I guess we're just going to sit around and play with ourselves, or each other, till there's nobody left to change our Depends.
Of course, our technological hubris may be solving that problem for us soon. We may have to adjust to threescore years and ten being pretty old again, as it was not so long ago.
Look: the bottom line in all of this is *your own* life. Neither of us is going to see missions to Mars in our lifetimes, let alone Alpha Centauri. If Christianity is wrong, then yes, we're pretty miserably misled people. But if Christianity is right, the shoe's on the other foot.
Your concern for the human race is laudable (if perplexing, given the logical consequences of your convictions, but despite atheism's claim to be rational, I guess when the rubber hits the road, it's not surprising that you're irrationally attached to the survival of some purposeless arrangement of atoms that the impersonal universe couldn't give two "shytes" about). The big question is, is this the final act or the test run? When you examine all the evidence with a clear head, the answer eventually comes clear. Well, more or less... and it takes time. 🙂
[Grammatical corrections edited in--the ones I spotted, anyway. --pyx]
When any debate deteriorates to personal attacks and character assassination, it really reflects on the poster, not the postee.
Personally, I think the entire "religion" vs "atheism" debate would be much simplified (and clarified) if one talked about "world view" rather than "religion".
Some people's World View includes a Great Spirit and, perhaps, immortality. Others' includes neither, but worship of stones and plants.
Atheism is as much a religion as any other - they have "beliefs", that are able to be stated coherently, and "members" of this "religion" can identify each other and with each other.
In fact, it is a "world view", just like some people have a world view that the earth was created and that the creator still lives, or that the earth was never created and rests on four giant tortoises.
One doesn't have to believe in a "god" to be called "religious". See, for example animists and naturists.
I find myself increasingly drawn to people whose world view (in the broadest of terms) I can identify with.
This includes elements of stuff that rvsakhedo writes about, but also much from my own Christian background. At the same time, I shudder and shrink from some of the radical (and offensive and divisive and most seriously: unloving) statements posted by certain "Christians" on RHP.
I do NOT call myself "religious", because I despise the excesses and hypocrisy of organised religion as much as the neighbourhood atheist does! Rather, I would call myself "Spiritual" because I believe in an immortal Spirit, (as well as my own immortal spirit).
Therefore, herewith my humbled plea, or rather suggestion, that we refrain from talking about "religion" as a cover-all and focus on which specific world view we are attacking or supporting.
PS: As pertains to the damage that "religion" does to children, how about the ultra-damaging world view of crass commercialism and materialism that some parents inflict on their children? They will grow up worshipping Mammon, often incapable of compassion and self-sacrifice.
It is a sad fact that whatever world view you hold, some or most of it will inevitably rub off on your offspring.
In peace,
CJ
Originally posted by CalJust
When any debate deteriorates to personal attacks and character assassination, it really reflects on the poster, not the postee.
True, and insofar as you're applying that to me, I guess I'll have to plead "guilty as charged."
Personally, I think the entire "religion" vs "atheism" debate would be much simplified (and clarified) if one talked about "world view" rather than "religion".
Personally I disagree. I think it was Einstein who said "things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." This strikes me as an oversimplification.
Atheism is as much a religion as any other - they have "beliefs", that are able to be stated coherently, and "members" of this "religion" can identify each other and with each other.
True, but you'll get no end of argument out of some atheists about that. 🙂
I find myself increasingly drawn to people whose world view (in the broadest of terms) I can identify with.
Imagine that! Me too 🙂
This includes elements of stuff that rvsakhedo writes about, but also much from my own Christian background. At the same time, I shudder and shrink from some of the radical (and offensive and divisive and most seriously: unloving) statements posted by certain "Christians" on RHP.
Would the quoting of "Christians" (with whch I don't necessarily disagree, but you and I would likely not see eye-to-eye on when the quotes were apposite and when they weren't) imply that you do, despite your pose of impartiality, have some Christian "orthodoxy" in mind?
