Monday, March 17, 2008
Sins
I’m a cradle Catholic. I went to Catholic elementary school for awhile, at the end of the reign of nuns, but there were still a couple left. I’ve had my differences with the church, but we’ve pretty much come to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” understanding with one another. I’ll overlook them being pricks for a millennium and change if they overlook the fact that I don’t really believe all of that medieval stuff they hang on to. I still go to church pretty much every week.
But I tell ‘ya, they are trying really hard lately to piss me off.
Some of you may be familiar with the mortal sins. These are the ones with a hefty price: “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell”. Pretty serious stuff.
Here they are, for reference.
Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth
Whether or not we agree that these things are worthy of eternal damnation, I think we can pretty safely agree that most of these things, taken to an extreme, are unambiguously bad. So thus far, the church has been on the right track in this respect.
Now, the church has introduced some new mortal sins that are more relevant in an era of “unstoppable globalization”.
Here they are:
Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature
Some of these I can buy. Drug trafficking is unambiguously bad. I think it is reasonable for the church to object to genetic manipulation and morally debatable experiments. We may differ in where we draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not, but the church is one of the few major entities asserting that a line exists at all, so I’m willing to cut them some slack. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature is vague in the same way that the ninth amendment is vague, and I’m guessing the church and I differ on where this one would kick in. But ok, there’s nothing explicitly objectionable about that one.
How about pollution? At first I scoffed at it, like they are trying to tell me I’m supposed to go to confession every time I drive my car. I don’t think that is quite right though. Just like I don’t think “lust” means I’m going to hell if I’m physically attracted to my wife, I don’t think “pollution” means minor things like driving my car to work. Regardless of the legal issues, I think one should feel guilty for spewing toxic materials in toxic quantities into groundwater supplies, waterways, and the atmosphere. The trick comes in realistically defining what is toxic, and in what concentrations these materials are toxic. Again, I suspect the church and I would differ on the interpretation, but I can live with it.
Now, the ones that really got my goat - accumulating excessive wealth and inflicting poverty. My first question is - how does one “inflict” poverty? The most effective way I can think of to do this is by advocating explicitly socialist policies, and taking advantage of the ignorance of peasants around the world, encouraging them toward governmental systems that only increase and prolong their oppression and poverty. You know, exactly like the church has done for decades. The hypocrisy here is astounding, though I suspect it is an unknowing clueless hypocrisy, as most of these socialist types honestly think they are doing some good.
How about accumulating excessive wealth? Let’s ignore the obvious historical issues for a moment and just look at the present day. It is quite possible that the pope is the richest man on earth. And I’m supposed to feel guilty about being wealthy enough to pay taxes? Maybe he’s not talking about me. Maybe he’s talking about Donald Trump. Even then - the mere state of possessing wealth is now evil, punishable by hellfire and eternal damnation?
You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.
I stopped giving money to the church a couple years ago. Once I understood better how church policy translated into political activism, I couldn’t in good conscience give them another penny. They aren’t politically active in my local area, except for the occasional anti-abortion rally, and our priest is actually a rabid conservative. Globally, however, the church is nearly universally a force for leftism, particularly in third-world countries.
I really respected John Paul II. He seemed like a decent human being first of all, strong, humble, and truly good. Anyone that the Soviets wanted dead was likely on the side of the angels. When John Paul died, I viewed the new pope, Ratzinger, with an open mind. Now that we’re a couple years in, the impression I’m getting of him is that he is the worst of all worlds.
Close on the heels of these new mortal sins was an article about how during a public sermon he called for an end to the violence in Iraq, condemning the war because it “disrupted the daily lives of civilians”. I was completely dumbfounded by that statement. All I can think of is Mohammad’s idyllic trip to the market being cruelly disrupted by Bradleys rolling through the neighborhood and American troops stealing his lunch money.
Ratzinger seems to combine the worst elements of European pacifist socialism with middle ages hypocrisy and authoritarianism. He’s also pushing back against the reforms of Vatican II, where the archaic and exclusionary latin mass was replaced by the modern mass, with modern music, modern language, and the participation of the congregation. I think in many cases it’s gone completely too far, turning it into a hippie kum-bye-yah exercise that has completely lost the beauty, majesty, and history of the latin mass. However, I don’t think Ratzinger looks at rolling back to older times as restoring beauty and majesty, it seems more like going back to exclusion and control.
