By their actions you will know them. We have had a number of raving angry Catholics in various threads here…or have we? I’ve had a moment to clean up a few threads and post some of the stuff that was held in comment moderation, and discovered that Naz, k8, promo, baker, PZ is a fool, Burns, rumrunner, Dobbs, NYTs, KKKAthiest, Andy, CDV, BradJ, Brett, b7, PCD, NVFU, Your daddy, facebock, baker and several other loud-mouthed asses who have been braying here are all one and the same person.
This is called sock puppetry. It is trying to generate the illusion of a consensus on one side of an issue by pretending to be a multitude. It is cowardly, contemptible, and stupid — not just because a blog owner can look at the stats and detect it, but because it suddenly diminishes your point of view. It makes you look so weak that you have to lie to put up a pretense of popular support, and it makes your side, in this case the fundamentalist Catholics, look like a troop of posturing frauds.
Thanks!
Steve_C:
Well — that’s your loss. I think it’s goofy to believe nothing unless it’s proven — and even then you’re taking a leap of faith in believing any scientific experiments you haven’t performed yourself.
If you have to wait until all the data is in before you believe anything then you’ll only end up believing nothing, because humans will NEVER know everything about everything.
I’m sure if you guys wouldn’t even believe you were born because you’d have to take someone else’s word on it.
Bronze Dog:
Ever see “A Clockwork Orange”? If so, don’t you see what Anthony Burgess was saying about the gift of Free Will?
You have it backwards.
There’s no reason to believe in gods unless you have some evidence to prove otherwise. And we both know you do not.
That’s why it’s called “faith” genius.
By their
deedsarguments ye shall know them.But you implied it.
Even the infant Egyptians that God killed? Even they oppressed the Israelites?
Sorry, that’s still an essentialist argument.
And we know that not all of the Israelites were faithful to God. The followup of Exodus describes the Golden Calf, and other examples of lack of Israelite faith in God.
Hey, what about the two sons of Aaron who brought “strange fire” to God? Were they not faithful? Or did they deserve to die because they weren’t faithful in the right way?
Suggesting that the sacrifice of a human being is somehow different from murder is also an essentialist argument.
Another essentialist argument. Boy, you’re just full of them.
Which is exactly what I wrote.
O RLY?
And that’s just the most blatant example. God demands bloody death in other ways.
No, it’s the essentialist argument to twist the words so that the cruelty of God is somehow justified.
Actually, he didn’t.
You see, to “sacrifice” something means to give it up forever.
But by Christianity’s own mythology, Jesus, came back to life, whole and healthy, and went up to heavenly bliss directly anyway. Either way, God got his son/self back (and that’s assuming that Jesus wasn’t in heaven while he was dead, which if wrong means that God never lacked for him).
It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was a brief inconvenience, for a being that is eternal anyway.
Jesus had a bad
weekendFriday for our sins?There’s too much stuff here to take on all at once, so I’ll just do it little by little:
‘I never said “God punished them so they MUST have been bad.”
But you implied it.
The very fact that the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites who were faithful to God.
Even the infant Egyptians that God killed? Even they oppressed the Israelites?
Sorry, that’s still an essentialist argument.
And we know that not all of the Israelites were faithful to God. The followup of Exodus describes the Golden Calf, and other examples of lack of Israelite faith in God.
Hey, what about the two sons of Aaron who brought “strange fire” to God? Were they not faithful? Or did they deserve to die because they weren’t faithful in the right way?’
So — when did I say that the Israelites were ALWAYS faithful at ALL TIMES? Dig that quote up for me.
Also: The punishment was directed at the fathers of the first born Egyptians. Were the babies being punished? If that’s your assertion then you claim to know what their fate was in the afterlife. If you do, let us know. We’ll reserve a new book in the canon for your revelations.
Sigh.
And that, too, is an essentialist argument.
1. What’s that got to do with anything?
2. Define free will in a meaningful manner.
Footnote from the NAB, the translation approved by the US Bishops:
“[30-40] The text clearly implies that Jephthah vowed a human sacrifice, according to the custom of his pagan neighbors; cf 2 Kings 3:27. The inspired author merely records the fact; he does not approve of the action.”
Oh, and that was kind of my point: ALL of the Egyptians were plagued for the sake of the Israelites, only SOME of whom were faithful.
PS: Say, that means that the infant Egyptians were also punished by the boils, lice, hail, and so on. Suffer not the children?
Neither does he disapprove. Neither does God express disapproval. Given that the author is “inspired”, that implies divine approval of the murder.
If by “essentialist” you mean I start with a basic premise, then yes, it is. In that case, you are an essentialist yourself because you start with the basic premise that there is no God, or if there is then he must be evil.
You have your basic premises, I have mine. I, however, feel no need to penalize you for starting your argument with premises. You, however, seem to feel need to fault me for doing so myself.
If I were truly an essentialist, I would still be an atheist (or agnostic). I’m not sure which one counts because I didn’t really care either way beyond two years ago.
I suggest you refrain from being so tiresome as to point out that I’m an essentialist, because if you do so then I will refrain from pointing out that you are just as much of an “essentialist” as I am.
In the end, it will save us a lot of time.
Judges was recorded from oral tradition. I’m not a biblical scholar — if you are let me know otherwise — but given the fact that this story seems to have been passed down from a society which was in the vicinity of pagan societies, wouldn’t it make sense that some of those pagan morals seeped their way into the text?
After all, I still put up a Christmas tree and paint Easter eggs, but I hardly think that’s concrete evidence that I’m either a druid or a worshiper of fertility gods.
No, I think you misunderstand what essentialism means.
Basically, you are saying that whatever God does is good. If something good happens, it’s the result of God’s goodness, but if something bad happens, it’s still the result of God’s goodness.
So there actually is no way to differentiate between good and bad — they’re both attributed to God being “good”.
Now, to contrast this with my own rationalist position, I would say that all that we can determine of good and evil is by the evidence of our senses, reason, experience, and knowledge of consequences.
Consider an extreme example: There was a case a while back where a woman drowned all of her children so that Satan would not get them.
Now, from a rationalist perspective, what that woman did was evil: The children were alive, then she destroyed their lives.
But from an essentialist perspective, what that woman did could just as easily be called good: Her motive was to “save” her children from evil, so she sent them along to be with God in heaven.
The laws of the world, however, try to avoid essentialism, certainly in regards to criminal law. Unless God entered the courtroom to testify that her children were indeed safe with him in heaven and that her motives were sufficient to warrant forgiveness and dismissal of all charges, all that we have do go on were the facts that she committed murder multiple times.
And that is the way a rationalist and skeptic views the bible: What are the consequences of the actions being described? We do not see heaven; we do not see justice being meted out with great care and deep wisdom; we do not see anything else being told about what happens. We see mass murder and cruelty, and joy being taken in mass murder and cruelty.
I am not an essentialist. I am going by what the story itself says happens.
All of your disagreement is based on essentialism: The indoctrinated belief that God must be good, no matter what, despite there being no evidence anywhere that this is so.
In other words, it’s all hand-waving and excuse-making.
1. What’s that got to do with anything?
It was a straightforward question. Why so hesitant to answer? I’ll just say that Alex has his free will taken away from him so he can no longer inflict suffering upon society and therefore will only want to do good and avoid evil. Alex’s lacking of free will is not a gift, however, but a punishment. If God were to do this to all of us for the sake of ensuring that we do good and not evil, it would be too horrible for anyone to want to imagine.
Otherwise, we’d all be like a bunch of robots — perhaps with emotions, perhaps not.
2. Define free will in a meaningful manner.
Define ‘meaningful.’ (Just kidding.) This article does a good job of describing it, but I’m sure the Catechism would probably provide a more thorough answer:
http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/YU/ay0603.asp
‘Consider an extreme example: There was a case a while back where a woman drowned all of her children so that Satan would not get them.
Now, from a rationalist perspective, what that woman did was evil: The children were alive, then she destroyed their lives.’
I remember that case. Considering that the woman was mentally ill, I hardly find her responsible for her own actions. I don’t know if that’s the legal finding in that case, but to me it’s pretty obvious that the woman was disturbed.
Frankly, I think that if there was evil done in that case it was from us, as a community, not caring for our mentally ill any more than we do. For the sake of lower taxes we allow people who need treatment to go untreated and wonder when crap like this happens.
You know — even though I’m a theist, I’m still very much a liberal with Democrat leanings. I think a lot of Catholics are. For some reason, I feel it necessary to point that out because so many of my liberal friends talk to me like I’m Dick Cheney or something.
I’ll read on to what you said later in your post…
Of course. I am quite certain that the morals of neighboring societies made their way into the texts of all of the books of the bible, because I am quite certain that the texts are in no way inspired by a transcendent, benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, but are rather the non-factual (or quasi-factual, at best) mytho-historical records of one Middle-Eastern people surrounded by many other Middle-Eastern peoples.
Owlmirror:
That’s simply because you do not believe in metaphysics. I do. I’m interested in First Causes. From that perspective, your search for knowledge has its limits.
First Causes lies beyond the realm of science so you pretend they don’t exist. I believe that something can’t come from nothing so I believe that they do exist. That’s why we’ll always disagree.
I don’t read the Bible as a fundamentalist does. I’m fully aware of its place in the contexts of history and religion. I think it’s important to know these things lest one allow oneself to be misled. You can’t present me arguments assuming I’m a fundamentalist and expect that to blow my faith.
Dutch you’re tedious. We KNOW you believe in magic. Thanks for clearing that up though.
‘But from an essentialist perspective, what that woman did could just as easily be called good: Her motive was to “save” her children from evil, so she sent them along to be with God in heaven.’
That’s what we in the Catholic Church would call ‘bad discernment’ — tragically bad, I might add. I don’t know what you think about Catholics, but we most certainly DON’T believe that God talks to us directly like that. We shouldn’t believe ourselves to be direct channels for the Holy Spirit.
There are many spirits. Sometimes we’re hearing our own thoughts and wishes telling us what we should do. Sometimes we’re being told things that would be bad to ourselves and others and we shouldn’t listen to those either — even if they claim to be God. (Perhaps I should say especially if they claim to be God.) As Catholics, we’re taught to be skeptical when discerning.
In order to be confident that the Holy Spirit is talking to us — and that’s what you essentially are speaking of when you talk about ‘God telling us things’ — one has to be:
1) Humble. If we’re not truly humble, we can most certainly be sure that the Holy Spirit is NOT talking to us.
2) Be Skeptical
3) Double-check with Scriptures. If Scriptures contradicts us then we can be sure it’s not the Holy Spirit.
4) Double-check with the Church. The Church knows the true meaning behind scriptures better than laymen because their lives are devoted to it. That keeps us from coming up with any interpretation we happen to stumble upon that happens to be to our liking.
Sometimes it’s not a choice between doing Good and Evil. Sometimes it’s a choice between doing Good and Better. What discernment does is help us to discover the difference between Better and Best, for the Holy Spirit would be the Best Spirit to listen to.
So — it isn’t a casual manner one should take when ‘listening to spirits’. (You guys do this to even if you call it something else — ‘decision making,’ if you will.) Anyway, as I said before, this woman was clearly disturbed and can’t be thought of as someone who could clearly discerning the Holy Spirit.
She needed help from us. I’m sure there were signs that she was insane. Something should have given us a warning. Were we not listening? I’m liberal enough not to blame mentally ill people for their condition and the consequences of letting that condition go untreated.
I’ve never seen evidence nor reason that
(a) a First Cause is necessary, nor
(b) that a putative First Cause necessarily has intelligence, knowledge and awareness, nor
(c) that a putative First Cause necessarily has moral qualities, nor
(d) that a putative First Cause is the exact same thing as the God of the bible, or of any other religion.
And what it comes down to is that your search for knowledge is exactly as limited as mine.
No, now you directly contradict yourself. Your alleged First Cause must have come from nothing, so you do believe that something can come from nothing.
Provide evidence that anything you say makes sense, and you may well convince me.
Regardless of what your religion is, religious faith is just making believe, and making believe that you’re not making believe.
Steve_C said, ‘Dutch you’re tedious….’
‘There is no such thing on Earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninteresting person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and the bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower…in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.’
— G.K. Chesterton
Do be sure to let all the theists and other people of faith know your conclusions when you deduce First Causes without using science. I have no doubt they’ll all accept your conclusions without quibble.
After all, thousands of years’ worth of theological approaches to metaphysics have netted us–hmm, what exactly has theology netted us? A closer understanding of the nature of god(s)? No, there are still hundreds of thousands of opinions on that and exactly zero evidence. Freedom from the negative aspects of humanity? No, terrible crimes are still committed by some of the most faithful servants of religion. Objective understanding of the nature of good and evil? No, there are some who equate blasphemy with genocide (though only blasphemy against their god(s)) while others consider blasphemy a victimless crime.
Well, maybe Dutchy will finally and once and for all solve all of these issues with his non-scientific approach to first causes. Thank the Lord Krishna!
Why not?
So… what’s the Eucharist again?
Sigh. Even assuming that spirits are real (how do you know? how would you know if you were wrong?), how do you know that all of the popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, not to mention alleged saints, alleged prophets, alleged apostles, and so on… How do you know that all of the Church fathers used correct “discernment” all of the time? How would you know if you were wrong?
That’s being skeptical.
The real test of anything is not with the Scripture, and not with the Church, but with reality itself.
That’s being skeptical.
Owlmirror:
My belief in First Causes is more platonic than anything else. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, ideals, etc. So it’s from learning about philosophy through literature, history, and actual philosophy classes that I get my groundwork for my religious beliefs.
I comprehend that we may all be looking at shadows on the wall and thinking them to be real.
I don’t see how thinking the body comes from the soul is any more absurd as thinking the soul comes from the body. But I believe in ideas just as I believe in anything abstract — such as music. To someone who just measures what can be measure, it’s possible to say that music doesn’t exist; soundwaves do. I guess it’s true that if there’s a radio playing and no one is there to hear it, then nothing results but soundwaves. Upon being heard and comprehended, however, those soundwaves become music.
That line between what is music and what is noise is something I’m not sure can be defined. It takes a soul to recognize it.
I could ramble on like this, though, but I don’t expect you to understand because it’s like we’re talking in two different languages. I think it’s thinking about things a little more abstractly and less concretely that lends one to understand.
It’s the difference between poetry and prose, really.
There is a field called musicology. You might want to investigate it, unless you’re content to assume all fields of inquiry stopped at Plato.
‘So… what’s the Eucharist again?’
The Eucharist calls for discernment as well. It’s a sacrament. Sacraments are manifestations of the invisible world into the visible world.
If this seems too incredible to believe, here’s an example which makes it a little easier:
I remember one time when a young woman was getting baptized, I could just see the joy on her face. During this, I was thinking about the meaning of sacrament and thinking how seeing joy on a person’s face would be considered ‘sacramental.’
I could not see her emotions, but I could see physical evidence of them showing through her facial expressions. This is an example of something which is ‘sacramental’ in nature.
The Eucharist is a sacrament, but it needs our full cooperation for it to mean anything.
Brownian, OM:
Yeah, I’ve taken Music Theory, too. Thanks.
As with anything, skepticism is a useful tool but it can be misused. If one is skeptical of everything, he wouldn’t be able to function.
You could be skeptical that turning on a light switch is going to produce electric light. I could be skeptical that hitting the ‘Post’ button will actually post this.
As I said earlier, I could be skeptical that I were actually born. I can’t remember it. I have to take the word of someone else. My parents? They could be lying. Maybe all the documents are forgeries and the photographs were photo-shopped. Maybe I was dropped off by space aliens who grew me in a pod.
