Should atheism be illegal?

[OriginalJS]

If we have free will and there is going to be a divine judgment based on our actions or inactions, then there has to be free choice as to those actions or inactions. Those actions or inactions include belief and nonbelief.

The thought of any western legislature enacting a law making atheism illegal is laughable for a host of reasons.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Apologies for the delay – yesterday left me in no shape for this

No problem. My replies will probably be slowing down during the next two weeks, because the university quarter is coming to an end and I’m preparing for finals.

From a Catholic theological standpoint, I must of course grant that you are correct (and given the likelihood of kuru, ‘sick’ is pretty accurate however you look). However, you’re not thinking like a good politician or monarch at all. Repression makes religions thrive – just look at what it did for Christianity!

Christianity generally flourishes under persecution, but historically, you’re not correct about Christian heresies. Force has effectively suppressed them throughout Christian history, up to the Protestant Reformation. The use of force against them didn’t strengthen them- it repeatedly either extinguished them or pushed them to the edge of existence, so that only small bands could hang on.

The Protestant Reformation was the real breach from that history. It shattered Christendom, so with the novelty of the printing press and the end of the threat of force to stem them, destructive and false ideologies spread throughout the West. The reason this evil was allowed to grow as it did, in my view, is because of the immense corruption of the Catholic Church in the 16th century. It was extremely morally degenerate, and consequently God allowed it to be punished with the destruction of its power.

A theologian has only the abstract to work with: it’s a lot clearer. You, even as the Autocrat, have to deal with people. You are never going to exterminate this religion once it has taken root, so which would you rather have: a reasonably happy and prosperous state that, being earthly, is imperfect but realizes that all earthly states are but pale shadows of the kingdom to come; or a totalitarian dystopia that still doesn’t achieve its goals?

It’s a false dilemma to pit our “reasonably happy and prosperous state” against a “totalitarian dystopia.” Democracies throughout the West have legalized the slaughter of tens of millions of children through abortion “rights,” and the US democracy, specifically, is responsible for the extermination of millions of North American Indians and the enslavement of tens of millions of blacks because of their skin color. That’s the “will of the people,” not the will of God.

In the Medieval Ages, abortion was illegal and Christian nations only very rarely invaded others to convert them by force. They were generally being attacked by barbarians from without, but it was rare for the Christian kingdoms to initiate attacks on these kinds of powers. Although there are a number of instances one can point to throughout that thousand year period in which atrocities occurred, I also don’t know of any Christian nations becoming responsible for genocide, even during the Crusades. Furthermore, during the Early and Middle Medieval Ages, there aren’t any recorded rebellions against Christian kings. There were a few smaller scale rebellions against feudal lords, but no monarchs suffered any real challenge from rebellion. In the Late Medieval Ages, there were quite a lot of rebellions as the system was challenged on multiple levels.

The whole of the modern system of government was rooted originally in rebellion, however, and it has persisted in carrying out a series of rebellions throughout the modern era. Modern Communist, Democratic and Fascist governments have also all been responsible for unspeakable genocides. The modern system is not only responsible for tremendous violence, but it also, along with its economic system, are based upon strife between people. Internal conflict for personal gain is the nature of capitalism (which, along with the slave trade, really began to thrive in the beginning of the modern era). Conflict between people is also the nature of democracy. Division is our system, whereas the old monarchies were all based upon unity, unity around the local lord or king, and around the Church. The only reason why we see our divided political system as good is that we are basing our system upon the “will of the people,” so to us, the more ideas we have circulating, the better. We don’t know what the best route is, so we’d better have more options laid out for us and then find a compromise.

Compromises between uncertain human ideas obviously can result in bad things as easily as it can in good things. The US 3/4 Compromise determining how much of a person a black was is a pretty good indication of this.

What society truly needs is an absolutely true and virtuous moral standard on which to base its laws. That won’t solve all problems or eliminate the possibility of abuses. Historically, one can see smears on Medieval history too, like the use of torture, or Late Medieval abuses of the peasantry (and abuses of nobles by the same peasantry around that time period).

Abuses of the poor by the rich, of course, have actually been even more severe since the end of the Medieval Ages, though we don’t tend to think of it. Male skeletons of peasants who died in the Early and Middle Medieval Ages have been shown to be as tall as the average 20th century Westerner. During the Late Medieval Ages, the Little Ice Age produced bad harvests and greatly reduced the availability of food to many peasants, so the average heights declined during that era. But it was during the Enlightenment, particularly the 18th century (and I think the 19th century, though I’m less sure about that), that the heights hit their lowest ebb, because of how brutally the poor were being treated in the Industrial Revolution work force.

There are a lot of lies, stereotypes and incorrect assumptions about the Medieval Ages circulating in our society, though scholars of our day have been rebutting them more and more as available information and real research is being done. It more and more frequently is refuting the post-Enlightenment and post-Reformation myths about the past.

The winners write history. The Enlightenment and Reformation rebellions won. Our societies exist as part of their legacy, and so inherited their animosity toward the system they overthrew and replaced. But thankfully, modern scholarship has been doing a lot to overturn their assumptions.

I can get you sources for any of the things I’ve said here. I’m just not at home now and don’t have them handy, so I can’t cite them at this moment, but if you want them I can get you them later.

It comes down to a question I asked earlier but got no answer for – and although I phrased it lightly, I am seriously asking. Francisco Franco: great dictator or greatest dictator? Feel free to give me a completely different answer than the false dichotomy provided; in fact, I hope you do.

I haven’t researched General Franco sufficiently to give you much of an answer on him. From what I recall hearing of him, he was a terrible tyrant.

Donatism I don’t know about, but I think you can still find some Arians if you look hard enough and there are definitely still a few Cathars – although one must certainly note the Dominicans’ sheer brutal speed in putting them in their place back in the Albigensian Crusade.

As you say, you have to look hard.

Then wherefore ‘free will’? If we have not the right, God erred in giving us the ability.

On the contrary. We have the ability to commit murder, rape, theft or other immoral acts, but our government rightly recognizes no right to commit them. God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden when they ate of the foribdden fruit. That strongly implies that they had no “right” to do what they did, for if they’d had a right, he wouldn’t have punished them.

