Freedom vs social control

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niceatheist said:
social control so inherent in organized religion
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Remember Brendan Eich, forced from the company he founded, for donating to the “wrong” side of California’s Prop 8 campaign?

And believe me, that happens on all sorts of levels throughout society.

There is social control everywhere. groups have norms, and they engage in all sorts of actions to get people to adhere to them.

Candice Owen’s has been called racist and anti-woman for her stances: she is a black woman.

So it’s not just in religion that social norms are enforced.

I won’t go into each of the issues you raise, but there are food arguments on the anti- side. At the same time, I will argue on the opposing side for one of those issues 😉 (HP)
niceatheist said:
It strikes me that for some , religion is a legalistic entity,
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You are right, but the emphasis should be on the word some. The same can be said of most other belief systems, because there are people who are, for whatever reason, inclined towards a rigorous legalistic entity.

Some seem legalistic in one area because of their passion, some
are merely passing through this phase, others honestly believe it, and still others want a cudgel to beat people over the head with.

But Catholicism is not actually that way. Christ condemned the legalism of the Pharisees.

I see Catholicism as kind of like an owner’s manual put out by a manufacturer. It is not legalistic to say that the oil needs to be changed every XX,000 miles, is it?

At the same time, we should not beat people over the head if they don’t change their oil that often, should we?
niceatheist said:
you stifle all intellectual curiousity
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Wow… you know the develiper of the big bang theory was a Catholic priest? The father of genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel? The discoverer of germs, Louis Pasteur, was a devout Catholic?

Not to mention St Thomas Aquinas, whose “Philosopher” was Aristotle, “Avicenna” was Ibn Sina, “Commentator” was Ibn Rushd, and “Rabbi Moses” Maimonides? Along with the numerous Catholic sources.

And if you really want to get into the intellectually curious, there is GK Chesterton, whose curiosity brought him to Catholicism, along with Mortimer Adler, Jacques Maritain, Clare Luce Booth, and Marshall McLuhan, among many others throughout the 2000+ years since Christ.

On a personal basis, I find that Catholicism makes me more intellectually curious, both because there is more to be curious about, and because there is a reason to be curious.
niceatheist said:
I can’t imagine ever abiding by someone telling me what to read or who to vote for, and yet that seems to be the tendency with some here
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Again, the fact that some do this sort of thing does not mean that all do so, nor that any ought to.

Even Pope Benedict wrote that people should not vote for politicians because of their support of abortion, but that in the face of a proportionate reason, people could vote for supporters of abortion’s being legal.
 
niceatheist said:
It strikes me that for some , religion is a legalistic entity, that either you abide by not only certain rules, but also that you stifle all intellectual curiousity, and further that even non believers must be forced to abide by the religion’s rules, or at least the rules as they it.
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You already are doing what you want. If they want to tell others what to do it is practically their right. This is pretty much a non issue if you ignore it at least on the Internet, but that’s usually where it takes place anyways.
 
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niceatheist said:
So you believe birth controls should be banned, that your own religious beliefs should be coercively applied to non-believers?
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I think birth control is a side issue.

A loving marriage for life between one man and one woman, and before God is at the heart of our concerns. If we are to bring children into this world, we first need to have a loving, kind, caring and forgiving relationship with our spouse.

Sadly, in the UK, by the time children reach fifteen, about half of them are not living with both their biological parents. When marriages break down, communities break down. Birth control gives people the freedom to sleep around and supposedly have a good time, without any real sense of commitment.

A loving lifetime relationship has to be a greater goal, than lots of short term flings. I may be wrong, but I sense that the secular world is relaxed about self interest and casual relationships.
 
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So can one read Harry Potter and be a good Catholic, or choose not to demand the banning of the birth control pills, or even vote for the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump and still be a good Catholic?
 
niceatheist said:
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons I abandoned religion, and still struggle with it to this day, is the social control so inherent in organized religion. I don’t mean to repeat the fallacious argument that religion was created as a means of social control, but rather how it used by some believers to bully other believers.
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I get this all the time and believe me when I tell you the Catholic Church is very unpopular in Australia ATM because of the sexual abuse of children. So the social control is conflated with that issue. We don’t do the political democrats vs republican thing here.

For me personally there are rules to being a Catholic, they stem from the Commandments of God. I have intellectual curiosity and know plenty of believers who do not abide all the rules. We are human, we have free will.

In today’s reading there is a rich man who feasts it up inside and is warm. On his door step sleeps a poor skinny man who occasionally gets scraps from his kitchen.
So both these men die. The rich man , having not practiced charity and allowing people to starve right outside his door, and other things I assume, goes to hades, sheol, the hell before hell. The poor man goes to where the dead hang out with Abraham and others who have lived a just life. The rich man asks Abraham to send the poor man back from the dead to warn the rich man’s brothers if they don’t change their lives they will end up where he is , in hades.
Abraham replies they have Moses and the Prophets to tell them how to live, They do not need a dead man to appear before them to tell them to change or else.

I think the message is we have to work this out for ourselves with the teachings of the Old Testament prophets, Abraham, Moses, and the Gospels in the New Testament which contain the teachings of Jesus.
 
My children and I read HP, and I simply explained that it was like science fiction. I can understand why some people were flipping out, tho, because I read some of the suggested lesson plans, which were did do things like suggest the students go to Wiccan sites online.

I have not heard of any politician seriously propose. banning artificial birth control; that seems to have been a stunt pulled on Romney.

And there are some on CAF who argue strenuously about why proportionately, we can vote for a Dem as president.

