Yeah, I don’t have much faith in people’s abilities to communicate such things well.
For all we know the Bible’s mostly misquotes.
It’s probably not appropriate to assume ‘RAWR’ based on what crazy people say, that’s just another variant of the same problem.
Ironically, in reality world, there are men who don’t have either 
But you touch on an interesting question which is: why, if man is made in his image, did god need genitalia in the first place?
I don’t know of any. It’s not in the catechism, I think.
I expect that there’s plenty of time in heaven for God to tell me His conditions for my entry into the afterlife. The God I used to believe in wouldn’t have attached any more conditions.
“Accept Jesus as your lord and saviour” sounds more like American-style fire-and-brimstone protestantism than “old European” Catholicism. They might say something like “Accept God’s Love into your heart”, but they’d be talking about “love-thy-neighbour” stuff and not about a formal act of acceptance. So an atheist who “follows his conscience” and ends up being “worthy” of going to heaven could be said to have accepted God’s love without knowing it.
Attempting to kill that particular vengeful God might be the Right Thing to do, but it is also a pretty stupid thing to do. If scripture is accurate, God is pretty unkillable. If scripture is accurate about God, the real question is - how accurate is scripture and tradition about the Other Guy? Was Lucifer a principled resister to God’s Evil and was therefore cast down from Heaven? Or was Lucifer just another power-hungry supernatural being that lost in a power struggle against God? Maybe we just have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Of course, any God who offers me a place in heaven despite the fact that I denied His existence is already at least a little bit better than the God of literally interpreted scripture. That alone would be enough for me that, if I met Him after my death, I’d give Him the benefit of the doubt and ask him some hard questions instead of immediately renouncing him or attempting to kill Him.
Balls and a noodly appendage, however…
That sort of reasoning strikes me as painfully similar to what might have led someone to accept the role of Kapo in a concentration camp.
It’s notable that the non-Kapo survivors of the camps did not look kindly upon those who made that choice; the Israeli, German and Polish courts after the war tended to view Kapos as little different from the Nazis themselves.
There are levels of evil that demand resistance, even if that resistance is suicidal and futile.
I agree, some cosmologies have been more or less naive than others. But what I was thinking of, and lacking the word for at the time, was cosmogeny. Humans saying that they have a certain place in the universe makes perfect sense, but the myths about its creation have been almost exclusively personal and cultural.
Why do you start by asking whether or not this accurately represents my position, and then immediately follow it with a statement asserting that it does? I never stated any personal standards, nor dismissed anyone. So I am not sure what you are getting at there.
It’s a nice gesture, but for a true atheist, that won’t differ one bit from him saying that atheists go to hell, even when they follow their consciences.
Pope Francis: atheists who follow their consciences (might) be welcome in Heaven
Not wanting to sound mean or ungrateful, but…
Arduenn Schwartzman: believers who follow their consciences will be stone dead when they’re dead, their souls not going anywhere either because there weren’t any souls anyway—according to scientific theory, awareness exists only in living tissue.
That more of a Hebrew thing, so up that bacon intake.
This comment makes me wonder if you understand very much about the God portrayed by Christian Scripture. The Christian God isn’t an entity within space and time (although he manifests himself there). He’s the cause and sustainer of both. What you’re saying is kind of like “I’m going to destroy the universe and all the laws of nature.”
You’re going to join me in the corner with the other unintelligent people? Let’s all show solidarity.
Stating one set of unprovable paradoxes doesn’t invalidate someone else’s set of unprovable paradoxes.
So will we have to or can we opt out? So many questions…
actually he says you can get in to heaven, but not how long you’re allowed to stay, maybe they’re only expecting the atheists to stay for the weekend and then as the days wear on they start getting more passive aggressive at hinting that maybe now you really ought to get going to purgatory or maybe even hell, this doesn’t mean it hasn’t been super nice having you hear to visit and you can come back maybe next year but really we need some alone time.
Agreed - I’m reading a very good book on congnitive dissonance at the moment - the main point is the old truism that the bad guy thinks that HE’S the good guy. I suppose his point is, if you’re genuinely trying to do the right thing, and wind up in front of Shimon Cephas being told it was all wrong, if you honestly say “I thought I was helping people - I’m so sorry”, then you’ll be forgiven and allowed in.