I do NOT call myself "religious", because I despise the excesses and hypocrisy of organised religion as much as the neighbourhood atheist does! Rather, I would call myself "Spiritual" because I believe in an immortal Spirit, (as well as my own immortal spirit).
So for you there is no social component to "spirituality," just "what's right for you" and "what's right for me?"
Therefore, herewith my humbled plea, or rather suggestion, that we refrain from talking about "religion" as a cover-all and focus on which specific world view we are attacking or supporting.
Well, believe it or not, I actually agree with this. As I will never tire of pointing out (and as some of you are probably already getting tired of hearing 🙂 ), for a discussion to really bear any fruit, people have to be talking about the same things using the same words, and taking some care to figure out "what they need not argue about" before arguing.
In peace,
CJ
I think this is an example of crying "peace, peace" when there is no peace... the modern version of which is, "why can't we all just get along?"
I don't intend to hurt anyone by posting as I do, but then again I don't intend to let things I see as wrong pass without an answer, either. I try only to insult people deliberately, and not to make it personal, but focus my derision on what I perceive to be wrongheaded ideas. I'm sure my opponents do the same, at least I assume so. sonhouse and jaywill and others are big boys and girls and fully capable of taking care of themselves, and giving as good as they get.
So get over it. And come on in--the water's fine. A bit hot at times, but hey, that's debate 🙂
Originally posted by CalJustThank you very much for your kind words !
When any debate deteriorates to personal attacks and character assassination, it really reflects on the poster, not the postee.
Personally, I think the entire "religion" vs "atheism" debate would be much simplified (and clarified) if one talked about "[b]world view" rather than "religion".
Some people's World View includes a Great Spirit and ...[text shortened]... t will inevitably rub off on your offspring.
In peace,
CJ[/b]
I very much appreciate your leaning towards spiritualism rather than any "religion" as such.
We are all citizens of this lonely planet whirling away in a corner of the universe and we do feel the need for brotherhood and mutual respect. Especially at this critical juncture in human history when humans are bent on inflicting violent deaths on each other for the flimsiest of reasons or no reasons at all.
While posting on this forum my aim has been to highlight what the westerners who are the majority on RHP may not have much knowledge about viz. Hindu Spiritual Thought.Sometimes that may not go down well with some but I know that even the stoutest resistance of the atheists will eventually give way to tolerance,if not acceptance. By inclination and due to the inculcated spirit of my culture,I welcome all on to the threads even though they may oppose my views.Wishing Good debating to all !
Originally posted by rvsakhadeoI was prepared to give you a proper accounting of myself and my position until this last line. Why don't you print out these posts of yours and take 'em to your guru. Maybe he can connect the dots for you.
By the way Hitler used to call all slavs and jews as subhuman.Do you admire Hitler ?
Originally posted by rvsakhadeoBy the way, it was Hitler and his followers who advanced the notion that Slavs, Jews and other "Untermenschen" had no soul. Are you and Hitler going steady?
I postulate that many miltant atheists have already morphed into soulless assemblies of bio-chemical reactions. Certainly their senses have lost all capacity for appreciating beauty,love,fellow feeling etc.
Originally posted by pyxelatedI disagree. I think it was Einstein who said "things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." This strikes me as an oversimplification.
Don't you agree that a religion is a way how one believes the world works? What is good and what is bad, who gets punished and who rewarded? That is a world view.
..... imply that you do, despite your pose of impartiality, have some Christian "orthodoxy" in mind?
I suspect that your use of the word Orthodoxy is borrowed from Chesterton, whom I know you admire. I've also read the book, and like him! Yes, just like a World View, we all have a concept of Orthodoxy, me too. However, what is in or out of yours will be debated by those who disagree - hence the zillions of denominations and schisms - not only in Christianity, but in Islam, Buddhism and others. Probably my closest take on Orthodoxy is CS Lewis in Mere Christianity.
So for you there is no social component to "spirituality," just "what's right for you" and "what's right for me?"