Right is the ability to do something legitimately. Ability simply is the ability to do something. If we didn’t have the ability to do bad, our good choices would be valueless, for by doing good, we’d simply be behaving as robots. If we have an ability to do good or bad, then our good acts have value when we commit them, and we ourselves have value. The possibility of bad is necessary for good to be real.

On the other hand, the possibility of bad does not mean one has any “right” to do bad. One can do bad, but if so one does so illegitimately, for the only truly legitimate actions a human can make are good ones.

You see what I mean?

And yes, according to your scripture, we took the right and used it to render ourselves unworthy – but you must remember that as created beings, we are supposedly only as worthy as God allows in the first place. He made us, gave one rule, and gave us the choice and the ability to blow it.

You would have it that God’s love requires us to return it in full. There’s a word for that kind of ‘love’: rape.

Is it rape for a dad to spank his child in order to get the erring child to do good? It is not, in my experience. I’m glad my dad spanked me, for otherwise I’d be spoiled rotten and nowhere near so happy. I’d be miserable and making others miserable.

God’s love requires love for him, because the only way people can really be happy, fulfilled, virtuous or loving is by loving him. He himself is love, the source of all virtue, so people can’t be happy while rejecting the source of all virtue.

And in the end, God will allow people to eternally reject him. He strives with them until they have made that choice finally. Self-inflicted separation from God is the nature of Hell, the final destiny of those that God finally allows to take their chosen journey to its conclusion.

I can’t respond to the rest of your post now- I’m late for class.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Are you espousing… dare I say it… a situational morality?

Okay, that’s not quite fair, given city of jerks vs. invading army, but – why was it a moral imperative to commit genocide against a city minding its own business in the book of Joshua, yet now to do the same would be considered a great sin?

The reason the destruction of whole cities is condemned in the Catechism is that “the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral” (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 57). Presumably, therefore, if there aren’t innocent people in the city, its wholesale destruction is not gravely immoral. Who is in a better vantage point to determine the innocence of people than an omniscient God whose nature is love?

The wholesale destruction of cities or even entire nations in modern times would be ethical if all of the inhabitants were guilty of crimes deserving the death penalty, and the one who destroyed them had the right to do so.

Justice doesn’t change. If an individual deserves the death penalty, he deserves the death penalty. If a group does, it does. If a city does, it does. That was true in the Old Testament times and it is true in our New Testament times. But if righteous men are in a city of people deserving the death penalty, then everyone except those righteous men deserves the death penalty. Sodom and Gomorrah are good examples of this. Everyone in the cities deserved destruction except a single righteous man and his family, so God spared the cities until the righteous were removed. He also said that he, in his mercy, would spare the entire cities if only a handful of good people could be found in them. Unfortunately, there was next to no one righteous there to be found.

Sometimes, entire cultures have been and still are rooted and founded on fundamentally immoral concepts. In pagan societies, a false religion might lead the entire culture to accept immoral practices, like sexually promiscuous fertility rites, idolatry and child sacrifice. Whole civilizations could be in agreement with those practices, much as modern societies in the West almost universally agree with capitalism, democracy or freedom of religion. Though granted, we’ve got some Communists too, plus the odd historical relic like me. Internationalization has created more diversity in modern cultures than existed in more geographically restricted historical civilizations.

Sometimes, almost everyone in the nation accepts the validity of immoral beliefs, though, such as the imperialists of Japan in the 20th century, who invaded China. Japan was consumed in nationalistic fervor that led to abominable acts of cruelty. There were also plenty of innocent people in Japan, but most of the people were consumed in an exceedingly immoral wave of violent imperialistic sentiment. That was a corporate sin. There are private sins committed by individuals and corporate sins that organizations, groups, communities, towns or even nations can commit. Those kinds of sins are often rooted in a wicked belief that sweeps through an entire population, or almost an entire population. Historically, it’s easy to point to a number of cases where that exists or has existed, in modern times. I don’t know of any modern cases like Canaan where the ENTIRE population was consumed with it, but there certainly are a lot of cases, such as Germany in the Nazi era, or China under Mao’s regime, where only small minorities of the populations objected, and the objecting groups were themselves persecuted and alienated from the population at large.

It’s a question of who’s innocent. God is in the best position of all to make that judgment, and Canaan is the only incident I know of where he ordered humans to carry out that judgment when he felt it was necessary, rather than doing it himself.

The CCC’s opposition to genocide is based on the assumption that many of the people slaughtered are going to be innocent. If no one in a country is innocent and all of them deserve the death penalty, then genocide is not wrong. I have trouble seeing that as a decision humans have the right to make, though. It’s such a sweeping and final decision regarding so many human lives that we are ignorant of, that it makes sense to me that only God would be in a position of sufficient wisdom to make that decision. It involves too many possibly innocent lives for humans to know. Thus the CCC justly objects to massacres of vast populations that humans select on their own judgment.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Not always, particularly in abusive relationships, which are practically defined by a gross inequality.

True. But I was saying that it was an unfair analogy because God is so much wiser than us. The idiot who hits his girlfriend is certainly no wiser than she is. The relationship is only unequal in his favor because he’s meaner and stronger. God is stronger than we are, but he’s also wiser and we are meaner, so there isn’t a valid comparison there. God only exacts punishment for grave crimes humans commit, because he feels it necessary to do so to protect his followers or to draw people to himself. And when I say, “draw people to himself,” we need to remember that God is love and the source of all virtues, so drawing people to himself is to draw them to virtue and away from wickedness, so they’ll be happier and more joyful, and better people for doing so. The more they separate from the source of virtue, the less virtuous and the more wicked and destructive they become, so to draw people to himself, God does something virtuous and beneficial to all mankind. If he allowed them to wander astray, he’d be like the negligent parent who lets his children hit and beat each other and him and throw rocks through the windows of the house, turn over chairs and pig out on candy, throwing away their homework and such. Drawing humans to himself is an expression of God’s love for them. Disciplining them is also an expression of his love. Even if it doesn’t always look like it to a tiny little human, much as a child being spanked might not feel that his parent isn’t being at all loving.