In the middle ages, the church alternated between bossing around monarchs and being bossed around by monarchs, as the circumstances warranted. They knew very well where the wealth and power were concentrated, given that most of the church leaders came from those circles. The church gravitated to the political realm and was a major force in global politics for centuries.
Now in the age of democracies, the church has lost that influence. The political ideology of the church, and in particular this list of sins that more or less criminalizes capitalism from the church’s perspective, seems pointed toward replacing the influence that the church used to have with monarchs with the influence of the uneducated masses in third-world countries. I’d like to think the church leadership are simply well-meaning fools, and I’m sure some, probably many, are. But at the upper levels of the church, the history speaks too strongly to me. I find it hard to believe that the church is suddenly altruistic after centuries of exploitation. The desire for power and money are surely a part of it.
Every time something like this comes up, which is fairly frequently, I ask myself why I am still Catholic. Part of it is because I’m comfortable with it. It fits me like a glove, it is part of me, and I do enjoy the mass (now that my wife is music director and I can comfortably sit in the pews without earplugs.) I like the culture of the church, and I want my kids to be exposed to it. These upper level directives are largely ignored in the United States and have virtually no effect at the local level, so though they make me angry, they don’t really affect daily life in any way.
However, if the day ever comes that the church attempts to micromanage it’s membership, I and many others will disappear in a flash. I honestly hope that day never comes.
Comments
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This post interests me extremely. Disclaimer: I’m Catholic, and since this appears to me to be a post about Catholicism, I’m going to respond as a Catholic. Not combatively, but conversationally.
Mortal sin: You’re using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
The list is of Cardinal or Deadly Sins - they’re called that because, through an excessive following of any one of the individual characteristics, they lead to mortal sin among other bad things.
“Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.” - Catechism
So, were they adding to the list of Cardinal Sins, they would not be adding, explicitly, to a list of mortal sins, for which one would go to hell. A list of mortal sins, promulgated by the Church, by the way, is nigh on impossible to find - I think precisely because of the “full knowledge” and “deliberate consent” clauses.
OK, that quibble about definition out of the way, they didn’t actually promulgate a new list of sins. This was exxagerated from an interview in which Bp. Girotti was asked about what he saw as modern social sins. Linky
But, because this is interesting, let’s say they did include these as deadly sins that lead to greater chance of mortal sin, and look at the list again, leaving aside the ones you’ve listed as OK, and remembering that excessive exercise of a Deadly Sin leads to mortal sin or other bad things. I’ll admittedly exaggerate my examples just to make the spectrum easier to see.
Obviously, being attracted to your wife is OK, but a disordered pursuit of high-priced prostitutes across state lines using your office as Governor of New York would not be OK. I think that last is a sin, though the judgement of whether it’s mortal or not rests with Mr. Spitzer and with God.
Now, Environmental Pollution. I’d see driving your car as using the materials and ingenuity that God gave us to make your life easier. Driving your car to the mailbox down a 50’ driveway to the mailbox, then leaving it idling as you talk to your neighbor then walking away and leaving it idling until it runs out of gas would be stupid and wasteful, but I wouldn’t see how you could make that sin rank higher than venial. But, dumping high concentrations of a known carcinogenic toxins into a river upstream of a Girl Scout swimming facility, even when you know that girls who have swum in that hole keep getting cancer and their skin sloughs off? If I did that, I would count it a mortal sin.
Accumulating Excessive Wealth? Again, it’s a matter of the degree you do it, why you do it, what it does to you, and how your doing it helps or harms others. Jesus told the rich young man that he had to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus. He said that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (a tight gate in the Jerusalem wall) than for a rich man to get into heaven (but not impossible for the rich man). Why did he say those things? I think it’s because “love of money (not money itself) is the root of all evil.” Excessive attachment to money, sumptuousness, “stuff,” inhibits loving God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Possessing wealth is not evil. Serving wealth and letting it possess you separates you from God.
