Pope Francis

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Comments

  • Posts: 15,106
    Ah Paul Ryan, who complained that Obama was against Christian values of small government... Ryan, as a Catholic, should have known better: the Catholic Church is the biggest, most invasive government there is!
  • Posts: 7,653
    Regarding Pope Francis and the Catholic Church as a whole, it is clear that a great many people posting here are simply misinformed. You are well within your rights to disagree with the Church's stance on everything from the existence of God on down, but you owe to yourselves and the Church to at least get the basic facts right.

    First of all, the Church has never been a real enemy of science. It has made many mistakes over the years, but it has always been a supporter of science. The Church helped establish the university system, and many prominent philosophers and scientists have been Catholics, and even priests. Copernicus was a priest, Gregor Mendel was a monk, and Georges LeMaitre (Who developed the big bang theory) was a priest. The Church never opposed evolution, in addition to all of this.

    Now, many people have already mentioned Galileo, and he will likely be mentioned many times again. But the Galileo affair was far more complex than it is remembered today. First of all, Galileo's theory was not actually strictly correct. Most importantly, he believed that the sun was the center of the universe, which is obviously false. There was another perfectly legitimate argument against his theory, namely that if the Earth revolved around the sun, other stars in the night sky would show parallax. This objection was perfectly valid, and Galileo had no answer for it. Despite his theory not being proven, Galileo claimed that it was, and also claimed the authority to interpret Scripture (he was a Catholic too) based on it. This was what truly irritated the Vatican. On a side note, Galileo was initially close to Pope Urban VIII, but had eventually lost his favor due to his sometimes unfriendly personality. Galileo was ultimately sentenced to house arrest (he lived in a mansion), and continued to receive the Sacraments. The Catholic Church actually changed its stance on Galileo in the 1700's, before the question of parallax had been answered. Everybody remembers John Paul II's apology in 1992, but that was far after the fact.

    There can be really no defense made for the pedophile scandal, as it was a crime against God, man, and decency. Everyone in all corners of the globe acknowledges it. Only a few clarifications can be made. First, the majority of the incidences themselves were decades ago, and reports now are nearly non-existent. Second of all, both Benedict XVI and Francis have been noted for their strong desire to make things different in terms of reporting and punishing those convicted. While the crimes of the past were great, the Church has made great strides (as has the rest of the world) in changing how things like this are dealt with.

    Francis himself is a very humble man. When he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he sold the official residence and went to live in an apartment, cooked his meals, and rode the bus to work like any other worker. Many of his writings are about economic injustice and the way the everyone should treat the poor and order their lives. And despite his oppositon to homosexual behavior, he went to personally work at AIDS hospices, where he helped to clean and feed dying victims, regardless of how they got the disease. If that is not on some level impressive, I don't know what is.

    The last point is the idea that believing in God makes someone stupid. I can understand why someone wouldn't believe in God, and obviously why then he'd consider that the correct stance. But to claim that you are verifiably, undoubtedly more intelligent than Elizabeth Anscombe, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Kurt Godel, Immanuel Kant, Antoine Lavoisier, Max Planck, and all the scientists mentioned at the start is simply mind-boggling. Perhaps we could all at least acknowledge that it's possible to hold different views, even radically so, without being idiots?

    Thank you for this very well written piece of information.

    While I myself are by no means a believer in any religion, the do fascinate me in the sense how they played such a large and important part of our history. And I do like to read up on the historical aspect simply because they do show the morals of mankind through the centuries.

    The scary bit is how people in this thread do blame the RC church for some of the stances made in the current US by religious groups. And they are really sometimes hatefull and totaly crazy and hatefull against people that oppose their religious convictions. Hence the current mess and religious hatred towards our western nations.

    And indeed the past of child abuse which was somehow and sometimes allowed to continue within the power of the church cannot be condoned. But with power comes corruption a case in point is the current US senate that is working for the 1% rich in that they want them to pay even less tax and have the majority of citizen have nothing at all. It shows that what some people blame the church/religion for also applies to politics in that the common man not always choses for his own best interest but lets him chose something else against his own interest due to reasonings that are as odd as any made sometimes by the church.