Or, perhaps, did humans take the idea of the divine and make it easier to relate to by ascribing very, very human characteristics to it?

God’s interaction with humanity suggests otherwise, for if he was invented, he couldn’t interact except to the extent that people delude themselves. And he has interacted, as I will show shortly.

‘Hm, what will I do this week, and so much nothing… oh, I know! Create a universe!’

There’s nothing to suggest God was bored before creating the universe. We don’t know what he was doing.

‘Mm, my prosecuting angel bets me he can turn my servant Job against me… ehh, sure, whatever.’

Job represented Israel. His faith showed that God’s plan to bless humanity through the Old Testament process of salvation could work. If Job, God’s most righteous servant, had fallen, then all Israel would have fallen with him. It was a challenge against God’s righteousness, and in the spiritual world, words have power. They can be weapons.

In fact, they are in the physical world too, where propaganda is commonly used to stir people to a common purpose, for good or ill.

The Book of Job describes a tumultuous spiritual battle for the soul of Israel.

It’s supposed to be funny

Well, that reading lifts my eyebrows, anyway .

But the Noahide Laws do not, as they are written, contain a provision for invincible ignorance. How fair is that?

The absence of invincible ignorance does not equal a statement denying its existence. The Jews at that time may not have understood it, though Paul much later on described it as covering many sins until the Law was revealed on Mt. Sinai, but the fact that the people didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. They didn’t know much about the prophecies of the Messiah at the time of Noah either, and they had only loose ideas about the afterlife. They knew nothing about the Ark of the Covenant. There was a lot they didn’t know. Ignorance doesn’t equal denial.

Well, for that you have my sincere congratulations, my hope that you will do well by your beliefs, and maybe occasionally a funny look now and then But seriously, I am glad you have found peace.

As I said, I don’t know why God sometimes takes so long to reveal himself. But the fact that he’s taking a while doesn’t mean we should give up seeking. In fact, one thing I came to realize after I came to the Lord was that often he himself puts the hunger for him into our hearts because he loves us and wants deeper intimacy with us. There is a positive conclusion to the search available to us all. Just don’t give up.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

I am an apostate, I think I’m excommunicate latae sententiae, I do not consider myself Catholic in any way, shape, or form, and in any case I do not believe the Sacraments are a way of ‘reaching’ any God that may exist. For those four reasons, especially the last two, I would not presume to profane your faith. It would be highly disrespectful.

Hmm . . . I hadn’t realized that Confession was primarily for Catholics, though Christians of other denominations could go to it in extreme circumstances. I knew the Eucharist was for Catholics only, but I didn’t realize Confession has restrictions too.

I do, however, attend Mass with family when they visit me, sit, stand, kneel, and all that, but do not go up the Communion line. I did get my throat blessed on St Blaise’s feastday though.

I’d never heard of that.

I’m here for the forseeable future, Mod willing

Cool!\

Not quite so much ‘disagree’ as ‘fail to see the evidence for’, but other than that, you’re dead on.

Well, okay, but that’s trickier to support from your position, because if you “fail to see the evidence for” religions you know nothing about, you aren’t in a position to believe they’re wrong.

How am I to tell whether these miracles and signs are of natural (even if not yet explainable) origin, of supernatural origin, or just plain made up?

You’'d have to see how much evidence supports it. In some cases, the evidence is extremely tenuous. In other cases, it is very strong. My grandmother, for instance, is an eyewitness of miracles involving people with legs of differing lengths. People would pray for them and then the people’s legs would grow longer or shorter before her eyes, adjusting themselves to be equal length, ending the painful hobbling the people had had to do in the past.

Another time, my grandmother felt that the Holy Spirit was telling her to pray for a woman in our church. The woman was very overweight and had had three surgeries on her legs to try to heal them, all of them to no avail. She was hobbling along on a walker. My grandmother prayed for her and she was instantly completely healed. She walked out of the church carrying the walker on her shoulder! My sister witnessed that miracle, too.

Some of these cases are more easily supported than others. And I know it can be hard to verify. It helps when you know the people involved. But the glorious thing is that God can reveal himself in an objective way to each one of us, if we seek him and ask him to reveal himself to us in a way we can clearly see and accept.

Really, the universality of supposed miracles is much more a problem for the believer who says ‘this is the only right way’ than it is for the skeptic. How do you regard the milk miracle reported worldwide by Hindus in the 90s?

I don’t know. It could be a real magical occurrence- the rods of the pharaoh’s magicians turned into snakes, and their powers turned water into blood. The milk miracle certainly was reported by a vast number of eyewitnesses, which should lend a great deal of credibility to the story. It certainly would if they were describing any phenomenon that could have a scientific explanation.

Miraculous or magical phenomenon in other religions does lead many people astray, which is why demons sometimes do that kind of thing, but in Christian history, the greatest miracle of all has occurred. Jesus’ resurrection and ascension are the greatest miracles, proving his claims of deity. Jesus’ body remained physical, capable of eating meals with the disciples, yet it was glorified so that it could pass through walls or appear or vanish at will. And Jesus, in that body, ascended into heaven before his disciples’ eyes.

The proof of Christianity is found in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. One of the glorious facts about Christianity is that we don’t have to rely on faith to believe what the Gospels say is an extremely accurate historical account. I’ll explain why in the next post . . .

 

[Lief_Erikson]

One of the strongest layers of objective evidence supporting the accuracy of the Gospels is the blood of the disciples. Belief in the truth of the Gospel accounts spread throughout the Early Church, accepted by the Early Church Fathers and quoted countless times, accepted throughout the Church because they related what the disciples had taught about their experience with Jesus. The disciples passed on their teachings and stories of their experiences to their own disciples, and these Early Church Fathers in response accepted the validity of the stories in the Gospels.

The disciples were so convinced that what they were doing was entirely right and true that they all (except John, who was exiled) died for their beliefs. Many were tortured to death and refused to deny any of what they claimed about Jesus.

Therefore we know that they weren’t intentionally lying. People don’t die for lies. People die for beliefs that they incorrectly believe to be true, but they don’t die for beliefs they know to be false. And we’re talking at least ten men all dying for these same lies. Therefore they weren’t purposefully lying.

