Leaning towards Skepticism

[PhiriTalk]

Leaning towards Skepticism Non-Catholic Religions

Regarding “clump of cells”.

Humanist arguments usually include the argument that humans yet to be born, are not really human, that they are only clumps of cells. Catholic morality, is such that we believe all human life should be treated with dignity. Even the human life that some seek to deny that dignity, by calling that life “a clump of cells”. To us, if those yet to be born are just clumps of cells, well so are we, as we stand in solidarity with all human life. No…

The worst thing about the abortion debate is the reductive arguments used by those arguing in favor or against it. It’s always an all or nothing thing, no complexity or context is given, or is rarely given.

No to Abortion:Posture, Not Policy | America Magazine

 

[Pattylt]

What is the objective moral position of God on cloning? If He is not explicit on the morality of it then you are left to subjective, fallen mortals to determine morality. This is every bit as subjective as the atheist’s subjective moral decision. Every time we decide what God said about a moral issue it is a subjective decision especially because God wasn’t very specific on many moral questions. Even the Ten Commandments need subjective humans to decode.

 

[anon99031074]

But in order for us to be able to discuss anything at all we need to default to the priori position of that this world is real right?

What do you mean “real”? If this world is a shared dream that exists only as a p2p network of minds, does that make it unreal?

if naturalism is true everything that we perceive and all of our inferences are just biological process

Our perceptions, and inferences are both biological processes, from a third person vantage point, and subjective perceptions and inferences, from a first person vantage point. While I don’t know if I should even label myself a naturalist, I don’t see why reductionism follows from it.

a machine with no free will

I think free will is compatible with both theistic and atheistic determinism, and so even if we are biological machines we can have freedom or be enslaved. But we could start an entire thread discussing that as well

in solipsism nothing is known except the self

If you try, I am sure you are smart enough to see the glaring problems with solipsism without invoking God. I know I can.

Well but why would it matter if the nazis are hypocrite they have no free will, they are just following their biological-sociological protocol if naturalism is true

Your argument has changed from objective morals to lack of free will? My point was that people who act in a way that causes themselves and others suffering are acting against their own best interests, and what kind of behavior does that is not arbitrarily decided by the individual.

The nihilist atheists have it right, without God there is no objective meaning to anything

I don’t see what the word “objective” adds to the discussion here, nor have you shown what God can do to fix the problem you perceive, since any psycopath can kill both cats and me in a universe with a God and say that God is wrong about morals. God says it is wrong, but that is just his opinion? If not, why not? Practically speaking we deal with psycopaths the same way in a theistic or an atheistic universe. We restrict their freedom to prevent them from doing harm, and try to rehabilitate them.

Yes, but the physical construct we named ipad begin to exist

Any beginning of the ipad will be arbitrary. Whenever you say it began, I can say that it pre-existed. It begins to exist by imputation and not by coming into existence as a substance.

In fact I would doubt any theory that attempt to give answer to the nature of reality that is easy to grasp

Fair enough. To me it seems to be a contradiction, though. That might be because my monkey mind is too simple to understand these things. But that is ok. I can live quite happily without knowing the answers to the great questions.

 

[anon99031074]

Catholic morality is objective. It’s one of the things that drew me to Catholicism.

Not on planet earth. On earth it is paper fiction. Catholics have argued for/against slavery, for and against segregation even within the church based on skin color, for/against religious freedom. There are still traditionalist Catholics who are furious with Vatican II for declaring religious freedom, contrary to the arguments of Pius X. Catholics have argued for the death penalty and recently the pope has argued that it is unchristian in all cases. The Catholic Church has also supported the death penalty for specific crimes such as heresy, and now all Catholics seem to agree that it is immoral to hand people over to the inquisition to be burned alive for leading people astray through heresy, even though they may do more harm to souls than any murderer or criminal could, as Catholics argued in the past.

So perhaps morals are objective/unchanging to God in heaven, and that God has had the right answer to all these questions all along. That is certainly helpful to God, but not so much to humans who seem to have to find these things out for themselves regardless.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Well I’m Catholic and believe the Church I belong to is guided by the Holy Spirit “unto all truth”.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Individual Catholics can and do believe a great deal of diverse things.

 

[RebeccaJ]

There is a post modern idea that faith and secular life are separate, not only for states, but for religions and individuals. Sure there are a lot of Catholics who live life this way. It’s pragmatic, and pragmatism can be useful. But Catholic morality itself is not pragmatic.

Complexities, nuances, stereotypes, secular interpretations of religious laws and practices…leads to a wide variety of conclusions. Including among the faithful.

 

[PhiriTalk]

I’m not a big fan of postmodernism due to it’s emphasis on nihilism and irony. Nothing is sincere in postmodernism.

I don’t view morality as being a some of the time kind of thing. It’s all or nothing for me.

 

[Pattylt]

I understand that but from an outsiders view, the Holy Spirit is also directing their different interpretations of morality. It makes the Holy Spirit appear as though it is subjective men making the call.

How is an outsider to understand which Holy Spirit is correct? At what point can we assume that maybe there isn’t a HS behind it and that it really IS subjective?

I understand that you place your trust in the Catholic Church. Other equally serious and devout believers trust their church, too. And then there is the issue of completely different religions placing their trust in their institutions…making it all subjective to this outsider looking in. How am I to tell who has objective morality?

 

[RebeccaJ]

It’s ok to decide.

Not trying to be flippant. The HS cannot be laid out on a table and examined. People are fallible and make mistakes. Discernment is integral to a mature faith. We do the best we can. Decide what we can trust and use our God given ability to reason.

Faith without reason leads to things like suicide bombing. Reason without faith leads to atheism. There is a place of balance.

