Ask a Catholic

[c172]

Well, hello, ol' thread.

I wonder where Randy, the man with the plan, is. How 'bout them GA Techies? I think this is their year.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Jesus did a lot of things normal humans do.  He lied, ate, fished, cursed.  He wasn't too big on personal hygiene.

Where did he lie and curse? This ought to be good....

Haven't you ever read the fairy tale with a critical eye?  

1.  Do believers get whatever they pray for?  
Matthew 7:7-8; 18:19-20; 21:21-22; Mark 11:24-25; Luke 11:9-13; John 14:13-14; John 15:7; John 15:16; John 16-23-24.

2.  Have you been able to get a mountain to jump into the sea by your command?

How's the faith healing doing?  Mark 16:17-18

4. Matthew 11:21-24.

5.  Matthew 3:7; 12;34, 23:15, 23:33; Luke 3:7

[pocaracas]

Awww... buggers!

Anyway... the point I wanted to drive home was that there probably weren't enough generations to account for all those peoples... and all the disparity in beliefs.
I say "probably", because we're left without an answer as to how many generations there were.
And if that is so, then either the OT is way off... or Luke was way off...
But Luke researched everything he wrote thoroughly, right? So he couldn't be wrong...  


We can always broaden the scope of this question.
Considering all we know about human evolution and history; knowledge acquired through archaeology, linguistics, biology, anthropology, etc...; as is accepted by the catholic church, and considering the tales in the OT are fiction and mainly for rough guidance, then - if there has ever only been one single god, how did people come up with polytheism far before monotheism?
Not to mention that they came up with shamanism well before polytheism ("The earliest known undisputed burial of a shaman (and by extension the earliest undisputed evidence of shamans and shamanic practices) dates back to the early Upper Paleolithic era (c. 30,000 BP) in what is now the Czech Republic", in wiki)

I guess what I'm asking is more - how come mankind had to invent tons of entities, before the actual real one deity deigned itself to confirm its existence to a few select chosen people in a particularly theologically active time and region of the globe?

So much so that there had to be a commandment to prevent people from worshiping those other gods.... that didn't work.

I think the simplest answer is that there is no one, actual God that historically did all that is claimed.  Rather, there is a god sized hole in the human psyche which looks for and sees evidence of the unseen.  And it has done so always and everywhere.  It accomplishes nothing seeking to make historical sense of whatever is written in the babble.  It is simply one of many expressions of the god hole, no more or less special than any of the others.  

Personally I see no harm and admit curiosity as to what good might come of a serious examination of all the religious traditions with the sole purpose of understanding the tendency of our species to produce gods.

I have a book called Anthropology of Religions, it's in Portuguese, by a Portuguese university professor and it seem fairly thorough...sadly,I haven't read the whole thing yet... It's not as easy to carry around like an epub.
This book should cover the appearance and establishment of individual religions in different parts of the world.
But my question to Randy goes beyond that. I'm trying to probe a believer in one particular religion on how come the deity of that religion allowed, or even supported, the sustained belief in other religions and deities. How does he explain that people were believing in other gods before his preferred one ever popped its head to say hi to humanity?
How did mankind come up with them?

[Whateverist]

I have a book called Anthropology of Religions, it's in Portuguese, by a Portuguese university professor and it seem fairly thorough...sadly,I haven't read the whole thing yet... It's not as easy to carry around like an epub.
This book should cover the appearance and establishment of individual religions in different parts of the world.
But my question to Randy goes beyond that. I'm trying to probe a believer in one particular religion on how come the deity of that religion allowed, or even supported, the sustained belief in other religions and deities. How does he explain that people were believing in other gods before his preferred one ever popped its head to say hi to humanity?
How did mankind come up with them?

Yeah he doesn't realize it but of course he doesn't have a leg to stand on. But I can't imagine he isn't well practiced dealing with cognitive dissonance. No conflict will ever lead him to rethink his favorite hypothesis. Well, maybe you'll provoke him to improve his theology at least but I doubt it.

[pocaracas]

I have a book called Anthropology of Religions, it's in Portuguese, by a Portuguese university professor and it seem fairly thorough...sadly,I haven't read the whole thing yet... It's not as easy to carry around like an epub.
This book should cover the appearance and establishment of individual religions in different parts of the world.
But my question to Randy goes beyond that. I'm trying to probe a believer in one particular religion on how come the deity of that religion allowed, or even supported, the sustained belief in other religions and deities. How does he explain that people were believing in other gods before his preferred one ever popped its head to say hi to humanity?
How did mankind come up with them?