Yet they were the eyewitnesses of everything recorded in the Gospels. Their shed blood testifies that they were entirely sincere when relating their stories. The fact that none of them broke under torture or fear and denied any of what they’d said proves this. This is an extraordinarily powerful evidence supporting all the Gospels’ accounts that they were present to witness. And they were firsthand witnesses of almost all the miracles in the Bible.

Miracles such as Paul’s conversion experience, which he described in his Epistles, are likewise supported by the testimony of his blood.

But the mightiest evidence of all is that among these miracles, which include Jesus walking on water and stopping storms at a word, is the fact that Jesus’ physical body was resurrected and glorified, and he taught that everyone who believed in him would have a body like his, and would have eternal life. His teachings are supported mightily by his resurrection, the miracle of such power that no other religion can support a claim to anything like it.

johnankerberg.org/Articles/_PDFArchives/theological-dictionary/TD2W0403.pdf article is a useful comparison between the account of Jesus’ resurrection and that of reported resurrections from other religions.

Yet our scope is continuously expanding. The sky’s the limit, we just haven’t reached it yet. Eventually, I think it will be possible to scientifically explain all natural occurrences. Whether there is more to reality than that is not a question for science.

Perhaps you should exchange the word “natural” for the word “material,” as spirits have existed even longer than humans have, so they are a perfectly natural part of the universe.

I tend to disagree, because the universe is just so incredibly complex and vast. To think we could ever understand it all is to me wildly optimistic.

But whether you’re right or not about that, my point stands. Science is revealing new particles or tiny fragments or laws of the universe all the time, things that previously had been either invisible to us or incomprehensible. So logic doesn’t provide any reasonable basis for the rejection of a spiritual realm.

Bit of a long ‘relatively’ there!

True . Fair point.

Conflict of scope: those astounding mysteries are still natural phenomena, no matter how wondrous and beautiful. The supernatural is something science cannot answer to. Or is God a particle?

No, I wouldn’t say he’s a particle. I’m not a Hindu . But that doesn’t mean science is useless a useless tool to support the existence of God. The incredible improbabilities of star formation and of the formation of a universe that can sustain life are scientific support for the idea that the universe has a designer. Some have said that it is “fine-tuned,” to support life, because the odds of all matter emerging from the Big Bang in such a way that life could be produced are so incredibly small. This suggests a God deeply concerned with life.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Unprovable by observation and by reason. I do admit that direct revelation may be an excellent reason to believe for the recipient; however, that’s about the extent of it.

No, people who know the recipient have a good reason to believe also, or people who have no way of explaining the miracle, but see all of the evidence supporting it. The apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Egypt in the 1960s, for instance, were seen by millions, including non-Christians, and they were photographed and filmed. Here’s a site describing it:
zeitun-eg.org/zeitoun1.htm

But the most powerful evidence of all, to me, is the resurrection of the Christ. That is because the miracle is more stupendous than the apparition, as it involved a human body not only returning to life, but returning physically to life in a glorified state that could pass through walls or appear or disappear at will. It was the post-resurrection body we are all promised, and we can be sure, because of the testimony of disciples who laid down their lives for what they knew the truth or lie of from firsthand experience, that all the miracle accounts of the Gospels are true, when the disciples were their witnesses. They proved their credibility as eyewitnesses with their blood, not even one of the ten breaking from any part of his story, in spite of torture or the threat of grueling execution.

THERE! My marathon post is ended . There were so many complex issues to raise and address, it took a long time. I look forward to your response(s) .

Just to make sure you’re aware, as we’ve started a new page, there are four more posts for you to respond to, back-to-back, on the previous page.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Then you’ll apply the same logic to people being ‘influenced’ by atheism?

Absolutely.

First of all the kind of society you want would take away the ability to do certain things. What makes you think he doesn’t give the right to an individual to do or think evil - and suffer the consequences.

Well, ultimately everyone does have that ability. They have the ability to separate themselves from God completely, a choice many people take: Hell. If God wants to punish people on Earth to try to coax them not to destroy themselves and other people so hideously, that’s an act of love, like a parent messing up a child’s game by snatching him out of the street so a truck won’t run over him. Possibly not loving from a very young child’s perspective, but in reality, extremely loving.

The child has no “right” to walk into the middle of the street and get run over. The criminal has no “right” to commit rape or murder. Nor does an evangelist for a false religion have a “right” to damn souls by converting them to something destructive.

Why muddy the waters with things like rape or murder. We are talking here about peoples freedom with regards to their own bodies, their own minds.

Beliefs of a religion, false or true, will often be spread through evangelism, or even simple religious discussion or dialogue. Evangelism, where a person spreads a destructive belief to someone else, is what I oppose most strongly. If adherents of a false religion try to spread their religion, they are destroying people in much the same way a suicide bomber will. The government has a duty to stop suicide bombers.

 

[Mirdath]

Christianity generally flourishes under persecution, but historically, you’re not correct about Christian heresies.

Only where they were small and more cults than actual sects. Think of a virus: at low levels of contamination, the immune system can take them on without a problem. When they start to spread out or get big – as Christianity itself did after Pentecost, and as some of its heresies did (Arianism and Nestorianism, among others, lasted a good long time), it’s not up to the task. Actually, I think there are still Nestorians out there as well.

Division is our system, whereas the old monarchies were all based upon unity, unity around the local lord or king, and around the Church.

Unity? It was based on one guy trying to strongarm everyone else as long as he could manage, was incredibly fractious and chaotic, and all too often ended bloodily. Even though you could say that system was characterized by brief periods of some kind of unity over small areas, it was a very Machiavellian unity – in other words, a madhouse.

I haven’t researched General Franco sufficiently to give you much of an answer on him. From what I recall hearing of him, he was a terrible tyrant.

Good answer, but keep in mind that your Catholic utopia looks an awful lot like his regime.

That strongly implies that they had no “right” to do what they did, for if they’d had a right, he wouldn’t have punished them.

