Ask a Catholic

[Randy Carson]

I suppose we have to begin be defining God.

Good idea there.  But when you include in your definition 'beyond human understanding' or 'ineffible' or 'infinite' you sabotage any further description.  Once God is place beyond knowledge, you lose standing to claim knowledge thereof.
Personal revelation does not solve this.  To judge personal revelation true, you have to be able to judge its validity, a task whose possibility you just eliminated.

How well do I have to understand physics in order to get the general idea of the Big Bang or multiverses or black holes or dark matter?

Do I need the comprehension of these things that Stephen Hawking has? Or would some basics be sufficient for me to accept that these things are reasonable explanations based on what we know so far?

Do I need the comprehension of the trinity that Thomas Aquinas had? Or would some basics about God's attributes be sufficient for me to accept that God must exist?

Personal revelation does not solve this.  To judge personal revelation true, you have to be able to judge its validity, a task whose possibility you just eliminated.

Why? If a being far beyond my comprehension reveal himself to me, how is it that I cannot know with certainty that the being exists even if I cannot begin to comprehend Him in all His depths?

In my model of reality, religions are complicated memeplexes that colonize minds.  They are living structures of information carried in human brains.  They have replicating strategies and defensive mechanisms that have evolved to aid their persistence and replication.  They mutate and adapt.  Or don't and go extinct, subject, as are we all, to selective pressures.  While once strong, religion is being squeezed into smaller and smaller niches.  Will it survive?
As an infected carrier, and potential vector, you are an available experimental subject.  
Poke the bug, see it wiggle.  
I am happy to admit, my model is also a replicating memeplex, but at least it is aware of its condition.

I see.

I was referring to the entire expansionist imperialism of the Christian colonizing powers, not simply a few Spanish witch burners.  The reaction of the Catholic church to the perceived existential threat of the reformation was to try to take back its ambulatory memory (re-convert by argument or force) and, were this to fail, fall back on a strategy of replication and expansion into the non-european minds becoming available.  This expansion (missionary work to the heathen) supplanted cultures throughout the globe with attendent license to rape, pillage and murder because, after all, they were doing God's work.

Oh, sure...raping and pillaging and murdering do have a way of winning over the hearts and minds of the indigenous people. Nothing says, "We're here to preach a loving God" quite like a good bloodbath.  

And, not at all incidentally, to destroy the extant cultures they discovered. Compared to this, a policy of hiding pedophile priests from due punishment is pretty weak meat.

By teaching headhunters that killing neighboring tribesmen was wrong? Yeah, that was unnecessary...we coulda left that in place.

Guess you decided to drop the bit about the school systems doing the same thing then? Or was that JennyA?

Maybe I have the two of you confused.
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The only question any catholic should be asked is quite simple.

Where is your definitive proof of god?

More importantly, where is yours?

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More importantly, I know how to use NFP. The challenge is in saying "no" when you know you should...and that includes when she's saying "yes".

'Nuff said.

But what is the point of denying yourselves sex when you could just wear a condom?  How is NFP any different (besides effectiveness) from other forms of birth control?  You're still trying to "control" when conception happens.

The Church teaches that there is nothing wrong with controlling "when" conception occurs.

There are valid reasons for avoiding pregnancy. 

Why it does or does not is more important since even NFP can be used selfishly. 

Of course, having sex or abstaining (or denying the spouse) can be used selfishly, too.