I feel I’m not explaining well. So here is Bp Barron doing a much better job. Bishop Barron on The Holy Spirit - YouTube

 

[anon99031074]

Yes, and while it is relatively easy for a Catholic today to know that slavery and segregation are wrong, it wasn’t nearly as obvious just a short while ago. In fact, if you look at the debate about death penalty today it mirrors the past debate about slavery:

When some Christians, including a few popes, claimed slavery was wrong, others responded that God allowed it in the Bible, and so it couldn’t be wrong in and of itself. The pope had to come up with alternative arguments against slavery because the idea of objective morals was used against him.

One such argument was that it was wrong to keep slaves because it prevented them from converting to the Catholic faith. The pope argued that it would be hard for masters to reach people they had kidnapped and enslaved with the gospel, and so they shouldn’t have slaves.

The Catholic slave holders responded by baptizing all new slaves shortly after purchasing them, and so from their viewpoint, the papal argument was shot down. New popes came up with new arguments against slavery, as the centuries passed, and slave holders found new counter arguments.

Today the pope is arguing that the death penalty is always wrong, and some conservative Catholics are enraged with him for doing so. Ironically, the pro-life website lifesitenews is one such group of people. Not so pro-life when it comes to people who are found guilty of commiting a crime, huh… Why does it make them frustrated? Because morals are objective. If God allowed the Israelites to use the death penalty, and the allegedly infallible Bible says he did, then it cannot be inherently wrong, or so they argue.

Perhaps it will take another few centuries for the CC to completely shut the door on the death penalty. Or perhaps it never will. Who is “objectively” right? Catholics in good standing are found on both sides.

I see the idea of unchanging and objective ethical laws, revealed by God as a double edged sword. When they are good and can withstand the test of time, it is helpful that believers think God revealed them, as it is harder for them to be undermined when they are backed up by God, so to speak. But when they are… less than ideal… it becomes a hindrance to improving them.

 

[RebeccaJ]

If you hang around Catholics long enough, you’ll hear the phrase “God meets us where we are at”.

Your example is that, and of course has valid points, and can be applied to ourselves, at an individual and personal level. What do we hang onto that prevents us from growing in Christ?

The Church is like Christ, both human and divine. The human nature of the Church is not perfect, but Jesus does call us to perfection. We hold no belief that we are able to perfect ourselves. We need assistance from God. He meets us where we are at, as St. Paul taught, Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

What is perfection? We look to Christ to understand our destiny. He commanded to love God and neighbor. The Gospel of John tells us, God is love. The Ten Commandments were given to perfect the Israelites, in love. Humans are unable to perfect themselves as so we have a real need, that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

So we understand, to be perfect means to love perfectly. We are fallen, and don’t know how to love as we ought. Both as a people (Church) and as individuals. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live a life ordered towards Christian charity, caritas, as we are commanded to. We are all on the same journey, our destination is our God, the Holy Trinity.

This is how we are functioning in the world. Living an authentic life, according to our conscience, while seeking to conform our conscience to Christ. We believe everyone, and everything, is transformed by Him and in Him. We only need to cooperate with God, which is of course, the hard part, and why we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

We have human examples to follow, like our Blessed Mother, Mary, whose “yes” to God, is one of the best to learn from.

God bless you on your journey.

 

[Bradskii]

Faith without reason leads to things like suicide bombing. Reason without faith leads to atheism. There is a place of balance.

Faith with reason seems OK to me. ‘I have faith and I think these things are wrong for the following reasons’.

Then someone like me says that all reasonable people of faith from a myriad of different religions use the same reasons. With which I agree. So I skip the faith bit. It’s not required if you have sound reasons. It’s incidental. You may as well say ‘I have brown eyes and I think these things are wrong for the following reasons’.

Incidentally, using atheism as the other extreme compared to suicide bombers could be construed as being uncharitable to atheists. Although I’m sure that was not meant.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Of course God is not incidental and while you may not believe so, it is an extreme position to take. Analogies always fall short, I get it. It’s more like, I have brown eyes because of my genes, but genes are incidental to why I have brown eyes.

Extremism is is not necessarily alike in action.

I sometimes forget the extra love and care needed in “heavy duty” conversations with atheists. Such a tender lot, which is a sweet quality. I don’t mean to come across as harsh.

We are spiritual beings, even the most atheists of atheists I know, now and then, reveal a spiritual side. What they themselves would call “superstitious”. The superstitious atheists, is one of my favorite kinds of people…I’m married to one. Generally we agree to disagree, which is where all conversations between believers and non believers lead. So I’m not trying to convince an atheists of anything. Just answering some questions.

Conversely, every believer has their doubts, which is why we find in the NT, Lord, help my unbelief. The believing atheist, is in all of us…except for maybe the Saints, who overcame this propensity.

It’s great to be human.

 

[KyleHancock]

My apologies Senyorico, as I didn’t have time to read the entire thread, but I can tell you that you don’t have to abandon skepticism to end up having faith. I spent most of my adult life agnostic, not because I didn’t want God to be real, but I felt like Science had a lot better answers on things like age of the Earth, evolution, etc. Textual criticism of the New Testament (especially Bart Ehrman) was probably the last straw for me and I spent years without a belief system. I decided at some point to focus on historical research on the resurrection of Christ as that event, if true, is completely at odds with Islam and Judaism, so I could research the theistic big 3 all at once. My journey ultimately led me into the Catholic faith, but each person’s journey is different. My advice: read books on all sides of the issues that matter the most to you and God will ultimately do the rest… It’s amazing how in 2019 almost all academics have an “a priori” belief that the supernatural isn’t possible, and when we consider things past that blinder, the pieces start to fit together. Good luck on your journey, and feel free to PM me if you want any book recommendations. If I’ve read anything that might be helpful, I’ll be glad to share.