    Having read the writings of Dawkins & Hitchens they have far better critisms on the Church and religious belives as the majority of rants in this thread. As an atheist these gentleme should be required reading before telling anybody that you are in fact an atheist.

    I do believe there is something more in this universe, albeit God or mother nature I cannot say.
  • Posts: 9,843
    with all this argueing a Hockey game is bound to break out
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    edited March 2013 Posts: 17,789
    SaintMark wrote:
    I do believe there is something more in this universe, albeit God or mother nature I cannot say.
    As the cells in one's body are separated, so are they also connected. Man likes to divide & separate to label and understand, yet all is one.
    @SaintMark, you are me & we are God.
    The sooner we all know this, the sooner we will stop hurting ourself.

    TheShaolinChrisisall ;)
    Risico007 wrote:
    with all this argueing a Hockey game is bound to break out
    I'll get my skates!!
  • Posts: 15,106
    chrisisall wrote:
    SaintMark wrote:
    I do believe there is something more in this universe, albeit God or mother nature I cannot say.
    As the cells in one's body are separated, so are they also connected. Man likes to divide & separate to label and understand, yet all is one.
    @SaintMark, you are me & we are God.
    The sooner we all know this, the sooner we will stop hurting ourself.

    TheShaolinChrisisall ;)
    Risico007 wrote:
    with all this argueing a Hockey game is bound to break out
    I'll get my skates!!

    We are God? How did you come up with that one? Any evidence? And last time I checked, you and I are not related, or connected, unless you mean that we are both homo sapiens.

    All jokes aside, that's my gripe against faith and members of the clergy: they make very wide claims, very specific claims about the universe, life, what have you, yet show zilch evidence. Why is homosexuality and same sex marriage wrong? Why is/was eating pork? Is transubstantiation ever supported by any kind of evidence? Faith is no knowledge, it is in fact the very opposite of knowledge.
  • edited March 2013 Posts: 12,837
    Timothy Dalton accepted the role of Bond to give us quality movies but resigned because of Kevin Mcclory's sins, and one day he will die. But soon after he will rise again and will once again lead the Bond franchise to pure brilliance.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Ludovico wrote:
    All jokes aside, that's my gripe against faith and members of the clergy: they make very wide claims, very specific claims about the universe, life, what have you, yet show zilch evidence.
    My Son, believe what you will, for you believe not what you will not; it's all good, dude.
    Timothy Dalton accepted the role of Bond to give us quality movies but resigned because of Kevin Mcclory's sins, and one day he will die. But soon after he will rise again and will once again lead the Bond franchise to pure brilliance.

    ^:)^
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,264
    Rather over the top, but anyway.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Rather over the top, but anyway.
    Blasphemer!!! Daltonator heretic!
    You are NOT of the body!!!
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,264
    Slightly sacreligous...I'll say no more... >:) 8-X [..] :ar! and all that's evil.
  • Posts: 12,837
    Us Daltonites are miles better than the other religions because there are no rules. Are we allowed to drink? Until we're bladdered. Sex before marrige? Of course. Gay marrige, contraception, it's all good.

    I'm appointing myself pope of this new church. Now everybody rise for John Barry's TLD soundtrack.
  • Posts: 7,653
    Ludovico wrote:
    All jokes aside, that's my gripe against faith and members of the clergy: they make very wide claims, very specific claims about the universe, life, what have you, yet show zilch evidence.

    In the beginning there was little actual knowledge and as we develop and understand the world around us more we run into a whole different set of questions, for which many answers are given but yet none are proven. Faith in something has never been a bad thing and the clergy are meant to offer guidance. I have met many of them that did so in a far more progressive way than many folks that are not clergy have done so.
    Ludovico wrote:
    Why is homosexuality and same sex marriage wrong? Why is/was eating pork? Is transubstantiation ever supported by any kind of evidence? Faith is no knowledge, it is in fact the very opposite of knowledge.