Where did you get this idea from in anything that I wrote?! Of course there is a major social component in any world view or spirituality! What I believe affects all around me with whom I interact. The question is HOW do I interact? Do I force my way down their throat? Do I assume infallibility? When Jesus mixed with social religious outcasts, he didn't do so to debate their religious views or standards - he showed love and compassion. Remember the "neither do I condemn you!"? Remember also that he saved his most scathing comments for those religious hypocrites (whose specific world view put themselves at the top of the pile) who sought to impose their own flawed ideas on others.
I think this is an example of crying "peace, peace" when there is no peace... the modern version of which is, "why can't we all just get along?"
Well, why can't we? How about a new Spanish Inquisition?
I try only to insult people deliberately, and not to make it personal, but focus my derision on what I perceive to be wrongheaded ideas.
Maybe this is just a simple grammar mistake (e.g. "I DON'T try to insult people deliberately, etc), but as it stands, it just doesn't make any sense.
Btw, I am also getting on in years, not a youngster anymore. One of the things that I have learned in my life is that without fail, every time in the past that I knew for sure that I was right, and publicly proclaimed it (including many of my posts in 2004 - 2006) I know now that I was wrong. Hence I will never again dogmatically say: I know exactly what the TRUTH is! Hopefully, I will still learn many things about how the world works!
Hi CalJust, thanks for your reply. In what follows I've kept my original responses you quoted to preserve the context.
An ongoing conversation between CalJust and pyxelated
pyx said:
I disagree. I think it was Einstein who said "things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." This strikes me as an oversimplification.
CalJust replied:
Don't you agree that a religion is a way how one believes the world works? What is good and what is bad, who gets punished and who rewarded? That is a world view.
pyx responds:
I think our disagreement here is one of terminology. Religion-as-a-system-of-worship can be distinguished from religion-as-a-"worldview." Worldview has a subjective connotation that religion doesn't. Religion usually involves recognition (and usually worship) of some powerful entity outside oneself; worldview has an impartiality that is sometimes useful in a clinical sort of way, but connotes a position somehow above the debate.
As we agreed above, everybody has a religion, even if they deny it, as atheists do. I'd rather avoid the clinical coldness of such words as "worldview"--one of those disgusting Anglicized Germanisms that have infiltrated colloquial English since the apotheosis of Freud, Jung, Heidegger, etc.
----------------------------------
pyx said:
..... imply that you do, despite your pose of impartiality, have some Christian "orthodoxy" in mind?
CalJust replied:
I suspect that your use of the word Orthodoxy is borrowed from Chesterton, whom I know you admire. I've also read the book, and like him! Yes, just like a World View, we all have a concept of Orthodoxy, me too. However, what is in or out of yours will be debated by those who disagree - hence the zillions of denominations and schisms - not only in Christianity, but in Islam, Buddhism and others. Probably my closest take on Orthodoxy is CS Lewis in Mere Christianity.
pyx responds:
No, I quoted "orthodoxy" to refer to your idea of what constitutes proper Christian belief; believe it or not, G.K. had nothing to do with it 🙂
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pyx said:
So for you there is no social component to "spirituality," just "what's right for you" and "what's right for me?"
CalJust replied:
Where did you get this idea from in anything that I wrote?!
pyx responds:
Well, not so much from anything explicit as from the atmosphere of your post, I guess. Maybe I was mistaken, but there is a definite air of herd-independence about your preference of "spirituality" to "organized religion." But I may have been too hasty. Please feel free to expound on the social aspects of your spirituality; I may learn something (it wouldn't be the first time! )
CalJust said:
Of course there is a major social component in any world view or spirituality! What I believe affects all around me with whom I interact.
pyx responds:
A point which is unfortunately all-too-often lost on many of those who glom onto some vague "spirituality" and reject "organized religion" as beneath them. I'm glad to hear you're not one of these. 🙂
CalJust said:
The question is HOW do I interact? Do I force my way down their throat? Do I assume infallibility?
pyx responds:
Okay, here's a term that needs clarification if ever there was one. Catholics use "infallibility" to mean papal infallibility, which is what's most often in question. There is a strict definition that was codified at the first Vatican Council in 1870 (it has been operative since the beginning, as have all de fide doctrines--the Church never invents any dogma, just confirms what has always been held to be so). Here goes:
What the Pope says is guaranteed by the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit, if you prefer) to be free from error under, and ONLY under, the following conditions:
1) He explicitly speaks in his official capacity as pastor (shepherd) and teacher of all Christians (see John 21 and Matthew 16)--the Latin term for this is ex cathedra, i.e., "from the chair [of Peter]" (Matt. 23:2-3);
2) He explicitly intends what he says to bind the entire Church. Viz., he must indicate that what he says is to be definitive and binding.