I have no proof I was born. Still, I’m not going to be skeptical about it.
That’s essentially why I believe the New Testament, and if you want a longer answer you should just read “Misquoting Truth” (which is where I got the above analogy).
Maybe if you guys were truly skeptics you would question the Christopher Hitches’s and the Sam Harris’s of the world a bit more than you do.
Do some thorough fact-checking of them for a change. As a former atheist, I’ve shown that I’m willing to change my mind if I’m given enough plausible evidence. I was so much a skeptic that I was willing to question the skeptics.
I’m still that skeptical, to tell the truth, but I’m not going to make Skepticism my religion. I’ve got better things to do.
Not the same thing. If you were aware of the field of musicology and what it studies, you wouldn’t have said that it takes a soul to distinguish between music and noise.
For one of the most current treatments of the relationship between neurology and music (and why the ‘soul’ is an unnecessary thesis), I recommend This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel J. Levitin.
I have to warn you though: it eschews metaphysics for testable empirical evidence, so you may not find it to your liking.
….you were likely as prone to making unsupported assertions that were acceptable in 400 BC but reeks of dilettantism by current standards as you are today.
Brownian:
I’ll watch it (and probably enjoy it), although I fail to see how science disproves metaphysics. Just because I believe in psychology, for example, doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as God.
Fundamentalists have those arguments against science. I don’t.
Brownian:
Just as prone as you are. You guys essentially make metaphysical conclusions from science. That’s just as bad as making scientific conclusions using metaphysics, in my book.
Dutch, science disproves metaphysics when the predictions made by metaphysics are not supported by evidence.
In many cases, metaphysical predictions about the nature of the universe were not previously falsifiable because mechanisms for testing did not exist at that time. That is simply not the case today.
To hold that the ancients’ views on psychology, for instance, still stand because they’re metaphysical musings on the nature of reality (or our perception thereof) while ignoring the body of work by empirical scientists (many of whom are just as familiar with the Allegory of the Cave as you) is the very opposite of skepticality. In fact, it is the height of the hubris that seems to infect many philosophers.
The god of the philosophers’ gaps is shrinking as fast as that of the theologians. While there’s no reason to expect such gods will shrink forever, it is silly to hold on to those gods as if they were untouchable by science and thus unlike the god of the aether, the god of the celestial dome, the god of the elements, etc., etc.
If metaphysics needs scientific evidence to support its claims then it is not metaphysics but science. I don’t doubt that there have been those who have tried to deduce conclusions about the scientific world through metaphysics, but I would consider those people to be foolish at best.
Your disbelief in God is a leap of faith just as my belief of God is a leap of faith. If you relied only upon scientific evidence, you’d be agnostic at best.
Obviously not. I’ve already demonstrated at least one case in which you took a philosophical stance on the metaphysical nature of an abstract such as music, asserted that there is a difference between it and another abstract such as noise, and asserted that the difference is only detectable by another abstract the soul (for which there is little evidence for, and a growing body of evidence against), when in fact there is a whole body of research that has been exploring the very same question from the same philosophical underpinnings and finding such assertions to be unsupported. You’d do well to avoid asserting that such abstracts are beyond the reach of science in the future, lest you unwittingly reveal further evidence of your hubris and dilettantism.
Wank, wank. I am an agnostic, unless you’re talking about any of the gods that have been proposed by any proponent of any religion besides weak deism or pantheism. I am, for instance, as atheist about Awonawilona as you are.
Haven’t you ever heard of the Divine Ratio? Just because an aspect of beauty can be quantified and measured does not prove that God does not exist; that souls do not exist. Is that what you’re trying to say? I’m really trying to figure that out.
Just because you can measure what happens in the brain of an individual when music is played doesn’t mean that there’s no God that created the psychological make-up of the brain that enables it to act as its receiver.
You can go on all you want about particular frequencies and how they register in the brain when they’re heard in certain ways, but I don’t see how that proves God doesn’t exist. Where does that psychology come from? Where does that intelligence come from?
I suggest you stop dabbling in areas of metaphysics lest you prove to us how much a amateur you are in that field. The more you post on the matter, the more you reveal this to us.
All your magic belongs to us.
Steve_C:
I don’t believe you exist. You’ll have to prove it to me.
Posted by: Dutch Hedrick | July 15, 2008 6:13 PM
Examples, please? I assume, by “you guys,” that you meant the commenters here – or even atheists in general – but such a claim is specious. Saying that there is no evidence for the existence of God is not a metaphysical conclusion – it is an expressly scientific one. You, on the other hand, hit the nail on the head in stating that you claim to make scientific conclusions based on the quite literally unscientific premises deriving from metaphysics. Just because there is no evidence that God does not exist in no way proves his existence. There is an equal lack of evidence that Russell’s teapot does not exist, but that in no way means that it’s actually there.
Your insistence on trying to get someone to prove a negative – and asserting that failure to do so is somehow proof that God exists – simply shows that you’re quite weak in the field of logical argumentation.
That’s your stance? You’re going to pull out the “you can’t prove a negative” as if it were meaningful? You’re the amateur. Just to cite one example, neither does it disprove the existence of Brahma, but I’m sure that doesn’t bother you one iota. Why should a (shrinking) gap in which some god might potentially lay demand I accept that you or your theist pals have any meaningful answer when you cannot even demonstrate the same to each other?
It may be true that some god was the cause of it all. Fine Given theologists’ descriptions of him, it’s a pretty safe bet such a god ain’t yours.
As I said in an earlier post, when you use metaphysics to come up with anything useful, I’ll be suitably chastened.
Well, I’ve already read Plato and Chesterton, so be sure to let us know when you’ve got more than a collection of quotes.
dozen’s of posts ago, Mr. “I think myself apologist” said:
I know I shouldn’t waste my time here, though
uh huh.
whose time do you think you’re wasting?
’cause obviously you really don’t think its yours.
Divine Ratio? Would that be pi = 3?
Just kidding, Dutch H, but what I’ve read about the so-called divine ratio forms no basis for it being “divine”, and what’s worse is that when you look at the various occurences closely, they are nearly, but not exactly identical. It’s been more like a natural close-packing technique. So is that a variable divine ratio, or was god just sloppy about this divine ratio?
BTW, I am curious about your atheism/agnosticism. I am really doubtful about actual conversion from non-belief to belief. Were you a believer before you were atheist? I cannot imagine a circumstance beyond some real, solid evidence (not a personal appearance – drugs can really screw with your perceptions) that would convince me of the reality of any of the subset of gods defined so far. I can imagine a god that I would like, but that doesn’t come anywhere near making it real.
Maybe I was dropped off by space aliens who grew me in a pod.
as someone recently admonished me:
That would be an insult to pod-people.
Cripes. Dutch H is still wanking on.
So it’s essentialism, again.
Plato. Feh. He’s probably the most influential of those who turned rational analysis of the world into almost hallucinatory mystical mental masturbation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JSpolpWYEM
And of course, Christianity stole lots from Neo-Platonism.
So it’s all about how it makes you feel. Essentialism makes you feel good, so you adhere to it as being absolute truth.
Which means what?
So… it was an observation of emotion is someone else. Goody for her for feeling good, and goody for you for feeling good for seeing her feeling good… but she was just feeling happy about being the center of attention in the make-believe story of a religious ritual, and you were just feeling empathy.
Have you heard of mirror neurons, by the way?
So… there’s no reason to get upset at PZ then, either. Just refuse to co-operate with being angry about it.
Philosophy has advanced since the days of Pyrrho, too.
That’s nuts. The most parsimonious explanation of one’s own birth is the best inference, based on the evidence. We have evidence of how organisms reproduce and presumably you have some evidence of similarity to your parents. You don’t start coming up with wildly outrageous theories until you find evidence that directly clashes with the current evidence.
Wait, what?
You believe the New Testament because you don’t believe that you’re an alien pod person?
Could you please repeat that again, and using saner language?
Sounds like a book written by someone incredibly naive who had never heard of parsimony and falsifiability.
“Space aliens”, forsooth.
The First Cause/God of the Gaps argument is actually much more problematic for theists than it is for atheists or agnostics.
It’s problematic for theists because even the most cursory inventory of beliefs worldwide provides a nearly inexhaustible population of plausible candidates. Further, since many of these candidates are logically incompatible, they can’t all exist (which is even more problematic for monotheists since the existence of any one necessitates the non-existence of all others.) Thus, we’re left with the task of evaluating the evidence for each plausible candidate god, which is where we were before we even posited a deist First Cause. It’s certainly no more an argument for Jehovah than it is an argument for Brahma, and thus it is of no help at all for a Jehovah/Not Brahmaist (for the existence of Jehovah precludes the existence of Brahma) to provide an argument for the existence of Brahma (who, by the way, doesn’t preclude Jehovah but makes him a liar.)
It’s not particularly problematic for atheists or agnostics, since the history of science has continuously shrunk the Gap in which the God of the Gaps dwells. As of yet, we haven’t yet come across a Gap that cannot be further reduced by empirical investigation other than the prehistory of the Big Bang, the characteristics of alternative universes, or other such ‘big’ questions left in the field of physics since the discovery of relativity and the quantum realm. Further, such Gaps, such as what happens to information once it has entered the event horizon of a black hole, may not be Gaps at all. Until such Gaps can be demonstrated to be completely insurmountable, no deity is required.
Brownian,
Well then no deity would ever be required, how could you ever demonstrate that a gap is completely insurmountable ?
how could you ever demonstrate that a gap is completely insurmountable ?
um, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be a gap, in and of itself?
One thing that this thread has achieved, thanks to Dutch Hedrick, is show why Theology is a subject which can, and should, be safely ignored. Screeds and screeds of meaningless blather, without a single logical argument.
It’s kind of like saying that someone would believe in fairies if only they knew enough about the type of hats they wore.
It’s a gap but on a different category. I think Brownian was refering to those gaps that relate to our understanding of physics.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to be sloppy, but I was referring to some of the more esoteric aspects of our understanding of physics that place physical limits on what can be known or measured. For instance, by their very definition, universes other than our own could not ever be detected or measured in any way, according to some multiverse theories. On a more mundane level (but not much more), Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle places physical limits on what can be known about a given particle.
These ‘Gaps’ are very different than the ‘How exactly did abiogenesis occur?’-type of Gap that refer to knowledge or understanding not yet gained, but still theoretically attainable. Science and its precursors have been dutifully filling in these gaps, and I can see no good reason why these might one day all be filled in, even if incompletely as in the case of prehistory where some evidence might no longer exist.
I can see no good reason why these might one day all be filled in, even if incompletely as in the case of prehistory where some evidence might no longer exist.
time travel, baby!
:p
Steve_C:
I don’t believe you exist. You’ll have to prove it to me.
You can’t advance your argument by lying. In fact, this lame attempt at analogy, as with your music analogy, completely undercuts your argument, but you’re way too dumb to understand why.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle places physical limits on what can be known about a given particle.
It isn’t even that … it isn’t as if there are particles that really do have exact position and velocity but we can never know both; rather it is that particles aren’t like that, that our billiard ball model isn’t accurate. To quote Wikipedia (hide your eyes, Jolene), “In quantum mechanics, the position and velocity of particles do not have precise values, but have a probability distribution. There are no states in which a particle has both a definite position and a definite velocity. The narrower the probability distribution is in position, the wider it is in momentum”.
Not only doesn’t the universe conform to what some ancient goatherders imagined, it doesn’t even conform to our most basic intuitions.
Interesting you should say that, TM – I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and just got through the particle physics section of it. He uses the term ‘counterintuitive’, and I have to agree.
Heck, the goatherders had enough trouble coping with the world they’d discovered at the time let alone that which was yet to be revealed.
It’s amazing how if you scroll through enough of these threads you’ll always find some dipshit who went to junior college, learned a few things (very damned few) and now thinks he can use this miniscule knowledge to act as if the drool on his shirt is just an accident…
To Dutch Hedrick:
All of the shit you’ve crapped on this blog is hilarious, but #1035 reveals the real shallowness of it:
“Your disbelief in God is a leap of faith just as my belief of God is a leap of faith.”
You reveal that you have no understanding of the concept of evidence, proof, nor the methods whereby either are gathered or interpreted.
Fool, the very concept of “god” is manmade, not natural. “god” is a word, not a fact. Nowhere in nature is “god” seen: not on stones, rocks, boulders, plants, animals, the sky, anywhere. Man made up the word, the very concept of “god.”
I fear it is actually impossible for peabrains like you to understand this. You are operating on the assumption that “god” is a “given” when in fact, “god” is just a word.
You have to go back to the limits of human beginnings and study EVERY single “god” reference from there up to the present. When you do, as many of us have, you see the evolution of the concept of “god” in various cultures and stages of human development. You also see without a doubt that there is NO natural evidence for ANY god ANYWHERE. “god” has been manufactured just as Toad in The Wind in The Willows, Harry Potter, Bugs Bunny, or any other man-created idea.
This takes a level of intellect and discipline that peabrains like you just don’t have, yet we still have to listen to your failed attempts to sound as if you have climbed down out of the trees and can walk among evolved beings.
For in the end, that is WHY you believe: not because you take any supposed “leap” or have “reasoned it out” but because you are simply more simian than human. You may look, act, and try to sound more like a human than you really are, but you believe because your brain is just not as advanced as a human’s.
Your only purpose is to ensure genetic diversity. You truly have no other purpose, certainly not to act as if you can reason with humans about the nature of your inadequate brain’s attempt at making things like “god” up to help you deal with a world a trifle too complex for you to otherwise understand.
Go back to your nest, make some babies that might, through the mechanism of evolution, move your genetic line microscopically closer to human. It is your destiny, and your sole goal in your otherwise pathetic life.
It’s cute to watch trained chimps act like humans, but not to listen to them try to reason like humans.
You’re boring, Dutch.
Shut up and get lost.
Then apparently some robots have souls! Or, for the reality-based round here: there’s no such thing as a soul anyway and Dutch Hedrick is (ef)fluent in rubbish.
Dutch Hedrick wrote:
Maybe you’re not intending to, but you’re dodging the point. The question is whether the facts of morality are contingent on God’s will, so that God could simply declare child rape or animal torture to be a good thing, whereupon we’d all be morally required to rape children and torture animals. It’s not a question of whether God has made such a declaration. The question is whether he could make such a declaration, and whether the facts of morality would simply change to fit God’s will.
You say you’re into Platonic metaphysics. Well, this question is straight out of Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, and Christian thinkers have wrangled with it from the time of Aquinas. Duns Scotus thought he had Scriptural basis for saying that a good deal of morality is contingent on God’s will: he pointed to God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, his command that the Israelites plunder the Egyptians before heading to the Promised Land, and his command that the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute. Scotus thus drew upon the traditional division of the Decalogue into two tables, saying that while the first tables’ duties to God are necessary truths, God is capable of suspending the second tables’ prohibitions of murder and the like. Ockham arguably went whole-hog and said that God could even command us to hate him, whereupon we would be morally required to hate God. Descartes explicitly accepted that conclusion, and Luther and Calvin sometimes seem to flirt with the idea.
Anyway, Cambridge Platonists like Ralph Cudworth lambasted the idea that morality was contingent on God’s will, and took the view that God could no more change the truths of morality than change the truths of geometry. This opened the door for the nonreligious approaches to ethics found in Shaftesbury and Hume. These days some Christian philosophers (like Richard Swinburne) are willing to say that much of morality is true independently of God and therefore eschew moral arguments for God’s existence.
So, again, do you think morality is contingent on God’s will, or do you think that there’s an independent moral standard?
