Ask a Catholic

[JuliaL]

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?

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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.

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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?

As you pointed out up-thread, the consequences of being wrong could be personally catastrophic.
The trouble is, you think your understanding is complete and infallible while admitting it is not.
I bolded 'know with certainty' because it is exactly this where your unquestioning belief becomes a danger to yourself.
Physics is simply a description of the universe around us.  It is not personally vindictive or vengeful.  
A demon could be. It might play a game with you to see how far you can be misled. And it could be fully capable of clouding your mind into believing it offered absolute truth and eternal bliss.

Without an independent, reliable method of identifying a god vs a demon, you cannot even assign probabilities as to which is the case.  Even if you found a god, it could, for its own ineffible reasons, damn you to hell in what to you would be an arbitrary and unjust action.  You cry, "But God is Love, All perfection and goodness!  He would never do that!" in your own feeble, infallible, reedy voice.  Again, you arrogantly claim to know the essential characteristics of God while admitting He is unknowable.
By biting fully on the bait, you are buying that pig to which I referred earlier.

"Do I need the comprehension of the trinity that Thomas Aquinas had?"
Why do you think yours is less or his was complete?
In fact, you need more.

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. 

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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.

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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.

In the context of cultural imperialism, the raping and pillaging and the preaching go together.  They were practiced by the same societies in the same time and place.  It did work as the quote from van OSS shows. "Spain insisted on converting the natives of the lands it conquered to its state religion. Miraculously, it succeeded."  
I think you have quite a bit confused.

[Randy Carson]

Ok. I think that's bat-shit insane, but thank you for answering honestly.

No, problem, Becca.

I will always answer an honest question as honestly as I can. Thank you for asking.

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Oh wait.  Here's another one: since I entertained the "God" idea while you were explaining that, could I ask you to pretend you don't believe "God" exists?  Would you still use NFP, or would you concede that there's nothing wrong with copulation and contraception?

If it were not prohibited by God, then sure...I would encourage my wife to use some form of birth control.

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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?

---

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?

As you pointed out up-thread, the consequences of being wrong could be personally catastrophic.

Indeed.

The trouble is, you think your understanding is complete and infallible while admitting it is not.

After nearly 36 years of Catholicism and nearly a decade of online apologetics, one thing I do know is that I am not infallible.  

I bolded 'know with certainty' because it is exactly this where your unquestioning belief becomes a danger to yourself.

Some things can be known with certainty even if they are not fully understood.

Physics is simply a description of the universe around us.  It is not personally vindictive or vengeful.  

A demon could be. It might play a game with you to see how far you can be misled. And it could be fully capable of clouding your mind into believing it offered absolute truth and eternal bliss.

Ah...here you are really onto something, Julia. A demon COULD be deceiving someone...even me. So, knowing how demons operate, what they can and cannot do, and how to stay clear of them becomes a bit more important, doesn't it?

Now, for the baptized Catholic who frequents the sacraments and maintains a state of grace, demons do not have much sway. For the godless, demons have no real reason to bother - that battle is essentially won (unless the person is moved by grace and open to it). So, the battle is over those who are considering faith in God. (Satan also attacks God's strongholds - such as the priesthood - through sins of the flesh (think pedophilia and other carnal temptations here)). God is greater and cannot be defeated...but WE have free will and can choose to act on temptations.

Without an independent, reliable method of identifying a god vs a demon, you cannot even assign probabilities as to which is the case.  Even if you found a god, it could, for its own ineffible reasons, damn you to hell in what to you would be an arbitrary and unjust action.  You cry, "But God is Love, All perfection and goodness!  He would never do that!" in your own feeble, infallible, reedy voice.  Again, you arrogantly claim to know the essential characteristics of God while admitting He is unknowable.
By biting fully on the bait, you are buying that pig to which I referred earlier.

Knowing no god, I'm not sure how you feel qualified to comment on mine.

"Do I need the comprehension of the trinity that Thomas Aquinas had?"
Why do you think yours is less or his was complete?
In fact, you need more.

The Christian faith is simple enough that even a peasant may understand, believe and be saved. It is also deep and rich enough that some of the greatest intellects in history have barely scratched the surface.

[JuliaL]

The trouble is, you think your understanding is complete and infallible while admitting it is not.

After nearly 36 years of Catholicism and nearly a decade of online apologetics, one thing I do know is that I am not infallible.  

Some things can be known with certainty even if they are not fully understood.

My bolding.

At least you know you are infallible in the things about which you are certain, right?
From whence comes the certainty that the God you worship is not a demon?

A demon COULD be deceiving someone...even me. So, knowing how demons operate, what they can and cannot do, and how to stay clear of them becomes a bit more important, doesn't it?

