Ask a Catholic

[loganonekenobi]

2 Chronicles 15:12-13....that's one but there are several others that basicly lend legitimicy to harsh treatment of any who are not believers.
the history of the catholic church has always been one of money and power.  Look at the conquest of the native americans.  Even if you believe that the pope is a kind gentle soul that wants to save everyone from hell and not a man that wants the power the church used to have 400 years ago, the  fact is that the bible lends to either converting every one who can be converted or killing/shunning/outcasting those who cant.  
sorry it took so long to see you responce i'm new to the forum.

I thought you said Corinthians. You have cited Chronicles.

2 Chronicles 15:12-13 this one says i should be put to death, 2 John 1:9-11 this one says that you should have nothing to do with me, 1 Corinthians 7:12 this one says divorce is the only option if the wife is an unbeliever,
Psalm 14:1 this one says the unbeliever is corupt and an abomination, John 15:19 this one says that i automaticly hate you for some reason.
I could go on but I'm not here to turn phrases and outwit you as an opponent. I'm here to ask a simple question. As for what reason the pope would want to rule the world.... i dunno wealth, power, prevledge the ablity to ignore wrongs done by his special elite and to destroy any oppositional thinking that might relieve him of his power. All of this was done in history. It is convenient how the religious forget the horror that they have visited upon others in the name of their god. Before you try to get out of this just take a look at the list of atrocities that have been done in the name if christ since Constitine. you dont need me to look it up for you. the internet is available to you.
So the question stands. If this country becomes a catholic nation what would my life as a non believer look like?

[Metis]

Why does god give us free will only to come and say how we should behave? They can never get their shit straight.

The official Catholic answer is that God wants us to love him, and love can't be forced.

How to phrase it....Suppose you build a Stepford Wife. She can do everything you want her to, but she cannot be genuine about any feelings she might have. When she tells you she loves you it's just empty words, she has to love you because her programming doesn't permit her to feel anything else towards you.

On the other hand a human wife...She may have some serious character flaws, she won't automatically do whatever you want but when she tells you she loves you it is more meaningful.

That's the general idea; he wants to be loved but for it to be worth anything we have to choose to love him. Where does the hellfire fit into this? I suppose kicking an adulterous spouse out the house into an alleyway at midnight in the rain is the best comparison I have.

[Longhorn]

Let's say for the sake of argument that God did prevent the rape of one person...or prevent a murder of another. If He does that for one or two, wouldn't He be obligated to prevent every murder? Every rape? Divorce hurts people, too...what about preventing every divorce? Unemployment is bad....should God be obligated to prevent anyone from losing their job? Or falling on the playground and skinning their knees?

If God intervened in every situation that conceivably causes us pain, our lives would be so free from suffering that we would consider a hangnail to be a great injustice requiring God's intervention.

But at what point would God have to eliminate free will in order to accomplish this utopian existence? As disgusting as it is, God cannot stop the rapist or murderer without impinging on the free will of all mankind. Consequently, He allows the pain in order to respect the greater good.

And if we are not morally free to choose to rape or not rape, to kill or not kill, and we are forced to serve and obey God, why would we love Him since we had no other choice?

'But if I'm benevolent to one person, I'm gonna have to be benevolent to them all!'?

Have to? I thought god does what he wants

And I'm asking why is free will the greater good than no suffering?

[Jenny A]

Which one is your god doing? Making rape happen or Letting rape happen? Pretty simple question to answer.

Allowing rape to happen.

As bad as that is, eliminating free will of all humans would be worse.

But god did essentially that in the OT when he flooded the earth.   And he did in whole cities for similar reasons:  Sodom and Gomorrah for example.  The OT god is always poking around eliminating someone's free will.  Often for what look like minor infractions.

[loganonekenobi]

The greatest fear I have is that with enough consent we in this country may return to a theocracy that although brought us out of the fall of the roman empire did much atrocity to the world in the name of God.  Do you believe that today if that happened I and other non believers would have much hope for a life in this country?

The Catholic Church didn't do any such thing, it actually destroyed innumerable relics and books from the Classical world as "demonic idols" and "textbooks of demonology". It seperated us from our classical past, until it suited itself of course and during the reneissance the Papacy got a taste for the classics again.

