About retro-actively baptising by Mormons
This give me an idea. Why don’t we pass on to the mormons all the names of ISIS leaders and people who go there to fight. Abu Bakr Al-Bagdadi first.
Bert
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If I believed in such nonsense, all my friends would be South of that border and I’d rather hang with my peeps than homeboy hey-sus, so I guess this is all moot.
If he did that, I would find myself in even more disagreement with the Pope than I am already (much less than his predecessor, but still.) I do happen to think that Jesus is real. It’s the accreted miracles, the Pauline guff and the fourth Gospel, and the Sol Invictus/Mithra Roman add ons that I regard as bunkum.
An unofficial street Rabbi who preached that the murderous penalties of Leviticus and Deuteronomy should be stopped, that priestly castes and their hierarchies were hypocritical, that the Temple was not essential to religion, and that God should be thought of as a benevolent father figure rather than a wrathful avenger - yes, I can believe he was real.
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Most people have probably never even thought about it (I’m not disagreeing with you.)
The whole concept of creator gods, as you say, invites an interesting question; what makes us think, as limited beings stuck on a small planet of a mid-sized star, that we have the first clue about how the universe “really” functions? We’re mapping out a bit of it based on models that may be, like Ptolomy’s epicycles, in accordance with observation but otherwise utterly incorrect. The Abrahamic idea that we are some kind of special creation that can have a working relationship with a Creator is, to say the least, arrogant. But many humans do arrogance perhaps better than any other character trait.
Hinduism has at least advanced to the idea that local creator gods are of no particular importance in the scheme of things and are pretty illusory anyway. Personally I find the theological ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism more intellectually satisfactory than those of the Abrahamic religions, but of course with the fingers crossed caveat that it is all about metaphors.
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Gee, thanks, Pope! I’d also like to thank you for this big pile of Monopoly money, the Blockbuster free rental coupons, and the Radio Shack Battery Club card. I’ll treasure them all equally.
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Well, in this particular case, no one.
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I’d say that religion has never really had anything to do with cosmology. Myths function as a chronicle of and commentary upon human experience exclusively. When people read clearly metaphorical writing literally, this does not indict the context of the text, so much as it does their own literacy. With most literature, this is easy enough to see. Asking how Genesis can really be about cosmology is about as literate a criticism as complaining about how Star Trek stories can be from the future! Unfortunately, that seems to be precisely the kind of “debate” about religion that both sides mostly engage in.
I agree. Although I am not sure why the finger crossing should be necessary. It has never occurred to me that there is anything wrong with metaphor, in itself.
And to prevent laypeople from selectively interpreting the Holy Bible without proper respect for the living tradition of the Church and without proper aid from the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church in Her wisdom used to ban bible-reading for laypeople.
I smell a Protestant.
Don’t try to convince Catholics of anything by quoting from the Bible. The Catholic Church was there before the Bible.
And I wouldn’t agree. Myths have one role in trying to establish the relationship of human beings to everything else - they are about our place in the universe as well as trying to understand ourselves and our society. Genesis is such a mishmash because the compilers were not very interested in cosmology, but felt the need to have something to answer the question “what came before Abraham?”. But the myths Genesis references were those of the Mesopotamian city states, and we don’t really know how their inhabitants regarded their myths. We do know that early agricultural societies regarded events in the sky as being of great importance because they identified regularities that allowed the planning of the cycle of planting and reaping. Early cosmology might have been human-centred in that way, but the desire to understand how the movement of the sun, stars and planets operated (and thus to understand how the world worked) led to a lot of early mathematical development. When the peasant planted, there was a connection between this and what was happening in the sky, and the social organisation that made that possible was religious in the sense of res + ligio, i.e. the things that bind society together. Religion was intimately concerned with growing and also cosmology because they were aspects of the same thing.