My point was they had the right to choose to obey, and with either choice came consequences. That one set of consequences may seem worse than another has no bearing on the fact that they were given a choice.

Is it rape for a dad to spank his child in order to get the erring child to do good?

Thinking of a deity as a father-figure seems to be selling it quite short. Maybe it’s the Rome showing through, since fathers back in the Empire days could legally kill their children (and wives, to boot). Nowadays Christians say only God gets to do the whole ‘I brought you into the world, I can take you out of it’ schtick, but that in itself shows just how shallow your analogy is.

If God’s love requires a return on investment, it is no true love. It’s a stock-market scam played by a psychotic robot manufacturer.

Presumably, therefore, if there aren’t innocent people in the city, its wholesale destruction is not gravely immoral.

Who among us is innocent? Even Christians record only two, and that’s the world record as far as I’m aware.

Canaan is the only incident I know of where he ordered humans to carry out that judgment when he felt it was necessary, rather than doing it himself.

Canaan was not ‘one incident’, but a long string of them. It was not one nation, but many independent city-states. After that, Israel generally kept to (and fought) itself.

And really, how many genocides committed by or ordered by someone do we need in order to pass judgment?

But I was saying that it was an unfair analogy because God is so much wiser than us. The idiot who hits his girlfriend is certainly no wiser than she is.

Allow me to pose the question of a relatively intelligent and wise abuser in a relationship with someone whose IQ is just barely at ‘minimal social function’. That, I think, would be a fair analogy. And certainly you can’t have avoided hearing about guys (even very nice ones) who ‘like em dumb’.

God’s interaction with humanity suggests otherwise, for if he was invented, he couldn’t interact except to the extent that people delude themselves.

What I said is that God as commonly portrayed is very anthropomorphic, and suggested that that is our image and likeness reflected in what people think of God, not his image and likeness reflected in us.

 

[Mirdath]

I hadn’t realized that Confession was primarily for Catholics, though Christians of other denominations could go to it in extreme circumstances.

Baptism is the only sacrament that can be properly and validly administered to (or even by, for a little trivia!) a non-Catholic. People who haven’t been received into the Church at all and made their first confession can’t just walk in. Since I have, I could legitimately receive that sacrament, but to do so with any intent other than returning to the Church would be sacrilege.

If you “fail to see the evidence for” religions you know nothing about, you aren’t in a position to believe they’re wrong.

Hence ‘agnostic’.

Miracles

How thoroughly vetted are any of these, by whom, and how? And why slit poor William of Occam’s throat with his own razor and jump to the supernatural conclusion without seeing if an explanation exists that doesn’t require an entire level of reality beyond this one?

The proof of Christianity is found in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

External sources, please

The disciples were so convinced that what they were doing was entirely right and true that they all (except John, who was exiled) died for their beliefs. Many were tortured to death and refused to deny any of what they claimed about Jesus.

People are tortured and die for a lot of causes. That doesn’t make any of them correct.

Perhaps you should exchange the word “natural” for the word “material,” as spirits have existed even longer than humans have, so they are a perfectly natural part of the universe.

First, demonstrate the existence of spirits. You be Owen Glendower, I’ll be Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Only where they were small and more cults than actual sects. Think of a virus: at low levels of contamination, the immune system can take them on without a problem. When they start to spread out or get big – as Christianity itself did after Pentecost, and as some of its heresies did (Arianism and Nestorianism, among others, lasted a good long time), it’s not up to the task. Actually, I think there are still Nestorians out there as well.

As you point out, Nestor and Arius, and Marcion too, for that matter, led enormous heretical groups. It took time for them to die, but they did die and orthodoxy endured. When Christianity began, it was a severely persecuted sect both by the Jews and by the Romans, and it came to flourish in the face of the adversity that squashed its heresies. And it engulfed the entire Western world, and much of the Eastern, through the Orthodox churches. I won’t try to argue that the success of Catholicism as opposed to its heresies is the result of supernatural intervention, though, for there are much, much stronger arguments to lean on. The blood of the disciples being key amongst them, as well as the prophecies of the Messiah from the Old Testament, though that’s a line of reasoning I don’t have the resources on hand to get into very thoroughly right now. I can do it later.

Unity? It was based on one guy trying to strongarm everyone else as long as he could manage, was incredibly fractious and chaotic, and all too often ended bloodily. Even though you could say that system was characterized by brief periods of some kind of unity over small areas, it was a very Machiavellian unity – in other words, a madhouse.

That’s a modern lie that emerged when people wanted to overthrow the old monarchial system. During the Late Medieval Ages, rulers did often become more oppressive than the earlier ones had been, and the modern age came out of the struggles of the Late Medieval Ages. So the reformers looked back at their most recent memory of the Medieval Ages, which was the Late Medieval Ages, and then they assumed that things had always been as bad as the last few kings or lords they’d been enduring. Then they resisted and they triumphed, and because they triumphed, they wrote our history books. Only modern scholarship is finally getting sufficiently skilled and careful that it is at last debunking the big horror story of the Dark Ages.

As I already pointed out, there were no genocides in the Medieval Christian kingdoms, and there were no major rebellions up to the Late Medieval Ages, when the Little Ice Age was producing horrible harvests. That is a direct contrast with our modern era, which is replete with genocides and rebellions of many varieties (including the violent). Rebellion and distrust of government are the rule of our times, whereas in the past, both were the aberation. Factions and violence were not the rule of the “Dark Ages,” a term scholars are now rejecting. Our times, in fact, have far more grievous violent acts to answer for.

Good answer, but keep in mind that your Catholic utopia looks an awful lot like his regime.

How so?

My point was they had the right to choose to obey, and with either choice came consequences. That one set of consequences may seem worse than another has no bearing on the fact that they were given a choice.

They had as much “right” to choose to obey as people would have when laws oppose religious freedom. God said that if they ate of the apple they would die, and when they ate, he banished them from the Garden, made Adam labor in the fields and increased Eve’s pains in labor, etc. They had the choice to rebel, and if they chose to rebel, they’d be punished. They chose to rebel, so they were punished. The punishment was the consequence of rebellion. Similarly, under the laws opposing religious freedom, they could choose to rebel, and if they did, the consequence of their rebellion would be punishment.

