Questioning questions

[mathematoons]

This is an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while.

In order to believe most of what we believe, we have to accept someone as an authority. In order to believe that the moon is a giant rock you can stand on instead of a white circle on a dome-shaped sky, I have to accept this on authority, because I have never been there. I need to accept an authority just to believe that Australia is a real place, because I have never been there.

If I ask anyone a question about the faith, in order to believe his answer, I have to accept him as an authority. Because not everyone can be accepted as an authority, I have to check his answer by the Bible/Catechism. I will end up accepting his answer if it agrees with Church teaching/the Bible, and rejecting it is it does not. Therefore, it is not his answer I believe, but the Church (and the Bible it put together). So asking the question was a complete waste of time.

I asked my priest about this, and he agreed with everything I just said. He said any priest, even him, who disagrees with the Catechism is wrong.

So we ask questions on these forums and can’t really believe the answers we get. So, basically, these forums have no reason for existing.

So what do you all think about this?

 

[empther]

What can somebody know on his own? Not much.

There was a time everybody thought the world was flat, and the sun revolved around the Earth. People would still believe this if not for authorities telling them otherwise.

People in Tierra DelFuago think all disease is caused by the liver. There is “bad liver”, “angry liver”, “weak liver” etc etc etc. Tell him different and he’ll think you’re an idiot.

So are you supposed to doubt everything just because you can’t find out the truth by yourself? No. You have to examine the authorities.

Who do you trust more, a Catholic priest who gives you a complete explanation of God’s plan for man’s salvation through Christ,
or a Moslem mulla who has nothing to say about it? It’s no contest.

If somebody on this forum gives an answer, you have to consider whether his answer fits in with everything else you know.
For example, somebody says God in not omniscient. Does this make sense? Could God do anything if he wasn’t omniscient? He wouldn’t be God!

 

[Julia_Mae]

So we ask questions on these forums and can’t really believe the answers we get. So, basically, these forums have no reason for existing.

So what do you all think about this?

I think the forums are not just for Catholics. In fact, I think originally they were for non-Catholics to ask questions. Most of them don’t have a Catechism.

Forums serve other purposes. Like a gathering place for like-minded people.

The CCC is not the theological be-all and end-all. It’s more like an outline of our beliefs, not an exhaustive commentary. We still wonder in certain situations how to appropriately apply the beliefs in our lives. So we want to get some advice, other ideas.

If you can get all you need from the CCC, then the question becomes: why are you posting here at all? When you know why you do, then you will have answered your own question.

If you can get all you need from the CCC, why would you read Scripture?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

In order to believe most of what we believe, we have to accept someone as an authority. In order to believe that the moon is a giant rock you can stand on instead of a white circle on a dome-shaped sky, I have to accept this on authority, because I have never been there. I need to accept an authority just to believe that Australia is a real place, because I have never been there.

Actually, for these things you don’t have to believe them. If you find it helpful you can file it away as a prevailing model and defer judgement on it’s truth value. As you collect additional information you can compare it against the information you had gathered up to that point to see if there’s consistency and adjust or discard the model as you find necessary. There have been times in history where the prevailing model of how something worked turned out to be incorrect (ex: earth is flat, sun goes around the earth, so on).

If I ask anyone a question about the faith, in order to believe his answer, I have to accept him as an authority. Because not everyone can be accepted as an authority, I have to check his answer by the Bible/Catechism. I will end up accepting his answer if it agrees with Church teaching/the Bible, and rejecting it is it does not.

To some degree this sounds similar what I had described above.

So we ask questions on these forums and can’t really believe the answers we get. So, basically, these forums have no reason for existing.

With this I disagree. This forum gives people that are otherwise separated a way to communicate with each other. It’s not necessary to take any one here as an authority to get answers. Rather you can take what some one has to say as a starting point for an answer and then go on to validate what some one has said.

Small example, but if I don’t know the word for a concept I can ask some one and she may give me an answer. But I might not stop there. I might then go to a dictionary or thesaurus to see whether or not the person gave me a fitting word. While I haven’t treated the person as the end-all-be-all for an answer I have been able to use her contribution to find the answer that I’m looking for and increase my confidence in it.

 

[empther]

Re post #4

In other words, to make it short and sweet…

If somebody on this forum gives an answer, you have to consider whether his answer fits in with everything else you know.

Right? :extrahappy:

 

[Iron_Donkey]

If I ask anyone a question about the faith, in order to believe his answer, I have to accept him as an authority. Because not everyone can be accepted as an authority, I have to check his answer by the Bible/Catechism. I will end up accepting his answer if it agrees with Church teaching/the Bible, and rejecting it is it does not. Therefore, it is not his answer I believe, but the Church (and the Bible it put together). So asking the question was a complete waste of time.

Up to a point, you are correct, especially if the question is along the lines of “does hell exist?”. But for more specific questions - questions that matter but are detailed enough to require lots of application of the general principals those sources give us - asking others can help (what should I do in x situation, how do such and such principals apply to this moral question, etc).