Dutch Hedrick, also, you know, I’m aware of the stereotype that Catholics don’t know much about the Bible. But the conquest of Canaan is a really big deal. I mean, God makes a ‘Promised Land’ covenant with Abraham in Genesis and it gets renewed with Jacob and then God takes it up with Moses, who leads the tribes of Israel all the way up to the Promised Land and dies. Then (in the book of Joshua) Moses’ right-hand man Joshua leads the Israelites into the Promised Land and slaughters all the inhabitants, starting with the good people of Jericho.
This is Bible 101.
Yikes! Glad I didn’t take Bible 101.
Dave2@1061 – “This is Bible 101”
Hey, not fair expecting Dutch Hedrick to know anything about the Bible! He only bases his whole life on it as interpreted by the Catholic Church!
Dear Dr. Myers:
If you are reading this message, I wonder if you would re-consider your plan to desecrate the Blessed Sacrament.
As a devout Catholic, I note, first of all, that Catholics believe that the Eucharist is not a mere symbol of Christ but Christ Himself, under the accidents of bread and wine, meaning that all the appearances and other properties of the Host, by a miracle of God, will be discernible only as bread and wine. Nobody is claiming that a microscope will reveal something that the eye cannot see: both see only the accidents, according to the Faith of Catholics.
We Catholics do not ask you to believe this. You are free to call such an idea inane poppycock if you will. It’s a free country. But we Catholics do believe it. To us, the Eucharist is the most holy Object on earth. To desecrate a Bible or a Qu’ran is to desecrate the word of God; but to desecrate the Holy Eucharist is, in the view of Catholics, to desecrate God Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ, Whom Catholics love more than they love their own mothers. It is as if one were to drive the nails into Him again or into one of our mothers.
Naturally, the idea that you would do this, whatever your own intention may be, is very hurtful to us.
At one point, I heard that you plan to show that this mere “cracker” will do nothing to prevent the desecration, proving that it is only a cracker. But this proves nothing. The Church does not hold that Christ will prevent sin, even this sin, just as He did not prevent His own Passion and Crucifixion but endured it at the hands of unbelievers to redeem mankind. Catholics believe that this saving act, at least in His divine will, did not end then but is constant for all time. While there may be both vita and fables about miraculous Eucharists, faithful Catholics are not required to believe in any of that. There is no teaching in the Catholic Church that the Host will protect Itself; on the contrary, the opposite would be the expectation.
Lastly, morally speaking, this is a form of theft. In law, one can give something absolutely or conditionally, and conditions can be explicit or not. (An example of explicit conditions would be the sale of a house with the condition that others may have a right to use the driveway to access a parking space.) The Catholic Church communicates the faithful conditionally, on the understanding that the Host will be consumed in church. True, this may not be part of a formal contract in writing, but it is an implicit condition widely understood and accepted, and implicit conditions can be recognised at law. Therefore, those who possess the Eucharist without special permission should return It, just as someone who receives stolen goods should return them.
I apologise for those fellow Catholics who have reacted hatefully to your announcement. That is objectively wrong. But people are weak and few of us are or claim to be saints. Nevertheless, we should try to be.
I think that, should you proceed with your threats, this will cause deep sorrow and hurt among many people whom you do not even know. They are not all political foes of yours. It will cause real pain for some very good people, people you might very much like were you to meet them as your students or colleagues. Even were you to desecrate unconsecrated hosts and claim that they were consecrated, it would still cause great pain to many good people. You may think them fools but they are not necessarily bad people.
I also teach at a university and meet students and colleagues of every conceivable background. I try to show them and their beliefs some respect, even if, privately, I consider many of those beliefs to be rubbish. Nobody is denying your right here to speak your mind about the Eucharist. But please don’t break the hearts of millions of strangers. Please have a heart.
Sincerely in Jesus and Mary,
Peter K. Perkins
You are free to call such an idea inane poppycock if you will.
since that is all that he IS doing, perhaps you could have just shortened your entire missive to this sentence and been much clearer.
I try to show them and their beliefs some respect
so long as you realize those are two, entirely separate things, yes? …and separate from actions yet again.
I rather think you should spend some time re-thinking exactly what you mean by ‘respect’, and what “beliefs” you really show that respect for, and whether you also respect the individuals that express them.
If you are reading this message, I wonder if you would re-consider your plan to desecrate the Blessed Sacrament.
What about your plan to desecrate the Blessed Meatball?
Naturally, the idea that you would do this, whatever your own intention may be, is very hurtful to us.
That’s your choice.
Dave2:
Since you’re asking your questions respectfully enough, I’ll go ahead and answer them:
I believe that God wrote both laws of science and laws of morality — the first deals with the natural world, the second, supernatural. Those laws are out there for us to discover using logic; using reason, but being written by God they cannot reasonably be called “independent” of him any more that they can be with any other author.
As I said earlier in the posting that brought me back to this thread for a second day, I believe that God is perfect Reason and perfect Love and perfect Justice. That is why we are able to use reason and logic to determine His laws — scientific or ethical.
Can God suspend natural laws. If one believes the Bible, then the answer is yes. Can God suspend ethical laws? I cannot see how he could do so without betraying his Love for us. Natural laws differ from ethical laws because natural laws can only affect human beings indirectly. From what I can tell, the suspension of natural laws have been in the service of fulfilling his Justice or his Love. I do not see how he could suspend ethical laws which would directly hurt us and therefore act contrary to his Divine Nature.
I’ve never really given the subject very much thought before now, so I appreciate the opportunity to consider these matters. That’s been one of the rewards that I’ve received from co-responding here these past few days.
I’ve noticed some speculation recently on the validity of my claims to have been an atheist or an agnostic, so to clear up that confusion I’ll provide a little background information on myself. (I wouldn’t do so unless I thought it would help to clear some things up about me and my answers to the questions which have been asked of me.)
First of all — I do not claim to be a great Catholic scholar. I do not even claim to represent the average Catholic in my knowledge of the Bible. As I said before — or at least said through implication — anything in the Bible is quite new to me since I really cared so little about religion that I do not know if I could have been considered either an atheist or an agnostic. I would assume classifying myself either way would suggest that I would have to have cared enough to do so in the first place.
Growing up in the south, all I’ve known are the Fundamentalists. I thought them bigoted and intolerant and used God as an excuse for being that way. I walked into a Catholic Mass one day expecting to find out all the things in my life that were screwing me up. (We all have those things, I would think, and coming from a non-practicing Catholic family I thought I would find those answers there).
So — I am a newcomer to this side of the atheist/theist debate, but I am an enthusiastic newcomer. I’ve done a lot of independent research, but have only been able to do so much in a couple of years. That explains the large gaps in my Biblical knowledge. Still, that is why I do not shy away from those such as you, Dave2, who can shed some light on those matters for me. I knew of God’s Old Testament Covenant with the Israelites, but I did not know that it was specifically the Canaanites whom they were battling. Now I know. Thanks.
I expect to continue to learn for a long time. There’s too much knowledge out there to know in one lifetime. Anyway, I shall not respond any further to any questions.
Still, I reserve the right to change my mind just in case anyone else provokes my interests enough.
Good day.
I shall not respond any further
damn, I wish these relgionauts weren’t ALWAYS lying when they say this.
I left out an important part which is this: When I went to this initial Catholic Mass, to my surprise I didn’t find the Catholics bigoted or hateful at all. In fact, they seemed a lot nicer than most people I met. I did not become a fully participating Catholic that day, of course, but it did raise my curiosity concerning what Catholicism really was.
In retrospect, I think I learned that there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Generally speaking, science provides knowledge, but for me Catholicism provides the wisdom.
I know that others out there will disagree with me. That’s understandable, because they haven’t walked in my shoes. So — I do not expect understanding.
Ichthyic:
Still quoting me out of context I see, which I consider a form of lying in itself.
Well — if attempted deception is lying then quoting out of context to distort meaning is most certainly lying.
Physician! Heal thyself!
Still quoting me out of context I see, which I consider a form of lying in itself.
LOL
what a maroon.
Dutch wrote That’s understandable, because they haven’t walked in my shoes.
I think you’ll find that a lot of people on this site have walked in your shoes – and walked a lot further in them than you ever did.
Not me, though. I got lucky and missed out on the brainwashing, indoctrination and molestation that the church can offer. So your adherence to a quaint bronze-age superstition is baffling to me in a completely different way.
“what a maroon.”
What an intelligent response! I’ve come to expect as much. (Just thought I’d point that out. Having done so, I leave you in peace.)
Out.
May I recommend Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History, then?
Just so that you can understand how old the atheist/theist debate is?
I’ve come to expect as much.
then WHY are you still here?
seriously:
door-ass-etc.
Owlmirror:
I’ll look into it. Thanks for the recommendation.
Ichthyic:
That’s funny, because for some reason I thought this was an “open forum.” And as I said before — and as you left out when quoting me: “I reserve the right to change my mind just in case anyone else provokes my interests enough…”
I know civility may be a concept that’s hard for you to understand, so I won’t try to explain it to you. Since there are some people out there communicating to me in a civilized fashion, I’ve been responding to them as civility calls one to do.
If, however, it makes you feel more important by acting like a child: Please continue to do so.
As you were.
Dutch H, when you act like a troll, you get treated like one.
So, seriously:
See, Christianity is a flavour of theism.
The bible is the holy book of one religion. Studying the bible will not advance your quest.
If you’re serious, research why you believe in belief.
And I’ve given you more than you deserve, but I feel charitable today.
See? How do you think the tone of your posts comes across?
Hint: this is called patronising condescension, and it is disingenous of you to claim to expect reciprocal civility when you don’t practice it.
John Morales said:
“See? How do you think the tone of your posts comes across?
Hint: this is called patronising condescension, and it is disingenous of you to claim to expect reciprocal civility when you don’t practice it.”
Understood. In that case, if you could explain to me the more civilized way to respond to the posts I received from that particular person, I shall stand corrected and attempt to do so in the future.
Dutch H, when you act like a troll, you get treated like one.
all one has to do is scroll back through the thread to see “Hedricks’s angry inch” in all it’s glory.
Hm. You are now claiming you need explication as to what constitutes civility, a concept that “may be a concept that’s hard for you to understand, so I won’t try to explain it to you”.
You’re still doing it wrong.
John Morales:
Obviously, which is why I’m asking for you to set me straight. Please teach your willing student, sir: How instead should I have responded to such demeaning, abusive posts?
Dutch Hedrick, feel free to respond to posts as you wish.
I am not going to lecture you on civility; this was an issue you raised, I merely pointed out hypocrisy.
My point is, the honesty with which you engage others is more important than the civility with which you do so.
As an example, I point to truth machine, who has earnt a Molly due to merit. Hardly a poster child for civility, yet taken seriously here. Surprised?
I had written:
You are free to call such an idea inane poppycock if you will.
Fish replied:
“since that is all that he IS doing, perhaps you could have just shortened your entire missive to this sentence and been much clearer.”
No, that is not all Professor Myers is doing. There is a difference between expressing a negative view of Christ and threatening to attack Christ. Catholics believe that the Eucharist is Christ. Naturally, therefore, the threat he has made is very hurtful to them. And the Hosts which were distributed were given in the implicit understanding that they were to be consumed in church. Therefore, at least objectively speaking, their removal is a form a theft; it is a delict. Of course, Professor Myers was not the thief, but he really should return them, as he should return any stolen goods.
I am not accusing those who removed the Hosts of the sin of theft. Perhaps they did not consider all the implications of their actions; and perhaps they intended no malice. I have no way of knowning this. But they should know when they attend a Mass that those who approach for Holy Communion are required to be Catholics in a state of grace who agree to consume the Host in Church. The Church only gives the Eucharist under those conditions.
A return of the Hosts would be the kind thing to do because this threat of desecration is hurtful to many people who are not even known to Professor Myers and who mean him no disrespect or harm. Not all devout Catholics are his political enemies in some dispute. You may think that we Catholics are all fools. Fine. Perhaps we are “fools for Christ’s sake”. But it does not follow that we are all bad people, and this threat causes us pain.
In regard to my own students, I meant that I might think some of their beliefs to be absurd and some of their faiths to be utter rubbish, but I don’t think it would be decent to attack a Qu’ran or a Torah merely to cause pain to people who might be very honourable and good. This is not about what the Eucharist is, it is what some honest and good people think It to be and whether or not such people deserve this sort of treatment. I am willing to bet that Professor Myers may have even taught some students over the years who just might have been devout Catholics.
Peter K. Perkins
There is a difference between expressing a negative view of Christ and threatening to attack Christ.
again, that is YOUR idea.
since you have no proof that your fictional deity even exists, let alone one can find it in a cracker, he is no more “attacking christ” than a picture of mohamed in a cartoon is “attacking Islam”.
sorry, but you fail.
I am not accusing those who removed the Hosts of the sin of theft.
then you are being entirely hypocritical.
choose.
either you really believe christ in a cracker, or you don’t.
can’t have it both ways.
but I don’t think it would be decent to attack a Qu’ran or a Torah merely to cause pain to people who might be very honourable and good.
you are obviously either horribly mistaken, or outright lying about the intention.
which is it?
….and lastly, the suggested pain you reference is entirely self inflicted.
are you saying it’s a bad thing to notify someone that they are hurting themselves?
man, do you have this all twisted around in your head.
Not all devout Catholics are his political enemies in some dispute.
ok, one LAST thing:
like most of what you wrote, this too is a strawman.
Why not read the Bible? Isn’t it your moral authority? Doesn’t Jesus have something to say on the issue? Like, say, in Matthew 5:38-42 or Luke 6:27-31? Why then are you so fucking lost?
Fuck, you assholes can’t even do Christianity right. And you want us to respect your beliefs? Why don’t you try respecting your own beliefs by following the teachings of your god?
No wonder all the other Xian sects consider you Catholics a laughingstock.
(SIWOTI….)
There isn’t a terribly huge difference. Since “Christ” is not real in the first place, how does a threat differ from an insult?
No, it’s not natural at all. It’s decidedly unnatural to believe that a threat to a piece of baked wheat is a threat to the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe, or that such a threat can in any way affect real human beings.
Objectively speaking, it makes no difference if the wafer leaves in a person’s hand or a person’s stomach. I don’t think you have a legal leg to stand on, here.
Say, I wonder if a case could be made that it doesn’t matter theologically, either.
After all, digestion merely breaks down the accidents of the host, not the substance. And it makes just as much sense to state that the substance can enter the body through the skin of the hand as through the wall of the stomach.
So holding the host is exactly the same as eating it.
So it might seem at first. Yet theologicans argue that God’s cruelties are actually kindnesses. It could just as well be argued that Professor Myers’ threat is itself kind in the same way: His intent, after all, could be said to be to instruct people that desecration is meaningless, and that they need not fear it nor feel hurt by it. Is that not kinder than allowing people to fear and feel hurt for no reason?
Professor Myers certainly means Catholics no harm. Is being told that one’s beliefs make no sense harmful?
I think Professor Myers would agree that you are not bad people, and might even agree that you are not fools (or at least, not fools in your everyday lives). However, he would point out that religion makes good people do bad things, and religion also makes smart people think foolishly (or not think at all, it certainly sometimes seems).
Why do people keep comparing this with attacking books? A wafer is not a book. A book is meant to be kept safe, and maybe read. The wafer is eaten, digested, and shat out anyway.
The closest analogies that I can think of would be for someone to take the meat from the Eid sacrifice, or a piece of matzo from the Passover meal.
Although, if Professor Myers bought the Qu’ran or Torah himself, it would be his book to destroy.
This is about trying to explain to such people that given that the Eucharist is a cracker, they are not being “treated” in any way at all.