Punishment was the consequence of rebellion in both cases. Neither denies Free Will any more or less than the other, and neither denies it at all, for Free Will truly consists in an ability to do something, not in a right to do something. Adam and Eve’s “right” to rebel and accept the consequences of rebellion would exist in a Christian state too- the unbeliever could choose to exercise their “right” to rebel and accept the consequences of that rebellion, which are punishment.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Thinking of a deity as a father-figure seems to be selling it quite short.

Well of course, any analogy is selling God an infinite number of times short. But he created many analogies on Earth to reflect, parallel and symbolize spiritual realities of heaven, so I use what he’s given.

Maybe it’s the Rome showing through, since fathers back in the Empire days could legally kill their children (and wives, to boot). Nowadays Christians say only God gets to do the whole ‘I brought you into the world, I can take you out of it’ schtick, but that in itself shows just how shallow your analogy is.

You’re ignoring my point, so far as I can tell. My point was that people can turn out to be truly nasty if they aren’t disciplined, and discipline can make them better. Fathers killing their children or wives in Ancient Rome had nothing to do with kind discipline to help those people become better people. So that comparison is meaningless. My comparison of a child looking at a father’s actions is much better, both because the punishment is always (in a good parent) proportionate to the transgression, and the parent is merciful whenever he can afford to be without the child’s development into a good person suffering as a result of his kindness. Also, the parent looks mean to the child because of the child’s ignorance, and there can be no doubt that we know far, far less than God, if God is real and exists in the way Christians believe he does.

I sincerely believe that all of God’s punishments on humans here on Earth are efforts to bring them to righteousness, so that they can experience joy, love and eternal life. They have a punitive side, as a parent spanking a child does, but they also are done to try to make people better. That is a consistent message throughout many of the scripturally recorded incidents, and where there isn’t mention of this part of God’s motives, the absence of reference to them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Who among us is innocent? Even Christians record only two, and that’s the world record as far as I’m aware.

True, and everyone will die one day because of their sins. That’s the consequence of the wrongful eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, people are judged with death early because of particularly grave sins they commit here on Earth.

Canaan was not ‘one incident’, but a long string of them. It was not one nation, but many independent city-states. After that, Israel generally kept to (and fought) itself.

And really, how many genocides committed by or ordered by someone do we need in order to pass judgment?

You need a genocide that involved the divinely ordered destruction of people that didn’t deserve to die. The problem is that we are never going to be in a position where we have a right to judge the actions of God, because, unlike us, he is both infinitely wise and infinitely good. Morally and intellectually, we are in no position to condemn his actions. Which takes me back to my earlier point, that we cannot judge the grand and far off actions of God that are apparently good or bad, except in faith that they are good, because of the relationships we have with him. It is the same as a child and a father, a child not being in a position to judge the father’s bank management, but just saying that his father is loving in faith because of his relationship with his father. That’s the position we are in, and thankfully, a genuine relationship with God is available to each one of us. God has promised that himself, and all the joys and righteousness that come with it.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Allow me to pose the question of a relatively intelligent and wise abuser in a relationship with someone whose IQ is just barely at ‘minimal social function’. That, I think, would be a fair analogy. And certainly you can’t have avoided hearing about guys (even very nice ones) who ‘like em dumb’.

Can anyone not be dumb, in comparison with God, when his knowledge is infinite and the knowledge of any created being finite?

As regards your analogy, I must first point out that you and I are the person whose IQ is “just barely at ‘minimal social function,’” and we are the ones declaring that our caretaker is abusive. How is our judgment that we are being abused reliable, when we are complete idiots? If the IQ of this human we’ve invented is anywhere near so comparatively ABYSMAL as it would have to be to make a valid analogy between our knowledge and that of God, our judgment on whether or not we are being abused is completely unreliable.

What I said is that God as commonly portrayed is very anthropomorphic, and suggested that that is our image and likeness reflected in what people think of God, not his image and likeness reflected in us.

I know, and whether we made God in our image or he made us in his, we and God have some strong similarities, so both agnosticism and Christianity have logical explanations for these parallels.

In Ezekiel, the Lord said that he hates to put the wicked man to death and that he takes no pleasure in it. That is the kind of attitude a father has toward punishing erring children for their own good. If someone is punished with death, they may repent in the last moments of their lives and be spared in eternity. The Lord strives with us to bring us to eternal life, and to explain that I’ll respond below to your following statement:

If God’s love requires a return on investment, it is no true love. It’s a stock-market scam played by a psychotic robot manufacturer.

This reveals very clearly a misinterpretation of what God is in Christian theology. God is Love. I know you knew that, but there is a lot that follows from that. If one doesn’t love love, one won’t participate in love much. No one will have much love if they don’t love love. If they don’t love kindness, they won’t become kind. If they don’t love mercy, they won’t be merciful. If they don’t love justice, they won’t be just. They might behave in a kind or just way because of social pressures but not because of any true caring, because they don’t have any real love for those virtues.

Conversely, if people love kindness in a true way, they’ll become kind rather than merely receiving kindness from others. If people love mercy, they’ll become merciful rather than only receiving mercy. If they only receive mercy rather than actually displaying mercy in their own actions, then they don’t love mercy- they merely like the benefits others give them. Love requires giving as well as receiving. Giving is the overflow of love. If one loves mercy, one will therefore give mercy.

All virtues are . . . how shall I put this . . . they are derivations of love, perhaps one could say. Justice, kindness, mercy, generosity all have their root in love. And all love has its root in Love, which is God.

Therefore, God’s love requires that people love him back because if they don’t, they are evil. To the extent that they don’t love him, they are evil because he is virtue and love and all that is good. There is no good in any human that does not proceed from God. There is no good love in any human that doesn’t have its root in the love of God. That is because God is virtue and is love, and there is no virtue or pure love that does not proceed from him and that is not his nature. We cannot therefore reject Love without rejecting all that makes us worthwhile humans. To the extent that we deny or reject God, we deny or reject all that is good and true and virtuous, and in the end, complete rejection of God is the complete rejection of virtue, as God IS virtue.

