RE: Meaningfulness v meaninglessness; theism vs atheism;
January 17, 2011 at 8:46 pm
(This post was last modified: January 17, 2011 at 9:20 pm by dqualk.)
(January 17, 2011 at 8:15 am)Skipper Wrote:dqualk Wrote:You are lying. Have a greater respect for reason, logic and truth.
Oh the irony of religious folk demanding we have a greater respect for logic and reason haha!
Skipper... poor you, you really believe that you and your tiny group of atheists are the only intelligent rational people on Earth don't you? How sad and delusional. I do not make that claim that there are no well meaning intelligent atheists, I am not so arrogant. I feel for those arrogant ignorant people who think they are the only right ones, and treat anyone with differing opinions with disdain and disrespect. I have the great respect for any man who is truly seeking truth in charity, whether he is athesit, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian.
Quote:I've never seen the church put out a bulletin that says "the individual actions of our clergymen do not necessarily represent the opinions and beliefs central to the Church or Catholicism." Let me know if I'm wrong about that.
I respectfully say that you are wrong, the Church consistently says that individual actions do not represent the whole. The Church is represented as a whole in its Tradition which is defined in Counsels and by the Papacy when speaking on issues of faith and morals. A Pope's personal actions will scandalize the Church and defame it, but they do not reflect on the whole. The truth is there will always be stupid asses in the Church, and unfortunately we have bad Popes from time to time.
I fully accept that some Bishops made bad mistakes. Shame on them, I hope it never happens again, unfortunately, because of human nature, which is not exclusive to any belief system or lack thereof, I’m sure something like it will happen again.
I can understand why people would blame the whole Church, and I do not blame them. You make perfect sense in what you are saying. These bad bishops and bad members of the Vatican et al. have scandalized the Church and have given her a bad name. However, the Church does have many members who do great acts of charity, I'm sure you know of some, if not call your local Catholic charity and you will see that they help hungry families regardless of creed or lack thereof.
All I am saying is that the situation is very complex situation. My only intention in bringing this up is that the situation is a very complex and multi layered situation that people act as if all priests abuse 8 year old kids by doing extremely heinous acts, when in fact the cases are not always so heinous. This is not to say that it’s not evil or a scandal only that it’s complicated and misrepresented by the media for the sake of a big story. There are many layers influenced by time, victim, situation etc.
Well midsummer I think your post was a good post and it made strong points many of which I agree with. These priests and bishops were disgusting and they were a scandal on the Church. But once you sift through all of the misinformation, you will see that the Church is only as bad as any other institution. It’s no worse. Especially an atheist who creates their own right and wrong based on relative principles, relative to other organizations the Church’s record of abuse is rather low. And its record of charity is extremely high. So I think a rational person will have respect for the Church as a whole and recognize it as a decent organization as a whole, even though it has some sicko bastards who deserve to die within it. All organizations have sickos in it.
The Church has a canon law that deals with the situation appropriately. On paper the Church has the right laws and mindset in place on this topic. That is the Church says it’s a grievous sin, and that it is to be reported to the authorities and the priest is to be defrocked.
The Church does not release all things to the public to save the Church from scandal. Because people might blame the actions of bad individuals on the whole. In cases of abuse the Church according to Canon Law is not to worry about scandal, the victims concern is most important and the predator priest is to be defrocked and given to the authorities.
I agree pedophiles just need to sit in prison for life or under a constant secure watch at least. I agree the priests and bishops who covered it up are disgusting.
I can not blame you for not having trust in the Church. But I do beleive that you will find that the Church can be trustworthy under certain assumptions and if you examine the entire Church for what she is. At the same time I recognize that many do not have the time or capability to spend the time looking into the Church, and I cannot blame them, this is why it is so evil for those bishops and priest to scandalize the Church in such a way.
(January 17, 2011 at 3:18 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: Are you ready to learn what atheism is yet? Or would you rather prefer to continue trolling like the self-righteous hypocritical bigot that you are making yourself out to be? Kindly let us know.
You may tell me what atheism is and I will apologize where I wrong. My point is to say that telling me that I can not lump people who share certain common elements together is like telling a scientist that he should not lump mammals into a category becuase a human is so different from a platypus or something. The fact is they hold something in common therefore it is useful at times to lump them together. This classifying will always fail on some issue. So I can intelligibly lump atheists together even if its not always a perfect process.