Human beings are human beings. Crackers are not human beings, and are not living things at all.
And it’s important that people understand that.
Probably. And in class, he does not engage in these sorts of acts, but focuses on the material at hand.
I really don’t want this conversation to deteriorate into anger, but I must say that Ichthyic is not very good at logic.
I had written this:
There is a difference between expressing a negative view of Christ and threatening to attack Christ.
He answers:
“again, that is YOUR idea.
since you have no proof that your fictional deity even exists, let alone one can find it in a cracker, he is no more ‘attacking christ’ than a picture of mohamed in a cartoon is ‘attacking Islam’.”
But that was not my point, as I made crystal clear. My point was that Catholics believe the Eucharist to be Christ. I did not address the question of whether or not It is. To attack the Object which Catholics believe to be Christ is not the same thing as delivering an insult to Christ, just beating or strikign or laying hands on a person is not the same thing as insulting him or her. That’s why there are laws against assault but not against insults. I am referring to the effect of this on Catholics, not to the effect on Christ. You fail. You fail to see that Catholics will react different to an assault on a Person Whom they love, just as they would react differently to an attack on their mothers.
Then, I had written:
“I am not accusing those who removed the Hosts of the sin of theft.”
Fish responds:
“then you are being entirely hypocritical.
choose.
either you really believe christ in a cracker, or you don’t.
can’t have it both ways.”
Once again, Fish, you fail. I pointed out that they might not be guilty of the sin of theft because they might not have intended to steal the Hosts, owing to a lack of knowledge about the conditions under which It was distributed. Sin (or wrongdoing, if you don’t believe in sin, has two components, the objective and the subjective. This is standard moral theory, accepted by nearly everyone, including most atheists.) Let me guess. You are new at this. You are a first-year student.
In regard to Professor Myers’s intention, no, I think it reasonable to conclude that his threat is causing pain to people. I am hoping to appeal to his sense of decency by reminding him that not all these people are his enemies, and many of them are unknown to him.
Your claim that the pain is self-inflicted is fatuous. If someone is doing something which causes a second person pain, and if the second person asks him to desist, and if he refuses to desist and is deriving nothing necessary to himself by continuing in that action, then that pain is not self-inflicted in any way. Catholics did not choose to learn about this situation and did not choose to feel bad about it. They feel bad about owing to their honest beliefs about what the Eucharist is. They are not asking Professor Myers to share those beliefs, only to desist in a threat that brings him no great benefit but which causes them pain. I am hoping that he might do the decent thing and simply elect not to continue in this.
My plea was directed at Dr. Myers and not at others here. I have no interest in continuing to argue with amateurs who can’t think. I am sure that Dr. Myers does not fall into that category, which is why he has a post teaching biology.
Peter K. Perkins
The next poster writes:
“Objectively speaking, it makes no difference if the wafer leaves in a person’s hand or a person’s stomach. I don’t think you have a legal leg to stand on, here.”
It is given on condition that it be digested in church during an Act of Thanksgiving.
Say, I wonder if a case could be made that it doesn’t matter theologically, either.
After all, digestion merely breaks down the accidents of the host, not the substance. And it makes just as much sense to state that the substance can enter the body through the skin of the hand as through the wall of the stomach.
So holding the host is exactly the same as eating it.”
This is the sort of thing we get from people who don’t know the Catholic faith but then judge it. Once the Host loses the ‘appearances’ (accidents) of bread, Christ leaves the Eucharist. The substance is only present as long as the accidents have the form of bread. The exact point at which this happens is known to God alone. So digestion does indeed complete the process.
I know a thing or two about the law and your next claim is also false. At least in legal theory, goods can be given absolutely or conditionally, and the conditions can be explicit or not. Whether the removal of Hosts constitutes theft in the particular jurisdictions where it occurred is not known to me. But, objectively-speaking, it is theft in principle because the Church only gives Holy Communion conditionally, and this can be found in her teachings. I am trying to make my appeal here to Dr. Myers on the grounds of Moral Law. My intent is to appeal to his sense of decency, not to suggest that anyone should be hauled before a judge.
You also write this: “His intent, after all, could be said to be to instruct people that desecration is meaningless, and that they need not fear it nor feel hurt by it. Is that not kinder than allowing people to fear and feel hurt for no reason?”
Catholics have not asked Dr. Myers to teach them their faith, and he has no credentials or authority to do so. I am confident that Dr. Myers knows what his own intent is. I’ll leave it at that. I am only asking that he consider the feelings of many people who are not his enemies and mean him no harm.
Your comparision of the Blessed Sacrament to a mere book is mistaken. The Blessed Sacrament ceases to be Christ at the point of digestion. To Catholics, Christ Himself is more than the Word of Christ, and, again, a book bought by Dr. Myers becomes his to treat as he would like, but a Host removed from Church is not, since it was given on condition of consumption in church by those who are Catholic and in a state of grace.
Still, even in the case of the Qu’ran, it would not be kind to desecrate it publicly, whether this be legal or not. This sort of thing causes people pain needlessly. It would be simpler and easier and less injurious to others simply to denounce others’ beliefs in your own words and, ideally, without any intent to cause anger. The intent, I submit, should be to enlighten.
My hope was to appeal to Dr. Myers, not to argue with anyone on this blog. So I shall try to leave it at that.
I’m not sure there’s much to know. The more I look at religion, the less sense it makes, not more.
So going by your own description above, someone could crumble the wafer in their hands, with a little water. The wet paste thus no longer has the form of bread. Thus, Christ leaves the Eucharist, and the paste can be disposed of anywhere.
Neither do people ask Catholic missionaries to teach them their faith, and their credentials and authority are as questionable as Dr. Myers’.
I was not the one who made the comparison; that was you. Just look:
See? Those are your words, not mine.
And as for “mere” book — we are talking about a mere cracker here, after all.
It’s interesting that you admit that you think that beliefs that are not yous are utter rubbish. Yet that is exactly what this is all about, in some ways: the right to declare beliefs to be utter rubbish, and point out that, as a consequence of their being rubbish, a wafer is just a wafer.
Just to be clear: Even an authorized version of the Catholic Bible?
That reminds me: Many former Catholics have commented that there are no checks made to confirm whether a communicant is indeed a proper Catholic in a state of grace. So how does anyone know? Heck, how do you know if you’re in a state of grace?
That reminds me of something else: The history of the Catholic Church is quite clear that the message of Catholicism was spread, not just by positive teachings, but also by mocking, ridiculing, and very often, burning and suppressing the books of other beliefs. Not to mention by the actual executions and mob deaths of those who were not Catholics, or who disagreed with Catholic dogma.
Your Church exists in the form it has today because of the exceedingly unkind acts of the predecessors of the current religion. And while you yourself may attempt to be as kind and tolerant as possible, I am not sure that you have the ability to absolve the blood and cruelty that stains the history of the Church.
I agree.
I’ve made a suggestion to Dr. Myers about what I think is indeed a thoughtful, tasteful, and enlightening project to be done with host wafers. I hope he uses it, or something like it.
The choice to argue is yours, of course, as is the choice to believe that a cracker is sacred. In both cases, the choices may well arise from emotions that you cannot control, but in a way, that, too, is what this is about: Religious indoctrination results in uncontrolled emotions and the abandonment of reason and logic.
One further point. One poster here suggested that Dr. Myers’s intent was to disprove Catholic belief by desecrating the Host. But I can’t see how such an intent can be successful. Catholics do not expect the Host to defend Itself, just as Christ did not defend Himself 2,000 years ago but freely suffered and allowed Himself to be dragged through the mire during the Carrying of the Cross, scourged at the pillar, crowned with thorns, and killed to atone for the sins of man. The Catholic Church teaches that this Redemptive act is not confined to one historical event but perdures through time. That is why the Catholic Mass, unlike a Protestant service, re-enacts it in an unbloody way.
It is true that there are pious beliefs in Eucharistic miracles. But no Catholic is required to believe in any of them, and many do not. At any rate, nobody ever expects such a miracle but quite the reverse. It follows that an act of desceration can have no didactic function. I suggest that its only real effect, from the point of view of the desecrators, is to cause pain to some very good people (deluded fools though they may be) who have meant no malice to the desecrators. That is hardly the sort of action which builds harmony in society or moves people to work with one another co-operatively or constructively. It only sows discord and hardens Catholics against the arguments of their opponents.
It is absurd for atheists to attack belief in the Eucharist or in miracles. If God exists, miracles are easy, and even boring. A Perfect Being can create a world in an instant or suspend all its laws but one (e.g. stopping the course of the sun in the Old Testament) just as easily as He can sew a sock for a soldier or cause a single leaf to fall from a tree.
So anti-Christians who are logical will concentrate on attacking the foundations of Christians’ beliefs. First and foremost, they will ask (1) Why believe in a God Who is Absolutely Perfect?; (2) Assuming that there is a God, why believe in any particular religion?; (3) Why believe in any particular means of interpreting a true religion (if there be one)? All the rest is so much hot air.
I’ve made my points here and tried to appeal to Dr. Myers’s sense of decency. I see no point in returning to this blog to read the responses of others, so I shan’t.
Peter K. Perkins
Peter K. Perkins @ #1091:
Oh, so you just want to avoid needless pain and suffering? That would sound so noble, if you weren’t a lying sack of shit.
Where the hell were you when those assholes physically assaulted Webster Cook, and threatened to MURDER him, over the fate of a piece of bread? Where the hell were you when they started sending DEATH THREATS over another poor cracker that nothing has even actually happened to yet? Where were your calls for those people to “do the decent thing”? No, your first post here gave a non-apology apology for them (though admittedly that’s better than most of the catholic responses have been), defended them, made excuses for them. You didn’t whine that THEY should avoid causing pain to others, you reserved that for the guy who threatened foodstuffs.
Why is the fate of baked goods more important to you than threats to actual living, breathing human beings? Do you have no sense of proportion?
This whole thing is just insane. Religious nuts are up in arms over threats against wafers, but threats against people? Not so much. Then there’s the fatwa envy, the endless demands for “respect” (when they really mean no criticism of their beliefs, ever), the bullshit accusations of theft, and the well-developed persecution complexes.
I am returning only to answer some questions posed before I signed off.
“So going by your own description above, someone could crumble the wafer in their hands, with a little water. The wet paste thus no longer has the form of bread. Thus, Christ leaves the Eucharist, and the paste can be disposed of anywhere.”
No, because the act of crumbling would itself be a desecration.
2. On Catholic missionaries. It is beside the point. They teach those who wish to become Catholic. They don’t try to teach them the faith they had before. No missionary would presume to teach pagans the central beliefs of paganism, nor would he want to.
3. On comparisons with the Qu’ran. Yes, I have said that I would not desecrate the Qu’ran in *both* posts and yet explained that, from the point of view of Catholics, a desecration of Christ Himself is considerably worse than a desecration of his Words. These two notions are not even contraries, let alone contradictions.
4. On an authorised Catholic Bible. It would be wrong to desecrate any Bible, but it is not illegal to buy one and then do so, as it then becomes one’s property. The Church (and others) sell it unconditionally knowning this. The Host is NOT given unconditioally, as I have explained already in great detail.
5. On the state of grace, yes, I could explain to you in detail how one knows this. But sin has a subjective component. So one needs to know that one has committed a delict before it becomes a sin. The action must be wrong or declared wrong by the Church, and it must be committed with full knowledge and full consent. Then it becomes a mortal sin. Venial sins, which fulfil only part of these requirements, do not debar one from Holy Communion, although, if they are grave, they at least recommend that one not receive. One must also be a Baptized Catholic in order to receive; and one must consume the Sacred Host in the church, during an Act of Thanksgiving.
6. Whether or not every Catholic has always been kind when teaching the Faith is not at issue. Nobody has argued that Catholics are free from all sin. Quite the reverse. Man is a fallen creature. The issue is how we ought to act and how we ought to consider the honest beliefs of good people, including those who may be our friends. Really, this is such a specious argument. It is hardly worth addressing. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Everyone is called to do that which is right today.
7. On a lack of emotional control and a utter lack of reasoning and logic, I’ve seen a good deal of that here from atheists. It completely undercuts their claim to be the partisans of truth. Ichthyic is likely not obtuse but flies off the handle and enters quick responses without considering carefully what his opponents have intended. He needs to slow down and think.
8. On enlightening projects having to do with Hosts, I cannot see how Dr. Myers can do anything to the Blessed Sacrament which will convince Catholics that It is not the Blessed Sacrament. No chemical test proves anything. But an act of desecration will harden Catholics against Dr. Myers’s own views. So, perhaps God will bring some good out of this desecration.
Peter K. Perkins
In other words, Catholics expect the cracker to behave exactly like a cracker, just as a human being acted like a human being.
Religion is just a make-believe story that you keep telling to yourselves and others, and append the additional make-believe that the story is not make-believe. Perhaps, at some point, you will realize this, and stop making believe.
A perfect being could also speak and demonstrate its existence and good will as easily as you wrote those words, too.
And yet, no such simple and basic communication has ever occurred.
Why believe that a God who is absolutely perfect is completely incapable of communicating simply and clearly?
Assuming that there is a perfect God, why believe that this God would be absolutely incapable of preventing the corruption of his own creation?
If your religion were false, how would you know?
Digestion is exactly as much a desecration as crumbling. In both cases, the wafer is physically destroyed.
You’re quite wrong. A missionary necessarily teaches pagans that the central beliefs of paganism are false.
Perhaps. Yet nevertheless, even if that were true, that is for one’s own knowledge. How do those who perform the ceremony and dispense the wafers know?
Yet it is important. If they were cruel, then are you are defending something that has a history of corruption.
If man is imperfect, then you have no way of knowing if the traditions taught by the men of the church are correct.
I agree. But that does not necessarily mean ignoring them when they speak nonsense. It comes down to the proper way to correct those who are simply wrong.
I agree. Yet does that not also mean condemning the evil that was done in the past? Does that not also mean questioning the honesty and truth of what is taught by tradition, at least some of which may well have come from those who were corrupt and cruel?
As you said, humans are imperfect. Perhaps you are usually patient, but has there never been someone who was so stubborn in adhering to something obviously incorrect that you lost your temper?
It is my hope that he may be able to convince Catholics that the very idea of a wafer being a “blessed sacrament” is “utter rubbish”, to quote your own words.
That is always a danger: That the deluded, when feeling threatened and angry, adhere ever more deeply to the delusion.
If you were wrong about the wafer being a “blessed sacrament”, how would you know?
1. Because God does not (in your view) communicate His existence simply and clearly, it does not follow that there is no God. But I was not embarking on any attempt to explain the grounds for Faith. I could certainly do so but that way beyond my purpose in posting here.
2. Digestion is exactly as much a desecration as crumbling. In both cases, the wafer is physically destroyed.
Again, your ignorance of the Catholic Faith comes through. It is no discredit to you. After all, you are not Catholic. Digestion is not an act of desecration because consuming the Eucharist is directly commanded by Christ in Holy Writ. Best to avoid these details if you’re not versed in Catholic theology. Let’s not go into why digestion is commanded. There is an answer to that too. Suffice it to say that the Church distributes Holy Communion on the condition that those who receive will consume the Host before leaving church.
3. On missionaries. No, you’ve misinterpreted my meaning. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. I agree that missionaries may teach the central meaning of pagan beliefs in order to refute them. My point was that missionaries do not seek to teach paganism to pagans, and pagans do not look to missionaries to learn about paganism. Similarly, Catholics do not look to Dr. Myers for instruction in Catholicism. That was the point, and I rather think that Dr. Myers would agree with it.
