My Escatological Vision

[dqualk]

Yet another inaccurate comparison. The Catholic Church is a dogma-promoting institution around which Catholics are organized. Atheism is in no way an institution, and atheists generally do not organize themselves. It is therefore much more valid to generalize about the former when compared to the latter.

But the Church's dogma is good concerning this issue.

So if someone rapes and kills 100 children, but feels bad about it later and asks for God’s forgiveness, he can still go to heaven. But if someone else lives a good moral life and rejects the silly idea of God all the way to the grave, he goes to hell.

How utterly repulsive and immoral.

Did you even read this thread? I completely reject this idea and offer another one. The entire point of this thread is to demonstrate that your assertion above is not held by all Christians. How about this one, if someone rapes a child and truly is pentinent, and if someone did not believe and is truly pentinant, both go to heaven.

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Really? A well-placed "fuck" here or there means you're a "slave to passion"?

When it is well placed its fine. However, the only place one might place it well would be in a fight or a screaming mathc or something. You should never say fuck if the person you are talking to you is legitimately trying to reason with you. Which is what I am doing. I am listening and responding accordingly.

How fucking condescending.

You take offense where none was intended.

When you say "do something evil" you imply it was something pretty damn bad, not a "stupid mistake". Stupid mistake is me forgetting to pay the water bill and my roommate having to forgive me because it was shut off for a day. No lasting harm.

Touch a child and I have no forgiveness for you. You knew it was wrong on every level and you did it anyway, willfully and with full knowledge of its heinous nature. Let your contradictory god forgive you - you'll have none from this woman.

Well that is fine, but I would forgive simply becasue I truly believe that it helps everyone more, the victim and culprit.

Also, do you really belive that it is wrong on "every level." Or do you believe that it is wrong to you and like minded indiviudals? I don't mean this to be rude. I just believe that once you believing an intrinsic right and wrong you are one step closer to Theism.

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I will never, ever offer any forgiveness to a child molester nor will I respect, but hold utter contempt for, child molester sympathizers like yourself or even if said sympathizer is an all powerful universe creating God.

To say all the molester has to do is ask for forgiveness sincerly and he is to be forgiven is to sympathize with the molester.

I can sympathize with the man who was arrested for possessing a joint, because I smoke pot.

I can sympathize with tax evaders because I evade them myself.

Yes, I'm drawing a parallel here.

Major differance is I do not expect nor do I expect to be offered any 'forgiveness' no matter how sincerely sorry I am for failing to file/pay my taxes. Yet you believe child molesters/rapists/murderers should be offered such accomodation.

I'm hypothesizing your sympathy for child molesters is either becasue your church sympathizes with child molesters or you would enjoy a bit of molesting yourself.

Well if you read this thread you would see that you are the kind of person that I believe would not be able to make it into heaven. Although, I do not believe you are sincere, I think if you were faced with the reality of a loving God you would repent and have forgiveness on whoever. But in this case you would be like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. You refuse to enter the party(heaven) because you belevie your justice is more absolute than God's, thereby elevating yourself up to a phony god. I hope you do not take offense that I used you as an example. I sincerely do not bleive you are going to hell, if you are searching for Truth in charity, I really believe you will be saved in the end.

I do not believe that child molesters will not pay for their crime, on earth and in purgatory. On earth they will recieve the death penalty or life in prison, in purgatory I'm sure their suffering will border on inferno pain. However, I never said I believe and child molester will go to heaven, I just said they might, if they have a truly penitent heart. However, you have to ask yourself, if this person was willing to molest a child, is he even capable of true pentinence? Probably not, and therefore all molesters likely go to hell.

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It's not a cop out you colossal cretin, you meant to say a "red herring", and no its not! I am not trying to evade the subject matter when I am addressing it directly i.e your inability to grasp what atheism is and is not. Don't quote idiomatic expressions when you haven't taken the time to learn their meanings or what they are referring to.

Well if I meant red herring then I apologize and I'll just say red herring. I know what an atheist is, like I've said, I was using the term atheist to meant materialist atheist for the sake of not having to write materialist everything I said atheist. Ive already said Ill start doing that.

What part of "you don't get to have your own definition of atheism when a current working definition of the word already exists in the English Language" did you not understand? One can be a theist and a materialist as well you know, but that does not give you any entitlement to address theism broadly as "theistic materialism".

Listen brosef, people use the word atheist to mean materialist atheist all the time. Words can have many meanings, they do not always mean one thing. One can say atheist in the broadest sense, or in a more particular sense when talking to a certain audience. But so I do not offend your sensibilities Ill say materialist athiest, even though its over stating the obvious as its clear by the context that when I say atheist I'm actually referring to atheistic materialism.

Prove what? That atheism is logically as old as theism? Simple, were you born with the belief in god or gods?

Well a child likely doesnt believe in anything because he lacks the intellectual capacity. That is like saying a rock is an atheist. Also, babies do have some beliefs, for example, a child believes that his mother means to take care of him, and so he has faith in his mother, perhaps babies believe in God. Children are very apt to believe, and will believe in God without any explanation as if it is natural to believe in God.

That's arguing for a negative. Do you understand the difference between ontologically positive claims and negative claims? If I say the giant frog in the sun isn't real, is that a positive or a negative claim?

I'm afraid you are wrong.

A positive claim is any claim about the existence or properties of anything. Saying "There is no god" is a positive claim. Saying "there is a god" is also a positive claim.
Saying "I don't believe X" is a positive claim about your belief, but not about X. Lacking a belief in X because of the absence of evidence does not constitute a positive claim about X, it merely constitutes the null hypothesis. Any sane person should hold that position about everything for which they have no evidence.

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I saw that and understood (but disagree with) her position. I understand The Jewish position that justice is not about vengeance.

PLUS I really do understand (but disagree with) the Christian position of "hate the sin but love the sinner" . At the Catholic boys school I attended,I was taught there are no unforgivable sins.

However, the issue is not that those rock spiders were forgiven, but that the Church put itself above the law to protect those creatures AS POLICY. (IE the position that canon law trumps civil law) The church CHOSE to protect itself rather than its weakest,most helpless members;children. THAT is despicable and unforgivable.

Your position of a Catholic apologist,defending the indefensible reveals you as a fool with limited capacity for independent thought.

---and the horse you rode in on

It is unfortunate that you think that. It demonstrates you to be a fool with a closed mind.

Yes, that is nice that you disagree with it, but I brought it up to show some of the arguments for forgivness, and that is that it also helps the victim. Also, most Jews believe justice is about vengeance, Mengele swims agains the current of mainstread Judaism, or at least that is what the documentary puts forward.

The Church is above the secular law. Also the Church is a law unto herself. The UN recongnizes the Vatica as a nation and it has the right to make its own laws concerning itself. This is what Canon Law is. In the case of molestation the priest is to be defrocked and handed over to secular authorities. Most all bishops did, and do this.

Once more you demonstrate your extreme arrogance, that is if I have read you correctly. Are you claiming that all defenders of the Church's teachings are "fools." If so you are including some of the most intelligent men that ever lived including, Galileo, Leibniz, et al. Also, thank you for your kind statement of a "limited capacity" implying that I am capable of some independent thought lol.