Theology and Sociology

[SimpleCaveman]

That's the whole problem, though, isn't it?  That our current understanding of reality is post-christian (even to christians...) is an effect of christian ideas having already failed by that metric.

No, not at all. As an example, the military code / life is a good one. If someone betrays the code and leaves that life becoming a fat druggie or a hired killer of innocents, it’s not that the code failed. It’s that they rejected the code for their own self interests. Catholic theology didn’t fail. Rather people wanted it their way. Our society has moved into a “theology” where we are our own god.

Nature yet again, in the only way that it even makes sense to ask or answer that question.

Not sure how that makes sense. Nature made Nature? I guess you could say that world now comes from the world a moment ago, but that only goes back so far. What then?

If natural theology doesn't support any of these things - the way of allegedly knowing god by reason which you've said is the way to do that...then it seems like natural theology can't back up whatever the oughts in your christian religion are.

What you're telling us here is that your god facts and moral facts are not natural facts.  That they are of another kind not found in mere reality, in nature.  That there really is no such thing as a natural teleology, for example.  

Natural Theology is just one of the partitions of the broader field of Theology. Maybe even the first step because through our natural reason we can know that God exists (plus some other things about Him). Knowing God by their reason is something that everyone can do.

But Natural Theology can only take us so far. A divine being would be so different from us that we can only know so much by our reason alone. After that, we have to have revelation. The being has to reveal itself to us. So, no, it is not a “natural fact.”

The moral side is, the way I understand it, similar. There is a Natural Law and there is revealed Moral Law. The universe is orderly and rational. We are rational creatures. There is a lot we are able to rationally discern about what we should and shouldn’t do. For example, those who have never heard of the Ten Commandments already know that it’s wrong to murder – even if they do it anyway, or even if they rationalize a certain type of murder as not really murder. (taken from catholic.com)

Natural teleology is a third thing that you’re throwing in there. I take that to mean a purpose that we can discern with our Reason. If that’s what you mean, then yes, there is a natural teleology. We can clearly see that we want more both in quantity and quality. We want better than we have it, or why care about “what constitutes a meaningful existence, a just society or an ethical decision”? We want to have more than what we have now. This comes out in good ways by hard work, having kids, building a business. It comes out in bad ways by addictions and greed.

This innate desire for the more and better cannot be satisfied by any material thing. I’m not saying that we can jump to the idea that God exists from this, but it is consistent.

Pax et bonum