Perhaps based on your earlier statements you feel that discussion of religion should be restricted to ordained clergy like yourself? I have replied to your post in case anybody else is interested, but your de haut en bas attitude and dismissal of anybody who, as you see it, doesn’t come up to your standards - well, you’re not Richard Dawkins, obviously, but you share some characteristics.
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Sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia are the main principles of the Reformation. They were all rejected by the Catholic church.
Sola scriptura is what causes crazy bible literalism.
Sola fide is used as an excuse to hate people who think differently.
Sola gratia means even the Righteous need to quake in their boots because God has the right to send them to hell on a whim, anyway.
Okay, maybe I’m being unfair, but I’m an atheist who was raised in moderate Catholicism.
Catholic doctrine, by contrast, has long held that good and bad deeds in this world matter to salvation.
I don’t know because I don’t understand the reference. The only Drax I know is a large coal powered generating station.
What I was doing was a demonstration of using pilpul/casuistry to get round a problem.
I have never met a single Catholic here in Austria who thought I was going to hell for not believing. I have heard of Catholics who will actually say that non-belief is a sin that will count against me. I have not met them in person, and I’ve heard Catholic priests refer to them as “crazy radicals”.
Oh, and 61% of Austrians are Catholic, so it’s not like I’ve been able to avoid them.
Well, Austria is a country with openly gay parish council members, so maybe Catholicism in Austria is not quite “typical”.
So I checked what the official text of the Roman Catholic Catechism (published in 1992) has to say about atheism.
Catechismum Catholicae Ecclesiae, 2125:
Atheismus, quatenus Dei exsistentiam reiicit vel
recusat, peccatum est contra virtutem religionis. Huius culpae
imputatio potest ample minui propter intentiones et adiuncta. In genesi et
diffusione atheismi, « partem non parvam habere possunt credentes, quatenus,
neglecta fidei educatione, vel fallaci doctrinae expositione, vel etiam vitae
suae religiosae, moralis ac socialis defectibus, Dei et religionis genuinum
vultum potius velare quam revelare dicendi sunt ».
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?
Oh well. Let’s try the English translation instead:
Since it rejects or denies the existence of God, atheism is a sin against the
virtue of religion. The imputability of this offense can be
significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances.
“Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To
the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or
present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social
life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God
and of religion.”
So, the Catholic Church considers atheism a sin. Just like remarrying after a divorce. Or taking God’s name in vain. Or missing church on a Sunday. What does the Catechism say about going to church on Sunday?
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2181:
The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian
practice. For this reason the faithful are obliged to participate in the
Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason […].
Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a
grave sin.
A “grave sin”. Which about 89% of Austrian Catholics commit once a week.
So it really depends on intentions and circumstances. My nonbelief might “officially” be a sin, but the Catholic Church has long ago admitted that there are many worse sins that people commit.
So according to the Catechism, it sounds quite likely that am atheist who leads a good life will be admitted to Heaven.
Conclusion: The pope is not saying anything new.
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Everything that isn’t literal goes over Drax’s head. Except he is too fast, cause he would catch anything over his head.
The previous post said he was a bondman, which I changed to “bondsman”. Which implies they use bounty hunters like Dog the bounty hunter for people that break their rules like me who flee to other…
sigh
Explaining humor always ruins it. And I even had a nice anagram in there as well…
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Isn’t a pantheon polytheistic by definition?
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2clever5me
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Ahem. Explaining humor means more people can get the joke.
It’s a lot like religion. The more people understand the basics the more we can all laugh together.
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Isn’t there still a requirement of post-mortem conversion (i.e. “accept Jesus as your lord and saviour” etc.)?
Well, if I die and run into somebody afterwards that says ‘hey, here’s what was really going on behind the scenes’, I’m going to be intrigued in the face of the new information, even if it is Loki pretending to be Jesus.
So there’s that.
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OTOH, if I ran into something that claimed to be the god portrayed in Christian scripture, I would be strongly motivated to try and kill it. The biblical deity is blatantly monstrous; an entity to be resisted rather than worshipped.
If scripture is accurate, God is demonic.
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