If We Are Created In God's Image, Why Is He Nothing Like Us?

[davidv]

Why would one admit to an untruth? I happen to be married to a women who is superior to me in several ways, as I am superior to her in other ways.

I was talking to Betterave, and most of my comments were in regards to things that he specifically said.

As for sources, let’s start with the Church Father Tertullian:

Woman, thou shouldst ever be clothed in rags and in mourning, appearing only as a penitent, drowned in tears, and expiating thus the sin of having caused the fall of the human race. Woman thou art the gate of the devil. It is thou who hast corrupted those whom Satan dare not attack face to face.

Then some words of ‘wisdom’ from Saint Thomas Aquinas:
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.

Here is a much more recent quote showing the Church’s respect for women by
Pope Pius X:
“In public meetings, never allow women to take the word, however respectable or pious they may seem. If on a specific occasion bishops consider it opportune to permit a meeting for women by themselves, these may not speak except under the presidency and supervision of high ecclesiastical personalities.”

Unfortunately I wouldn’t have trouble finding more if you feel it necessary.

Since none of your sources’ material shows up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church I have to conclude that none of these are official Church teaching. As such they are no more the straw.

 

[Betterave]

I like how you just didn’t respond to ANY of my argument, when ALL OF THAT WAS A RESPONSE TO YOU.

You’re SO impatient! I said I would explain some things in my next post!

You disgust me. I’m glad I’m not longer Catholic. People like you make me so angry at the Church and remind me why I left in the first place. Really, people like you are EXACTLY WHY I LEFT.

In making statements like this you’re only giving further substance to my observations about your questionable intellectual mettle.

I can’t help but have an emotional response when a man twice my age who calls me dogmatic, bigoted, close-minded, a poor reader, a poor thinker, while suggesting that women are not naturally suited to leadership positions. I have worked my entire life to get to where I am, all of my life I have revered education, the liberal arts, reading, writing, intellectual expansion as the most noble crafts. I can’t help but be emotional when I am insulted, called stupid, and told I am not naturally suited to be a leader. I can’t respect anything you say at all, now, because you’ve said these things. Doesn’t that kind of seem like shooting yourself in the foot?

I’m sorry you don’t have better control over your emotions and that you can’t refrain from misquoting and misinterpreting me.

Guess what, Betterrave. I AM your intellectual equal, and one day I WILL hold a position of prestige and leadership. I’m young, and I still have a lot to learn, but that does not undermine my intelligence or will.

That’s just arrogant (this is not name-calling - it’s an obviously grounded statement of fact). How do you know you’re my intellectual equal? You act as if you think you’re my intellectual superior, yet you have no grounds whatsoever for believing this, surely?

 

[AngryAtheist8]

So lets see how bhall did in responding to my last post:

No response.

No response. (Evidence suggests that the answer is no.)

Response: an obvious straw man.

No response.

Lots of reaction, no rational response (I’ll explain in my next post).

Response by deepening the defensiveness, continuing to show disinclination to actual discussion.

No response to this specific point, just a generic claim about “my reasoning” without any indication of what point in my reasoning is being referred to.

Response: Another unreasonable emotional reaction.

Response: continued and reinforced dogmatism.

Using your own logic, I can only assume that you are unable to answer my points, since you have refused to answer them in any meaningful way. As for your discussion (and I use the term loosely) with bhall0689, given that most of your arguments consist of attacking the person your debating with, I can only assume that you have no meaningful answers for her questions either.

 

[Betterave]

Using your own logic - whatchou talking about??], I can only assume that you are unable to answer my points, since you have refused to answer them in any meaningful way. As for your discussion (and I use the term loosely) with bhall0689, given that most of your arguments consist of attacking the person your debating with, I can only assume that you have no meaningful answers for her questions either.

Dear Angry-oh-so-angry-atheist:

You claimed: “So much of what you have just said is simply untrue.”

I asked you to please name one thing which I have actually said that is simply untrue.

You have declined to name one such thing that I actually said and instead responded with a spew of pure red herring nonsense, falsely accusing me of merely attacking bhall and not addressing her with meaningful arguments or answers. That is a patently stupid characterization of my comments here. They apply quite well, mutatis mutandis, to your own comments however. Please try to stay on topic in the future.