    Homosexuality and same sex marriage are not wrong but people are threatened by something they do not understand. And for some people it is the current change in their society that can be blamed for anything really. It is like racism easy to do when you are not directly involved with people that you discriminate.

    Eating pork or rather the not eating of pork is a surviving dietary choice from the old times before food could be frozen and kept wel. It had more to do with hygiene in the desert world and as such was added to sensible rules of how to life.

    transubstantiation has various explanations by the different religious streams from within the christian church, some are more controversial than others as well as the critisms or teaching within the various religious christian streams. I think some people take it too far in taken in what is written in the bible to be as true as it is stated within that scripture.

    Faith is believing in something that is more than you are as an individual, and that is perhaps more factual than some scientific reasoning. Somehow there are shedloads of scientist that seem to believe in their faith just as easily as they believe in the knowledge of science.
    Even the strongest attacks on faith is not about the faith but the institutions running said faith. And even then they recognise that they have done a lot of good over the almost two decennia of the RC church. The whole western society thanks its creation of universities, cannonical law which is a foundation of most western law, etc.

    They should start anew with a fresh direction being led by this new pope, enetering the 21st century. But even within this church are large pockets of extreme conservatism that prefer the old times. It is almost a reflection of our current societies.

  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Us Daltonites are miles better than the other religions because there are no rules. Are we allowed to drink? Until we're bladdered. Sex before marrige? Of course. Gay marrige, contraception, it's all good.

    I'm appointing myself pope of this new church. Now everybody rise for John Barry's TLD soundtrack.
    And we can prove that Tim exists.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    And we can prove that Tim exists.

    OMG, biggest LOL of the week! :)) ^:)^
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    And in the prize for best comedic writing in a single sentence for today goes to:
    SaintMark wrote:
    Faith is believing in something that is more than you are as an individual, and that is perhaps more factual than some scientific reasoning.
    Key word 'perhaps' ie you havent a clue and its just a wild stab in the dark.

    Mind you this was a close runner up on the chortle front:
    And we can prove that Tim exists.

    Seriously though and without particularly wishing to atangonise:- Any 'believers' out there can you please just tell me why it is you have 'faith'?

    Thats all I'm asking. Nothing contentious this time, just explain why it is you believe in whatever you believe. The reasons you use to justify thinking what you do.
    Surely if its something you consider is so important in life you must have thoroughly thought it through so it shouldnt be too much to ask?

    If someone can give a logical and coherent response I promise I'll leave them to it and not jump down their throat. Honest.

    And may Tim strike me down with great vengeance and furious anger if I dont!
  • Posts: 7,653
    Amazing you attack believers and their faith and they have to offer you their reasoning as long as they are logical and coherent in your view I take it.

    Why don't you tell your reasoning for not believing perhaps you have a point.
  • edited March 2013 Posts: 246
    SaintMark wrote:
    Why don't you tell your reasoning for not believing...

    Do I need a reason not to believe there's an elephant in my fridge? Can't you accept my lack of belief in fridge-elephants without explanation?

    But if I told you I do believe there's an elephant in my fridge, I think you'd be justified in asking for my reasoning.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Nothing contentious this time, just explain why it is you believe in whatever you believe. The reasons you use to justify thinking what you do.
    Surely if its something you consider is so important in life you must have thoroughly thought it through so it shouldnt be too much to ask?
    I believe in 'souls' because in the 'cloud' of the cosmos, information is never lost, just stored in different ways. Law of conservation of energy. Or something like that.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    chrisisall wrote:
    And we can prove that Tim exists.