4. On the state of grace. The point is that, in Moral Law, the Church only distributes Holy Communion to those who are in the state of grace. This means that they believe that they are, for this subjective disposition is a necessary condition for that state. They must also be Baptized Catholics and intend to consume the Host in church. Those who do not fall into those categories have no moral right to receive the Blessed Sacrament because the Church only distributes conditionally. The fact that the priests don’t examine each person is irrelevant. They obviously don’t for practical reasons. It is not a question of how the distributors can tell if someone is in a state of grace. It is still wrong to steal even if the person you steal from you has no way of catching you.
Whether or not non-Catholics (e.g.) have a civil right to receive is another question but, again, I was appealing to people’s sense of decency; I was not threatening anyone with legal action. I would not go into a synagogue, remove the Torah scroll, and then destroy it on the outside steps on the grounds that it was not locked up at the time and nobody told me I couldn’t enter. The state would find that it was REASONABLE to assume that the Eucharist was not being offered to just anyone because most people know that and the Church does teach it. Equity, in law, will take into account what is reasonable. I can’t imagine walking into a Hindu temple and taking some substance without asking first.
5. Your last question can only be answered by addressing the other three questions which I posed (How do we know that there is a God?, &c.). So I’m not addressing that here. Faith comes from a conscious choice which nevertheless begins in a divine action, as St. Augustine taught. It is confirmed by God Himself. But as to the reasons for making that choice, that would take some space to explain, and it was not my intention to do that. If Dr. Myers wants to know why he should believe in God, he should consult the acknowledged experts, not me. My purpose is simply to ask him to show some decency and kindness.
Peter K. Perkins
My point was that Catholics believe the Eucharist to be Christ.
damn, but you are dense. You don’t seem to want to realize that we UNDERSTAND that was your point. It doesn’t invalidate what I responded with, but merely serves to reinforce it.
I think your problem is that your preference for circular reasoning, another example being this:
Faith comes from a conscious choice which nevertheless begins in a divine action, as St. Augustine taught. It is confirmed by God Himself.
since there is no proof of your god’s existence, this is an entirely circular argument. nothing can be “confirmed” by something that requires faith to imagine it exists to begin with.
talk about failing logic.
If you really are/were a teacher, I hope it wasn’t logic that you were teaching.
You also argue VERY dishonestly:
To attack the Object which Catholics believe to be Christ is not the same thing as delivering an insult to Christ
Is this your backpeddaling away from your earlier statement:
There is a difference between expressing a negative view of Christ and threatening to attack Christ.
you are a dishonest charlatan. One that I will fully enjoy devouring when I have a bit more time later.
yummy.
food for thought until later, you dishonest hack who claims to speak for all catholics…
here is a post, from the first thread on ‘crackergate’, from a catholic who defies your very limited understanding:
that was just one.
there were several catholics who posted similar sentiments.
at least some of the more thoughtful people out there apparently failed to drink all of the kool-aid.
Faith comes from a conscious choice which nevertheless begins in a divine action, as St.
1.
Augustine taught. It is confirmed by God Himself.
You respond:
“since there is no proof of your god’s existence, this is an entirely circular argument. nothing can be “confirmed” by something that requires faith to imagine it exists to begin with.”
This is not circular at all. If one needed to faith to imagine the existence of a God, you yourself could not imagine it. One can imagine His existence, choose to believe it, and then be confirmed in faith by divine power after making this choice. The action starts with God, requires a co-operative act of choice on the part of man, and is then reinforced by God. There is a circle but no circular argument. Do you have the brains to know the difference?
2.
My point was that Catholics believe the Eucharist to be Christ.
“damn, but you are dense. You don’t seem to want to realize that we UNDERSTAND that was your point. It doesn’t invalidate what I responded with, but merely serves to reinforce it.”
Yes, it completely invalidates your point ab ovo. The point I was making is that one can cause pain to someone by doing something which might not cause pain to oneself, the reason being that the two parties involved have differing beliefs about that something.
The point is that it is not kind to harm what is precious to others, regardless of what you may think that something to be. Obviously, I was not suggesting that Dr. Myers will experience pain by attacking or threatening to attack what he considers to be a piece of bread.
3. I had written:
To attack the Object which Catholics believe to be Christ is not the same thing as delivering an insult to Christ
“Is this your backpeddaling away from your earlier statement:”
There is a difference between expressing a negative view of Christ and threatening to attack Christ.
No, the first expression, if anything, is a forward-pedalling. The two are completely complementary. It is obviously worse to threaten to attack someone (or one others consider to be someone) than it is to insult someone. That is why there are laws against such threats but no laws against insults.
To Catholics, the Eucharist is Christ, and Christ is dearer to us than are our own mothers. So, of course, we don’t want people attacking Him. That causes us pain.
Logic seems to be a foreign country to you. You should indeed thank God that you’re not in my class.
Peter K. Perkins
On Josh’s comments:
I am not surprised at his reaction, but he is obviously ignorant of Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. Given the postconciliar confusion in the Catholic Church, I’m not surprised. He might flip open the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” to No. 1374, for instance. Most no longer know their Faith. I could easily quote all the dogmas Josh is unaware of, line by line. Transubstantiation is an infallible teaching of the Church.
My entire initial post was addressed to Dr. Myers, and to appeal to his sense of kindness and decency. There is really no need to add more.
Peter K. Perkins
Oh, as to that, certainly. Yet consider the other thing you wrote:
That is what Dr. Myers is interested in: Refuting the nonsense of religious beliefs.
I was just wondering about all those who took communion while not being in the correct state.
Are they guilty of theft as well?
And yet Augustine of Hippo was himself a weak and imperfect man. You have no way of knowing that he was correct.
No, it isn’t. It is only said to be confirmed, and those saying so are all weak and imperfect men.
There are no experts. There are only weak and imperfect men who have learned from other weak and imperfect men.
God does not confirm anything.
It can’t be infallible, because it is simply a long chain of teaching by weak and imperfect men, learning from other weak and imperfect men, with no test in reality.
If you really believed that, you would not add more. Yet you certainly seem to be compelled to continue.
It follows that there is no God who is capable of clear and simple communication and is willing to communicate clearly and simply.
but he is obviously ignorant of Catholic teaching on the Eucharist.
oh so shocked am I to see you using a variant of the True Scotsman fallacy.
This is not circular at all. If one needed to faith to imagine the existence of a God, you yourself could not imagine it. One can imagine His existence, choose to believe it, and then be confirmed in faith by divine power after making this choice. The action starts with God, requires a co-operative act of choice on the part of man, and is then reinforced by God.
absolute rubbish.
there is nothing reinforcing it but authoritarian argument from the mouths of men.
like yourself, for instance.
you’re delusional if you think that was an effective attempt on your part of breaking out of your entirely circular argument.
I see no point in returning to this blog to read the responses of others, so I shan’t.
Serial liar and troll.
Logic seems to be a foreign country to you. You should indeed thank God that you’re not in my class.
So it’s logical that we should thank what we consider a fictitious entity? For not being in the class of an incompetent mental defective? We don’t need to thank anyone but ourselves for making that choice.
I’m grading you on logic and ethics: you flunk. Now show some “kindness and decency” and stop trolling this blog.
oh so shocked am I to see you using a variant of the True Scotsman fallacy.
Uh, no. Simply saying that someone doesn’t know something is not an NTS. It would only be NTS if an argument were being made that therefore Josh isn’t Catholic.
I apologise for those fellow Catholics who have reacted hatefully to your announcement. That is objectively wrong. But people are weak and few of us are or claim to be saints. Nevertheless, we should try to be.
you can no more apologize for, than speak for, anyone but yourself.
that you keep insisting on doing so suggests volumes about your deference towards authoritarian argument.
a good little sheep are you.
No, no, no. It’s more like this:
I tell someone something. He tells other people. Either they listen to him, or he screams at them and hits them with a stick. So they then tell everyone else in their group, and teach their children what the first guy says is true. That’s one religion.
Then I find someone else, and tell him something completely different, and he and his group do the exact same thing. That’s another religion.
Then the two groups meet up, and each claim to have My one true religion, despite being very different. They scream at each other and hit each other with sticks and rocks.
Either way, I win, because fighting amuses Me.
I’ve been amused for the past umpty-thousand years.
This is not circular at all. If one needed to faith to imagine the existence of a God, you yourself could not imagine it. One can imagine His existence, choose to believe it, and then be confirmed in faith by divine power after making this choice. The action starts with God, requires a co-operative act of choice on the part of man, and is then reinforced by God. There is a circle but no circular argument. Do you have the brains to know the difference?
Sigh. I have the brains to recognize an imbecile. Since the existence of God is in contention, presuming that God exists, that God acts, in the course of making your argument makes it circular. Statements such as “the action starts with God” and “is then reinforced by God” are unsupported. Circular arguments such as these are intellectually dishonest, and it’s a service to humanity to call them out.
t would only be NTS if an argument were being made that therefore Josh isn’t Catholic.
oh, come on, can’t you smell it?
I’m simply bypassing the stage where I ask him whether that means Josh isn’t a “good” catholic.
Either way, I win, because fighting amuses Me.
…and bores the rest of us.
If you really believed that, you would not add more. Yet you certainly seem to be compelled to continue.
are we taking wagers yet?
oh, come on, can’t you smell it?
My sniffer is quite good, and it’s been trained on you before. His argument was not an NTS, and you were simply wrong in your claim that it is. Your “bypassing the stage” BS is dishonest, a fallacy of contrary-to-fact hypothesis, as identified on page 116 of T. Edward Damer’s “Attacking Faulty Reasoning”. But I don’t expect you to change your tune … as I said, I know the smell of your S.
The two are completely complementary.
so which is cracker-stealing, then:
insult or attack?
hey, you’re the one who set up the dichotomy.
But I don’t expect you to change your tune … as I said, I know the smell of your S.
and I yours.
shine on.
and I yours.
Tu quoque, asshole. It’s simply a fact that you misidentified something as an NTS but, being as intellectually dishonest and cowardly as any fundie, simply refuse to admit it … as you have done many times before. So just fuck you … I’m done with you here, feel free to spout off whatever dishonest and irrelevant bullshit about me that you’d like.
Your “bypassing the stage” BS is dishonest, a fallacy of contrary-to-fact hypothesis,
no, actually it is based on long experience seeing the religious claim that those who don’t think exactly as they do “aren’t true christians”.
It’s always good to claim that you are extending a benefit of doubt, but surely you aren’t going to try and honestly say you’ve never seen the place where perkins started from evolve into a well-defined fallacy of that type?
Especially coming from someone who’s as credulous as perkins appears to be.
that you can label something doesn’t make it so.
grr..
I meant to add:
that you can label something doesn’t make it so.
I agree with you on that, but aren’t you doing the same thing?
but surely you aren’t going to try and honestly say you’ve never seen the place where perkins started from evolve into a well-defined fallacy of that type?
Irrevelant, idiot. Go read Damer. Goodbye.
Irrevelant, idiot. Go read Damer. Goodbye.
right, so experience is irrelevant in making conclusions.
I’ll write that down so I don’t forget.
… I’m done with you here, feel free to spout off whatever dishonest and irrelevant bullshit about me that you’d like.
blah blah blah.
I’m done with you here
I’d lay even odds that’s going to be a very hard thing for you to do, based on experience with your brand of “shit”.
If you return, we can discuss your favorite fallacy:
poisoning the well
(which I’m sure is also covered in the same standard logic text to which you refer).
at least I attempted to justify mine.
I have said in previous posts here that I would not return to engage in debate, since I am not a theologian and theology is not the university subject which I teach, although I do know a good deal about it. I have not read the responses to my closing post and will not read those to this post. I feel that this is not the best forum for a debate on these issues. So I am not returning to debate. I posted in the first place only to make an appeal to Dr. Myers based on his sense of decency and goodness. While some bad Catholics may have threatened him, many good Catholics are praying for him and mean him no harm or disrespect.
The reason to return is mostly to supply information from an expert whom I consulted. I told him that someone on this list had advised Dr. Myers how a test could be performed to prove that the Eucharist is only a piece of bread. I remarked that I thought this impossible, since the accidents cannot be separted from the Divine Substance. He added that, even if such a test could be performed, it would prove nothing. The reason is that Dr. Myers may not have the Eucharist in the first place, and God may have seen to this. But there is no way for Dr. Myers to know if he was given any blessed Hosts. At most, he can discover that, at the time he performs a test, what he has is only bread.
Then he told me something which I knew but had not occurred to me. It is possible that the hosts received by Dr. Myers are only bread, owing to an invalid consecration at Mass. Sometimes, owing to a defect of form or matter or intent, the priest fails to consecrate or deliberately does not consecrate. This would happen if he does not use the right formula of words or the the right form of host, or if he does not have an intent to ‘do what the Church does’. In such cases, the Church teaches that the communicants who are in a state of grace do not receive the Blessed Eucharist but they do receive ‘the grace and virtue of the Sacrament’. This possibility is actually quite large. Catholic traditionalists and archconservatives, in particular (and they are the folks likely to be most perturbed by Dr. Myers’s action) quite frequently charge that most of the hosts consecrated at the New Mass are not real Eucharists, since, they charge, the New Mass is not valid. This charge is repeated over and over again on a website of archtraditionalists known as ‘Tradito’. Bloggers here needn’t take my word for it: they can go there on-line and check.
Since God is omniscient, He can easily arrange for such incidents in order to prevent grave sacrilege. He knows what everyone is thinking even before they do (or as they do, in accordance with Boethius’s thesis that God lives in an eternal present).
But then he told me something that I did not know. Owing to God’s omniscience and also His omnipotence, ‘re-transubstantiation’ is also possible to prevent grave desecration or, in fact, any desecration God deems to be inappropriate. The end would be to prevent further indignity to the Person of the Son of God. God, being omnipotent, does not need a priest to bring about Consecration. And he can also reverse the process after the fact whenever He wants to, since He is omnipotent. Therefore, at any point, a Blessed Host can revert to simple bread by the power of God.
It follows that no test can prove anything because the tester does not know if he has the Eucharist in the first place. On the other hand, because God does not reveal re-transubstaniation or the fact of the distribution of an unconsecrated host, faithful can never be sure if the desecrator has a valid Eucharist. Moreover, even desecration of a host which is known to be unconsecrated is simple sacrilege. So desecration still brings great pain to Catholics, since it *may* be a severe act of indignity to Christ, and it appears to be one.
To recapitulate, the following outcomes are possible:
(1) For reasons known only to the Divine Heart, God chooses to allow a desecration which He has the power to prevent;
(2) God, knowing all things, ensures that grave desecrators never have validly consecrated Hosts in the first place;
(3) God simply re-transubstantiates the Host back into the species of bread to prevent grave desecration;
(4) The Eucharist could preserve Itself by miraculous action in some cases, the purpose there being to engender a deeper faith.
In all these cases, God is in control of the outcome, not Dr. Myers.
Now the Church does teach that God allows ‘simple desecration’, which occurs when faithful receive unworthily (and believing that they are unworthy is a necessary condition for this); or when the unBaptized receive; or when non-Catholics receive without special permission; or when faithful receive when they have not observed the Eucharistic Fast. God allows this sort of descecration, for St. Pauls says, “They eat and drink their own condemnation”.
But grave desecration is different because it directly aims to attack either Christ or the faith of Catholics as conserved in the Eucharist. The Church does not teach that God prevents grave desecration but she does allow this as a possibility, for not to do so would be to deny God’s omniscience and omnipotence. Moreover, the Church does formally teach that not all Masses produce a real Eucharist, and that only God knows which of them do. There have even been cases in which the Church has proclaimed that particular Masses were invalid and therefore did not produce a valid Eucharist. Those present who did not know this this received ‘the grace and virtue [power]’ of the Sacrament.
