(January 28, 2018 at 12:13 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(January 28, 2018 at 5:10 am)shadow Wrote: Yes, it makes sense, as in you are... trying to squeeze god into your conception of morality. From my point of view, nothing ties the two together. Do I deliberately reject god? Yes. Do I deliberately reject morality? Not at all. And I don't feel the slightest hint of moral inconsistency with that view.
When you use the word 'god' to refer to morality, you attach the entire institution of the Catholic Church and the Bible to your morals, which is the first sign to me that you can't really believe them. For example, the Catholic Church is rife with child sexual abuse scandals. We're talking about thousands of authority figures in the church repeatedly sexually abusing children. You can't possibly agree with this behaviour. So why pretend that an organization fostering this kind of abuse has anything to do with your morality? Why do you need that corrupt institution at all to believe in a form of karma after one dies?
You agree that one can come to morality without being Catholic. So I don't see the role of god. I think the church likes to collect money for the concept of morality, and provides nothing real in return. You say the point is a desire to "constantly seek truth"... I don't think highly educated people often land at religion from their studies. I'm a very committed student but I've never come close to believing in religion. And you said it yourself - one could be led to an atheist conclusion even through living a good, moral, and truth-seeking life. So why on earth did god make himself empirically non-existent to so many of us, with the expectation that we would not find him, if there is any truth in that belief? The much simpler explanation is that god does not exist, so one can be a very moral person without finding or seeking god.
I think you may have misunderstood. I believe that God is love and goodness, and so where those things are present God is present also. If you accept love and goodness, if you strive to live by the values of honesty, truth, generosity, humility, kindness, etc, to the best of your understanding of those things, you are unknowingly accepting God into your heart, and He is present there, imho. I am by no means saying that people who are religious or Catholic are all good people.
You're quite secular for a Catholic, CL
I really don't know how you can get that where ever there is "love and goodness", there is god. God is supposed to be everywhere, right? Including all awful places, and allowing all awful things to occur. Once again, your conception of god is not your understanding of morality.
If, in your view, a good portion of the Catholics aren't moral and therefore aren't going to heaven, and a good portion of the atheists and members of other religions are moral and are going to heaven, there is no correlation between heaven and religion. So what, then, is the role of the Catholic Church?