    OMG, biggest LOL of the week! :)) ^:)^

    Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.
  • Posts: 9,843
    I can explain there various archelogical, logical, and scientific reasons why I have faith but since no one will listen to me so why bother
  • Posts: 246
    Risico007 wrote:
    I can explain there various archelogical, logical, and scientific reasons why I have faith but since no one will listen to me so why bother

    I'll listen to your reasoning. But if you don't want your reasoning to be challenged then probably best not to bother. If, on the other hand, your faith is unshakeable then any flaws in your reasoning we might point out will have no effect on your faith so you might as well enlighten us.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    Risico007 wrote:
    I can explain there various archelogical, logical, and scientific reasons why I have faith but since no one will listen to me so why bother

    I'm all ears.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Risico007 wrote:
    I can explain there various archelogical, logical, and scientific reasons why I have faith but since no one will listen to me so why bother
    I'm in. As long as it's not merely "I've heard it said..." stuff.
  • Posts: 246
    SaintMark wrote:
    Even the strongest attacks on faith is not about the faith but the institutions running said faith.

    Not really - I'm quite happy to put a foot in the believers' camp for a moment.
    Why would you worship a god who asked one of his followers to murder his own son as a test of his faith. That's sick.
    This god of yours got annoyed with some of his humans because they weren't worshiping him enough and decided to commit genocide by drowning very nearly every person on the planet. New-born babies, children, men and women alike - all dead. That's insane.

    So you'd have to agree, god's a pretty nasty character.

    You worship him out of fear? He might smite you if you don't go to church every week? Maybe its like a wife finding it hard to leave her husband even though he's abusive. I just don't understand why anyone would believe in a god - and I certainly don't understand how they can say the particular god of the bible (there are many others of course) is anything other than a vain, self-obsessed, vicious arse-hole.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Anon wrote:
    So you'd have to agree, god's a pretty nasty character.
    That story was exaggerated; he flooded a town of people yes, but they were all bad.
  • Posts: 11,425
    I am an atheist but have very close friends who are firm believers. I find it a shame the way in which some atheists (like Dorkins) have adopted an aggressively anti-faith stance. Dorkins comes across as a dangerous fanatic - more so than most beleivers.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Getafix wrote:
    I am an atheist
    What- you mean, like we are all simple biological realities and when we die, everything we were is simply gone? What about genetic memory? Past life recall?
  • Before I get into the existence of God, as to the arguments about modernising the Church. I'd say that the majority of Catholics who want "change" and "updating" don't frequently go to church and don't spend much time thinking about the moral theology, let alone those who don't even believe in Catholicism or Christianity. To use an analogy familiar to us here, it would be like people who've seen a few Bond films over the years talking all about the direction they should take with Craig and in the future. While they may have the right to an opinion, surely they shouldn't be thought of on quite the same level that the ideas those of us who've watched all the Bond films 10+ times are.

    Also, a quick note as to the flooding of the Earth. First of all, it's likely that the story was allegorical. But even if it weren't, or even on the allegorical level, from a theistic perspective, God has the right to end life, and he does quite frequently. If it's not morally problematic for him to end life at different times, what changes when it's all at once? He can end our life, again, from a theistic perspective, whenever he wants.

    On to the existence of God. Ultimately, I find the arguments for the existence of God, principally Aquinas's 5 ways, but also a few others, like the ontological argument and the argument from universal belief to be convincing, and I don't find atheist arguments like the problem of evil or the argument from inconsistent revelations to be that convincing. I heard the first set and found them well-reasoned and consistent. I heard the second set and remained unconvinced. I suggest that something similar happened, except in reverse, to the atheists here.

    On to moral questions. Belief in the sinfulness of homosexual behavior is not tantamount to hatred. I believe a great many things to be sinful, and I'm sure all of us do a great number of them, to one degree or another. That doesn't mean I hate you. In fact, most of you seem like quite decent people. Ultimately, though, the reason for its sinfulness lies in the dual purposes of sex, that it be ordered towars procreation (often reduced to procreative or opened to life, which leas to lots of messy attempts to clarify terms and frequently talking about nothing) or unity. Ultimately, gay sex cannot be procreative for...obvious reasons. The same goes for a whole bunch of different sex acts, but that's a separate debate, and it should be stressed again that I don't hate anybody who does any of these things.