2.
I also asked him about the defence of the faith. He said that my argument about choosing to believe in God is not circular. Christians (not just Catholics), for varying reasons, make a free act (in a free country!– and elsewhere) to believe in God. Having come to believe in Him, they then realise that their very inspiration to make this choice must have come from Him in the first place, since He is the author of all good things. (They could have come to this realisation before making the act of faith, but only as an hypothetical.) They also find that He confirms them in faith after they make the act of faith. Essentially, the action starts and ends in God but includes an act of co-operation on the part of the convert. Protestants would agree with this in particular, for it is what they call ‘being born again in the Spirit.
He goes on to say that the convert (at heart) need not make the choice owing to a logical proof for God’s existence. God does not make Himself accessible only to logicians, as if only they have a right to the Beatific Vision. People can choose to believe for practical reasons. What is important is that, having made the choice, they believe that God confirms them in their Faith.
We know that people can believe without proof because people have the power to do so. For example, people can believe in Santa Claus without proof. The difference between Santa Claus and God, however, is that the latter is an Unlimited Being Who, by definition, cannot be examined perfectly by the laws of evidence. The reason is that an Unlimited Being can never be separted from anything in order to be measured or considered. He either infuses all things (the Christian view) or includes all things (the view of the late Classical Greek philosphers), including even the examiner and the tools of examination. If the scientist could not separate the object under the microscope from the microscope himself and from himself and all of reality, he would have no context for the act of measurement.
By way of contrast, Santa Clause, by definition, is a limited concept. He is not inseperable from a glass of water or a housecat’s whiskers or from an act of the will or a poem. We can look for his house at the North Pole, and, not finding it there, can choose to disbelieve in him or to withhold believing or disbelieving.
This does not mean that there can be no proof for God’s existence. But it does mean that access to such proof is ultimately controlled by God Himself and is not necessary to faith. Unable to find such proof, and being unable to prove or disprove God’s existence, a man still have the power to choose to believe for practical reasons and then be confirmed in faith by God Who turns out to be there. Of course, a guarantee of confirmation in the faith is impossible to prove, since only God knows the heart of the one who chooses faith. Neither Dr. Myers nor anybody else is in any position to find that this faith is false. He just can’t know, although he can certainly hold a negative opinion that such ‘faith’ is pretence or fantasy. Even in that case, however, he cannot be sure that such belief is motivated by any malicious intent. So he cannot know, then, that all Christias are bad people who deserve to be maltreated or to whom pain should be inflicted (such as by an act of desecration of what *they* hold to be dear).
There are several approaches taken as justifications for making the leap of faith. One of them is the moral argument, a version of which is proposed in C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”. I read that as a youth but was not at all convinced by it. Lewis asks where our notion of virtue can come from and reasons that its origin must be divine. I have read that some prominent atheists have recently converted to theism owing to Lewis’s arguments. One of them was someone working on some D.N.A. project. I can’t remember his name.
Another approach is the consideration that, given the nature of man and his curiosity, and given his desire to know all things, only a Perfect Being can provide an end for his quest for complete truth and knowledge. Yes, it does seem selfish, but if a logical means cannot be found which proves or disproves God’s existence, this is justified as a choice on the part of individuals. Ironically, we can say that Christians believe in a true ‘freedom of choice’.
Another is a philosophical approach, such as that of Voltaire (although I’m not sure: not my subject). Anyway, this is the consideration that, should God exist, it would be wise to choose to believe in Him; and should he not exist, it does not matter in any case, so one might as well believe in Him. This argument hold that only disbelief in Him can be dangerous, or that disbelief in Him is more dangerous than is belief. Therefore, we should choose to believe. This is reinforced by the consideration that most of the greats of the past were believers, so their faith did not apparently ruin their lives but led them to do great things. We can say, I suppose, that the Bachs and Shakespeares greatly outnumber of Bertrand Russells, and that even Charles Darwin believed in God. I am not claiming that Bertrand Russell must have had a bad life owing to lack of faith, only that those having faith did marvellous things and their faith certainly didn’t prevent this. There is no reason to suppose that they would have done even better had they become atheists. In fact, it is hard to see how anyone could have done better than did Bach or Shakespeare, no matter *what* he believed. So, again, the faith apparently does not ruin the lives of people if there be no God; and, if there is, not having it can be a real danger.
Of course, I am speaking here about simple theism, not full-blown Christianity. Christianity involves consideration of another set of questions.
So, once again, Dr. Myers, Christians (and many others) are people who have made a free choice to believe in God in a free country. You may think that their reasons for doing so are absurd, and you are free to tell them why. But their freedom to make this choice is sacrosanct, presumably by your own principles as well as theirs.
An act of desecration of what *may* be the Eucharist in *their* view will prove nothing to Catholics but it will likely harden their hearts against everything you are trying to convince them of. Is this the best way to bring them over to your side? And if this is not likely to convince them but to make them even more resolute in thier current positions, what on earth are you achieving by an act of desecration (in their view)? While you may derive some pleasure from inflicting pain on your Catholic enemies, do innocent Catholics and those who do not contemn you deserve the same treatment?
Peter K. Perkins
Victoria, Canada
No, I’m not returning to read the rants of outrage from the atheists here. If I return, it will be only to supply more inforamtion.
Addendum to my last post.
In regard to the reasons I listed why Christians may believe. First, I did not mean the arguments there to be exhaustive. Secondly, even if all of them are faulty, they are honestly held by good people. There is no good reason to suppose that those who reason according to them are malicious.
It follows, again, that there are good people who believe in God honestly. Very few of them will ever read any arguments advanced by Dr. Myers or those writing on his blog. They are mostly not the enemies of Dr. Myers and do not despise or contemn him. But they might hear about an act of desecration, since Dr. Myers’s threats have been broadcast on a prominent Catholic news site, which is how I learnt of them. So, again, I appeal to Dr. Myers not to do anything which would cause pain to good people. As for those who are twisted and have threatened him, they need to be condemned publicly, and I will pray today in my rosary that God will enlighten their hearts so that they cease and desist in acts and threats of violence. I don’t know who they are but, if Dr. Myers will forward their names to me privately, I would gladly send them messages asking them to cease and desist. Objectively speaking, at least, they are hypocrites, since they are violating the rules of their own religion in order to defend it.
Peter K. Perkins
The Catholics sure have put a lot of effort into their convoluted lies and wriggles. You do realise, don’t you, that their blather has evolved over the centuries into its current state to cope with the fact that ever more sophisticated people kept catching them out in previous simpler incarnations of their lies. They never had any genuine evidence for any of it. It’s all just made up in order to try and avoid being seen for the manipulative conmen and abusers that they are. It’s just lie upon lie upon lie from the religious – at least the ones not already extinct or heading that way.
Second Addendum:
I wish to make it crystal clear that the choice to believe in God is not an example of apriorism or a circular argument.
We can understand (to some extent) the *concept* God by a process of inference from what we know. We know what limit is because everything we know is limited by everything it is not; and we know what negation is as that which is other than any particular thing. We see limit everywhere in reality and we can therefore realise a concept of God as that which is not limited, the Unlimited. Our understanding of the concept cannot be perfect as we ourselves, the understanders, are not perfect. And where this concept comes from ultimately may be God Himself (perhaps).
THIS IS NOT A PROOF FOR GOD. It is merely a demonstration that we have some notion of the concept of God. If we did not, none of us on this blog could be discussing God, for we would not know what we were debating over. Atheists would have a hard time if they had to say that something they have no notion of at all does not exist. They claim, on the contrary, that something having no limit to its power and knowledge does not exist.
The one who makes a choice to believe in God need not believe in God in the first place in order to make the choice. He need only understand a concept of God. When still in a state of uncertainty if there be a God, or else not believing in God, he weighs the consequences of a world or a life with or without God. Based on that, he makes a decision to believe that the concept points to a real Object. This process is not circular because the concept and the Object to which it pertains are not one and the same, just as a table is not the same thing as the idea of a table. I can have a concept of Santa Claus and yet not believe (or else believe) in Santa.
So the doubter makes a firm decision to believe in God. Once he has made this decision, he finds that it is confirmed by God. Then he knows that he’s made the right decision, since God confirms it! God might confer absolute certitude (the inability to doubt) in response to a perfect act of Faith; or He may confer moral certitude, which is adequate to infuse and reinforce Faith; that is, a tendency to believe. The new believer also realises that, since God is the font of all good things, the very decision he made to believe in God in the first place must have been prompted by divine grace.
Of course, it is also possible for someone who does believe in God to re-consider this belief, and then decide it is correct. By reaching this conclusion, he makes an act of Faith and goes through the same process.
There is a circle here from God to God. But it is not a circular argument in which the Thing to be believed is assumed to exist in advance. Perhaps the one making the choice has no idea if God will confirm his choice. Some might say that they made that choice but God never did confirm it, which proves nothing, since, perhaps, their choice was not adequate. Only God can know how pure is the intent of any man.
Now, as to the question of whether one should believe in God without having proof, that is a subject for which there are many approaches, most known by philosphical labels. But it doesn’t matter. I have only been claiming that some people who believe in God are honest in that belief. Whether or not they are correct is another matter entirely.
Because they are honest and believe in God honestly, they can be hurt grievously by an act of desecration. My own view is that God does not permit grave desecration in the first place, that He merely gives Dr. Myers unconsecrated hosts or else re-transubstantiates Himself out of the Host before Dr. Myers touches it. If God does permit it, He has the power to prevent it and therefore permits it for some good reason known, perhaps, only to Him. In any case, God brings good out of all evil.
So I shan’t worry about this. After all, Dr. Myers threatens to do nothing new. It has all happened before during the French Revolution. But he might do the kind thing so that many good Catholics who mean him no harm are not hurt by his action, for they will not all reach the same conclusions I have reached. It would be the decent and kind thing to do. The Golden Rule is something which many people believe regardless of their religion, if they have one: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It is a dictum which fosters harmony and creates the very environment in which people can discuss these issues openly and dispassionately.
Peter K. Perkins
Because closing your eyes is better than seeing and learning?
But I kinda suspect that you’re going to peek, anyway. Just in case.
If you’re referring to me, then you misunderstood me and what I suggested.
What I wrote was this:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/wide_open_thread_for_anything.php#comment-988959
That sounds exactly like my argument that desecration is not possible!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/unrepentant_science_heathen.php#comment-984745
I feel vindicated in my theologicination.
Nope. It’s just a wafer. By your own argument, it’s just a wafer. No God inside, nothing there but baked dough.
Therefore it cannot possibly be sacrilige.
God is good and perfect, remember? Therefore, God cannot allow a desecration which He has the power to prevent.
And even granting you #1, it sure looks like there are 3 chances out of 4 that no desecration would take place. Maybe you should only be 25% outraged?
And who are you to second-guess God’s will?
It can’t possibly attack Christ, because Christ is (a) dead and (b) not inside the cracker.
It might be said to attack the faith, I suppose, just like missionaries attacked (and even today still attack) the faith of pagans.
Yes, that’s my argument again. And what about God’s perfection and goodness? Does the Church deny God’s perfection and goodness?
Ah, but if God has the attributes claimed by the Church, God has the ability to hear questions and provide answers. Even if God cannot be examined directly, God could provide clear evidence of his attributes by responding to those questions put to him, or by clearly resolving theological dilemmas to the satisfaction of all concerned. However, God does not respond to questions, and does not resolve even the most basic theological dilemmas. Therefore, we can conclude that one or more of the attributes claimed for him do not exist, and the most parsimonious conclusion is that if one or more attributes are absent, so too must be the attribute of God’s existence.
Yes, and Lewis’s reasoning was quite fallacious. And really, as a fan of Plato, Lewis most certainly should have been aware of Plato’s arguments on the subject.
Francis Collins. He has, by the way, given two different conversion stories; one of being convinced by “Mere Christianity”, the other of having a revelatory experience in the mountains upon seeing a triple waterfall.
He has been discussed before here on this blog, and the general conclusion is that while his expertise with the human genome is laudable, his theological arguments and apologetics are no better than anyone else’s.
Note that neither Collins nor Lewis became Catholics — despite the latter having the Catholic J. R. R. Tolkien for a friend.
Oh, my! You most certainly did misremember your philosophers! But I do indeed strongly recommend that you read Voltaire. Lots and lots of Voltaire.
Yes, that’s (the philosopher Blaise) Pascal‘s Wager. Atheists have heard it many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, times before. And there are common rebuttals, as well.
No, thank you.
Actually, while in his youth Charles Darwin did train for the Church (of England, by the way, not the Catholic one), he became an Agnostic later in his life after seeing the slow and painful death of one of his beloved children.
O, come now. How could my reasoned refutations be characterized as having “outrage”?
Like all apologists, you forget that everything that you know about the God of your religion comes originally from other teachers. You argue from the position that your teachers could not have been incorrect in their teachings. But that is most definitely an a priori assumption, or a circular argument.
Untrue (though the levels at which they have to lie to themselves and others will differ) – and not at all a pre-requisite for them getting fearful, (mock) offended, angry and violent anyway.
I had noticed, even though Peter is pretending not to be able to see it.
Ditto on his circularity.
Only in a LOLcat “do not want” sort of a way!
So I am not returning to debate.
like I said, you’re nothing but a dishonest hack.
He added that, even if such a test could be performed, it would prove nothing. The reason is that Dr. Myers may not have the Eucharist in the first place, and God may have seen to this.
ROFLMAO
wait, you teach what now?
Aww, c’mon, the peepee is being honest, sorta.
He’s come here, got a shock, and is running away.
At least he has half-a-clue.
is being honest, sorta.
no, he’s really not.
when fallacy is presented as fact, that’s not honest.
when he returns after claiming he just had that “one message for PZ”, that’s not honest.
when he claims he is NOT debating, but presents thousands of words of debate, that’s not honest.
sorry, but unless you’re omniscient, you can’t even claim he is being honest with his intent.
At least he has half-a-clue.
“a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”
Sophistry™
Because when you believe without evidence
you have to console yourself somehow.
Ichthyic – Heh. You’re dead right.*
Of course, I meant half-a-clue in that it didn’t take the Cluebat to (hopefully) make him leave. Poor Cluebat has had quite a working-out recently.
By honest, I meant, of course, transparent.
* better you than tm, at least
Interesting site, take this for example:
Why, oh why do they say these hurtful and mean things??
Wait, it did. Color me stupid.
By honest, I meant, of course, transparent.
I figure wowbagger’s comment #1135 serves as a good wrap-up.
Peter:
That reminds me of the quote that Damian posted to “Fresh Crackers” (#1500), so I’ll copy it to here (with a few tweaks):
Of course, Diogenes was a Cynic, and as it’s particularly appropriate to say about those particular sons-of-bitches, their bark was worse than their bite.
@#1140
More tellingly, perhaps, the difference is that the relevant adults will generally confess they were lying to the children about Santa Claus existing. Whereas they continue to tell lie upon lie about some specific god(s) existing. So the (often forcible) reinforcement of the latter falsehood doesn’t go away within religious societies, making it expedient to pretend to believe even if one has figured out the god stuff was a lie.
In more secular societies the difference between the pretences is less significant. Those who have grown up sufficiently (whatever age that may be for the individual!) to recognise the god-lie for what it is are allowed to admit their atheism with considerably less social penalty (there being no penalty at all from gods, because they don’t exist!).