Yeah he doesn't realize it but of course he doesn't have a leg to stand on.  But I can't imagine he isn't well practiced dealing with cognitive dissonance.  No conflict will ever lead him to rethink his favorite hypothesis.  Well, maybe you'll provoke him to improve his theology at least but I doubt it.

If I have made him think about it, then my job is done!

The go-to answer I've gotten before had something to do with some holy spirit inspiring humanity... but human free will or local traditions got in the way and produced the wrong beliefs... all the while paving mankind for the upcoming attraction - god itself made man.
It's like this god couldn't have just done the job right from the get go.

[Randy Carson]

You were wrong, of course, since your sins ARE God's business, and confession was established by Jesus as the normative means for forgiveness of serious sins. Venial sins do not require confession.

How old were you at the time?

Even when I was a believer I never saw priests as anything but nosy humans and not as god's ground crew. I was pretty little back then. Maybe 9 or 10. And still being a believer I thought that god knew anyway. So why go through all the bother, since I also knew that I would lie to them anyway.

I always valued my privacy.

So, at the ripe old age of 9 or 10, you made these judgments about whether God had or had not instituted the papacy and the Sacrament of Reconciliation?

Of course, you were right to understand that an omniscient God would (and still does) know all of your sins, but since you were planning on lying to the priest anyway, why bother?

Um...did you also at that time consider the fact that while God knows our sins, He also knows our need to hear the comforting words of absolution from another human being?

If not, would it make sense to consider it now?

[Randy Carson]

That depends on how years are defined in the relevant texts, I suppose.

You're sort of dodging that. You said that they lived for a really long time back then, soooo one would have to assume that was much longer than we are living today. It sounds a lot like that you believe that Shem died at 600 and Methuselah died at the age of 969.

If you believed that a year wasn't measured like it was today, then you probably wouldn't have said that, so I have to assume that you do believe that people lived to a few hundred + years old, when ALL evidence heavily contradicts that.

I have no problem with the idea that they did live to extraordinary age. However, I am also aware that it's quite possible that some method of dating was used which is different from our own.

But what evidence do you have which indicates that Methuselah did not live to be 969 of our years?

[Randy Carson]

You're sort of dodging that. You said that they lived for a really long time back then, soooo one would have to assume that was much longer than we are living today. It sounds a lot like that you believe that Shem died at 600 and Methuselah died at the age of 969.

If you believed that a year wasn't measured like it was today, then you probably wouldn't have said that, so I have to assume that you do believe that people lived to a few hundred + years old, when ALL evidence heavily contradicts that.

Typical mental gymnastics from someone who doesn't sincerely believe his own holy horseshit. That's why he's such a virulent poster, because the only one he's trying to convince is himself. Kinda like how the most vocal gay-bashers turn out to have a love for The Sausage themnselves.

Or like someone who hangs out in an atheist forum to constantly reinforce his misguided belief that God does not exist?

[abaris]

If not, would it make sense to consider it now?

Simply put, no.

That kind of comes with the territory of not believing. You're living under the assumption that none of us had given the matter much thought before arriving at what we are today. That's projection, plain and simple. And it's also just a little bit presumptuous.

[Randy Carson]

If not, would it make sense to consider it now?

Simply put, no.

That kind of comes with the territory of not believing. You're living under the assumption that none of us had given the matter much thought before arriving at what we are today. That's projection, plain and simple. And it's also just a little bit presumptuous.

Considering that a common refrain in this forum goes something like, "I stopped believing your buy-bull when I was five (or 9 or 10)...", then, yeah, it is highly possible that many have NEVER seriously considered the evidence for Christianity objectively as mature adults.

They have examined ways to CONTINUE not believing since then, but that's not the same as being open-minded and willing to go wherever the evidence leads, is it?

And yes, I do realize that others here claim to have lost their faith as adults...but I'd be willing to bet that there was something other than intellectual objection to Christian doctrine that led to their departure. It is often the case that there are moral issues involved: sexual promiscuity, divorce, homosexualty, etc.