How does one respond to the fairy, leprechaun unicorn, etc. comparisons?

[PRmerger]

!!!
You’re saying that you know what Jesus said because the CC tells you what he said?!

Why, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

That’s like being told by a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba that Sathya Sai Baba worked miracles!

Ok. I’ll dialogue with a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba on this forum if one should appear.

How do you know that what the CC tells you is what Jesus said?

I use the exact paradigm that you do, TruthSeeker. You believe what you’ve been told to believe, too.

I propose that you believe that Manila is the capital of the Philippines even if you’ve probably never been there. You’re simply trusting that the map, google, Wiki, Mrs. Cartigiaroni in 4th grade, your Filipino doctor, or your mama was telling you the truth when you accepted this, eh?

 

[PRmerger]

pretty much every known culture discovered the golden rule without any help from christianity.

Indeed.

Could you elaborate, Rocinante?

Are you saying that every other culture, outside of Christianity, condemned slavery because of their knowledge of the golden rule?

 

[PRmerger]

It would only be nonsense if s soul is intrinsically immortal (meaning that it is impossible for it to cease existing).

Ok.

If it’s immortal in the sense that god always sustains it’s existence, then god could make it cease existing. The source I cited before took a position closer to the latter.

Ok.

As most Catholic answers are, it’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

Souls are intrinsically immortal, that is, they are impossible to cease to exist, because, then, by definition, they are mortal. Logic, TruthSeeker. (Sheesh, what* are *they teaching in school these days, quoting my beloved Professor Kirke from the Chronicles of Narnia. )

AND! God always sustains its existence by His very word.

Besides all this, if one’s heart is such that if one dies, one would suffer forever, god could just keep him alive until that changes (or if he never changes, keep him alive forever).

Clearly, you’ve never been in love or you wouldn’t even propose this. As if you would want to force your girlfriend to be with you. As if! :dts:

 

[PRmerger]

100 C.E. Is about 70 years after the alleged death of Jesus. That’s like if someone didn’t write about the Pearl Harbor attack until now. Sure, they didn’t have the communication technology back then like we do today, but even if we only had the technology they had back then, historians two thousand years in the future I’m sure would be able to find plenty of contemporary writings about Pearl Harbor. Also, although the Pearl Harbor attacks were spectacular and noteworthy, having thousands of dead people come back to life (Matt 27:52) is more even more spectacular and noteworthy.

St. Thomas Aquinas argued, as quoted by Peter Kreeft, that if the incarnation did not really happen, then an even more unbelievable miracle happened: the conversion of the world by the biggest lie in history, and the moral transformation of lives into unselfishness, detachment from worldly pleasures and radically new heights of holiness all by a mere myth.

Which segues nicely into my point: no atheist has ever been transformed into unselfish love, detachment from worldly pleasures and radically new heights of holiness. They’re just often nice people.

Not a single atheist, I unwaveringly proclaim, has gone to his death singing hymns of praise to (fill in the blank with God, his country, or whatever he idolized/idealized–and, make no mistake, he had an idol/ideal.), with a smile on his lips, as the Christian martyrs did. As Maximilian Kolbe did.

No one person, after hundreds of posts, is responsible for the direction of this thread.

That is 100% true.

I rather like it when threads go off a bit tangentially. It mimics real life coffee-house discussions.

 

[donsnow]

this all sounds like moral relativism to me. the one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on is that slavery is wrong always and everywhere. only a relativist could find a way to say that under certain conditions it is a good thing or simply cannot be judged to be good or bad. i thought catholics were against moral relativism?

rocinante

We are.

The scripture, “All things work out to the good of those who love God and are called to serve Him” does not say anything about slavery. It speaks of all ill-will among humans toward their fellow creatures, as well as of people who have goodwill toward all things…

The only time that relativism came into my post, was when I put God outside the picture; then slavery depended upon whether or not one had a good or bad slave master/owner as to whether the slave had a good or bad experience. Understand?
With God in the picture, slavery is bad because the slave owner then envies (10th Commandment, a shalt not) God’s property. All creation and everything or being in it are God’s property. Unless they choose not to be. Then, that gives the lesser “power-that-be”, Satan, a chance to grab that wandering soul. Or souls.

To be honestly ignorant of the spirit world is one thing. But, to have learned of or to have heard of the spirit world and reject that knowledge is quite another thing.

Regards,
Don

 

[Michael_Francis]

Closed pending mod review.