Now, for the baptized Catholic who frequents the sacraments and maintains a state of grace, demons do not have much sway. For the godless, demons have no real reason to bother - that battle is essentially won (unless the person is moved by grace and open to it). So, the battle is over those who are considering faith in God. (Satan also attacks God's strongholds - such as the priesthood - through sins of the flesh (think pedophilia and other carnal temptations here)). God is greater and cannot be defeated...but WE have free will and can choose to act on temptations.

If the God you worship is really demonic, and you have no way to prove the contrary, then the information you've been fed on the intentions and behaviors of demons is not only suspect, it is wrong, crafted to divert you from the true path.  You have a consistent story about grace and damnation, but consistency is not truth.

Knowing no god, I'm not sure how you feel qualified to comment on mine.

Your god and I inhabit the same reality.  The question is whether he fulfills the supernatural specifications you want him to or is simply a set of cultural conventions and agreed upon images created by a society that serve individuals in and the society itself.  In short, your imaginary friend whom you can use to threaten and manipulate others.

The Christian faith is simple enough that even a peasant may understand, believe and be saved.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."  H.L. Mencken
I won't suggest that the peasant is stupid and can't understand what the wise do.  We're back to, "What part of ineffible don't you understand?" The only possible answer is, "All of it."

[pocaracas]

Feeling ignored... not a worthwhile question, huh?

My question remains the same: How do you fit in your head the information that a writing exists, predating the canonical date of the birth of Jesus, which presents a figure whose life contains details that match very closely to the life attributed, in the canon, to Jesus?

This question is about YOU. What is your personal take on this.
Had you ever come across this detail of 1970's archeology?

Maybe it's because it doesn't address catholicism in particular... Why should the questions on this thread pertain only to catholicism?
On the other hand, catholics do claim to be the true followers of christ, so this should be quite relevant, as it may undermine some... traditions. It also casts some doubt on the legitimacy of the church founders... what did they really know?

[JuliaL]

Ah...here you are really onto something, Julia. A demon COULD be deceiving someone...even me. So, knowing how demons operate, what they can and cannot do, and how to stay clear of them becomes a bit more important, doesn't it?

Now, for the baptized Catholic who frequents the sacraments and maintains a state of grace, demons do not have much sway. For the godless, demons have no real reason to bother - that battle is essentially won (unless the person is moved by grace and open to it). So, the battle is over those who are considering faith in God. (Satan also attacks God's strongholds - such as the priesthood - through sins of the flesh (think pedophilia and other carnal temptations here)). God is greater and cannot be defeated...but WE have free will and can choose to act on temptations.

Pretty amazing that you agree a demon could cloud your mind with one breath and in the next paragraph state that you could not be deceived. 
A and not A in the same post.
Magic and logic don't go together.

[Randy Carson]

Feeling ignored... not a worthwhile question, huh?

Not really.

My question remains the same: How do you fit in your head the information that a writing exists, predating the canonical date of the birth of Jesus, which presents a figure whose life contains details that match very closely to the life attributed, in the canon, to Jesus?

This question is about YOU. What is your personal take on this.
Had you ever come across this detail of 1970's archeology?

Maybe it's because it doesn't address catholicism in particular... Why should the questions on this thread pertain only to catholicism?
On the other hand, catholics do claim to be the true followers of christ, so this should be quite relevant, as it may undermine some... traditions. It also casts some doubt on the legitimacy of the church founders... what did they really know?

But since you've brought it up like five times in this thread, I'm guessing this is your go-to argument for proving Christianity wrong, eh? This is the one that you think cannot possibly be answered by anyone stupid enough to believe the Jesus is God?

<Yawn.> 

Okay, if you want to provide a link to this figure whom you feel Jesus was copied from, I'll check it out. But you do know you could easily Google "Jesus Copycat" and find all kinds of refutations of this silliness, right? 

We both know you're not going to believe anything I post in response, so I can only conclude that you THINK you can rattle my cage by referencing some half-baked notions such as those you are promoting. Seriously? No chance.

So, I recommend you use your time more profitably by checking out the writings of Tim O'Neill, an atheist historian who knows enough to be honest about the historical Jesus. I've printed out a lot of his posts, and I'm reading them now.

If half of the members of this forum understood half of what O'Neill is saying, there would be a lot less stupidity on display.

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Ah...here you are really onto something, Julia. A demon COULD be deceiving someone...even me. So, knowing how demons operate, what they can and cannot do, and how to stay clear of them becomes a bit more important, doesn't it?

Now, for the baptized Catholic who frequents the sacraments and maintains a state of grace, demons do not have much sway. For the godless, demons have no real reason to bother - that battle is essentially won (unless the person is moved by grace and open to it). So, the battle is over those who are considering faith in God. (Satan also attacks God's strongholds - such as the priesthood - through sins of the flesh (think pedophilia and other carnal temptations here)). God is greater and cannot be defeated...but WE have free will and can choose to act on temptations.

