Is America the greatest country

[Catholic_Lady]

You're making strawmen arguments and very much mistaken about what I believe and about what is "according to me". 
[...]

You claim to be a "devout catholic". I happen to know what that means, as I was raised as one. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too, by on one hand - subscribing to a very rigid and transparent set of religious beliefs, and on the other - creating a pretense of individuality and freedom of thought.

You can deflect all you want, saying that I'm somehow misrepresenting your particular self-serving interpretation of the ideology I was once a part of, that doesn't change the fact, that my claim to "proper" understanding catholic dogma and views is just as valid as yours.

Being raised Catholic doesn't necessarily mean you know your catechisis. I was raised Catholic too, but there were a lot of things I did not know and did not understand until I started doing my own research and my own reading. A lot of it I learned when I was in college and joined a Catholic Student Association - not at home with my mom and dad, and not even in my Catholic grade school. For example, the Church does not say that gay people will go to Hell but you accused me of believing that anyway.

[Whateverist]

Perhaps you should answer his point?  Part of Original Sin -- our "fallen state" -- is death. As your own catechism states, Original Sin is not an act but rather a condition. It is clear that if your god wanted to do so, he could heal humankind of this fallen state (as you believe he did with Mary). The fact is that you believe your god himself invented death -- when he had the power to instead impart immortality. To then turn around and protest someone's hypothetical wish for the death of others even as you worship the Author of Death is the weakness his point is aimed at.

As for the story of Eve eating the apple, I've talked many times about how neither me nor the majority of Catholics see this story as a literal one. It's more a symbolism of human sin, free will, and the fact that none of us is perfect and will inevitably do things wrong sometimes.

Your ability to understand your religious beliefs allegorically is a great advance over the bullocks we hear from baser forms of protestantism all the time around here. But tell me, why isn't resurrection and after life understood in the same allegorical way? I'm sure it is by plenty of catholics, especially the better educated ones. This is what allows 'believers' to be as unfettered by their beliefs as any atheist. I just wish it was more common.

[Longhorn]

To be fair the catechism only says gays are commiting a grave moral depravity, it doesn't explicity say they therefore must go to hell
(...Woo fucking hoo, I know )

[Catholic_Lady]

Here are my beliefs regarding Hell: 

http://atheistforums.org/thread-35781.html

I certainly agree with all three points.  The only provision for me is "thus rejecting God" part, since it seems spurious to equate "goodness and love" with "god".  (I would've thought god was more synonymous with revenge and retribution than anything else, but admittedly I am uninformed.)

So this is to say that "being in hell" is a psychological state, not a physical place.  I believe psychological states exist, including angst, alienation and hopelessness.  When one is actually in such a state, the imagery and symbolism of the bible's hell may more richly capture the felt experience.  But one must never allow what something is like become understood literally.

Yes, describing it as a psychological state is a great way of putting it. 

I wonder if you can say why you feel what understanding positive psychological states as being closer to god adds to your experience or understanding of the world.

Well I believe God is everything that is good - love, charity, kindness, honesty, generosity, etc. I believe everything that is not good is merely the absence of God. Cliche, but basically in the same way that darkness is the absence of light.

[Homeless Nutter]

[...]So when someone talks about wanting every gun owner to get killed by getting shot, I use the word "innocent" to describe them in the sense that they are not criminals deserving of a death sentence merely because they have a gun.  

And yet they deserve a death sentence merely because they were born human. All you're saying is that only god gets to harm and kill people, or even wish for them to die. All we get to do is praise god when they do die and/or get otherwise punished.

As for the story of Eve eating the apple, I've talked many times about how neither me nor the majority of Catholics see this story as a literal one. It's more a symbolism of human sin, free will, and the fact that none of us is perfect and will inevitably do things wrong sometimes.