Inflicting Poverty? I agree with you on the ways you listed to inflict poverty and I, too, hope that the Church’s support of socialism has been unknowing, clueless hypocrisy. When you read actual encyclicals, they seem to be actually treading a fine line between active concern for the poor and socialism while trying to avoid socialism.
John Paul II: Everyone seems to love him, but I have a hard time with his ecumenism. He is said to have kissed a Koran among many other shows of profound respect to other religions. They wouldn’t do the same for Catholicism, so I don’t see that his gestures did any good, and could have done harm by seeming to validate beliefs he should not validate.
Benedict and Vatican II: He’s not pushing back Vatican II. He was JPII’s head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was in charge of settling difficulties over doctrine. Vatican II asked for increased use of the vernacular alongside the Latin Mass which should be preserved for those attached to it. The post-conciliar clergy threw out the Latin Mass. Benedict, in Summorum Pontificum, merely stated outright what JPII didn’t say strongly enough in Ecclesia Dei: that Vatican II did not say to throw out the Latin Mass and that it should be allowed where requested.
Why am I a Catholic? Because the Church is right
, however uncomfortable it makes me personally.
Does the Church micromanage your life? No. It does tell you how to live it so as to achieve salvation. That’s its job.
Weetabix | 3/18/2008 12:15 PM CDT -
I was never a Catholic. The closest my family came was its Episcopal roots, although my great grandmother left the church and chose to become a presbyterian (and later, my mother chose an even lower church for us to attend).
For some reason the Catholic church in the neighborhood I lived as a child didn’t have a school, so (unusually) the Catholic kids were in school with us non-Catholics. They had catechism classes after school, in the same way Jewish kids attended Hebrew school.
Other than my childhood experiences, working with for Episcopal church (as I did many years ago), I came in contact with a number of professional Catholics (especially Monks). There were also Episcopal churches that were “more Catholic than Catholic” and were studied by Catholic priests because of the old mass that was still delivered.
I will admit that I find discussions like this fascinating, but it is like watching people speaking Klingon. I can hear the sounds, but it has no meaning to me, and since I don’t speak Klingon, I have no ability to contribute.
Still fascinating though.
Mrs. du Toit | 3/18/2008 12:49 PM CDT -
Let me start by saying that I am too young to have received “traditional” Catholic education. That was my father’s generation. I seem to have gotten the new age version, with more “Jesus loves you” and less hellfire and damnation. I never actually learned about mortal sins, for example.
Now that I think about it, that’s really strange. 6 years of Catholic school, several years of CCD, all of the relevant sacraments, and not one mention of mortal sins that I can recall.
It is entirely possible that my understanding does not jive exactly with what the church teaches. That doesn’t really bother me, since I don’t see the church as being the ultimate authority in such matters anyway. A respected opinion, definitely. But that’s all.
So I guess I’m simultaneously admitting ignorance and dismissing the importance of actual church doctrine, and going more from my interpretation of it. I only say this so you have a better idea of where I’m coming from.
Mortal sin:
I stand corrected on the differentiation between mortal and deadly sins. I’m glad you got my point though.
Your link does a much better job of clearing up the origin of this new list of sins than I have previously seen. I did get the distinct impression from other sources that this new list was “non-binding” or non-official, in that they weren’te actual doctrine. Even so, I think it is very important insight into the mentality of the church leadership.
I do question though about whether or not the pollution, wealth, and poverty issues were intended in the way you interpret them. I personally agree with your interpretation, but I suspect that to some extent they were intended in the spirit of anti-corporatism and socialist redistributionism that the church seems to have wedded itself to. I don’t like the church’s stance on these issues one bit.
Similarly, there was a very interesting article in a recent issue of City Journal on how some Catholic priests in the southwestern US are very active in the illegal immigration movement, in some cases spilling over into socialist or even communist-sounding agitation. The article isn’t coming up on google in 30 seconds or less, so I’ll have to look it up at home if anyone is interested.
The church is GOING to be politically active. It’s things like this, that list, politically active priests, etc, that tell me how the larger organization is going to influence the world. If the church would stick to the business of religion and quit screwing around in politics, I’d be much happier. Fat chance of that happening though.