Pretty amazing that you agree a demon could cloud your mind with one breath and in the next paragraph state that you could not be deceived. 
A and not A in the same post.
Magic and logic don't go together.

You have a deficient understanding of God. While I do not claim to be infallible nor to have a comprehensive understanding, what I can say is this:

In the Western Philosophical tradition, God is a being that is necessary (cannot fail to exist), eternal (not bound by time), immaterial (not bound be space), all-powerful, and all knowing. Most Western philosophers and theologians agree that God is all-good, or he is the perfect embodiment of the virtues of love, justice, and every other good we know. As St. Anselm of Canterbury said, God is the being "than which no greater can be thought."

Now, let's deal with your demons.

You suggest that I may be deceived by a demon and that if this is true, I would not even know it. Well, how is that working out? Christians believe that the greatest commandments are to love God and our neighbor. If a demon is deceiving me into thinking that I must love the Creator of all things and to care for those around me, how is this demon advancing his own agenda which, presumably, is to have Christians do something other than those two things? IOW, if Christianity is actually a demonic plot to mislead all of its adherents, the demon who devised it has done his job too well - billions of Christians have given their lives to follow NOT the demon who sought to fool us, but the God of the myth that the demon created. 

How has this demon benefited from the ruse?

And precisely who or what is the demon attempting to mislead us from? Another demon? The true God? You've not been clear on this point. If believing that Jesus is God is a deception, then what do you posit to be the truth? Who should we be worshiping instead?

Jesus said, "If Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?" (Luke 11:18) 

So, if I'm deceived by a demon into believing that there is a loving creator God who died upon the cross so that I might live with Him forever in heaven, what is the truth from which I am being diverted by this evil demon? 

And what's in it for Him? We spend a lifetime doing good as much as possible...that must be unbearable for him to watch. A purely evil God would rather see evil - not good - being done. And as has been pointed out quite forcefully in the "Why Be Good?" thread, even non-believers do good to others. Wow. That must suck for our evil demon. If he is deceiving Christians by a false gospel which tells them that they must do good, then by what mechanism has the demon also deceived atheists that they must do good, also?

Are you saying that an evil God would fool Christians into believing that there is a heaven just so he can pull the rug out from under us in the end? That seems sort of anti-climatic, doesn't it? People spend their lifetimes running soup kitchens and discovering vaccines to prevent illnesses and so forth...doing all kinds of GOOD things because of their mistaken belief that "God" wants us to do them...and then he gets to say "Gotcha" when we learn that heaven is a lie after we die? Really? He has to endure watching us do good for years so that he gets a momentary thrill? 

Sounds kinda silly, doesn't it? And truly beneath a Being who has that kind of power.

[Randy Carson]

My question remains the same: How do you fit in your head the information that a writing exists, predating the canonical date of the birth of Jesus, which presents a figure whose life contains details that match very closely to the life attributed, in the canon, to Jesus?

This question is about YOU. What is your personal take on this.

My take is that Tim O'Neill nailed this on his blog. Responding to the italicized bit below, Tim provides a pretty solid answer.

Another possible alternative take is that "Jesus" was actually the Jesus the Pharisee leader crucified by Alexander Jannaeus about 110 years ago before the alleged NT Jesus allegedly was crucified.

Lots of things are merely "possible". Historians leave writing about things that are merely "possible" to novelists and stick to what is rendered "most probable" via analysis of the evidence and cogent argument.

The "possibility" that Jesus was "really" the Yeshu executed by Alexander Jannaeus faces the same problem as many of these theories that Jesus was "really" someone else - if the Jesus in the gospels was that Jesus, why did they set their stories 130 years later? That needs an explanation that accounts for the all the elements in the later stories better than the far more parsimonious idea that there was another guy called Jesus executed in the 30s AD.

Fr. William Most wrote an article entitled, "Dead Sea Scrolls: Threat to Christiantiy" which discusses the "Teacher of Righteousness", Michael Wise and a host of related matters.
You can find it on EWTN's website.

[pocaracas]

My question remains the same: How do you fit in your head the information that a writing exists, predating the canonical date of the birth of Jesus, which presents a figure whose life contains details that match very closely to the life attributed, in the canon, to Jesus?

This question is about YOU. What is your personal take on this.

My take is that Tim O'Neill nailed this on his blog. Responding to the italicized bit below, Tim provides a pretty solid answer.

Another possible alternative take is that "Jesus" was actually the Jesus the Pharisee leader crucified by Alexander Jannaeus about 110 years ago before the alleged NT Jesus allegedly was crucified.