We can not decide to vote for them because they are pro-choice, but for other proportionate reasons we can.

You will see Catholics here argue against voting for a D, and some will go overboard and say it would be sinful, but you will also see Catholics who argue for the same without saying it would be sinful, and Catholics who say it is proportionate and that Catholics should vote D, because of help for the poor and climate change. I am one of the middle group: I advocate voting for someone who at least does not promote the legality of abortion, but do not say it would be sinful to vote D, so I wanted to clarify that.
 
niceatheist said:
So can one read Harry Potter and be a good Catholic, or choose not to demand the banning of the birth control pills, or even vote for the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump and still be a good Catholic?
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Yes you can read Harry Potter and still be a good Catholic. As with much of fantasy you’ll run across things dealing with sorcery and witchcraft and the like. Tolkien, who many consider to be the father of modern fantasy, was a devout Catholic and had some rather unconventional views regarding politics and such.

I think many Christians tend to vote based upon their faith and use it as a guide when selecting a political candidate to support. However, I personally know many family and friends who still claim to be devout Christians, yet have zero problems voting for politicians who are openly anti-Christian and even more so, anti-Catholic.

In my family for example, many of my older relatives and some younger ones, still describe Democrats as the party of minorities and the working class, while Republicans are the party of rich white men. And that’s literally how they view the differences. So for them voting for a Democrat is voting for social justice and the poor and downtrodden, while those who vote for Republicans are voting for wealth and power.

In their minds they see their vote as being perfectly in line with their Christian beliefs because Jesus and the Church help the downtrodden and less fortunate. I think this is what we tend to see today and unfortunately often times distorts the true picture.
 
And yet there are posters here who view the Five Non-negotiables as tantamount to church teaching and have openly questioned the faith of Catholics who vote Democrat. To me, standing on the outside, it looks like a blatantly partisan bullying masquerading as religious council, and I find it extremely distasteful. It’s that kind of social control I find abhorrent to my nature. How does one defend oneself from fellow believers who use their religion in such a way, as a means to dominate and control?
 
I’m guessing from your post you disagree with your Democrat-voting relatives?
 
I certainly disagree with their views of the differences between the two parties.

I think often times it’s these misunderstandings which still shape people’s views regarding politics. I’m sure there are people who vote simply by looking for the D or R behind the candidates name.

And there are those who get their news based upon what they hear on the daily show or SNL and think that their favorite actor, musician or sports figure has the inside knowledge of what’s really going on in the world, so they vote based upon their influence.
 
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niceatheist said:
How does one defend oneself from fellow believers who use their religion in such a way, as a means to dominate and control?
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By ignoring them or avoiding them. They don’t actually have any power anyways.
 
niceatheist said:
How does one defend oneself from fellow believers who use their religion in such a way, as a means to dominate and control?
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Why would a person need to defend their choices?
It’s none of their business. Where do these conversations happen anyway?
Walk away.

If you find it distasteful, so do I, when I’m in the workplace and someone notices I’m wearing a cross and they are hostile to religion.

The ugliness of humanity is everywhere. I don’t care for how you are singling out the church bullies when bullies are everywhere. When I see you continue to single out ‘the church’, when everyone is free to come in and sit down, and be a pain in the neck to others, I see your bias. Do you think the women’s league or the Knights of Columbus don’t have a person come in that upsets people? They do. The church has open doors and we try to live and work with each other. That’s life. Get over it.
 
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At the end of the day, faith is a gift. No amount of reasoning will lead you to it, as Descartes discovered.
The atheists I know ignore any social peer pressures that may exist, they are free to do so. But they also reluctantly admit that there is no purpose in life, it all comes down to cosmic dust so no consequences no meaning. This is what Nietzsche discovered and atheists cannot rationally contradict his conclusion.
 
I find arguments from aesthetics unappealing and unconvincing. But that’s not what this topic is about.
 
I’m not singling out the church, more just wondering about the constraints some people would put on others so far as intellectual pursuits. I grew up in a faith group where reading something like Harry Potter and getting caught would have lead to censure. There was no sense of intellectual freedom. Quite the opposite, freedom was to be feared, and I see similar sentiments among some here. As I question my own world view, I can’t help but wonder if part of where I ended up was a reaction to an extreme attempt at social control, using the Bible as a weapon to beat independent thought out of people.
 
It could be said of any entity that you believe in. A political party, a movement, a government, a school system an individual school, a corporation, a job site, a classroom, a family, or a brand of science. Even our cultural language is about control, what words or attitudes you are allowed to have and which ones you cannot. So, when accusing religion of this freedom robbing, can you point to anything else that is better? And the freedom religion offers is not about freedom to sin, but rather freedom FROM sin and it;s consequences.
 
niceatheist said:
So you think coercive religious proclamations like “vote for Donald Trump or you’re a bad Christian” or “read Harry Potter and you’re celebrating witchcraft” are the kinds of social rules I should live by?
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I hope you come to know that what you’re describing is a ‘people problem’ not necessarily a ‘religion problem’. And it’s most definitely not a Catholic problem. Some other religions may have micro-management built into them, but Catholicism doesn’t despite what you may see and hear from some Catholics.
 
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IdaCatholic said:
And the freedom religion offers is not about freedom to sin, but rather freedom FROM sin and it;s consequences.
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Um, this seems like an argument for coercion. “Reading Harry Potter could lead to sin, so you are forbidden from reading it.” That’s exactly the sentiment I find appalling.
 
So how do you deal with the “people problem”? Do you just ignore those telling you you are a bad Catholic because you don’t act as they believe you should act? What if the person making these declarations is your priest?
 
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