JPII:
I agree that some of his ecumenism might have been somewhat counterproductive, only in that it wasn’t reciprocated. I don’t see it as doing any real significant harm though. Even he would once in awhile say something that really grated on me, but I gave him a pass because in the grand scheme of things, I thought he was a good leader for the church.
Benedict:
What is your opinion of Benedict? I’m very curious to know what a “more Catholic” Catholic thinks of him. I heard lots of ridicule and hate spewed from anti-religious and secular people early in his papacy, but I wrote that off as the clueless throwing stones just to be jerks.
I started with no opinion of him, and it’s been slowly drifting negative. Not for any one reason that I can put my finger on though, more I think for the trend in the church that I’m going to call “medievalism” that I’ve seen emboldened, both locally and globally, by his elevation to the papacy.
I think many in the church would like to micromanage life. That’s part of what worries me, I see those forces gaining strength.
American Farmer | 3/18/2008 01:14 PM CDT -
Gorbledy gorp floogplasty?
What’s Kim’s phrase for religious folks and their churches that he doesn’t use much for concern of offending? I can’t remember it, but it made me laugh.
ETA - I cross posted this with AF’s comment. This silliness is in response to TS.
I’ll be more serious when I have time.
Weetabix | 3/18/2008 01:31 PM CDT -
I had 5 years of Catholic school - 2 elementary and 3 high school. I don’t know whether they did a less than outstanding job with the religious education or I was a teenaged, male dope. It could easily have been either. At any rate, I don’t remember much of my religious education. My academic education there was excellent, I think.
As to the Church’s authority, (again, speaking from a strictly Catholic standpoint as opposed to arguing or chastising or something else unpalatable) the Church and the Scriptures do form the ultimate authority. The combination of the Magisterium and Scriptures contain the whole of Revelation. Given that the bible is often difficult to understand, it makes sense that we’d have a teaching authority to help us out. In the absence of that, we’d splinter into 30,000 different denominations… oh, wait: that’s what the Protestants did after they rejected Rome.
So, I accept the authority of the Church. Interesting thing is, when you go to the source documents, you’ll find that what the Church actually teaches is often not as troublesome as what some priests, Catholics, or even Bishops say it teaches. When someone tells you something that strikes you as wrong, ask them to show you the document that requires that.
How did I get to accepting the Church’s authority? By starting with first principles. Here are the questions I asked myself (trying to look at it critically):
Do I believe in God? Yes. Oddly, what really reinforced that for me was anthropology classes in college - the dotted lines on the evolutionary chart were much longer than the short, solid lines that represented the fossil record. They had no hard evidence. It actually takes less faith for me to believe in God than to believe that all this stuff “just happened.” Add to that the incredibly utility and necessity of water, and I’m sold rationally.
Do I believe in Jesus? Well, examining all the other religions, it appears to me that Judaism and Christianity are the only ones that, if everyone followed them, we’d have a pretty good place. I can’t get excited over the extended results of any other religion. When you examine Jesus’s whole message, it all just makes sense.
So, on my journey back, I looked at the Christian religions. Most of those 30,000 denominations of Protestants struck me as crackpots focusing on just one or two points and throwing out the rest. A couple of denominations seemed pretty close. Then I looked at why Martin Luther struck off on his own. He had some valid points, but a later Council addressed most of them. Add to that that he appears, even in laudatory biographies, to have been quite emotionally unbalanced, I came to believe that the Catholic church really is it. So, if they’re right, I felt I logically had to accept their authority.
I guess that’s my too-long-winded way of telling you where I’m coming from.
Pollution, poverty, wealth questions: They probably are not strictly interpreted by clergy the way I interpret them. However, the clergy often strike me as our equivalent of an ivory tower in their removal from some of the realities of life. I feel sure they mean well, but I’m not sure they understand all the social, economic, and human consequences of their stances and actions, especially with the illegal immigrant population. The clergy see them as God’s children, and so far I agree. But in providing them with the assistance they do, I think they encourage illegal activity when their ends could be better met via other routes. I think they tread perilously close to scandal there.