    Obviously, Christianity doesn't hold that pork is sinful, you'll have to ask a Jew or Muslim or Jew for Jesus about that.

    I confess to not truly understanding transubstantiation. I know that it has to do with Aristotelian ideas like the form and accidents of a substance, but I'm not particularly versed in those matters, and like I said I don't really understand it. But I don't understand plenty of other things, like quantum mechanics or even economics, and I don't doubt their existence. I've believed the Catholic Church on everything else thus far, and I find rather silly to say, "So the Church has been right on every other moral matter over 2000 years, but on this one, I, soundofthesinners, a man with a partial college education and an internet connection, am right, and 2000 years of teaching is wrong." Just sounds like something odd to say.

    And last but not least, somebody mentioned proof, and it's kind of hard to discuss proof in philosophical matters, since there's no sort of empirical experiment that can be done as with scientific hypotheses. This doesn't mean they're less valuable, only different. After all, we're still arguing about what Socrates and Plato thought and they're essentially the inventors of philosophy as we know it.
  • Posts: 15,106
    SaintMark wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    All jokes aside, that's my gripe against faith and members of the clergy: they make very wide claims, very specific claims about the universe, life, what have you, yet show zilch evidence.

    In the beginning there was little actual knowledge and as we develop and understand the world around us more we run into a whole different set of questions, for which many answers are given but yet none are proven. Faith in something has never been a bad thing and the clergy are meant to offer guidance. I have met many of them that did so in a far more progressive way than many folks that are not clergy have done so.
    Ludovico wrote:
    Why is homosexuality and same sex marriage wrong? Why is/was eating pork? Is transubstantiation ever supported by any kind of evidence? Faith is no knowledge, it is in fact the very opposite of knowledge.

    Homosexuality and same sex marriage are not wrong but people are threatened by something they do not understand. And for some people it is the current change in their society that can be blamed for anything really. It is like racism easy to do when you are not directly involved with people that you discriminate.

    Eating pork or rather the not eating of pork is a surviving dietary choice from the old times before food could be frozen and kept wel. It had more to do with hygiene in the desert world and as such was added to sensible rules of how to life.

    transubstantiation has various explanations by the different religious streams from within the christian church, some are more controversial than others as well as the critisms or teaching within the various religious christian streams. I think some people take it too far in taken in what is written in the bible to be as true as it is stated within that scripture.

    Faith is believing in something that is more than you are as an individual, and that is perhaps more factual than some scientific reasoning. Somehow there are shedloads of scientist that seem to believe in their faith just as easily as they believe in the knowledge of science.
    Even the strongest attacks on faith is not about the faith but the institutions running said faith. And even then they recognise that they have done a lot of good over the almost two decennia of the RC church. The whole western society thanks its creation of universities, cannonical law which is a foundation of most western law, etc.

    They should start anew with a fresh direction being led by this new pope, enetering the 21st century. But even within this church are large pockets of extreme conservatism that prefer the old times. It is almost a reflection of our current societies.

    Faith by definition is believing in something without proper evidence. It is not wrong per se, except when, as it often happens, faith blinds the believer when evidence contradicts his or her belief, when because of faith they refuse to recognise truth. Faith has hindered or outright opposed scientific progress, the development of medicine and human rights. Yes Catholicism is part of Western culture, yes the institution had some use in the past, but that does not mean 1)that other institution could not have done the same thing and 2)it is relevant now. And that the beliefs at the core of its existence are justified. I am glad that you are a liberal Christian, I do hope that the new pope's positions are closer to yours, but when conservative Christians oppose contraceptives, same-sex marriage, what have you, they back it up by the same faith, which they erect as above truth.

  • Posts: 15,106
    chrisisall wrote:
    Anon wrote:
    So you'd have to agree, god's a pretty nasty character.
    That story was exaggerated; he flooded a town of people yes, but they were all bad.

    Evidence that the flood happened and it was divinely triggered?
This discussion has been closed.