I hope this explains the concept well enough.

The Apostle James once wrote, “This is true religion, pure and undefiled in the sight of God, to look after widows and orphans in their time of need.” Virtue itself is true religion, because it is love for God.

Basically, we can’t refrain from loving God while remaining good because all that’s good comes from God and is part of his nature. It’s like trying to shed one’s own skin, to reject God while remaining virtuous. It’s a practical impossibility because God is virtue, all human virtue comes from him, and all our love of human virtue is love for God.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Baptism is the only sacrament that can be properly and validly administered to (or even by, for a little trivia!) a non-Catholic. People who haven’t been received into the Church at all and made their first confession can’t just walk in. Since I have, I could legitimately receive that sacrament, but to do so with any intent other than returning to the Church would be sacrilege.

Okay, thanks for telling me .

Hence ‘agnostic’.

Yeah, but you said earlier that you had problems with all religions because of their beliefs in the supernatural. You aren’t in a position to debate their . . . oh, never mind. It’s not important.

How thoroughly vetted are any of these, by whom, and how? And why slit poor William of Occam’s throat with his own razor and jump to the supernatural conclusion without seeing if an explanation exists that doesn’t require an entire level of reality beyond this one?

It’s perfectly valid to look for alternative explanations, IMO. On the other hand, if there is a great deal of evidence supporting the supernatural explanation, and none or very little to support the rational explanation, then the most rational thing to do is accept the supernatural explanation.

External sources, please

Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, some documents from the Pharisees are some of the main non-Christian sources. There are also a ton of corroborating writings from the Early Church Fathers, of course, but that’s not exactly “external.” There are some other useful documents too that I can’t cite off the top of my head, but those are some of the main relevant ones. They support a lot of the Gospel account. I can get you a summary from an expert about how much they confirm, when I return from college and have access to my books.

People are tortured and die for a lot of causes. That doesn’t make any of them correct.

Very true, and that’s what almost everyone automatically says, so I tried to respond preemptively to this point in my last post. Maybe I didn’t do a good enough job of making my point clear.

People die for beliefs they think are true. They don’t die for beliefs they think are false. Someone’s willingness to die for what they believe is EXTREMELY strong evidence that they are entirely sincere.

Now, people can, of course, be entirely sincere and sincerely wrong, which is why, as you rightly point out, their willingness to die for a cause isn’t proof that their cause is valid. It is merely proof of their sincere belief in their cause.

What makes the martyrdom of the disciples such powerful evidence for Christianity’s truth from a reason point of view is that they were in a position to know whether what they believed was true or not, because of what they saw with their own eyes. They weren’t dying for an abstract belief but for what they truly knew the truth or untruth of from their own personal, eyewitness experiences. They died declaring the truth of their own eyewitness testimony, testimony that is preserved in the Gospels and that was accepted as their teachings from the earliest days of the Church. So they knew whether or not they were telling the truth, and their blood proves their sincerity.

Thus the Gospels are very, VERY credible accounts, in fact about as credible as any accounts could possibly be, because they are the recorded eyewitness testimony of people that died for their belief in the truth of what they saw with their own eyes. They knew whether or not their beliefs were true, because they saw almost everything that took place in the Gospels.

Therefore people can’t say with any degree of logical coherency that the Gospels are “just stories.” From a rationalistic point of view, instead, they must become an enormous series of bizarre mysteries, seemingly miraculous events that must be somehow scientifically explained.

Some of the miracles can be explained by rational methods. Psychological persuasion to make a person think they’re better can actually make them feel better, in a number of cases. Other miracles are impossible to explain, though, like Jesus walking on water, which was observed by all the disciples, and most notably of all, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven.

First, demonstrate the existence of spirits. You be Owen Glendower, I’ll be Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy.

Fair enough, and I’ll refer you to this webpage again.

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Atheism is quite possibly one of the worst sins in the eyes of the Church. It includes a complete rejection of Jesus, the authority of the Church, the love of God - almost every single Catholic doctrine about the divine. It most certianly is a mortal sin, if the other two conditions for a mortal sin are met.

Other grave sins are illegal, such as murder, rape, theft, etc. Atheism, which is just as bad (if not even worse) than those sins, ought to be illegal too. Also, it would be a deterrant to conversion to atheism and most likely result in significantly fewer atheists.

So, why shouldn’t atheism be illegal? Where is my logic wrong?

Atheism should be IMPOSSIBLE, not illegal!

If Christians would do what they should be doing, then the obvious silliness of being an agnostic/atheist should simply prevent anyone from BEING other than a Catholic Christian.

Since Christians can’t seem to convince non-Catholics that they (non-Catholics) are culpable for not accepting the sin of disobedience to the Church, they (the non-Catholics) aren’t COMMITING mortal sin, and are therefore not due any “punishment” for that which they are not culpable!

We (Catholics) need to evoke culpability in non-Catholics as to their should-be mortal sin.

How would you suggest we do that?

 

[JimO]

No belief system should ever be illegal. Actions can be made illegal, but thoughts should never be. It’s a dangerous precedent. Even if a completely Catholic nation were established whose system of government and laws were entirely aligned with the teachings of the Church, I couldn’t see it requiring people to be Catholic. That would violate the concept of free will, which is a gift from God. God never forces anyone to believe.

 

[Mirdath]

As you point out, Nestor and Arius, and Marcion too, for that matter, led enormous heretical groups. It took time for them to die, but they did die and orthodoxy endured.

And perhaps Christianity, too, will pass, no matter how much the ‘gates of hell will not prevail’ quote gets tossed around.

I won’t try to argue that the success of Catholicism as opposed to its heresies is the result of supernatural intervention, though, for there are much, much stronger arguments to lean on.

Good thought.

The blood of the disciples being key amongst them, as well as the prophecies of the Messiah from the Old Testament, though that’s a line of reasoning I don’t have the resources on hand to get into very thoroughly right now. I can do it later.

The blood of the disciples will get you nowhere. Christianity is not the only religion to have been built on blood, nor the only for which people who witnessed its foundation were martyred.