No, what dragged us out of medevalism was the fall of Byzantium and the transport of huge quantities of classical Greek literature and artefacts back into the west. The beautiful irony however is that the Catholic Church could have prevented that even still! Firstly if it hadn't weakened Byzantium by taking it over and briefly setting up a Latin Patriarchate, and secondly if they'd actually given any more help than a token gesture of 300 Pisan archers to defend Constatinople!

The Catholic Church did give us a few things we take for granted today like Charity, many Romans before then practiced what the Catholics call "vainglory"; setting up huge monuments to their own fame rather than feeding the poor but leaving the Dark Ages? Irish Celtic Christianity did a hell of a lot more there, in fact they created many of the monasteries the Catholics like to claim as their own today.

thank you for the history lesson. I love learning. I was always taught that the catholic church attempted to preserve the roman knowledge unless it contradicted the bible.

[Mr.wizard]

Allowing rape to happen.

As bad as that is, eliminating free will of all humans would be worse.

But god did essentially that in the OT when he flooded the earth.   And he did in whole cities for similar reasons:  Sodom and Gomorrah for example.  The OT god is always poking around eliminating someone's free will.  Often from what look like minor infractions.

Good point

[robvalue]

Hmm, let's see:

1- God makes it so no one has the desire to rape in the first place

or

2- God designs things so that anyone who tries to rape anyone is automatically physically unable to do so

or

3- God lets people do what the fuck they want, blames the humans for abusing free will, simply asks the rapist to apologise to him (not the victim) then rinse and repeat

[Metis]

thank you for the history lesson.  I love learning. I was always taught that the catholic church attempted to preserve the roman knowledge unless it contradicted the bible.

Hey, my pleasure! They did preserve a few things but when it came to written works the Early Church had a rather interesting habit of repurposement.

Sometimes If they found something truely beautiful and of great artistic merit, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses (a long poem narrating the history of Earth from time imemmorial to Ovid's day through Hellenistic myths) they would edit it. They'd take out all the smut, or introduce new features to the plot to give the tale a moral spin.

Several of Ovid's works were known to Medeval Christians, but rather than knowing him as the lecherous aristocratic love poet we do now that we've got access to his Art of Love collection they thought (our main evidence of this is a work called Ovide Moralise from 1340 which is an edited version of Metamorphoses compiled by a French Monk) written by he was a Catholic Bishop who denounced the Roman world and wrote stories using pagan allegory to demonstrate Christian morals. Which is impossible, he died before Jesus began preaching.

It did preserve a couple of things, but it often edited them changing their meaning and purpose entirely. That and it did destroy a lot of our material culture too.

[loganonekenobi]

thank you for the history lesson.  I love learning. I was always taught that the catholic church attempted to preserve the roman knowledge unless it contradicted the bible.

Hey, my pleasure! They did preserve a few things but when it came to written works the Early Church had a rather interesting habit of repurposement.

Sometimes If they found something truely beautiful and of great artistic merit, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses (a long poem narrating the history of Earth from time imemmorial to Ovid's day through Hellenistic myths) they would edit it. They'd take out all the smut, or introduce new features to the plot to give the tale a moral spin.

Several of Ovid's works were known to Medeval Christians, but rather than knowing him as the lecherous aristocratic love poet we do now that we've got access to his Art of Love collection they thought (our main evidence of this is a work called Ovide Moralise from 1340 which is an edited version of Metamorphoses compiled by a French Monk) written by he was a Catholic Bishop who denounced the Roman world and wrote stories using pagan allegory to demonstrate Christian morals. Which is impossible, he died before Jesus began preaching.

It did preserve a couple of things, but it often edited them changing their meaning and purpose entirely. That and it did destroy a lot of our material culture too.

I'm pretty sure he/she won't answer my question because inevitably the answer would be that the non catholics would be "persuaded" to convert and by persuade i mean all non believers would become second class citizens.

[Randy Carson]

I thought you said Corinthians. You have cited Chronicles.

2 Chronicles 15:12-13 this one says i should be put to death, 2 John 1:9-11  this one says that you should have nothing to do with me, 1 Corinthians 7:12 this one says divorce is the only option if the wife is an unbeliever,

Once again, I must show you that you are in error because you do not know the Word of God (maybe this is why you're an atheist?):

1 Corinthians
12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

So the question stands.  If this country becomes a catholic nation what would my life as a non believer look like?

Not much different than it does now, I expect.