Best wishes.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I did not say that. Please read more carefully.

Also, do you think that all leadership is the same (it’s either “physical” or “intellectual” and descriptively exhausted by those categories)? I sure don’t. You seem to have a rather poorly nuanced view of the matter.

I don’t know why you keep restating it. I guess it’s because you don’t know what a non sequitur is. Please look this term up, then try to actually understand the criticism I have addressed to this point.

You’re an English major, not a history major. That’s obvious. If you had studied any history you would know that your historical categories - “primitive times” vs. “modern” times - are indeed very simplistic. If you insist on interpreting this observation as an insult, that’s your problem, not mine.

Can you please point out to me where I made that argument?

Again, this simplistic narrative is based on your extremely simplistic and inaccurate ‘observations’ about the history of human societies.

Curiosity is great, I applaud that. Curiosity and closed-mindedness make strange (nay, incompatible?) bed-fellows though. I object to the latter in your posts, not the former.

Which reasoning I am employing? (The reasoning that you have repeatedly miscontrued and clearly failed to understand?)

I’m just a humble TA, no professor. But I would say that to a student who was pretending to want to debate, but who wasn’t listening to what anyone else was saying and was repeatedly distorting the position she was arguing against. Why wouldn’t I?

Well to be fair Betterave, your own tactics when arguing with me have not been much better.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Since none of your sources’ material shows up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church I have to conclude that none of these are official Church teaching. As such they are no more the straw.

You doubt that the opinions (especially the public opinions) of Popes and Church Fathers had a bearing on Church Teaching?

 

[Betterave]

Well to be fair Betterave, your own tactics when arguing with me have not been much better.

I see… No, I don’t actually. Please, what are you referring to? The difference between an observation and an insult here is that an observation is tied to something observable, something that can be pointed to. You seem to prefer gratuitous insults to grounded observations. Please try to be more reasonable in future posts.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

If we assume that men and women are of equal worth (which the Catholic Church has done since its inception),

-This is untrue, the Catholic Church has frequently treated women as inferior (whether it was an official teaching or not). Many priests and theologians argued that women should not be in the priesthood because they are intellectually and spiritually inferior.

then it is hard to justify giving men all the perks, and saying that women are wrong to even ask for them. But no one wants to justify any such absurdly vague thing, so this is rather irrelevant.

-Obviously untrue, numerous groups, such as the supporters of Sharia Law and advocates of the Biblical Patriarchy Movement want to take away any rights or privileges women may have.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I see… No, I don’t actually. Please, what are you referring to? The difference between an observation and an insult here is that an observation is tied to something observable, something that can be pointed to. You seem to prefer gratuitous insults to grounded observations. Please try to be more reasonable in future posts.

To be honest I usually make an effort to be polite on this board.

But your childish attempt at cyber-bullying with bhall0689 disgusts me, so I have decided to use some of the same tactics on you.

 

[Betterave]

To be honest I usually make an effort to be polite on this board.

But your childish attempt at cyber-bullying with bhall0689 disgusts me, so I have decided to use some of the same tactics on you.

LOL! You’re attempting to cyber-bully me? LOL!

Again, with this silly comment, please point out to me at least one place where I have ‘bullied’ bhall. Your generically insulting assertions, not tied to anything in particular, are really tiresome.

 

[Betterave]

If we assume that men and women are of equal worth (which the Catholic Church has done since its inception),

-This is untrue, the Catholic Church has frequently treated women as inferior (whether it was an official teaching or not). Many priests and theologians argued that women should not be in the priesthood because they are intellectually and spiritually inferior.

This is the antecedent of a conditional. As such it cannot possibly be true or untrue (false). Please google ‘conditional sentences’ if you don’t understand how this works.

then it is hard to justify giving men all the perks, and saying that women are wrong to even ask for them. But no one wants to justify any such absurdly vague thing, so this is rather irrelevant.

-Obviously untrue, numerous groups, such as the supporters of Sharia Law and advocates of the Biblical Patriarchy Movement want to take away any rights or privileges women may have.

First, those groups are obviously not really relevant to the context of my remark (which was that of Catholic teaching). Second, your claim is obviously false even w.r.t. supporters of Sharia Law and the BPM.

So you were wrong, but at least thanks for trying.