Posted by: SEF | July 20, 2008 3:40 AM
See this? This is my “I’m in total agreement” face…
SEF wrote:
I agree. When people say that, back in the ‘old days’, everyone was religious, I point out that in many of those societies to be seen to speak out against religion or the church would mean anything from social ostracism to imprisonment or worse.
What i think happened was that anyone who was an atheist who wasn’t able to cope with the consequences of having their position be made public knowledge kept it to themselves for fear of retribution.
But it’s not that much better in these so-called enlightened times – as anyone in the US who’s aiming for a career in politics will no doubt agree. That someone could look at the actions of Dubya and assert that he’s in any way following the teachings attributed to Jesus is beyond me – but he plays the ‘I’m a Christian’ card and it works.
Oh, and brokenSoldier – Veronica Mars reference? Awesome.
All right, I did peek. But I don’t want to get into endless arguments on this because I don’t have the time for that right now. I just want to address some problems with responses to my post, and I don’t want to address obvious rants, just some fairly good points.
First of all, for those who claim that I am dishonest, since I have returned to debate, we can see how mistaken they are. In fact, I didn’t lie, I simply changed my mind! (while this may be cast as a flippant remark, it actually is true: I didn’t intend to return at first. But I didn’t make any solemn promises, it is not some cause for rants.)
1. On my first proposition, that God could allow a desecration, Owlmirror contends that this would contradict God’s “perfection and goodness”. That claim is unsupported because God may have a much deeper understanding of what those qualities consist in. But it really doesn’t matter, as I’m sure owlmirror will agree, because, in that case, a desecration is not a bad thing after all. In any case, God will not allow that which is fundamentally bad.
However, this misses my entire point, which is that, whatever God may allow, many good Catholics might think that a desecration is taking place, and this causes them pain. This is the reason why Dr. Myers should not do it.
Another poster made the absurd argument that such pain is self-inflicted. That’s nonsense. A certain Joe believes, rightly or not, that Christ is present as the Eucharist. Dr. Myers then threatens to attack the Host which has apparently been consecrated. Myers may not think that Christ is present, but Joe apparently does (even if mistaken). The threat of Dr. Myers could certainly cause Joe pain, for Joe loves Christ more than he loves his own mother. It is absurd to say that that pain is “self-inflicted” if Dr. Myers is aware of Joe’s view on the matter and if Myers derives no necessary benefit from attacking the Eucharist. The kind and decent thing for Dr. Myers to do is to return the Hosts, since many Catholics who are not his enemies and mean him no contempt, may suffer as a result of his threat. That’s a very simple point. Odd how people here are trying to wiggle out of admitting it. I can’t see how people on this blog can refuse to admit that a threat to desecrate the Eucharist may not cause pain to Catholics who are apparently honest in their fears. Saying that they might be dishonest is an obvious evasion. And it is silly to imagine that the average Catholic is unconcerned about desecration for the reasons given by me.
2. Owlmirror: thanks for the correction on Pascal. I’ve read his works (and those of Voltaire, for that matter) but it was a long time ago now. I don’t depend on his idea but can’t see how it can be refuted. It is merely a consideration leading to a choice. The choice can be made with or without the consideration. Even if the consideration is mistaken, one could still make a correct choice to believe in God and then have that confirmed after-the-fact by the God Who turns out to be there.
Moreover, the consideration seems to be eminently reasonable to me. The negative consequence of rejecting a God Who is there could be philosophically disastrous, since God would then be the end of all things, including the lives of all people. But the negative consequence of accepting a God does not seem to be that bad, and most of the greatest men were believers, without apparent disaster for them. Even if atheism would have made their lives somewhat better, a fallacious atheism would seem to risk far more for, if God is there, all our beliefs about everything are connected to His Being as their foundation and end, which imparts meaning to everything. Missing that boat could be a tad problematical, no? So I’ll go with Pascal on that, although it’s not the reason for my own faith.
3. On Santa Claus versus God, I don’t see a refutation of my claim that God is not subject to the laws of evidence, since He can’t be separated from any thing, whereas Santa can be:
“Wrong. The difference is that once a mind reaches the age of being able to reason out things for themselves, most of them relinquish their belief in a man who lives at the north pole and delivers presents to all the children of the world in one night. This is not so with religion.”
This is patently false. Any of us here can think of examples by which we choose to believe in something without having adequate evidence. A child might believe in Santa because she trusts the one who informs her about him. That can also happen with adults. An adult whom you trust could convince you that he’d seen a ghost. Some would believe, not realising that the teller has lost his mind last week. The point is that we have the power to believe that which we cannot verify; and we must have the power to believe in errors or else we’d all agree on everything.
At any rate, it is impossible to disprove the proposition that we have the power to believe with little or no evidence. Those who claim to have this power can be believed or not, that’s all. Just as one cannot disprove the existence of God, one cannot disprove the existence of faith. Those claiming to have faith may be deluded, or they may be mendacious, or they may be telling the truth (or it could be a mixed bag depending on who you ask). I am not proposing this consideration here as proof that one should believe in God. I am merely proposing that it may be the case that those claiming to have faith are both honest and right (or they could be honest and wrong too).
4. “But, following your ‘you can’t prove a negative’ God argument, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that those who reason according to them are not malicious. That can be known by those people alone.
First of all, in moral law, we assume the honestly of the claimant unless we have compelling evidence to the contrary. I wouldn’t want to call a certain Mr. Smith a liar because it *might* be the case that he isn’t, and I don’t want to cause offence unnecessarily. Why risk an injustice if it can be easily avoided?
‘Tis one thing to tell that Mr. Smith that you don’t agree with his belief; ’tis quite another to charge him with dishonestly for holding it.
Furthermore, I think that most reasonable people would concede that there are good religious people who honestly believe what they claim. They may be deluded or mistaken, but are they likely to be all a pack of liars? I submit that those who think this lack good judgement.
5. Owlmirror writes:
“However, God does not respond to questions, and does not resolve even the most basic theological dilemmas. Therefore, we can conclude that one or more of the attributes claimed for him do not exist, and the most parsimonious conclusion is that if one or more attributes are absent, so too must be the attribute of God’s existence.”
No, this is not supportable at all. Once again, this presupposes that we have access to a full knowledge of all the attributes of the divine nature. It makes us the judges of God’s nature. In fact, we can only know so much of God’s mind as He is willing to reveal. It is simply not possible for us to be sure that He must answer certain questions in order to be true to His own nature. To be sure of that, we’d have to understand that nature fully. If God exists, the standard of truth and goodness must be determined by Him; it could not be independent of Him. So this is purely speculative.
6. “You argue from the position that your teachers could not have been incorrect in their teachings.”
No, I never argued that. It is possible to believe in God as the result of an act of faith and then be confirmed in that faith. That is the point I contended was not apriorism, and I could have arrived at that conclusion on my own, not following any teacher. As a result of a chain of reasoning from that, one could indeed come to conclude that a religious authority is correct. But that conclusion comes at the end of the chain, not the beginning.
On the point about Lewis and Collins not becoming Catholic, it’s irrelevant really. There could have been many other reasons they didn’t become Catholic, such as Lewis’s Orangeman background (his mother’s side) and upbringing. Who knows?
I shouldn’t have returned because all of this is detracting from my central point, which is that the kind and decent thing for Dr. Myers to do is to respect the feelings of many good Catholics, regardless of what he thinks of their beliefs and regardless of whether their beliefs are mistaken. Perhaps they are deluded or perhaps right but it is not reasonable to suppose that they are all liars. That’s silly.
That’s really the only point I wanted to make. The rest is all incidental.
Peter K. Perkins
liars? No. Wrong? Yes. That was easy.
Wow, peepee must like being a barefaced liar and a fool.
Hey Peter K. Perkins, here’s a clue.
Peter K. Perkins is a liar
Peter K. Perkins is a fool.
Peter K. Perkins is a liar
Peter K. Perkins is a fool.
Peter K. Perkins is a liar
Peter K. Perkins is a fool.
What I tell you three times is true.
Peter K. Perkins #1145,
Dr Myers has already offered to return the Hosts, he even made a very generous offer on Catholic Radio International, this is for your information :
So, if I’m reading you correctly, you have no reason to disagree with what PZ is suggesting, why don’t you contact the catholic church and put pressure on them so that all this gets resolved in an amicable manner, afterall, we all seem to agree that the despicable smear tactics of Bill Donohue are very “un-catholic”. Or are they ?
Take your time. Theologians, and religious adherents, have been arguing and disputing for thousands of years, and God has not seen fit to step in with any clear and unambiguous answers.
And in that case, it is God’s deeper understanding that means that the “desecration” ought to occur.
Yes, that pretty much follows. So why should Catholics become upset?
Ah, but it causes them pain precisely because they do not understand that the sacred is under God’s control, not man’s, just as you (and I) argued above. Thus, all we need do is make sure that they understand: Either God’s goodness is as humans understand goodness, in which case God will under no circumstances permit desecration to occur, or else God’s goodness is of a deeper and more mysterious quality, in which case, the desecration is willed by God himself. Either way, there is absolutely no way for humans to know what happened, and it is not up to humans to question God’s will.
So we just need to make sure that the above is propagated out to those who might feel hurt. Once they understand that they should not feel hurt, they should simply stop feeling hurt.
Consider an analogy: Someone sees their spouse passionately kissing someone else. The person becomes hurt and outraged. If the person simply continues to glare from a distance, their hurt and anger may build and build. Yet if they approach and examine the scene more closely, they see that the one doing the kissing was in fact a stranger with only a superficial resemblance to their spouse: The hurt and outrage were simply the result of confusion; once the confusion passes, so should the hurt and outrage.
Well, you might try reading “The End of Pascal’s Wager” and see what you think.
Ah, but if God exists, then God would know that our understanding of his nature is weak and flawed, and would provide correction based on that understanding of our flaws.
There is another problem with suggesting that God’s nature is utterly incomprehensible: By your own mythology, man was created in God’s image. If God is nonphysical, the “image” referred to cannot mean physical form. Therefore, it must be in reference to mental qualities. This means that we can indeed judge God’s nature, because it is the source of our own nature. Therefore, our understanding of goodness, which includes honesty, forthrightness, and compassion, must be the same as God’s understanding of goodness. Therefore, God’s goodness means that, out of compassion for human ignorance and confusion, God must honestly and forthrightly respond to questions or confusions about his will and intentions, since he is the only one who can clarify those matters.
Therefore, God’s silence on all matters, but especially theological ones, directly implies a lack of goodness (or of power, or of knowledge), or a lack of existence.
It is implicit in every argument you make about God.
I had written:
“Owlmirror contends that this would contradict God’s “perfection and goodness”. That claim is unsupported because God may have a much deeper understanding of what those qualities consist in.” He replies:
And in that case, it is God’s deeper understanding that means that the “desecration” ought to occur.
No, that is a non sequitur. The fact that a good God may allow a desecration to occur for some unknown greater good does not mean that we should desecrate. We can (and morally must) only act in accordance with our limited understanding of goodness, not His Unlimited one, and we don’t know for sure that He’s allowing any descecration to occur. It only means that, owing to his more comprehensive understanding of goodness and perfection, He may allow it for some purpose not known or not accessible to us. We can only act in accodance with a good intent insofar as we understand goodness. But this little matters, as what follows shows.
On Owlmirror’s next point, first, it is unreasonable (even arrogant) to suppose that the average Catholic will come to realise Owlmirrors’ conclusions. Again, the fact that God may allow a desecration to bring about some good does not mean he wants us to desecrate. On the contrary, he wants us to revere the Blessed Sacrament as a way to revere His Divine Son. That is also why the church considers abuse of even an unconsecrated host to be a simple sacrilege (as opposed to a grave one): it attacks a symbol of God and is therefore much like stomping on a crucifix. Catholics don’t need owlmirror to tell them how God wishes to be worshipped and honoured. They will listen to the Church for that. There is little chance that many of them will change their minds on this owing to the various theories entered on this blog. We might be a bit more practical and sensible about this: even if some do change their minds, many will not and will still be hurt by an act of desecration. So my central argument stands here.
2. “Ah, but if God exists, then God would know that our understanding of his nature is weak and flawed, and would provide correction based on that understanding of our flaws.”
No, once again, this does not follow. Yes, God must know our state, but we do not know His, so we simply can’t judge the adequacy of His (supposed) approach to us. In fact, He knows our state better than we do. Only He can judge the means and the timing of His approach to us in accordance with a larger plan of which we can know only what He reveals. This really doesn’t fly. We cannot make His goodness dependant on our understanding or on any aspect of ourselves. That is why faith is a surrender to Him.
3. I didn’t say that God is utterly incomprehensible, only that our understanding of Him is limited by His will and power.
4. No, we can’t judge God’s nature adequately, for it is perfect, whereas our is imperfect. That is a fundamental difference, although not necessarily an absolute one. An image is a likeness. The passage means only that there is some resemblence between God’s nature and ours, just as a painting of a man bears some likeness to the man. Again, He controls the relation completely. We’d have to have an understanding equal or greater to His in order to be able to judge His. And there cannot be two infinite and perfect beings.
Really, I didn’t want to get in to ‘my religion’ on reasons for believing in God. According to ‘my religion’, only the Magisterium can tell authoritatively what any passage means, and then only following inspiration.
5. “It is implicit [sc. apriorism] in every argument you make about God.” No, you’re just assuming that because Catholics ‘follow Scripture and patristics’. But the justification I furnished here for making a choice to believe did not come (or need not have come) from others’ teachings and does not logically depend on them.
6.
I don’t base my own act of faith on Pascal’s Wager, although I think it to be plausible. Consider that, if God is really there, rejecting Him means not only rejecting something ‘rather important’ but rejecting that which is all-important and on which everything else must necessarily depend, given His definition. I’m sure that others have worked out in some detail the full meaning of such a rejection. I won’t bother that attempt here. But it looks scary.
On the other side, if one should choose to believe in God and He isn’t there, the effect does not seem to be all that bad. In fact, a good case can be made that it is better to believe even if He isn’t there (given that we can never know that for sure). At any rate, if there be no God, the only judgement which counts for us is human judgement. If we compare the lives of believers to those of unbelievers on purely human terms (and assuming, again, there be no God to enrich the lives of believers in ways not discernible to others), frankly, either believers come out on top or else the two are comparable. It does not appear to create disaster for people to believe, and most of the treasures of world culture came from those who believed in a deity. No, I am *not* suggesting that it’s a fair comparison: I realise that few people were unbelievers until recent times. I am merely saying that believers have done rather well, and, if anything, I suggest that Shakespeare and Bach (as examples) would have done much less well had they not been writing about a transcendent divine truth. Attending to their work is evidence of that.
The inference is obvious then: the risk entailed in choosing to disbelieve a God Who is there would seem to be greater than the risk (if any) of choosing to believe a God Who is not there. Of course, ultimately, this is a matter of human judgement. But it can lead people to choose to believe in a God Whose existence they cannot prove absolutely by measurement of an Infinite Object.
We can’t know for sure if those who subscribe to Pascal’s Wager are right. It’s ultimately a matter of judgement–unless, of course, some who, as a result of this argument, choose to believe in God and are subsequently confirmed by His grace.
Seems reasonable.
Thank you for the link on Pascal’s wager but I get the uncomfortable feeling that people on both sides have argued extensively about this. I suppose that those who came to God by Pascal’s wager will simply say that, having made their Act of Faith, God confirmed that Pascal was right!
7. Another poster writes this, quoting Dr. Myers:
PZ : That’s actually a very good point, no actually there has been no official response from the catholic church and I would make a deal here that I would return these wafers to the nearest catholic church if the church could come forward and disavowe the tactics of Bill Donohue and the people who have threatened my job and my life.