3) What he says concerns faith or morals. (Pizza preferences are off-limits, in se. Latinists, correct me here. 🙂 )
The last time the Pope used the charism of infallibility that I'm aware of was in 1995, when he confirmed the doctrine that women could not be priests. This has been believed from the beginning of the Church, as have all other truths of the Faith; it took nearly two millennia to be explicitly declared because in all that time it was never seriously challenged.
But besides Papal infallibility, the formal pronouncements (usually called canons) of ecumenical councils are infallible, as the Pope (at least by proxy, as at Nicaea) is a participant in every ecumenical council and ratifies its conclusions. These usually take the form of "anathemas," or condemnations, of specific heretical views.
I, pyxelated, am infallible in nothing. This is one of the big reasons I need a Church that is infallible in the important things--so I can know what is true and do it, with a minimum of philosophical and intellectual fuss. My understanding of the Faith is incorrect and incomplete, and will always be so. (God's "mind," even as it applies to human conduct and well-being, is beyond mine and always will be.) This has the added benefit for you that you can even correct me, by pointing out where the Church and I disagree on a subject. (Of course, depending on the subject, I may have a great deal of latitude in my opinions. But the important stuff is covered; all I have to do is do my best to follow it.)
CalJust said:
When Jesus mixed with social religious outcasts, he didn't do so to debate their religious views or standards - he showed love and compassion.
pyx responds:
Yes, but he didn't countenance evil, and he called a spade a spade. (Besides, He could work miracles to help Him get His message across. I haven't reached that level yet 🙂 --the only tools I have in here are words. Well, glyphs -> 🙂 ) Not only that, telling the truth is part of showing love, especially when the truth needs to be told. You don't love someone in error very well if you don't try to show them the truth. (Of course you have to use your best judgment. Some people just aren't ready to hear the truth--yet.)
And then there's St. Francis' dictum: "Preach the Gospel always. Use words when necessary." In this forum I've always found them necessary. Or is there a mind-meld option I've been missing? 🙂
CalJust said:
Remember the "neither do I condemn you!"? Remember also that he saved his most scathing comments for those religious hypocrites (whose specific world view put themselves at the top of the pile) who sought to impose their own flawed ideas on others.
pyx responds:
Jesus could call people "hypocrites" without having the term thrown back in His face. The rest of us are most definitely not in that position, so it's, er, hypocrital, at best (okay, maybe metahypocritical), to take a position from which one condemns the hypocrisy of others, no?
Granted, some of us try harder than others to avoid the taint of hypocrisy. But contrary to current secular orthodoxy, hypocrisy is not the unforgivable sin; in fact, "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue" comes much closer to the truth than the knee-jerk reaction that the very mention of the word has elicited from the followers of fashion in thought over the past forty or so years.
Two further points:
1) You're tacitly comparing my views to those of the Pharisees', at least in that you're calling both "wrong." I have a request: before you dismiss Catholic beliefs as wrong, please investigate what the Catholic Church says about itself (by reading, say, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and/or the Roman Catechism. The former is available for free online--Google it--and the latter may be; if memory serves, at newadvent.org, which also hosts the old Catholic Encyclopedia, which is much better than any of the new Catholic Encyclopedias, and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas.). Fulton Sheen once said something to the effect of "not one in a million people really hates the Catholic Church, they only hate their [inaccurate] idea of it." That runs parallel to G.K's "The Christian religion has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."