 

[davidv]

If we assume that men and women are of equal worth (which the Catholic Church has done since its inception),

-This is untrue, the Catholic Church has frequently treated women as inferior (whether it was an official teaching or not). Many priests and theologians argued that women should not be in the priesthood because they are intellectually and spiritually inferior.

then it is hard to justify giving men all the perks, and saying that women are wrong to even ask for them. But no one wants to justify any such absurdly vague thing, so this is rather irrelevant.

-Obviously untrue, numerous groups, such as the supporters of Sharia Law and advocates of the Biblical Patriarchy Movement want to take away any rights or privileges women may have.

The official teaching of the Catholic Church (see below) indicates that you have created a strawman. The sins of men in the Church are not the teachings of the Church.

369 Man and woman have been created, which is to say, *willed *by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.240 Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God”. In their “being-man” and “being-woman”, they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

LOL! You’re attempting to cyber-bully me? LOL!

Again, with this silly comment, please point out to me at least one place where I have ‘bullied’ bhall. Your generically insulting assertions, not tied to anything in particular, are really tiresome.

Relax Betterave, you’re not worth doing such a thing to me.
I am just saying that I am not that concerned about being polite to you anymore.

As for some examples of you acting like an internet troll to her:
But I never said that women make worse leaders than men! You may be ‘college-educated’ but that doesn’t mean you have good reasoning or reading skills. I’ve spent more than enough time marking college students’ papers and exams to know that, without you having to demonstrate it to me again.

So you don’t agree that it is simplistic. Nonetheless it clearly is. But you seem disinclined to discuss it. (If you’d like to discuss it, drop the defensiveness and let’s discuss it.) Noting that your view is simplistic is not name calling and does not indicate that I’ve been cornered - to claim otherwise is just stupid.

You are apparently a very dogmatic, closed-minded person. Do you think this is a good quality in a leader? It might be… but probably not.

In making statements like this you’re only giving further substance to my observations about your questionable intellectual mettle.

 

[Betterave]

Relax Betterave, you’re not worth doing such a thing to me.
I am just saying that I am not that concerned about being polite to you anymore.

Oh, okay, I’ll relax then. You’re not planning to cyber-bully me (what a relief), you just plan to continue not being polite to me whenever you feel like it.

As for some examples of you acting like an internet troll to her:
But I never said that women make worse leaders than men! You may be ‘college-educated’ but that doesn’t mean you have good reasoning or reading skills. I’ve spent more than enough time marking college students’ papers and exams to know that, without you having to demonstrate it to me again.

So you don’t agree that it is simplistic. Nonetheless it clearly is. But you seem disinclined to discuss it. (If you’d like to discuss it, drop the defensiveness and let’s discuss it.) Noting that your view is simplistic is not name calling and does not indicate that I’ve been cornered - to claim otherwise is just stupid.

You are apparently a very dogmatic, closed-minded person. Do you think this is a good quality in a leader? It might be… but probably not.

In making statements like this you’re only giving further substance to my observations about your questionable intellectual mettle.

Okay, thanks. Four possible examples (each one conveniently decontextualized). Now can you pick any one of them (or all of them if you like) and explain why it constitutes cyber-bullying or trolling?

 

[bhall0689]

Okay, thanks. Four possible examples (each one conveniently decontextualized). Now can you pick any one of them (or all of them if you like) and explain why it constitutes cyber-bullying or trolling?

Here’s your quotes:

1. "But I never said that women make worse leaders than men! You may be ‘college-educated’ but that doesn’t mean you have good reasoning or reading skills. I’ve spent more than enough time marking college students’ papers and exams to know that, without you having to demonstrate it to me again."
2. "So you don’t agree that it is simplistic. Nonetheless it clearly is. But you seem disinclined to discuss it. (If you’d like to discuss it, drop the defensiveness and let’s discuss it.) Noting that your view is simplistic is not name calling and does not indicate that I’ve been cornered - to claim otherwise is just stupid."
3. "You are apparently a very dogmatic, closed-minded person. Do you think this is a good quality in a leader? It might be… but probably not."
4. "In making statements like this you’re only giving further substance to my observations about your questionable intellectual mettle."
5. "This has been a very simplistic narrative you’ve offered here, and I’m sure you believe it, but can we at least agree, for starters, that it’s very simplistic?"
6. " You can still be a leader though, the world is obviously full of bigoted, ignorant leaders. You choose who you want to be."

