Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Anyone need a Christmas gift for that special militant atheist in their life? For $800, you can give 'em the shaft.

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Apparently the Paper of Record needs some religion (editors).

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Apparently the Paper of Record needs some religion (editors).

That's not a mistake. It's an editorial.

I don't understand how anyone can "misunderstand" religion. Either you're outside of it and it's pretend, or you're inside of it and it's suspension of disbelief. It's like going to the opera. What's to understand or misunderstand? You're giving something (doubt) to get something (comfort).

[LynahFan]

Apparently the Paper of Record needs some religion (editors).

Even this article about missing it is missing it. The mistakes they cite have nothing to do with how middle Americans practice religion and how religion influences their day-to-day and once-every-four-years decisions.

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

On the necessity of moral absolutes:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/I...es_Matter.aspx

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

On the necessity of moral absolutes:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/I...es_Matter.aspx

Isn't the Just War doctrine a violation of the writer's premise?

Back in 1984, Saint John Paul II affirmed, “The whole tradition of the Church has lived and lives on the conviction” that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object.” An example of such an exceptionless norm is the direct killing of an innocent person. Even if an act of directly killing an innocent person might save an entire city from destruction, such an act remains intrinsically wrong. It can therefore never be freely chosen—period.

Period. Indeed.

From the Catechism:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

there must be serious prospects of success;

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Therefore, the common good is an object by which you can choose to kill an innocent person -- say, kill a baby by bombing a city that also produces armaments which an enemy would otherwise use to kill other babies.

Now the writer would no doubt claim that the bomb does not have the direct goal of killing the baby. But that is casuistry. One could as easily say a drunk driver did not intend to kill the child he ran over, so he's morally in the clear.

Mind you, I don't object to moral absolutes per se, for purposes of teasing out the structure and practice of morality. It's just that nobody actually ever walks the walk of moral absolutes, so they become a reductio ad absurdum argument which has other purposes. In this case, judging from the Comments, the purpose is apparently to sh-t all over Pope Francis.

But let's move along because there are still some interesting things in the piece even if the agenda is rather political and base.

Catholicism holds that there are two levels of conscience. The first is called synderesis. This encapsulates the notion that knowledge of unchanging truths about good and evil is written into our nature as rational beings. As Saint Paul says, all humans have a basic prior knowledge of the essential elements of moral truth (Rm 2:14-15). To obey conscience-as-synderesis is to adhere to moral truths knowable through natural reason, including the truth that certain acts are intrinsically evil.

The second level of conscience is what Aquinas called conscientia. This is Aquinas’s way of describing the act of applying the basic knowledge of synderesis to concrete situations. Conscientia thus involves individuals making practical judgments about what to do in light of synderesis. That’s why an erring conscientia doesn’t necessarily absolve me of guilt. The guilt may involve my suffocation over time of the voice of synderesis: of consistently deciding, for instance, that there may be circumstances when it’s acceptable to commit perjury.

I love these terms and want to read more about them, but it is an intellectual exercise. As defined, there is no such things as synderesis. Humans are animals which evolved to meet the challenges of their environment. One of our best adaptations was what we call "consciousness" -- the ability of our minds to wrap back upon themselves and examine themselves. The ability to be infinitely "meta" and to reason from species to genus, first with concrete things like "that tree" to "tree" and then to abstractions like "treeness" to "living organisms" to "being." But all these are still rooted in actual existence. Ises. There is a whole other tree of abstractions with no root: good, beautiful, just, useful. These are the great gift of man to the natural world -- our imposition of terms that are not found in nature. Oughts. But their anchor is not like a tree or a color. It has no natural referent. It's special because it is not rooted in our animal substrate.

This horrifies some people because they think that makes it unsubstantial. I disagree. It is no more unsubstantial than language, which is also wholly human. Like language it can change over time, but like language one person can't just arbitrarily decide to change it or he won't make any sense. The anchor of morality is human society. But as soon as you step outside one person and start dealing with society all the top-down authoritarian principles of mechanistic logical systems are invalid. Meaning from that point further is a negotiation. It is open-ended, changing, and adaptive.