Prophecy is even shakier, for a few reasons. One, you’re asking me to take another religion’s claims at face value, then saying it’s about yours. I won’t just do that unless you give me some really good reason to. Two, the religion to which those prophecies belong, and to which those prophets attached themselves, do not regard yours as the fulfillment of those prophecies. Three, I see no reason to consider Isaiah any more a true prophet than the guy who writes fortune cookies. Anyone can scribble down thoughts on what is to come and something which resembles those thoughts will often come to pass: Jules Verne and H.G. Wells made careers of it. And fourth, I have no reason to trust anyone’s interpretation of prophecy, particularly that recorded in such a poetic and mystic style as used in the Old Testament.

There is no denying that Christianity has been very successful. But you need not look to God or prophecy to discover why. Christianity is simply a beautifully designed social institution. It (at its best, in any case) appeals to love over fear, promotes an aspiration to unity with the divine instead of a constant need to placate it, and is intentionally open, welcoming, generous, and accepting of anyone and everyone. And it was the first to really cover those bases: no surprise it was effective.

That’s a modern lie that emerged when people wanted to overthrow the old monarchial system. During the Late Medieval Ages, rulers did often become more oppressive than the earlier ones had been…

Nobody’s arguing that the later Middle Ages got nastier, but come on, that’s like asking whether I’d prefer to get an eye poked out or an arm chopped off.

How so?

Catholicism the state religion, all others outlawed, conservative Catholic mores enforced as law (to the point of people who had been civilly married before the Fascists took over having to get remarried!), absolute repression of any ‘outside’ cultural influences – to start.

Similarly, under the laws opposing religious freedom, they could choose to rebel, and if they did, the consequence of their rebellion would be punishment.

Two points: one, your government is human, not divine, and here you would have it usurping divine duties; two, and more important, how do you intend to save souls by such means?

Fathers killing their children or wives in Ancient Rome had nothing to do with kind discipline to help those people become better people.

Yes, it seems to have much more in common with the ‘discipline’ practiced in much of the Old Testament, which was neither kind nor focused on the self-actualization of others.

I sincerely believe that all of God’s punishments on humans here on Earth are efforts to bring them to righteousness, so that they can experience joy, love and eternal life.

Hell of a way to go about it. He could just ask.

You need a genocide that involved the divinely ordered destruction of people that didn’t deserve to die.

Did the children and infants of Jericho deserve to die?

The problem is that we are never going to be in a position where we have a right to judge the actions of God, because, unlike us, he is both infinitely wise and infinitely good. Morally and intellectually, we are in no position to condemn his actions.

No. What you are saying here is that I am not in a position to judge the God of Abraham, because I do not judge him good and right and just and worthy of worship. You think your judgment of this God as possessing all those qualities is just peachy-keen.

This is an unwarranted double standard; this is fallacious; this is far beneath any semblance of civilized debate; this is, in short, total bollocks. Tell me I’m wrong all you like, but don’t you ever tell me I can’t consider the same questions you do.

 

[Mirdath]

As regards your analogy, I must first point out that you and I are the person whose IQ is “just barely at ‘minimal social function,’”

I proposed it from the point of view of an external observer. Try again.

…I hope this explains the concept well enough.

Well put and admirably accurate in many regards, but I disagree with your central postulate that God is Love itself. Why on earth (or elsewhere) should I believe that?

Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, some documents from the Pharisees are some of the main non-Christian sources.

(snip)

They support a lot of the Gospel account.

Actually, all they really have to say is ‘there are some weirdos calling themselves Christians in the eastern provinces’, and where they do go into more detail, all they do is report on the beliefs of the communities.

By the way, have you read the actual letters between Pliny and Trajan on the subject? Keep in mind that that sort of thing is also very similar to your proposed ideal government, and likely close to how it would end up.

[The disciples] weren’t dying for an abstract belief but for what they truly knew the truth or untruth of from their own personal, eyewitness experiences.

So were the inhabitants of Jonestown. So were the founding or early members of more cults and religions than I could list. Catholicism is not unique in this regard.

Therefore people can’t say with any degree of logical coherency that the Gospels are “just stories.”

Nor have I done so. I would say instead that they are myths. Not to be confused with mere fables, but true myths, and with a more solid historical grounding than most. I have little reason to doubt that there lived an extraordinarily charismatic, wise, even holy man named Jesus of Nazareth. I do have reason to doubt that he walked on water, multiplied food, turned water into wine, or rose from the dead, because that stuff generally doesn’t happen and isn’t experimentally verifiable.

Before you mention it, yes, I know of the Trilemma: ‘lunatic, liar, or Lord’ or ‘mad, bad, or God’ depending on whether you prefer alliteration or slightly wonky rhyming. I have the utmost respect for Lewis, but here he falls short. My take on the gospels is that they most likely are the product of a group of people living in an already tumultuous time, who got caught up in the creation of a legend in their midst. Remember, they were not outside observers: they were followers and participants, and their entire lives became centered around this one amazing person. It’s a small step from that to myth and deification, and once you get a core of die-hard believers out to spread the word, it snowballs dramatically.

George Washington didn’t cut down his father’s cherry tree, after all, but that myth became popular wisdom in a fraction of the time it took the story of a levitating rabbi to do the same. As to more recent ‘miracles’, such as the supposed Marian apparitions, once again, I see no need to chase after the supernatural to explain it. We don’t know nearly everything about the natural world; why introduce a whole new reality when we really can’t say if it’s needed to explain such occurrences?

 

[Lief_Erikson]

Mirdath, I’m going to just let your last couple of posts be the final word in our discussion. I’ll continue to hang around the thread for a while, possibly rebutting various viewpoints put forward by you, cynic or newcomers, things I disagree with. I just don’t feel like this particular dialogue has any further to go.

I look forward to getting to know you better as time goes on . Perhaps at some point in the future, we’ll come back to this discussion somewhere else. If so, it’ll be a pleasure, as this conversation has been.

May the Lord bless you.

 

[Mirdath]

Yeah, we were starting to get off track (though I did try to keep at least a little of the topic at hand going!), so, here’s where we shake hands and agree to disagree, I guess

I look forward to seeing more of you too