Now a definition of cyber-bullying according to Wikipedia.
Cyber-bullying: The National Crime Prevention Council’s definition of cyber-bullying is “when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person.”

The comments that you posted above are hurtful and would definitely fall in the realms of the above definition. The context does not matter - the comments were intended to hurt and embarrass. There’s no way you could call someone close-minded, a bigot, ignorant etc. without meaning to hurt. I think you owe me an apology.

By the way, if you click ‘Report this post,’ one of the grounds for complaint is harassment. I will quote:
STOP!: This form is to be used ONLY for reporting spam, advertising messages, and problematic (e.g., harassment, fighting, rude) posts that break forum rules.

I am not going to report you, but just remind you that many of your comments towards me have been both harassing, antagonistic, and rude, all of which (to my humble understanding) might break forum rules.

 

[Calvin_95]

According to Catholic doctrine God created us in His image, yet He is virtually nothing like us.

We humans learn by experimentation and studying our environment, as well as by sharing knowledge with one another. God has never learned anything, He is All Knowing and always has been. As soon as God asks Himself a question He has the answer.

Humans are relatively weak for creatures of our size. We are not that strong, we have no natural defense like an exoskeleton or stink gland, and we have no natural weapons such as claws or fangs. The only reason we have dominated our environment is our intelligence, ability to make and use tools, and talent for organizing ourselves into efficient groups. God is All Powerful and does not need to use tools, think through problems, or employ group tactics to accomplish anything. He simply wills it, and it is done.

Humans come in 2 distinct sexes, woman and man, male and female. It is how we reproduce, how we relate to one another, and (for better or worse) a big part of how we organize our societies. God has no sex, yet He is in some way masculine (God the Father), lacking a feminine aspect observed in half of humanity.

It seems to me that if a god like the one described above made creatures in his own image they would be more like him. Can Catholic theology explain this apparent inconsistency?

Looking at things from the negative view of God and man; this is a normal conclusion or commentery perhaps.

However, we have a knowledge of good and evil, we know something of love, hate, anger, joy, and justice. God and man share these; He just does it to perfecton. Humans are very creative in many manner from art to architecture and this we really are like-minded with God; only He does it perfectly but because of out sin problem we do everything subordinately in every way. These are just a few off the top of my head, so to speak.

 

[Calvin_95]

Why would one admit to an untruth? I happen to be married to a women who is superior to me in several ways, as I am superior to her in other ways.

I was talking to Betterave, and most of my comments were in regards to things that he specifically said.

As for sources, let’s start with the Church Father Tertullian:

Woman, thou shouldst ever be clothed in rags and in mourning, appearing only as a penitent, drowned in tears, and expiating thus the sin of having caused the fall of the human race. Woman thou art the gate of the devil. It is thou who hast corrupted those whom Satan dare not attack face to face.

Then some words of ‘wisdom’ from Saint Thomas Aquinas:
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.

Here is a much more recent quote showing the Church’s respect for women by
Pope Pius X:
“In public meetings, never allow women to take the word, however respectable or pious they may seem. If on a specific occasion bishops consider it opportune to permit a meeting for women by themselves, these may not speak except under the presidency and supervision of high ecclesiastical personalities.”

Unfortunately I wouldn’t have trouble finding more if you feel it necessary.

God created men and women with specific roles in mind that are to complement the family and the raising of children. It is not an issue of superiority for God is not one to show partiality.

Ever heard of the “Proverbs 31 woman”? All men would love to have this woman, but she does not exist as far as I know, but it should be the goal for every woman. Just like men are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church. That is on very high calling to which every woman would love to have in her husband, but it is unobtainable because of our sinful flesh, but it should be the goal and direction toward our wives.

God bless you and may Jesus send His Spirit to rest upon you unto His rest if He has not already and may His peace and joy through His word be written in your heart, soul and mind.

 

[bhall0689]

Reading Betterrave’s other posts, I now see that he is antagonistic and trollish towards everyone, not just me in this thread. I will no longer take anything he says personally or seriously.

 

[Michael_Francis]

Closed pending mod review