You're still dancing around the issue. It doesn't matter, if it's a literal female eating a literal apple, or not - according to your god because of our POTENTIAL for "doing things wrong sometimes", we don't deserve to live forever, the way humans were - allegedly - originally intended to. In fact - many of us deserve to live in utter poverty, ignorance and indignity, just because - as C. Hitchens put it - we were created sick and commanded to be well.

[Anomalocaris]

Actually, Christopher hitchens was quoting Baron Greville. The rest of the poem is just as topical.

O, wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
Is it the mark or majesty of power
To make offenses that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self deflower
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
For how should man think that he may not do,
If nature did not fail and punish, too?
Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,
Only commands things difficult and hard,
Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,
Makes easy pains, unpossible reward.
If nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good.
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in good and still devotion,
To preach of heaven’s wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks
He finds the God there, far unlike his books.

[Catholic_Lady]

As for the story of Eve eating the apple, I've talked many times about how neither me nor the majority of Catholics see this story as a literal one. It's more a symbolism of human sin, free will, and the fact that none of us is perfect and will inevitably do things wrong sometimes.

Your ability to understand your religious beliefs allegorically is a great advance over the bullocks we hear from baser forms of protestantism all the time around here.  But tell me, why isn't resurrection and after life understood in the same allegorical way?  I'm sure it is by plenty of catholics, especially the better educated ones.  This is what allows 'believers' to be as unfettered by their beliefs as any atheist.  I just wish it was more common.

Hmm, I can't say I've never met a Catholic who doesn't actually believe in an afterlife as being a real, literal thing. Same with the resurrection of Jesus. They are definitely fundamental, doctrinal teachings. But believing in a symbolic version of Genesis is indeed very common. Though there are definitely varying degrees of understanding of "original sin." I understand it as being the fact that none of us are perfect and will at times use our free will to do wrongful things.

[Catholic_Lady]

To be fair the catechism only says gays are commiting a grave moral depravity, it doesn't explicity say they therefore must go to hell
(...Woo fucking hoo, I know )

Yes, it does teach that any sex outside of husband and wife is not moral, and of course that includes homosexual activity. However, there are many aspects that play a role in a person's culpability, and ultimately it is culpability (what is in a person's heart) that will matter in the next life. And when speculating about a person's culpability, if we do so at all, which we really shouldn't, we are required to assume the best of the person.

[Whateverist]

I wonder if you can say why you feel what understanding positive psychological states as being closer to god adds to your experience or understanding of the world.

Well I believe God is everything that is good - love, charity, kindness, honesty, generosity, etc. I believe everything that is not good is merely the absence of God. Cliche, but basically in the same way that darkness is the absence of light.

So is being of or from god something which exists in pleasant psychological states, being what they are like? Do you believe God can and does literally take the form of a human-like subject? Is there anything which God, as you understand it, is apart from the way we experience it?

I guess you know by now I think that God can seem as real to a person as they are themselves, and that is because I think both personal identity and god identity are the product of the human mind. Neither we nor god have any existence outside lived experience, but that doesn't mean that those who believe should be rid of belief in God any more than they should try to transcend belief in themselves as persons.

If it is any comfort, I think that God is usually experienced as encompassing a greater portion of ones total being. Furthermore, those of us who reject any gods in all forms don't always succeed in creating an alternative 'channel' for accessing that greater self. (But it isn't impossible.)

[Longhorn]

To be fair the catechism only says gays are commiting a grave moral depravity, it doesn't explicity say they therefore must go to hell
(...Woo fucking hoo, I know )

Yes, it does teach that any sex outside of husband and wife is not moral, and of course that includes homosexual activity. However, there are many aspects that play a role in a person's culpability, and ultimately it is culpability (what is in a person's heart) that will matter in the next life. And when speculating about a person's culpability, if we do so at all, which we really shouldn't, we are required to assume the best of the person.

But it does teach that same sex sexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered' and can't be approved under any circumstances, which is singling them out, not just claiming that it's wrong because they're not married. The outside marriage thing sounds like simple rationalization to me. And I'd do that too if my church was this bigoted.
#2357:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/ar...s2c2a6.htm