What's preventing YOU from being a Catholic?

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QContinuum said:
why does it permit us non-Catholics to even join? Or bother to give us a non-Catholic board?
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My understanding is for non Catholics who are genuinely interested in the Catholic faith to learn and discuss.
 
ratio1 said:
My understanding is for non Catholics who are genuinely interested in the Catholic faith to learn and discuss.
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Or perhaps for Catholics to learn about and discuss traditions that are different from their own.
 
I doubt that would be the main purpose, for the simple fact that a Catholic who wants to discover such traditions would find far better answers/discussions at forums of those traditions.
 
But there is a 'first day of your life" outside the womb as a breathing and viable human being.
 
Curious11 said:
That would be ridiculous in my opinion. Settling for a world where you allow evil to achieve a greater good rather than create a perfect world with perfect humans to inhabit and enjoy it is itself evil, and proves God is weak or evil. What possible greater good can come of having children born blind or dying of cancer every single second of existence?
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What of free will? The nature of true love? Reason? Human agency?

I am very greatful that God did not make us perfect little clockwork men and women without the ability to reason.
 
Curious11 said:
There’s always mutations in genes due to replication mistakes that happen to every single living being. I don’t have the exact same genes my parents do, they’ve mutated a little. We say humans have the same genes, but what we really mean is that they’re similar enough to be classified as the same species, no other human has the exact same genes as me.

Same as fish, there’s a period of time where you start getting animals that very closely resemble fish and little by little every passing generation becomes more fish-like but it happens across many generations, not a single sudden break into fish-hood. You can probably take like 5 generations and see the animals becoming more closely related to fish, but that’s it.

Once again, the analogy which you seem to ignore, for some reason, is the example of when you stop being young and start being old. Is there a clear cut point? No. Does that mean there’s no change? The answer is so obvious I think it would even be patronizing of me to point it out
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I’m an RN. I know that. I’m well aware of random genetic mutation.

There was still a point where the first creature that we now basically know as a fish came into existence - regardless of how fleeting it was.
 
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QContinuum said:
I used to think too that there has to be a “first fish.” At some point. Then an evolutionary biologist friend took pity on me, and dashed all my simpleton ideas by giving me a crash course on the concept of emerging populations.
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I really don’t consider myself a simpleton for thinking that at some point - at some infinitesimal point - the “first fish” came into existence. That doesn’t make me naïve or blind or uneducated, nor do I think you’re casting aspersions on me in the least about anything.

Everything has a first.
 
Q, the forums aren’t meant to be echo chambers. But as noted with regard to another poster, they aren’t meant to be places where people who are not interested in discussion or exchange of ideas --that is, communication itself, whether it’s done well, badly, or in between-- have decided simply to be human gnats, biting and swarming without any idea of truly trying to listen. Nobody needs gnats.
 
Pup7 said:
I really don’t consider myself a simpleton for thinking that at some point - at some infinitesimal point - the “first fish” came into existence.
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I’m not talking about you, Pup, but me, lol! I think you’re quite smart. I had trouble wrapping my head around the emerging populations thing. I think I basically get it now but it still butts up against the part of my brain that looks for cause and effect.
 
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😍😍

Oh, not in the least. I don’t think you think that about me at all. No worries there. I accept evolution - and still at some point, all the genetics came into alignment and boom - there was what we now consider a fish. It was likely a nanosecond, but still. And yep, what we consider a fish now looks very different from how ever many years ago that happened.

This sort of reminds me of what I’ve read of I believe it was St. Thomas Aquinas, his five proofs, and the conversations I used to have with my dad when he’d say: “Look at a blade of grass. Where did the first grass come from? A seed, right. But where did the first seed come from?”

🙂
 
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Granted. While I am a theist and take a different stance to Curious11 on certain things, I’m interested in what he says. It seemed to me that Agatha didn’t like his comments on theodicy and was trying to shut him down.
 
This thread is confusing me with multiple lines of discussion. I think Pup and Curious’ discussion is thought provoking though, both make good points.
 
Curious11 said:
Right. Says you?

How did God create humans than? It must have been from nothing right?
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Well here is where I show my heresy: Not from nothing but from God’s own being, own consciousness, own life.
 
Oh, I see. While it’s true that his comments were ‘not well expressed’ if one is looking for an exchange of ideas and not simply ‘pot stirring’, I don’t think she was trying to shut him down; I think she was trying to get him to be intellectually honest, for his own best interest as well as everyone else’s. A person who comes out with, “I have no interest in what you think but I just want to play games” can still contribute, after all. But the fact is that on these forums, when there is a question asked and the majority of people are engaging in true discussion, and one or two are using that as a cover to just steer the discussion into a direction where it’s just a shouting match, for their own personal amusement, it is not fair to anybody to let that be done and not to expose the ‘gadflies’. If you have a game going on that involves everybody getting a change to pass a ball to each other, and a couple of the players are pretending to go along but are ensuring that the ball stays away from the other players, and it is SEEN that this is happening, it would be ridiculous to just let those few ruin the game.
 
Well that’s great if you believe that, but I’m sure you agree it’s certainly challenging to understand God’s motives
 
No there wasn’t. Was there a point where you became an adult rather than a teenager? And I don’t mean your 18th or 20 or 21st birthdays. It’s such a gradual transition that there is no first fish or human of plant
 
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