[dons apologetics hat]
As to the Church’s being politically active, I can’t quite condemn that. the Church’s concern is the salvation of the soul. Political activity, properly used, should lead to a freeing of people that allows them to better or more clearly focus on religion. It should also lead to an end of oppression which is spiritually good for the oppressors as well as for the oppressed.
[doffs apologetics hat]The Church’s ideas of social justice as preached from the pulpit set my teeth on edge. I think, though, that we have a left-leaning priest who puts his own spin on it.
Benedict: I love that guy. He really seems to get a lot of things. He doesn’t move as quickly or as decisively as you might think. He’s often restating things that the Church has always taught, but which the “Jesus loves you” crowd likes to brush under the rug. I think he’s working to clean out the accumulated hippie cobwebs from the 60’s & 70’s and the selfish nonsense of the 80’s and 90’s.
He recently reaffirmed that the Catholic Church contains the “fullness of truth.” But the Church has never taught otherwise. It believes that other Churches contain parts of the truth, depending on which parts of truth they’ve rejected. But really, how could you expect the Church to say otherwise? “We’re not really all that important or unique; you could go to church anywhere, really.” I think only the Universalist Unitarians say that. The Church specifically does not say that all non-Catholics go to hell, though many people think it does. I can look up the paragraph number for the Catechism reference if you’d like it.
Here’s his letter that accompanied Summorum Pontificum to assure the Bishops that he was not rolling back Vatican II
I like him.
Church micromanaging your life? I don’t think they’d like to micromanage your life. I think they will gladly tell you how to live it, but again, that’s their job: to tell you how to live life in the best way to follow Christ and in hopes of salvation. Kind of like a good mother.
Weetabix | 3/19/2008 11:14 AM CDT -
First off, as a (sometimes lapsed) Catholic with at least 6 (good) years of Catholic school education, I want to investigate the source of this report:
BBC - “The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession...” AND “In an interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Girotti said he thought the most dangerous areas for committing new types of sins lay in the fields of bio-ethics and ecology...He also named abortion and paedophilia as two of the greatest sins of our times.”In other words, this does NOT come directly from Pope Benedict as a Church Teaching, Canon Law, or even a revison to the Cathecism of the Catholic Church - see their website http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM for more info
Instead of this noise, I listen to these words
“The first commandment is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”They only micromanage your life is you forget what’s important!
cas | 3/19/2008 03:14 PM CDT -
Interesting thing is, when you go to the source documents, you’ll find that what the Church actually teaches is often not as troublesome as what some priests, Catholics, or even Bishops say it teaches. When someone tells you something that strikes you as wrong, ask them to show you the document that requires that.
Do you have any significant examples of that?
Not that I doubt you, I’m just curious to find out what I know that is wrong.
American Farmer | 3/19/2008 07:35 PM CDT -
Honestly, I’m more used to dispelling non-Catholics’ mistaken notions of what the Church teaches, so I don’t necessarily have anything on tap. What pisses you off?
Here’s one that pissed me off.
My wife was baptized and confirmed a year ago. She attended RCIA. In there, discussing conscience, our pastor said a human must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience (CCC, 1790). “If he does that he’ll go to heaven.” Working from the outside to the inside, I asked, “A suicide bomber obeys the certain judgment of his conscience that he must blow up his victims. Does he go to heaven?” He said yes.
But, the Catechism says a conscience may make an erroneous judgment (CCC, 1779) and that
“It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them… There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it. - CCC 1756
So, he was wrong as he was trying to reassure people that everyone goes to heaven.
Which the Church does not teach, though it also does not say all non-Catholics go to hell.
So - what pisses you off? I’ll see what I can find.
Weetabix | 3/19/2008 08:49 PM CDT -
I guess my issues come at a higher level. Like transubstantiation.
American Farmer | 3/20/2008 06:46 AM CDT -
It feels odd to discuss this on mrsdutoit.com. As Wayne Campbell said to Alice Cooper, “I’m not mental of anything, so don’t be afraid.” I have a strong faith, but I’m not a nutjob. (’Course, no one thinks he’s a nutjob!
)
I’ll admit I know a lot of this stuff in the back of my head, but I have to look up the actual references.
[apologetics hat]
Here’s how I addressed transubstantiation for myself:1. Do I believe in God? Yes.
