RE: Is the catholic church a force for good?
March 8, 2013 at 2:04 am
(This post was last modified: March 8, 2013 at 2:04 am by Lion IRC.)
EGross,
Do you remember the Hitchens dilemma/wager along the lines of...
...anything you can do, I can do better with an atheist level of mediocrity probably almost just as well?
It's the one he used to trot out whenever the moral argument for God was being raised.
It's applicable here because, (and this was why his counter-apologetic ploy failed,) the atheist can EQUALLY do something ''bad'' if they want. (Same free will as Christians)
However unlike the Christian who sins, none of Mr Hitchens' fellow atheists could hold up a bible and say...see how you have sinned.
My point is that the Christian can do something ''righteous'' and that Christian's Church would endorse it biblically. And that same Christian could also sin and they would for the very same reason, agree that the Church's admonishment was based on a standard set by the same God.
The sinner who asks for forgiveness and receives a clean slate from God is in a different category to the person who thinks theres no such thing as sin and no God to Whom they ought apologise. One is a True Scotsman and the other isnt even from Scotland.
So you see there IS such a thing as a True Sinner in the eyes of The Church and it IS possible to differentiate between bad things done by atheists and sins committed by those who admit the reality of sin (good/evil)
In any case, I think I could sustain an argument that The Church was a force for good even is they did have to ''cop'' the blame for (truly evil) deeds of people that you might accuse of being Christians.
I wonder if anyone ever did publically offer a successful response to Mr Hitchens challenge?
I thought the best contender would be laying down your earthly life for your fellow humans with no earthly reward. (ie. no insurance policy payout to your surviving relatives.) Self-sacrifice purely for love, done in the faith that there is an afterlife.
That to me would take the sort of faith that an atheist couldnt match and would be hard for an athiest to explain in secular or evolutionary terms. Why deprive your own selfish DNA the opportunity to continue propagating while simultaneously saving the life of someone else whose DNA is technically going to compete with your future offspring.
Do you remember the Hitchens dilemma/wager along the lines of...
...anything you can do, I can do better with an atheist level of mediocrity probably almost just as well?
It's the one he used to trot out whenever the moral argument for God was being raised.
It's applicable here because, (and this was why his counter-apologetic ploy failed,) the atheist can EQUALLY do something ''bad'' if they want. (Same free will as Christians)
However unlike the Christian who sins, none of Mr Hitchens' fellow atheists could hold up a bible and say...see how you have sinned.
My point is that the Christian can do something ''righteous'' and that Christian's Church would endorse it biblically. And that same Christian could also sin and they would for the very same reason, agree that the Church's admonishment was based on a standard set by the same God.
The sinner who asks for forgiveness and receives a clean slate from God is in a different category to the person who thinks theres no such thing as sin and no God to Whom they ought apologise. One is a True Scotsman and the other isnt even from Scotland.
So you see there IS such a thing as a True Sinner in the eyes of The Church and it IS possible to differentiate between bad things done by atheists and sins committed by those who admit the reality of sin (good/evil)
In any case, I think I could sustain an argument that The Church was a force for good even is they did have to ''cop'' the blame for (truly evil) deeds of people that you might accuse of being Christians.
I wonder if anyone ever did publically offer a successful response to Mr Hitchens challenge?
I thought the best contender would be laying down your earthly life for your fellow humans with no earthly reward. (ie. no insurance policy payout to your surviving relatives.) Self-sacrifice purely for love, done in the faith that there is an afterlife.
That to me would take the sort of faith that an atheist couldnt match and would be hard for an athiest to explain in secular or evolutionary terms. Why deprive your own selfish DNA the opportunity to continue propagating while simultaneously saving the life of someone else whose DNA is technically going to compete with your future offspring.
