Unless you can provide a source for this “reasonably likely” premise, all you are doing is providing wild, unsubstantiated speculation. There is no source, within 1 or 2 generations of King Arthur’s, Achilles’ and Romulus’ existence, that documented a “legend” or myth about any of these characters, as there was with Jesus.
The point, samiam, is that the Church simply proposes, it does not impose.This post contradicts everything I’ve read about Catholicism. Do the words Protestant, cafeteria Catholic, and heretic, ring a bell? I’ve heard dozens of times on the forum people saying things like “the church is always right, if you do not understand a certain teaching, pray to God and He will show you,” “the Church can never change bc that would be admitting She was wrong.”
example: contraception
From the CCC:
"No one - no individual and no community - can proclaim the Gospel to himself: “Faith comes from what is heard.391 No one can give himself the mandate and the mission to proclaim the Gospel”
889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a “supernatural sense of faith” the People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith."417
The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church’s shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.
The Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed,"419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith."420
Could you explain yourself?
I find this all quite confusing. So you are saying that you don’t think that being restricted to a single opinion (on pain of death) is bad. But you do think we should be free to change our opinions? Why?*Absolutely not! *
This is what we are agreed on, which is quite a bit different from your premise above:
Exactly, thanks for demonstrating my point. Catholics have the magisterium, which they believe is right. Other religions have other sources which they believe are right (just as strongly as you believe in the magisterium). That’s exactly why it’s irresolvable.
Agreed, obviously, but as far as I know you are the only person who has suggested otherwise. Glad we’ve got past this now.Ok. *
Fair enough. It is a limitation he has imposed upon himself, but it certainly is not the result of Catholic teaching that he proposes this.
Also I suspect more or less inevitable. Since there is no enforcement, no visible consequences and standards which are not derived from first principles but from a “higher” reference for issues which are themselves complex. Not to mention the starting point being written in a different language, by people with a culture and education vastly different from ours and living conditions which are virtually unrecognisable.
No, actually I’m providing my opinion. That why I wrote “Personally, I think…”.
It would be interesting to know the source of your moral values…
Which of them were responsible for the teaching of Jesus? Was it a combined effort or were they all writing independently? And what were their motives?
Well, up next I was going to defend the reliability of Matthew based on the criterion of embarrassment earlier - if it edited the baptism, how do we know he didn’t edit anything else? Well, here are some reasons:
Being free to change our opinions is part of the gift of being rational creatures.
Truth, Candide, is always resolvable. We are given the faculties of faith and reason upon which we can come to an understanding of Truth.
Ah, but Candide, there are indeed quite visible consequences. Quite visible indeed! One was pointed out quite empirically by Mystic Banana about the chaos and despair that ensues when one has no way to resolve Truths.
I take it you never studied the Greek philosophers in college, Candide? The truths proclaimed by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were written in a different language, by people with a culture and education vastly different from ours and living in conditions which are virtually unrecognizable.
No problem, I work them out from axiomatic principles such as “suffering is bad”, “happiness is good” etc. These are based on the definition of those words rather than any reasoned and justified position. If you wanted to change that then you’d need to redefine those words, in which case others would replace them.
The pleasure-pain principle has long been rejected as an adequate basis of morality. For one thing it reduces good and evil to what **you **experience regardless of the rest of the world - unless you introduce the principle of equality. You can define anything to suit yourself but reality is not based on what suits you…
Rejected by everyone or rejected by theists? I’ve heard the principle of trying to cause the maximum happiness for the maximum number of people… hardly a principle designed to only suit “yourself”.The pleasure-pain principle has long been rejected as an adequate basis of morality. For one thing it reduces good and evil to what **you **experience regardless of the rest of the world - unless you introduce the principle of equality. You can define anything to suit yourself but reality is not based on what suits you…
I assume you are referring to me saying that I think it’s quite likely there were one or more real people about whom the events in the NT were written?
I’m pretty unconvinced by the criterion of embarrassment to be honest. For one thing the culture that Matthew was writing to was vastly different from our own, can we really judge exactly what they would have considered embarrassing? Perhaps Matthew expected them to see it as humble. Afterall Christianities roots lie in the lower orders of society who would have well associated with such a message and indeed with social injustice such as the crucification.
Why not? Crucifiction was at the time a normal event anyway. Why bother to try to make it seem extraordinary? The resurrection claim is pretty extraordinary anyway, why try to make it ordinary?*
I agree that Matthew would have valued the resurrection story. It’s probably the single most important event in the story. However, I don’t believe that supports the argument that the story was accurate. It may be simply that there were other reasons for writing the story that way. As I said it’s difficult to judge literary choices from another language, 2000 years ago and say “he wouldn’t have written it like that if he made it up”.
Perhaps, what references do we have to judge against for that earlier, cleaner tradition?*
This is interesting. So were the disciples fooled into thinking he was dead when he wasn’t? Or were they “in” on the deception?
Flawed premise. We would not “do” anything because we would not exist. Try again.
Difficult to say, I personally find many moral, historic and scientific discrepancies with every form of God I’ve heard about, so if I was convinced any one of them really existed I would be expecting some decent answers to my questions and my resulting actions would depend on those answers.