2. Do I believe he made the heavens and the earth? Yes. See above - it’s easier for me to believe that than that it all “just happened.”
3. Do I believe that when Jesus said something and didn’t clarify it when disciples went to leave as if it were a misunderstanding, he really meant what he said? Yes. See John 6:53-69
4. Do I believe that God can do whatever he wants because he made the rules? Yes.
5. Do I still see bread and wine? Yes.Transubstantiation means that while the physical portion of the bread and wine stay the same, the substance or essence changes to Jesus’ flesh and blood. He said emphatically several times that you must eat his flesh and drink his blood has eternal life.
Kind of like you were AF as a boy; you’re AF now, and you’ll be AF when you’re 80. Your physical body changes cells until they’re all new cells, though your substance is the same. Transubstantion is the same but changing substance instead of the physical stuff.
I figure if God can make dirt, he can sure do this, and he said he would. I accept that by faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I guess I choose to believe because I accept the Magisterium.
Weetabix | 3/20/2008 10:06 AM CDT -
To me the question of transubstantiation is exactly analogous to the question of an invisible flying pink dragon in my neighbor’s garage. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, you can’t concretely determine it’s presence in any way. In fact, there’s no good reason at all to even believe it is there, except that my neighbor told me it is there. Even the assertion of it’s existence is a meaningless statement, because it is a completely untestable assertion, and the truth or falsity of the assertion has no impact on anything.
I suppose the same could be said of the existence of God, but I’m not willing to go so far as to say that’s the same thing.
Also, I don’t mean to disparage your faith in any way. There is a point at which reason ends and faith begins, and I accept whatever people choose to believe in, within reason.
American Farmer | 3/20/2008 10:28 AM CDT -
Your paragraph 1: You’re completely right. I believe (but can’t prove) that the truth or falsity of transubstantiation has an impact on at least one thing.
Paragraph 2: Again, you’re right.
Paragraph 3. I don’t take it as disparagement. People believe different things. Please don’t take anything I say as disparagement either. I don’t disparage anyone’s faith or lack of it. Well, maybe I do disparage those UFO guys. But, come on! How could you not?
But… if you only accept whatever people choose to believe in, within reason, there’s no faith involved! (Sorry - couldn’t help being a smart@$$.)
Weetabix | 3/20/2008 10:36 AM CDT -
But… if you only accept whatever people choose to believe in, within reason, there’s no faith involved!
That’s an interesting point, because that is where it begins and ends. I can (without any problems at all) accept that people believe things. That’s their business.
When it becomes my business (and only then) is when I have to believe what they believe in order to agree with them on something. If I don’t share their belief, then I can’t share in their conclusion, and they can’t use belief as the basis for convincing me.
Mrs. du Toit | 3/20/2008 10:40 AM CDT -
I should add (to complete the thought--DUH!) that belief isn’t limited to religion.
Someone can believe in global warming. That’s fine. They can believe that, too, if they want. What they cannot expect is that their feelings (or belief) that it is true is the basis for getting me to agree, or setting public policy based on it.
When it leaves the realm of belief/feelings and becomes an issue of public policy, then it has to rise to a higher standard, and there must be a burden of proof.
Mrs. du Toit | 3/20/2008 10:42 AM CDT -
They also cannot expect to get away with believing in global warming, or something else that is contrary to facts, without being mocked mercilessly. Something like religion, that is not testable, is completely different in that respect than something like global warming, that is testable.
American Farmer | 3/20/2008 11:01 AM CDT -
Exactly, TS! That sums up nicely my quandary in the Geopoliticus Morality thread. That’s why I’m looking for a way to convince people who don’t share my religious belief that there are universal moral truths based on reason and not based on an appeal to some belief that they don’t share.
I (personally) happen to believe that God commands or prohibits certain things. But I actually believe that God commands us to do those things because they are good for us and avoid other things because they are bad for us, not that they are good or bad solely because he commanded it.
I think you and I could agree (skipping over whether God exists) that some things are inherently good or bad for us or for society.
It’s up to me to rise to that higher standard on that issue as much as it is for the Screwball Warming crowd to rise to a higher standard.
Weetabix | 3/20/2008 11:04 AM CDT