If and only if this is true, then, yes, Dr. Myers deserves real credit here. I am shocked that the local bishop has not contacted him. I agree that “Donoghue” (whoever that may be) is not the person to ask for anything.
By the way, some others on this blog accused me of not being involved in some previous incident which prompted Dr. Myers’s action. I was unaware of that incident until after the fact and still do not know all the details.
Peter K. Perkins
But we do. Remember? Your own argument: “In all these cases, God is in control of the outcome”
So if desecration occurs, God — the one in control, after all — must have indeed allowed it.
So why not hold God up to the exact same standard?
Excuse me, is that not what the Church hierarchy is for? The dissemination of the teachings of the Church?
And again, this sort of thing is exactly what God himself should be communicating on his own, without needing humans to speak for him one way or the other.
If that’s what he wants, then he should be able to say so clearly and simply on his own, without needing you to speak for him.
Obviously not.
Why? People should not need the Church, either. God himself should be able to tell Catholics — and anyone else — how (or if) he wishes to be worshipped and honoured.
Or at least, God would if he really existed…
Hence my suggestion that this should be taught by the Church in the first place.
Actually, we can: By the very multiplicity of religions and religious sects themselves. Obviously God’s (supposed) approach is inadequate, otherwise there would be no disagreement about religious beliefs.
But we must. Your own words above: “We can only act in accordance with a good intent insofar as we understand goodness.” Does God meet our understanding of goodness? No, he absolutely does not.
The above is an essentialist presupposition.
You don’t know that God’s nature is “perfect”, you only know that you have been told that. Yet if God cannot meet our weak and imperfect standards of goodness, we obviously cannot judge God to be perfect. Therefore, what you have been told about God’s nature must be wrong.
Nonsense. The problem is not one of equal understanding, the problem is one of understanding as best we can. If God did communicate, we might not understand everything he said and did, but we would at least have a basis for judging him as being better than us. However, since he does not communicate, we must necessarily judge him to be worse than us, using the only metric of understanding that we have.
Another essentialist presupposition.
How would you know if they were wrong?
Actually, all of them did and do depend on others’ teachings. See your own assumption that the “Magesterium” can somehow tell what scripture means.
It looks like you didn’t read or understand the link. Oh, well.
But damnation looks scary precisely because God does not clearly communicate how not to be damned. Maybe the Protestants are right and the Catholic Church has become completely corrupt, and all Catholics are damned, along with everyone from every non-Protestant religion. Maybe the Jews are right, and all Christians are damned along with everyone else, because Christianity is blasphemous idolatry. Maybe all followers of the Abrahamic religions are damned, because the true God is actually Odin.
If God does not communicate, he deliberately condemns all those who make the honest mistake of thinking he wants to be worshiped in a way that he does not, or should not be worshiped in a way that he does.
How would you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Take your time. Theologians, and religious adherents, have been arguing and disputing for thousands of years, and God has not seen fit to step in with any clear and unambiguous answers.
or any answers at all, for that matter, unambiguous or not.
Of course, that’s what we would expect from a pink unicorn.
1. So why not hold God up to the exact same standard?
But that’s my point here. We can’t hold up God to our standard because His understanding of goodness is infinitely greater than our own, given that He is the Perfect Being by definition. Again, we can only act in accordance with a good intent in accordance with our own limited understanding of goodness. Therefore, desecration is wrong for us even if God can bring good out of it. Our intent must be to honour God by cherishing Him. This is achieved by human acts, and desecration militates against these from our own point of view, based on our own limited understanding of goodness.
2. “Why? People should not need the Church, either. God himself should be able to tell Catholics — and anyone else — how (or if) he wishes to be worshipped and honoured.”
Catholics believe that God has a divine commission to teach us God’s will. They conclude this as a result of a long chain of reasoning which starts with a belief in God and then moves on to the other questions (Why believe in this particular religion?, &c.). Obviously, I am not going to set out the steps here. I don’t have that kind of time and others have done the work more exhaustively.
Once again, it is unreasonable to suppose that Catholics will look to Owlmirror for this guidance. They will look to the Church. Hence they are perturbed by a threat of desecration. It’s silly to suggest that they will look to Owlmirror, perhaps even arrogant. Remember, the idea behind the desecration was supposed to be didactic. It will not have that effect for most Catholics. Instead, it will harden them against the views of Dr. Myers.
3. “By the very multiplicity of religions and religious sects themselves. Obviously God’s (supposed) approach is inadequate, otherwise there would be no disagreement about religious beliefs.”
We can’t limit God’s approach to us to what we know about differing world religions. Non sequitur again. Moreover, we are discussing here the matter of believing in a Perfect Being, not a correct religion. They only tell us (often agreeing with one another on this) what He tells us about Himself–a limited revelation.
Moreover, I was writing about God’s approach to us to believe in His existence; that is, the extent to which He leads us to believe in Him, not how He leads us to particular religions. That latter is anterior to the former.
4. “God himself should be able to tell Catholics . . . ”
Again, this is just a repetition of a point I’ve dealt with. We cannot tell God what He must do in His means of approaching us; it’s the reverse. This is owing to His perfect knowledge and the fact that our understanding of divine attributes and moral standards is limited. In order to say what God should or should not do, we need to have His depth of understanding. But we don’t.
5.
You don’t know that God’s nature is “perfect”, you only know that you have been told that. Yet if God cannot meet our weak and imperfect standards of goodness, we obviously cannot judge God to be perfect. Therefore, what you have been told about God’s nature must be wrong.
God’s nature is perfect by definition. When we decide to make an Act of Faith, that is Whom we make it in favour of, a Perfect Being. When He confirms that Act by divine grace, that is what we are convinced of. Now you’re trying to change the definition of God to suit your own purposes.
We can know God to be perfect because our power to know this comes not from ourselves but from Him. But this does not mean that He must convey to us His perfect understanding of concepts such as goodness. He conveys to us exactly what He likes, no more and no less. He does not allow Himself to be judged by some blogger named Owlmirror–or by me.
6. “The problem is not one of equal understanding, the problem is one of understanding as best we can. If God did communicate, we might not understand everything he said and did, but we would at least have a basis for judging him as being better than us. However, since he does not communicate, we must necessarily judge him to be worse than us, using the only metric of understanding that we have.”
How do you know that He does not communicate? He communicates what is essential to us in order to give us adequate means to believe in Him. Those of us who have made the Act of Faith know this to be true. Having made it, and having been confirmed in His grace, we realise that He must have led us to the decision in the first place. Hence He spoke to us in His own way–but on His own terms, not Owlmirrors. No, this is not circular, as I have demonstrated already. It does not assume the existence of God when the choice-maker knows a concept of God when he makes the choice.
Secondly, the problem *is* one of equal understanding, or, at least, adequate understanding. But our understanding is limited by His will. “Understanding as best we can” is not adequate to understand a perfect nature. You would make faith dependent on God meeting a human standard, as if God were subject to man. He, on the other hand, leads us to Him by His own methods and inspires us to make the right choice. But He requires that we do the rest. To ask why is to demand to know the depth of His nature. That is not for us to do.
Of course, this whole matter also leads to the question of free choice. If God gave us absolute proof of Himself, there could be no choice. Yes, I know, so what? All I can say is that, for reasons known only to *Him*, he wants us to make a leap of faith without absolute proof. Again, we can’t judge that as being unjust because our concept of justice is limited by His revelation of Himself through Nature (and Scripture, for Christians; and Tradition, for Catholics).
5. “Actually, all of them did and do depend on others’ teachings. See your own assumption that the “Magesterium” can somehow tell what scripture means.”
No fair! I have never denied that I follow the Magisterium on many things. But that is not the same as saying that the Magisterium has led me to all things. Objectively, at least, you are not being fair here. The teaching of the Church is not necessary for making the Act of Faith, and, for some people, is not even involved (e.g. converts).
Also, following the Magisterium on the other matter, a matter of Scriptural interpretation, is not an ‘essentialist proposition’. Accepting the authority of the Magisterium in regard to the interpretation of the Revealed Word can follow a long line of reasoning from first principles. But this entire subject is a huge digression here.
6. I never mentioned damnation and wasn’t thinking about that, actually. I was trying to focus on theism purely and simply, not wanting to bring particular religion into this out of order. I was thinking that it would be scary philosophically to reject a perfect Being because, if He’s there, absolutely everything must depend on him, including the purpose of human life and the nature of reality. In fact, should He exist, He cannot be separated even from immediate causes.
That’s why I mentioned that others more expert in this than am I have probably fleshed out the full effect of rejecting a Perfect Being when that Perfect Being turns out to exist. Yes, it’s scary, but I’m not thinking of Christian hellfire (although I guess we could eventually go there too).
Try not to jump to conclusions.
I really am going to go this time. After all, if you attack my responses mercilessly unfairly (I make no accusations of malice but mean this objectively), this will be a sacrifice on my part, and sacrifice is what Catholicism is all about.
I feel that, at this point, the various considerations here are leading to arguments each one of which could be bandied back and forth for some time. I imagine that this has already been done by professionals. I just don’t have the time to answer and re-answer all of this, as it goes on interminably. I suppose that it might be essential to battle it out if I had no faith and was trying to decide if I should believe in God or not.
But this does not concern me. I have made my own Acts of Faith and I am convinced (rightly or wrongly) that God has continually confirmed my faith by His grace. I have conviction as a gift from God, although not, as so many Catholics call it, a ‘free’ gift. For what it’s worth, I can add my voice to those who recommend this to others. But everyone has to make his own choice in the matter. For His own hidden reasons, God does not force the choice.
My main, no, my only reason for coming here was to appeal to Dr. Myers not to desecrate the Eucharist, on the grounds that this will cause great pain to many Catholics who are not his foes. Whether they should feel this pain or not is a secondary consideration, since there is no practical way of changing that.
I was very much impressed when I read that, in a radio interview, he offered to return the Hosts to representatives of the Church. The ball is now in their court.
I thank Owlmirror for being polite to me on this blog, unlike some others. I apologise for not going to the site on Pascal’s Wager yet, but I just don’t have the time to delve into all that, especially since the Wager was not the reason for my own Act of Faith. Once again, I have the uncomfortable feeling that the matter has been argued to death on both sides, as have other arguments raised by some of you here.
Peter K. Perkins
No, we can hold up God to our standard, because an infinitely great understanding of goodness must necessarily include an understanding of goodness that is at our own level.
And that’s the basic essentialist presupposition.
Then clearly God is seriously remiss in following his commission.
I don’t know why you’re bringing this up yet again, given that I specifically disclaimed being a guide for all Catholics. Could you let it drop?
Why not? People have committed great crimes and cruelties against each other in the name of their different ideas about what God wanted; surely God bears responsibility for those crimes, given that he could have stopped them with but a word.
You mean accepting the essentialist presupposition that a perfect being exists. But religion is connected to that, because it is your contention that in addition to merely existing, God does want certain things and does certain things — that is, the essence of religion.
But this is wrong because God does not tell us about himself. Religions are traditions about what God allegedly told someone long ago about himself; God does not confirm any of it.
Ultimately it comes down to that: Either God does certain things, or does not; God either wants to be worshipped in one way, or in many ways, or does not care about being worshipped.
Either way, it is God’s responsibility to clearly explain that so that we imperfect humans do not do evil to each other as a result of confusion over what God wants.
Since God does not clearly explain and thereby prevent evil being done, something is clearly wrong with the idea that this so-called “Perfect Being” exists.
And this is a repetition of an essentialist presupposition which contains a fundamental problem.
First of all, it is not “telling God what he must do”, like a small child bossing around the king. It is asserting that if the king has the attributes of goodness, knowledge, and power, then it his responsibility to act, based on those attributes. Failing to act demonstrates the absence of one or more of those qualities.
Continuing the analogy: Suppose one minister of the king says that the king orders the people to wear red hats. Then another minister comes along and says that no, the king orders the people to wear blue hats, and not wear red hats.
Obviously it is the king’s responsibility to clarify the words of his ministers, and explain what color hats, if any, they should wear. And if he does not, he is lacking goodness, knowledge, and/or power — or he does not exist, and the ministers are fighting among themselves for power.
Nope, I’m pointing out that what you call an “Act of Faith”, I call an essentialist presupposition with which you have indoctrinated yourself.
Since he conveys nothing, he likes nothing.
And he can’t tell me that himself? Why does he need you to tell me that on his behalf?
Because I, weak and foolish mortal that I am, know only what communications I have received from other weak and foolish mortals. Even this exchange is a communication, despite the fact that we often appear to be arguing past each other. We are at least able to use the language skills we have.
And again, if God communicated, there would be no atheists, heresies, schisms, or different religions; there would be one single world religion
God does not communicate.
In other words, he doesn’t communicate at all.
No, it is circular, as I have demonstrated already. You assume the conclusion.
Obviously the above is wrong, because there are atheists and religious disagreements. Since there is such a huge diversity of opinion on God, then there must be something going wrong with “God’s methods”. The most parsimonious explanation for the confusion is God not existing.
False.
Even in the bible, those who God supposedly spoke to directly had the free choice to disobey.
If God were real, he could give us the exact same amount of proof of his existence that he gave to Adam, and we would still have free will, just as Adam allegedly had.
You’re directly contradicting yourself here.
You would not know what the “Act of Faith” even was without the teaching of the Church.
And as for me being merciless and unfair… How do you know that I am not secretly more merciful, fair and just than you are capable of understanding, exactly as you claim is the case for God?
You judge me by the standards that you judge other humans. I judge the stories about God by those same standards, and reject the essentialist presupposition of God being merciful or fair.
That’s alright. Philosophical and theological logic-chopping can get boring even for the most determined of philosophical and theological logic-choppers.
Skeptical analysis is millenia old, as I pointed out to Dutch above (#1074). So far, skeptical analysis is ahead on intellectual rigor, while (make-)belief is ahead on sheer numbers.
Not the teachings, but there is a certain similarity of tactics. Use vague catchphrases, then get all huffy when someone points out a contradiction.
Isn’t it rather rude/tactless of the Roman Catholic church to be summoning Jesus into a cracker using the language of his oppressors? Shouldn’t the magic words be in biblical hebrew or whatever the local folk spoke in the relevant time and place?
Oops – jumped thread boxes somehow. How weird.
Belatedly, after concentrating on the cranky PZ kraken-summoning thread:
Oh that’s way down the list of reasons to regard you as dishonest. The rest of the contents of your posts is far more damning than the mere fact of you making more of them. Eg:
What’s actually unsupported is your claim that your imaginary friend may have anything at all, let alone “a much deeper understanding”. The trouble with you theists is you can’t stop making up completely unevidenced rubbish about what your god does and doesn’t think, say, do and like. You have never actually ceased being dishonest at any point. Practically everything you post reveals your overwhelming dishonesty.
That would also include you trying to pretend your circular argument isn’t circular, except that it’s just about possible you really are so mentally incompetent you simply can’t see that one rather than it being another deliberate falsehood on your part.
aith comes from a conscious choice which nevertheless begins in a divine action, as St.
1.
Augustine taught. It is confirmed by God Himself.
You respond:
“since there is no proof of your god’s existence, this is an entirely circular argument. nothing can be “confirmed” by something that requires faith to imagine it exists to begin with.”
This is not circular at all. If one needed to faith to imagine the existence of a God, you yourself could not imagine it. One can imagine His existence, choose to believe it, and then be confirmed in faith by cellphone divine power after making this choice. The action starts with God, requires a co-operative act of choice on the part of man, and is then reinforced by God. There is a circle but no circular argument. Do you have the brains to know the difference?
2.