This is also important for conceptualizing things. It’s one thing to know that Hell exists, for example, but it’s another to know what it is, and seeing it explained by different people who process the commonly available information and think in slightly different ways can give different view points that, while not really adding to pure knowledge as such, can help a person see how one truth interacts with and relates to others. (For example, the male priesthood, Church as the bride of Christ, impossibility of gay marriage, and the fact that men and women are fundamentally different (though equal in dignity of course) are all interlinked, and while nothing anyone says here is going to give new information about such a position - the Church is pretty clear about where it stands here - seeing different people’s thoughts can help a person see the why and how these areas are linked.)

Of course, you do have to vet what you read, to make sure that it’s correct (or in some cases, separate out the correct from the incorrect). But the mere fact that you have to do so does not make the statements you read useless, because what you will be doing is processing them in your mind to the point where they can be tested and even the act of processing is helpful.

Not to mention that even with all that is specified completely, there are things which are not specified (as a math logic nerd, I’d say this by saying there is more than one model which satisfies the information that we are given) that we can speculate about, as well as things that are specified but not directly (math nerd version - a set of true sentences may have true consequences not contained within them ie the set {a=b, b=c} has as a consequence, with the usual definition of =, “a=c”), and trying to figure out either requires lots of thought that can be shared among people.

So yes, everything must be tested against an authority that we trust but, in short, forums like this help us come up with new things to test, and help us see how other people do the testing and hence get better at it ourselves, and finally help us see the relationships between the things that are tested.

 

[Filippo_Bruno]

There was a time everybody thought the world was flat, and the sun revolved around the Earth. People would still believe this if not for authorities telling them otherwise.

No, both of these things are provable via experiment.

For the earth being round, you can see a ship on the horizon rising above the horizon as it approaches. You can launch a small rocketship or weather balloon and take pictures of the earth. Launch your phone up there and see.

Proving the earth goes around the sun is a little harder to do directly, but it would involve measuring the parallax to various objects in the sky.

 

[Perplexity]

Yeah, the question of authority is fascinating. So much of our knowledge is utterly derived from relying on those whom we consider reliable.

Ever thought about what world-view you’d come walking away with if you accepted all the scholarly consensus’ of each academic field?

Here’s a glimpse: philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

 

[Linusthe2nd]

This is an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while.

In order to believe most of what we believe, we have to accept someone as an authority. In order to believe that the moon is a giant rock you can stand on instead of a white circle on a dome-shaped sky, I have to accept this on authority, because I have never been there. I need to accept an authority just to believe that Australia is a real place, because I have never been there.

If I ask anyone a question about the faith, in order to believe his answer, I have to accept him as an authority. Because not everyone can be accepted as an authority, I have to check his answer by the Bible/Catechism. I will end up accepting his answer if it agrees with Church teaching/the Bible, and rejecting it is it does not. Therefore, it is not his answer I believe, but the Church (and the Bible it put together). So asking the question was a complete waste of time.

I asked my priest about this, and he agreed with everything I just said. He said any priest, even him, who disagrees with the Catechism is wrong.

So we ask questions on these forums and can’t really believe the answers we get. So, basically, these forums have no reason for existing.

So what do you all think about this?

I think you are confusing " blind faith " with genuine Faith. Certainly as children we, for a time, do place blind faith in our parents and perhaps a few others who have earned our trust. But as we mature we begin to consider the reasons for many things including perhaps why we believe in God and trust the Church. But we soon learn there is good reason for doing both. So our faith isn’t blind. Most of us wake up some day and say “… oh yes, that does make sense after all…”

As to whether these forums have a valid reason for existing I would say yes, though the reasons may not be as lofty as the creators had hoped. We have to weigh what people here say against our own knowledge and understanding about reality and truth. We also have to be aware that some posters may not be the disinterested parties they pose as. I do think some posters do have an agenda of some sort that is not in accord with " truth in advertizing." I wouldn’t put any specific names to that remark but I do think all who post on these forums or just read what is posted must by wary.

Other than that these forums give folks a chance to visit with others interested in the same things. No harm in that. A lot better than watching T.V. doing something else equally worthless.

 

[WesleyF]

If I ask anyone a question about the faith, in order to believe his answer, I have to accept him as an authority. Because not everyone can be accepted as an authority, I have to check his answer by the Bible/Catechism. I will end up accepting his answer if it agrees with Church teaching/the Bible, and rejecting it is it does not. Therefore, it is not his answer I believe, but the Church (and the Bible it put together). So asking the question was a complete waste of time.

…

So we ask questions on these forums and can’t really believe the answers we get. So, basically, these forums have no reason for existing.

“Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5)

Ultimately, every person has to be convinced in his own mind about what the truth is. If you ask a question and get an answer, you definitely will have to check the answer with the Bible and the Catechism. That does not mean that there is no reason for the forums to exist!

You assume that when you have a question, you will know where to look in the Bible or catechism to find the answer. You may not always know this. The folks on the forums will give you proper citations from the Bible and catechism. Your job then is to simply verify these citations. Saves a whole lot of time doesn’t it?