Intelligence, education, and the Bible's message

[jack_hawkins]

you have to face it, the general answer to any questions here is:
quote number “xyz” in the Cathechism
“take it on faith” as the Church is 2,000 years old
do you really think that intelligent people are generally satisfied with answers like that?
that’s not treating people like adults is it?

 

[KathleenElsie]

you have to face it, the general answer to any questions here is:
quote number “xyz” in the Catechism
“take it on faith” as the Church is 2,000 years old
do you really think that intelligent people are generally satisfied with answers like that?
that’s not treating people like adults is it?

For anyone educated, non-educated or anywhere in between FAITH IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE PHYSICALLY PROVED OR IT WOULD NOT BE FAITH.

Sure God could have provided us with concrete PROOF that we could touch, feel and see. But instead God provided His Son that we have to have faith in. His choice our decision.

 

[jack_hawkins]

For anyone educated, non-educated or anywhere in between FAITH IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE PHYSICALLY PROVED OR IT WOULD NOT BE FAITH.

Sure God could have provided us with concrete PROOF that we could touch, feel and see. But instead God provided His Son that we have to have faith in. His choice our decision.

I’m not talking about faith tho
I have faith in Jesus, I believe he died for my sins.
but the range of things I am meant to have faith is has been exponentially increased
when does one stop having faith?
one can have faith in all sorts of things

 

[Tantum_ergo]

you have to face it, the general answer to any questions here is:
quote number “xyz” in the Cathechism
“take it on faith” as the Church is 2,000 years old
do you really think that intelligent people are generally satisfied with answers like that?
that’s not treating people like adults is it?

quote number “xyz” in the Cathechism
Well, why do you think we have a catechism? People have been asking these questions for 2 millennia, not just ‘intelligent’ adults of today. We have the answers, it’s just that people don’t want to accept them.

do you really think that intelligent people are generally satisfied with answers like that?

Why wouldn’t they be? Just because an answer is given by an authoritative souce doesn’t mean it’s wrong (although in today’s society with its hell-bent attitude toward deconstructionism, revision, and general destruction of anything as truth, I can understand that the ‘intelligent’ people, who have spent the last 2 generations being told to ‘question, question’ -with no real perceived ‘final answer’ to be accepted!–think they don’t have to accept authority if they don’t ‘feel’ it’s right. Somehow, it just doesn’t feel like you really are ‘adult’ unless you can ignore authority when you don’t agree with it.

that’s not treating people like adults is it?

Why not? As an adult, you accept plenty of things as ‘authoritative’ provided you feel they are right. The whole contention that ‘morality is relative and what is right for one is not right for another’ paradoxically assumes as its authority the absolute contention that “morality is relative”.

The wrong assumption is that ‘questions’ by ‘intelligent adults’ can somehow not be satisfied by an authority, that there must always be either something more than “we teach this because the Spirit has revealed this”.

So long as people think that being adult means disobedience instead of obedience, pride instead of humility, rejection instead of acceptance, and “my will be done” instead of “God’s will be done”, we’ll continue to have the situation of thousands of would-be Christians convinced that anything they choose to accept is done so in the spirit of “my rational, adult choice informed by reason”, and anything they choose to reject is done so again by “rational adult choice informed by reason”.

There is nothing wrong with “rational adult choice informed by reason”, but there is everything wrong when rational adults choose, according to their reason, evil instead of good, and attempt to excuse it by making the ultimate god and virtue “my rational adult choice informed by reason”.

David made a rational adult choice informed by reason to seduce Bathsheba and kill Uriah, after all.

 

[jack_hawkins]

tantum, you just don’t see where I’m coming from - and it’s evident that other intelligent people share my views and equaally feel that the Church doesn’t treat them as intelligent adults
treating everyone that questions as if they are in bad faith is the way to get their backs up including mine
look at this thread - instead of being an opportunity to explore why certain things are so it turns into a defensive exercise about how people are acting in bad faith

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Well, Jack, actually I do see where you’re coming from. I just disagree with your hypothesis.

It is also evident that plenty of intelligent people share my views too and feel that the Church does indeed treat us as intelligent adults. I’m sorry you don’t feel that way, but perhaps time will help. I certainly noticed that people got a lot smarter in the last 30 years or so since I was a teen. (and no, I’m not implying that you are a teen, I know you are not).

 

[jack_hawkins]

Well, Jack, actually I do see where you’re coming from

well you’re in the minority then - many posters here actually resent anyone questioning anything, and resent anyone asking for an explanation

 

[KathleenElsie]

well you’re in the minority then - many posters here actually resent anyone questioning anything, and resent anyone asking for an explanation

Don’t resent it just find it argumentative. No matter how some questions are answered someone out there won’t accept the answer given.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

Dawkins et al have a ready audience of not too gifted fans to play to as well. And when they roll out the hackneyed arguments about religion being the cause of all the wars they don’t get any disagreement from their acolytes. The funny thing is that their followers actually as near as damn it worship them anyway - they repeat the words of their “prophet” and when Dawkins starts to campaign for animal rights, they start to campaign for animal rights too.

Hmmm, so for these people the credo would be, “There is no god, and Dawkins is his prophet?”

 

[jack_hawkins]

Don’t resent it just find it argumentative. No matter how some questions are answered someone out there won’t accept the answer given.

That amounts to pretty well the same thing, or at least gives the same impression anyway, that is “why are you bothering to question something that is self-evidently true?”