He’s basically moved the cut-off point from the instants before death when you can still repent whilst wearing your skin suit to the moment at the Pearly (and other gems) gates when you discover that you were wrong. The question is whether your soul (the situation pre-supposes that you have one) can throw the effects of cognitive dissonance, and admit that what you thought of as the right thing was wrong, rather than saying “Mistakes were made”.
I should think that you can opt out - there are those who opine that hell consists of knowing that you could have gone to heaven, and chose not to.
On the other hand, there is always the idea that heaven is what’s heaven for you - I recall a Smith & Jones sketch which had a Hellfire & Brimstone preacher getting sent down, and being perfectly happy to get what he deserved, and an “anything’s alright” type complaining bitterly about going up (after stealing a snack from the vending machine in the waiting room for St Pete).
If you genuinely belived that it was the right thing to do, and are genuinely sorry if (note the if) it turns out that you were wrong…
I’m curious about what we do when someone’s conscience genuinely tells
them to (e.g.) stand in the pathway of a bus filled with children who
are fleeing violent, chaotic failed states, holding signs that say
“RETURN TO SENDER?”
I think he’s expressing a wider sense of freedom of concience - much like democracies are meant to do.
Sort of denying that old saw that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.
He seems to me to be expressing the traditional deontological position that it is your intent that matters, not the act or its consequences. The saw that he seems to be denying is the utilitarian concept that the best intent is evil if the unforseen consequences are bad.
Piers Anthony has quite a good take on Kantian ethic in “On a Pale Horse”, basically saying that only good done for its own sake counts in terms of salvation by works: if you do a good thing to get in to heaven, then this is a selfish end, and likely to have the opposite effect. On the other hand, a character who knows that she is going to hell, and sacrifices herself on the basis that she has nothing to lose, finds herself going to heaven for her selfless act.
I don’t know. But it is the same reasoning that led some people in the concentration camps to survive rather than going out in a blaze of glory trying to kill all the SS men in the camp with their bare hands.
I wasn’t talking about being God’s Kapo. Just about not attempting to kill Him when there’s no chance of succeeding.
Also, the “who/what is the lesser evil” thinking is important. Not acting before you know enough might also be important.
Why?
If there is any doubt about either “suicidal” or “futile”, there might be a point. But if God is as absolute as described in the Bible, no. That’s utilitarian ethics. If there is a chance to kill the Evil God, it is better to wait a little and find out what else about the scriptures is inaccurate.
[quote=“dug, post:131, topic:71225”]
This comment makes me wonder if you understand very much about the God portrayed by Christian Scripture.[/quote]
Christian Scripture can be understood in many ways. Atheists will say it is self-contradictory, but I guess believers will prefer terms like “multi-layered” or “deep”. And the interpretation we’re blaspheming about right now is the interpretation of God as a person who acts by slaughtering Egypt’s first-born, by commanding Abraham to murder his own son, by torturing Job and murdering his family just because he can. I am well aware that scripture can be read in more civilised ways. But I am not (at this moment) mocking that God.
As a true atheist, I disagree.
In this, very real, life, I cannot be friends with people who think that I deserve eternal torture. This is the point where my religious tolerance ends.
If a madman says his imaginary friend wants to kill me, I won’t be afraid of the imaginary friend. I will be afraid of the madman. And even more so if the madman approves of what his imaginary friend wants to do to me.
By contrast, a crazy person who thinks their imaginary friend wants to be nice to me can even be my friend.
So how can you say it doesn’t differ one bit?
Yes, Catholicism definitely isn’t based on utilitarian ethics.
But judging intent rather than outcome makes a lot of sense in the context of divine reward and punishment.
According to some part of Catholic teaching, people have Free Will, which I take to mean that God doesn’t want to meddle (much) in people’s motivations. They say He doesn’t want to just move His Divine Little Finger and make evil people good.
Under that premise, the following makes sense: Take all well-intentioned people to Heaven, and then pour some divine wisdom over them, so from now on their actions will be genuinely good. [unless you subscribe to the interpretation of heaven as a state without any change, and therefore without any actions, and therefore, in my opinion, without any life].
Doing it using utilitarian ethics doesn’t work: Take all people who managed to be a net benefit to the world, no matter their intentions. They won’t all be well-intentioned. Making them well-intentioned violates the concept of Free Will.
Well, for one, the pope’s still not my friend, no matter what he says.
And I’m quite sure the larger part of my own family still thinks that I will go to hell, because that’s how their (protestant) belief is. I can’t hate them for just that. They’re family, even though they’re brainwashed.