2) What really set me off about your post was the implied superiority to the adherents of "organized religion," who are all "hypocrites" and "excessive." I know you're probably just reflecting the fashions of our age--the '60s and '70s were rife with this kind of nonsense--but it still rankles with me, partly because it's the kind of stuff I mindlessly spouted for a long time. (Funny, isn't it, that it's usually your own shortcomings that annoy you most when you see them in others.)
So much for my counting abilities; here's #C:
C) I do not seek to impose my views on others; neither does the Church. True, at certain times in the past, and in certain places, certain members of my Church, including those in high places, have sought to do so. They have been wrong, and this has never been official policy. Again, true, in majority Catholic societies, public dissent from orthodox teaching has not always been treated as leniently as it has been in the classically-liberal English/American society we have grown up in and take for granted. But although the Anglo-American system has many merits, its ultimate suitability for human society is at least debatable, and the net effects are not always positive (as we are seeing today). Many books ...
I seem to have exceeded the maximum post length. Here's the rest.
C) I do not seek to impose my views on others; neither does the Church. True, at certain times in the past, and in certain places, certain members of my Church, including those in high places, have sought to do so. They have been wrong, and this has never been official policy. Again, true, in majority Catholic societies, public dissent from orthodox teaching has not always been treated as leniently as it has been in the classically-liberal English/American society we have grown up in and take for granted. But although the Anglo-American system has many merits, its ultimate suitability for human society is at least debatable, and the net effects are not always positive (as we are seeing today). Many books have been written on this Gordian knot of a subject, but I seem to have mislaid my sword, so we may have to discuss this another time (or two, or ten thousand).
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pyx said:
I think this is an example of crying "peace, peace" when there is no peace... the modern version of which is, "why can't we all just get along?"
CalJust replied:
Well, why can't we? How about a new Spanish Inquisition?
pyx counters:
It's the comfy chair for you, my lad. Harharharharhar.
Seriously, the evil of the Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated. I'm not saying all was lovey-dovey, and certainly not that no wrong was done, but if accused criminals frequently attempted to get their cases out of the secular courts of the day into the religious ones (and that's what the Inquisitions were: religious courts), how does that comport with the image of their being these monsters that devoured the lives of millions? The Wikipedia article on the Spanish Inquisition says that between 3,000 and 5,000 people were executed over the span of about 400 years. OK, not great... but by modern standards Torquemada was a piker. How does that merit comparison to the killing machines that existed in the 20th century? And all sides were killing each other during the Reformation. Elizabeth I of England executed many Catholics during the years 1580-1600 for the heinous crime of being a Catholic priest, or of harboring one.
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pyx said:
I try only to insult people deliberately, and not to make it personal, but focus my derision on what I perceive to be wrongheaded ideas.
CalJust replied:
Maybe this is just a simple grammar mistake (e.g. "I DON'T try to insult people deliberately, etc), but as it stands, it just doesn't make any sense.
pyx counters:
No, no mistake there. I try never to insult anybody unintentionally (IIRC that was somebody's definition of "gentleman"😉, and only to use insult as a provocation to thought, never as a personal attack. (That's one reason my posts are littered with smileys--I love teasing, irony, and sarcasm, which often don't translate well into print without nonverbal modulation.) Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway 🙂 ), I'm far from perfect, and if you catch me being mean, just let me know and I'll probably apologize (after I've cooled off a bit, maybe), or at least explain myself.
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CalJust said:
Btw, I am also getting on in years, not a youngster anymore. One of the things that I have learned in my life is that without fail, every time in the past that I knew for sure that I was right, and publicly proclaimed it (including many of my posts in 2004 - 2006) I know now that I was wrong. Hence I will never again dogmatically say: I know exactly what the TRUTH is! Hopefully, I will still learn many things about how the world works!
pyx replies:
Well, I still have to be careful (after all, my understanding of the Faith is still developing, and I hope to keep growing it as long as I live), but at least I know where to go for the truth about the really important things now. It's been this way for over 10 years since my conversion, and I don't see that ever changing.
So only for some things will I say that I know dogmatically what the truth is. The rest, of course, is subject to my many human failings 🙂