Lots of things are merely "possible". Historians leave writing about things that are merely "possible" to novelists and stick to what is rendered "most probable" via analysis of the evidence and cogent argument.

The "possibility" that Jesus was "really" the Yeshu executed by Alexander Jannaeus faces the same problem as many of these theories that Jesus was "really" someone else - if the Jesus in the gospels was that Jesus, why did they set their stories 130 years later? That needs an explanation that accounts for the all the elements in the later stories better than the far more parsimonious idea that there was another guy called Jesus executed in the 30s AD.

First up: I've searched for it and it seems there's a great controversy over who the teacher of righteousness may have been... however, the names "Yeshu" and "Jesus the pharisee" are never even candidates:
http://www.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/deadsea.htm
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso...19666.html

I could also not find a reference to that "Jesus the pharisee" anywhere, in the 10 minutes I spent googling that guy and Alexander Jannaeus. This later dude does seem to have crucified or hung some 800 pharisees... if one of them was called Jesus... well.... why not?

So, it seems that, once more, Tim O'Neil is not aware of the teacher of righteousness... Oh, but he is!
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christ...-2560.html

In all this discussion, little is mentioned of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a "Teacher of Righteousness", and a "Wicked Priest".
Why are these documents ignored here as well as other discussions about the origins of christianity?

Could it be that christianity " borrowed" from these ancient papers?

Or that Jesus and his followers were part of the same socio-religious environment that produced the DSS. How would you determine the difference between "borrowing" from them and simply being from the same culture as them angelo?

Which brings us back to the similarities in the extraordinary details of both tales. That's how, Tim.
WUT?! Both guys resurrect after 3 days?!

Second up: I agree.... Why set up the stories some 100 years after the fact? Indeed, it needs explaining... but if the tale is told a few decades after the real fact, where no fact-checking is possible, it could have happened 10, 20, 100 years before... no one would know.... and no one who maybe could fact-check it was interested in the story (the pharisee priests? the romans?).
Maybe (and here I go into pointless speculation) the person telling the tale just didn't know... and used some elements from memory - some roman guy that was the big boss when the storyteller was a kid... or something. I'd like to know how things happened back then, but, except for the use of a time machine, there's no way we can find out, is there?

[Randy Carson]

My take is that Tim O'Neill nailed this on his blog. Responding to the italicized bit below, Tim provides a pretty solid answer.

First up: I've searched for it and it seems there's a great controversy over who the teacher of righteousness may have been... however, the names "Yeshu" and "Jesus the pharisee" are never even candidates:
http://www.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/deadsea.htm
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso...19666.html

I could also not find a reference to that "Jesus the pharisee" anywhere, in the 10 minutes I spent googling that guy and Alexander Jannaeus. This later dude does seem to have crucified or hung some 800 pharisees... if one of them was called Jesus... well.... why not?

So, it seems that, once more, Tim O'Neil is not aware of the teacher of righteousness... Oh, but he is!
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christ...-2560.html

   Or that Jesus and his followers were part of the same socio-religious environment that produced the DSS. How would you determine the difference between "borrowing" from them and simply being from the same culture as them angelo?

Which brings us back to the similarities in the extraordinary details of both tales. That's how, Tim.
WUT?! Both guys resurrect after 3 days?!

Second up: I agree.... Why set up the stories some 100 years after the fact? Indeed, it needs explaining... but if the tale is told a few decades after the real fact, where no fact-checking is possible, it could have happened 10, 20, 100 years before... no one would know.... and no one who maybe could fact-check it was interested in the story (the pharisee priests? the romans?).
Maybe (and here I go into pointless speculation) the person telling the tale just didn't know... and used some elements from memory - some roman guy that was the big boss when the storyteller was a kid... or something. I'd like to know how things happened back then, but, except for the use of a time machine, there's no way we can find out, is there?

Yep.

The eleven disciples sat around one night shortly after the death of Jesus (and Judas) trying to figure out what to do next. While fishing and tax collecting were obvious choices, there was no general agreement. 

As the night wore on and more wine was consumed, someone starting talking about the legend of Yeshu...one thing led to another...and they all swore a blood oath to never reveal the secret of how they invented the Legend of Jesus of Nazareth. 

I'll close with this: before I ventured into this forum, I knew that Christianity has its lunatic fringes. Now, I see that atheism does, too. As Bart Ehrman wrote in response to Richard Carrier, "My view is that there is no reason to take seriously people who cannot be taken seriously:  a few indications of general incompetence is good enough."

[FatAndFaithless]

You..do know they simply could've been wrong, right? They could've genuinely and honestly believed in this stuff, believed that what the stories they were telling and writing down later were true. I don't think the claim here is that they consciously sat down and said "Let's lie to people."

Lay off the strawmen, Randy, it's unfitting for someone as articulate as you.