The alternative is what really underlies the whole piece. "Moral absolutes mean I get to tell you what to do."

No thanks.

[unofan]

On the necessity of moral absolutes:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/I...es_Matter.aspx

That's fine as a general principle: I think we can all agree murder is wrong. But I think reasonable people can differ on what is murder (you would include every abortion, most people would not, for instance, while others say the death penalty is wrong, even though you're fine with it), let alone other issues with even more shades of grey.

The devil is in the details.

[joecct]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Francis is a product of South America (and the Jesuits). That background is a almost a 180 from Western Catholicism.

Trouble is, Catholicism in both places is dying because of relativism. Africa is thriving because "No" is apparently a still a useful word there.

If you want to check out what post V2 Catholicism in the USA should be, check out the Diocese of Lincoln, NE. There are enough articles out there that should give a complete picture.

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Remember God was willing to spare Sodom if a righteous man could be found.

[unofan]

Francis is a product of South America (and the Jesuits). That background is a almost a 180 from Western Catholicism.

Trouble is, Catholicism in both places is dying because of relativism. Africa is thriving because "No" is apparently a still a useful word there.

If you want to check out what post V2 Catholicism in the USA should be, check out the Diocese of Lincoln, NE. There are enough articles out there that should give a complete picture.

-------------

Remember God was willing to spare Sodom if a righteous man could be found.

Lincoln's bishop is a conservative farkwit. Omaha is far more Catholic and has looked down on that whole diocese since I was still in Catholic school.

Omaha is also primarily educated by Jesuits thanks to Creighton.

[joecct]

Lincoln's bishop is a conservative farkwit. Omaha is far more Catholic and has looked down on that whole diocese since I was still in Catholic school.

Omaha is also primarily educated by Jesuits thanks to Creighton.

Which explains why Lincoln has a ton of seminarians, thriving Catholic schools (tuition free!) full of mostly Catholic students and religion classes taught by priests and nuns. Mass attendance is way above the US average.

[unofan]

Which explains why Lincoln has a ton of seminarians, thriving Catholic schools (tuition free!) full of mostly Catholic students and religion classes taught by priests and nuns. Mass attendance is way above the US average.

Omaha is run by what I refer to as the Omaha Catholic Mafia - the real power behind the throne. The city is roughly 60% Catholic, and its Catholic schools are far more numerous than Lincoln's.

Lincoln has only one religion, and its church is the third largest city in the state on Saturdays in the fall.

[Kepler]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Trouble is, Catholicism in both places is dying because of relativism. Africa is thriving because "No" is apparently a still a useful word there.

You may be surprised by this, but I agree with you. The whole idea of Catholicism is grounding meaning in an absolute:

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. -- Matthew 16:18.

If you begin to allow for the grey areas of human life, there is no reason to stick with Catholicism: secular liberalism fits the facts of both physical and social science better and is a far more healthy human environment to grow up and live in.

Catholicism's Q score would benefit from a wholesale retrenchment into a reactionary 19th century church. It is a snowman that can't stand the sunlight of reason, so retreat from the light.

[The Sicatoka]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

The Romans had the right idea. Whenever you meet a new people and they have new gods, you just add them to the panoply. The people who insist their god is the only one you smile patiently, add them to the panoply, and flag their file that they're not mature enough to play well with others yet.

Does this apply to the "god" climate change?
There are zealot believers and heathen unbelievers, or is that heathen believers and zealot unbelievers, ... and a whole bunch of folks somewhere between*.


*see also: cafeteria Catholics

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Does this apply to the "god" climate change?
There are zealot believers and heathen unbelievers, or is that heathen believers and zealot unbelievers, ... and a whole bunch of folks somewhere between*.


*see also: cafeteria Catholics

Uh, you understand the difference between scientifically accepted fact and mythology or religion, right...?

[The Sicatoka]

Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Uh, you understand the difference between scientifically accepted fact and mythology or religion, right...?

Humans have a long history of taking a little bit of scientific information and misusing it into a profitable enterprise. Some are called magicians, others, priests, others climate scientists.